Read Online Nero Wolfe 16 - Even in the Best Families by Rex Stout - Free Book Online Page A

personal use when he asked for it, but that he kept asking for bigger amounts, and she began giving him less than he asked for, and last October second he wanted fifteen grand, and she refused. Gave him zero. Since then, the past seven months, he had asked for none and got none, but in spite of that he had gone on spending plenty, and that was what was biting her. She hired Mr. Wolfe to find out where and how he was getting dough, and I was sent up here to look him over and possibly get hold of an idea. I needed an excuse for coming here, and the dog poisoning was better than average.” I fluttered a hand. “That’s all.”
    “You say Leeds was with her?” Noonan demanded.
    “That’s partly what I mean,” I told Ben Dykes, “about Noonan’s notion of how to ask questions. He must have heard me say she had Leeds along.”
    “Yeah,” Dykes said dryly. “But don’t be so damn cute. This is not exactly a picnic.” He spoke to Noonan. “Leeds didn’t make any mention of this?”
    “He did not. Of course I didn’t ask him.”
    Dykes stood up and asked Archer, “Hadn’t I better send for him? He went home.”
    Archer nodded, and Dykes went. “Good God,” Archer said with feeling, not to Noonan or me, so probably to the People of the State of New York. He sat biting his lip a while and then asked me, “Was that all Mrs. Rackham wanted?”
    “That’s all she asked for.”
    “Had she quarreled with her husband? Had he threatened her?”
    “She didn’t say so.”
    “Exactly what did she say?”
    That took half an hour. For me it was simple, since all I had to use was my memory, in view of the instructions from Wolfe to give them everything but the sausage. Archer didn’t know what my memory is capable of, so I didn’t repeat any of Mrs. Rackham’s speeches verbatim, though I could have, because he would have thought I was dressing it up. But when I was through he had it all.
    Then I was permitted to stay for the session with Leeds, who had arrived early in my recital but had been held outside until I was done. At last I was one of the party, but too late to hear anything that I didn’t already know. With Leeds, who was practically one of the family, they had to cover not only his visit with his cousin to Wolfe’s office, but also the preliminaries to it, so he took another half-hour more. He himself had no idea, he said, where Rackham had been getting money. He had learned nothing from the personal inquiry he had undertaken at his cousin’s request. He had never heard, or heard of, any serious quarrel between his cousin and her husband. And so on. As for his failure to tell Noonan of the visit to Wolfe’s office and the real reason formy presence at Birchvale, he merely said calmly that Noonan hadn’t asked and he preferred to wait until he was asked.
    District Attorney Archer finally called it a night, got up and stretched, rubbed his eyes with his fingertips, asked Dykes and Noonan some questions and issued some orders, and addressed me. “You’re staying at Leeds’ place?”
    I said I hadn’t stayed there much so far, but my bag was there.
    “All right. I’ll want you tomorrow—today.”
    I said of course and went out with Leeds. Ben Dykes offered to give us a lift, but we declined.
    Together, without conversation, Leeds and I made for the head of the trail at the edge of the woods, giving the curving paths a miss. Dawn had come and was going; it was getting close to sunrise. The breeze was down and the birds were up, telling about it. The pace Leeds set, up the long easy slope and down the level stretch, was not quite up to his previous performances, which suited me fine. I was not in a racing mood, even to get to a bed.
    Suddenly Leeds halted, and I came abreast of him. In the trail, thirty paces ahead, a man was getting up from his hands and knees to face us. He called, “Hold it! Who are you?”
    We told him.
    “Well,” he said, “you’ll have to keep off this section of trail. Go