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

disinfectant, diluting it, of course, every day including Sunday. I can back that statement up with two pieces of evidence: the word of the turnkey on the second-floor cell block, whose name is Wilkes, given to me personally, and my sense of smell, which is above average.
    I had no opportunity to make a tour of inspection during the twenty hours I was there, that Easter Sunday and the day following, but except for the smell I found nothing to write to the newspapers about, once you grant that society must protect itself against characters like me. My cell—or rather, our cell, since I had a mate—was as clean as they come. There was something about the blankets that made you keep them away from your chin, but that could have been just prejudice. The light was nothing wonderful, but good enough to read by for thirty days.
    I didn’t really get acquainted with my surroundings or my mate until Monday, I was so darned sleepy when they finally finished with me down below and showed me up to my room. They had been insistent but not ferocious. I had been allowed tophone Fritz that I wouldn’t be home, which was a good thing, as there was no telling what he would have done with no word from me coming on top of Wolfe’s fadeout, and also to try to call Nathaniel Parker, the only lawyer Wolfe has ever been willing to invite to dinner; but that was no go because he was away for the weekend. When at last I stretched out on the cot, I was dead to the world ten seconds after my head hit the pillow, consisting of my pants wrapped in my shirt.
    It was the pants, or rather the coat and vest that went with them, that made my stay pleasanter than it might have been right from the start. I had had perhaps half as much sleep as I could have used when a hell of a noise banged at me and I lifted my head and opened my eyes. Across the cell on another cot, so far away that I would have had to stretch my arm full length to touch him, was my cellmate—a broad-shouldered guy about my age, maybe a little older, with a mop of tousled black hair. He was sitting up, yawning.
    “What’s all the racket?” I asked. “Jail break?”
    “Breakfast and check-up in ten minutes,” he replied, getting to his feet, with socks on, to the floor. “Stupid custom.”
    “Boneheads,” I agreed, twisting up to sit on the edge of the cot.
    Going to the chair where his wardrobe was, his eye fell on my chair, and he stepped to it for a look at the coat and vest. He fingered the lapel, looked inside at the lining, and inspected a buttonhole. Then, without comment, he returned to his side, two whole steps, and started to dress. I followed suit.
    “Where do we wash?” I inquired.
    “After breakfast,” he replied, “if you insist.”
    A man in uniform appeared on the other side of the bars and used his hands, and the cell door swung open.
    “Wait a minute, Wilkes,” my mate told him, and then asked me, “You cleaned out?”
    “Naturally. This is a modern jail.”
    “Would bacon and eggs suit you?”
    “Just right.”
    “Toast white or rye?”
    “White.”
    “Our tastes are similar. Make it two, Wilkes. Two of everything.”
    “As you say,” the turnkey said distinctly, and went. My mate, getting his necktie under his shirt collar, told me, “They won’t allow exceptions to the turnout and check-up, but you can pass up the garbage. We’ll eat here in privacy.”
    “This,” I said earnestly, “is the brotherhood of man. I would like this breakfast to be on me when I get my wallet back.”
    He waved it away. “Forget it.”
    The turnout and check-up, I discovered, were not to be taken as opportunities for conversation. There were around forty of us, all shapes and sizes, and on the whole we were frankly not a blue-ribbon outfit. The smell of the breakfast added to the disinfectant was enough to account for the expressions on the faces, not counting whatever it was that had got them there, and it was a relief to get back to my cozy cell with my