The Golden Spiders (Crime Line)

Wolfe leaned back, rested his forearms on the arms of the chair, drew in a bushel of air, and audibly let it out. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am up to my thighs in a quagmire. Customarily, when I enlist your services, it is enough to define your specific tasks, but this time that won’t do. You must be informed of the total situation in all its intricacy, but first a word about money. Less than twelve hours after the client gave me a check for ten thousand dollars, she was murdered. Since no successor to the cliency is in view, that’s all I’ll get. If it is unavoidable I am prepared, for a personal reason, to spend the major portion, even the entire sum, on the expense of the investigation, but not more. I don’t ask you to be niggardly in your expenditures, but I must forbid any prodigality. Now here it is.”

Beginning with my ushering Pete Drossos into the dining room Tuesday evening, and ending with my report of my talk with Jean Estey, which Fred had not heard, he went right through it, omitting nothing. They sat absorbing it, each in his manner-Saul slumped and relaxed, Fred stiff and straight, with his eyes fastened on Wolfe as if he had to listen with them too, and Orrie with his temple propped against his fingertips for a studio portrait. As for me, I was trying to catch Wolfe skipping some detail so I would have the pleasure of supplying it when he was through, but nothing doing. I couldn’t have done a better job myself.

He glanced up at the clock. “It’s twenty past seven, and dinner’s ready. We’re having fried chicken with cream gravy and mush. We won’t discuss this at the table, but I wanted you to have it in your minds.”

It was going on nine by the time we were back in the office, having discussed all of five chickens, with accessories, so fully that they were settled for good. Wolfe, after getting arranged in his chair, scowled at me and then at them.

“You don’t look very alert,” he said peevishly.

They didn’t jerk to attention. While none of them had had as much of him as I had, they knew how he hated to work during the hour or so after dinner, and what was eating him wasn’t that they weren’t alert but that he didn’t want to be.

“We can go downstairs,” I suggested, “and play some pool while you digest.”

He snorted. “My stomach,” he asserted, “is quite capable of handling its affairs without pampering. Has any of you gentlemen a pressing question before I go on?”

“Maybe later,” Saul suggested.