Read Nero Wolfe 16 - Even in the Best Families for Free Online Page B

raising hell with the detective business. It used to be that a social evening at someone’s house or apartment was a fine opportunity for picking up lines and angles, moving around, watching and talking and listening; but with a television session you might as well be home in bed. You can’t see faces, and if someone does make a remark you can’t hear it unless it’s a scream, and you can’t even start a private inquiry, such as finding out where a young widow stands now on skepticism. In a movie theater at least you can hold hands.
    However, I did finally get what might have been a nibble. The screen had been turned off, and we had all got up to stretch, and Annabel had offered to drive Leeds and me home, and Leeds had told her that we would rather walk, when Barry Rackham moseyed over to me and said he hoped the television hadn’t bored me too much. I said no, just enough.
    “Think you’ll get anywhere on your job for Leeds?” he asked, jiggling his highball glass to make the ice tinkle.
    I lifted my shoulders and let them drop. “I don’t know. A month’s gone by.”
    He nodded. “That’s what makes it hard to believe.”
    “Yeah, why?”
    “That he would wait a month and then decide to blow himself to a fee for Nero Wolfe. Everybody knows that Wolfe comes high. I wouldn’t have thought Leeds could afford it.” Rackham smiled at me. “Driving back tonight?”
    “No, I’m staying over.”
    “That’s sensible. Night driving is dangerous, I think. The Sunday traffic won’t be bad this time of year if you leave early.” He touched my chest with a forefinger. “That’s it, leave early.” He moved off.
    Annabel was yawning, and Dana Hammond was looking at her as if that was exactly what he had come to Birchvale for, to see her yawn. Lina Darrow was looking from Barry Rackham to me and back again, and pretending she wasn’t looking anywhere with those eyes. The Doberman pinscher was standing tense, and Pierce, from a safe ten feet—one more than springing distance—was regarding it with an expression that gave me a more sympathetic feeling for him than I ever expected to have for a statesman.
    Calvin Leeds and Mrs. Rackham were also looking at the dog, with a quite different expression.
    “At least two pounds overweight,” Leeds was saying. “You feed him too much.”
    Mrs. Rackham protested that she didn’t.
    “Then you don’t run him enough.”
    “I know it,” she admitted. “I will from now on, I’ll be here more. I was busy today. I’ll take him out now. It’s a perfect night for a good walk—Barry, do you feel like walking?”
    He didn’t. He was nice about it, but he didn’t. She broadened the invitation to take in the group, butthere were no takers. She offered to walk Leeds and me home, but Leeds said she would go too slow, and he should have been in bed long ago since his rising time was six o’clock. He moved, and told me to come on if I was coming.
    We said good night and left.
    The outdoor air was sharper now. There were a few stars but no moon, and alone with no flashlight I would never have been able to keep that trail through the woods and might have made the Hillside Kennels clearing by dawn. For Leeds a flashlight would have been only a nuisance. He strode along at the same gait as in the daytime, and I stumbled at his heels, catching my toes on things, teetering on roots and pebbles, and once going clear down. I am not a deerstalker and don’t want to be. As we approached the kennels Leeds called out, and the sound came of many movements, but not a bark. Who wants a dog, let alone thirty or forty, not even human enough to bark when you come home?
    Leeds said that since the poisoning he always took a look around before going to bed, and I went on in the house and up to the little room where I had put my bag. I was sitting on the bed in pajamas, scratching the side of my neck and considering Barry Rackham’s last-minute remarks, when Leeds entered downstairs and came