In the Best Families

I had had it in mind to drop in at Rusterman's Restaurant for dinner and say hallo to Marko that evening, but now I didn't feel like sitting through all the motions, so I kept going to Eleventh Avenue, to Mart's Diner, and perched on a stool while I cleaned up a plate of beef stew, three ripe tomatoes sliced by me, and two pieces of blueberry pie. Even with a full stomach I was still excited.

It must have shown, I suppose in my eyes, for Mart asked me what the glow was about, and though I had never had any tendency to discuss my business with him,

I had to resist an impulse to remark casually that Wolfe and I had finally mixed it up with the most dangerous baby on two legs, one so tough that even Inspector

Cramer had said he was out of reach.

I went home and sat in the office all evening, holding magazines open as if I were reading them. All I really did was listen for the phone or doorbell. When the phone rang at ten o'clock and it was only Fred Durkin wanting to know where

Saul and the subject were, I was so rude that I hurt his feelings and had to apologise. I told him to cover the Churchill as usual, which was one of the factors that made it a burlesque, since that would have required four men at least. What I wanted to do so bad I could taste it was call the number Wolfe had given me, but that had been for emergency only. I looked emergency up in the dictionary, and got 'an unforeseen combination of circumstances which calls for immediate action. Since this was just the opposite, a foreseen combination of circumstances which called for getting a good night's sleep, I didn't dial the number. I did get the good night's sleep.

Saturday morning at 1019 I had to pitch another ball, but not to the same batter. The typing of Friday's reports required only the customary summarising of facts as far as Saul and Fred and Orrie were concerned, but my own share took time and thought. I had to account for the full time I had spent in Rackham's suite, since there was a double risk in it: the chance that I was being checked and had been seen entering and leaving, and the chance that Rackham had himself split a seam. So it was quite a literary effort and I spent three hours on it.