Nero Wolfe 16 - Even in the Best Families by Rex Stout

shortly after midnight. What did you say to him?”
    “I told him what had happened. I reported, as fully as I could in the time I had, everything from my arrival here up to then. If the operator listened in you can check with her. I asked if I should limit my talk with the cops to events here and leave the rest for him to tell, and he said no, I should withholdnothing, including all details of Mrs. Rackham’s talk with him. That was all. As you know, I followed instructions.”
    “Jesus,” Dykes said. “Son, it looks like your turn to sweat has come.”
    Archer ignored him. “And after telling you to withhold nothing from the police, Wolfe suddenly decides, in the middle of the night, that he has had enough of detective work, sends an ad to a newspaper announcing his retirement, calls on a friend to arrange for the care of his orchids—and what did he do then? I was so engrossed I may have missed something.”
    “I don’t know what he did. He walked out. He disappeared.”
    I was aware, of course, of how it sounded. It was completely cuckoo. It was all rayon and a yard wide. I damn near made it even worse by telling them about the sausage and the tear gas, of course without letting on that we knew who had sent it, but realized in time how that would go over in the circumstances. That
would
have made a hit. But I had to say or do something, and decided to produce evidence, so I reached to my pocket for it.
    “He left notes on the table in his bedroom,” I said, “for Fritz and Theodore and me. Here’s mine.”
    I handed it to Archer. He read it and passed it to Dykes. Dykes read it twice and returned it to Archer, who stuck it in his pocket.
    “Jesus,” Dykes said again, looking at me in a way I didn’t like. “This is really something. I’ve always thought Nero Wolfe had a lot on the ball, and you too in a way, but this is about the worst I ever saw. Really.” He turned to Archer. “It’s plain what happened.”
    “It certainly is.” Archer made a fist. “Goodwin, I don’t ask you to tell me. I’ll tell you. When you found Mrs. Rackham there dead, you and Leeds agreed on a tale about the visit to Nero Wolfe. Leeds came here to break the news. You went to his place to phone Wolfe and report, both the murder and the tale you and Leeds had agreed on—or maybe Wolfe knew that already, since you had pretended to investigate the dog poisoning. In any case, Wolfe knew something that he didn’t dare to try to cover and that, equally, he didn’t dare to reveal. What made it unbearably hot was the murder. So he arranged to disappear, and we haven’t got him, and it may take a day or a week to find him. But we’ve got you.”
    The fist hit the table, not hard. “You know where Wolfe is. You know what he knows that he had to run away from. It is vital information required by me in my investigation of a murder. Surely you must see that your position is untenable, you can’t possibly get away with it. Twenty Nero Wolfes couldn’t bring you out of this with a whole skin. Even if he’s cooking up one of his flashy surprises, even if he walks into my office tomorrow with the murderer and the evidence to convict him, I will not stand for this. There is no written record of what you said last night. I’ll get the stenographer back in here and we’ll tear up his notebook and what he has typed, and you can start from scratch.”
    “Better grab it, son,” Dykes said, perfectly friendly. “Loyalty to your employer is a fine thing, but not when he’s got a screw loose.”
    I yawned. “My God, I’m sleepy. I wouldn’t mind this so much if I was helping out with a fix, good or bad, but it’s a shame to get stuck with the truth. Askme tomorrow, ask me all summer, I refuse to tell a lie. And I do not know where Mr. Wolfe is.”
    Archer stood up. “Get a material witness warrant and lock him up,” he said, almost squeaking, and marched out.

Chapter 8
    T he jail at White Plains uses a gallon of strong