In spite of which, I was interested in Manuel Kimball. He had at any rate been one of the foursome; and he looked like a foreigner and had a funny combination for a name, and he made me nervous.

At lunch the conversation was mostly about airplanes. Sarah Barstow kept it on that, when there was any sign of lagging, and once or twice when her brother started questions on affairs closer to her bosom she abruptly headed him off. I just ate. When Miss Barstow finally pushed her chair back, punching Small in the belly with it, we all stood up. Larry Barstow addressed me directly almost for the first time; I had seen indications of his idea that I might as well have been eating out back somewhere.

"You want to see me?"

I nodded. "If you can spare a quarter of an hour."

He turned to Manuel Kimball. "If you don’t mind waiting, Manny. I promised Sis I’d have a talk with this man.

"Of course." The other’s eyes darted to rest on Sarah Barstow. "Perhaps Miss Barstow would be kind enough to help me wait."

She said yes, without enthusiasm. But I got a word in: "I’m sorry." To Miss Barstow, "May I remind you that you agreed to be present with your brother?" It hadn’t been mentioned, but I had taken it for granted, and I wanted her there.

"Oh." I thought she looked relieved. "Yes. I’m sorry, Mr. Kimball; shall we leave you here with the coffee?"

"No, thanks." He bowed to her and turned to Larry. "I’ll trot along and have a look at that gas line. If one of your cars can run me over? Thanks. I’ll be expecting you at the hangar any time. Thank you for a pleasant luncheon, Miss Barstow."

One thing that had surprised me about him was his voice. I had expected him, on sight, to sound like a tenor, but the effect he produced was more like that of a murmuring bull. The voice was deep and had a rumble in it, but he kept it low and quite pleasant. Larry Barstow went out with him to tell someone to take him home. His sister and I waited for Larry to come back, and then all three of us went out to the garden, to the bench where I had been taken on my arrival. Larry sat at one side on the grass, and Miss Barstow and I on the bench.

I explained that I wanted Miss Barstow present because she had made the agreement with Nero Wolfe and I wanted her to be satisfied that nothing was said or done that went beyond the agreement. I had certain things I wanted to ask Lawrence Barstow and if there was any question about my being entitled to answers she was the one to question it.

She said, "Very well, I’m here." She looked about played out. In the morning she had sat with her shoulders straight, but now she let them sag down.

Her brother said, "As far as I’m concerned--your name’s Goodwin, isn’t it?"

"That’s it."

"Well, as far as I’m concerned, your agreement, as you call it, is nothing more than a piece of cheap insolence."

"Anything else, Mr. Barstow?"

"Yes. If you want it. Blackmail."

His sister had a flash left. "Larry! What did I tell you?"

"Wait a minute, Miss Barstow." I was flipping back the pages of my notebook. "Maybe your brother ought to hear it. I’ll find it in a minute." I found the page. "Here it is." I read it just as Wolfe had said it, not too fast. Then I closed the notebook. "That’s the agreement, Mr. Barstow. I might as well say that my employer, Mr. Nero Wolfe, keeps his temper pretty well under control, but every once in a while I blow up. If you call him a blackmailer once more the result will probably be bad all around. If you don’t know a favor when you see it handed to you I suppose you’d think a sock on the jaw was a compliment."

He said, "Sis, you’d better go in the house."

"She can go in a minute," I said. "If the agreement is to go overboard she ought to see it sink. If you don’t like it, why did you let her come to Wolfe’s office alone to make it? He would have been glad to see you. He said to your sister, we shall proceed with the inquiry in any event. That’s our business, not such a rotten one either, a few people think who have dealt with us. I say the same to you: agreement or no agreement, we’re going to find out who murdered Peter Oliver Barstow. If you ask me, I think your sister made a swell bargain. If you don’t think so there must be some reason, and that’s one of the things we’ll find out on the way.

"Larry," Miss Barstow said. Her voice was full of things. She repeated it. "Larry." She was telling him and asking him and reminding him all at the same time.

"Come on," I said. "You’re all worked up and looking at me all through lunch didn’t help you any, but if something goes wrong with your airplane you don’t just kick and scream, do you? You pull your coat off and help fix it."

He sat looking not at me but his sister, with his lower lip stuck up and pushed out so that he looked half like a baby about ready to cry and half like a man set to tell the world to go to hell.

"All right, Sis," he said finally. He showed no signs of apologizing to me, but I thought that could wait for a rainy day.

When I began feeding him questions he snapped out of it. He answered prompt and straight and, as far as I could see, without any figuring or hesitation anywhere. Even about the golf bag, where his sister had flopped around like a fish on a bank, it was all clear and ready with him. The bag had been brought down from the university on the truck; there had been no luggage with them in the car except one suitcase, his mother’s. When the truck had arrived at the house about three o’clock in the afternoon its load had been removed and distributed at once; presumably the golf bag had been taken straight to his father’s room though he had no knowledge of that. At Sunday breakfast he and his father had arranged to play golf that afternoon.

"Who suggested it? You or your father?"

He couldn’t remember. When his father had come downstairs after lunch he had had the bag under his arm. They had driven to the Green Meadow Club in the sedan, parked, and his father had gone straight to the first tee, carrying his bag, while Larry had gone around by the hut for caddies. Larry wasn’t particular about his caddy, but there had been one the preceding summer that his father had taken a fancy to, and by chance that boy was there and Larry had taken him with another. On his way to the first tee Larry had fallen in with the Kimballs, also ready to tee off, and since he hadn’t seen Manuel for some months and was eager to discuss plans for the summer he had asked them to make it a foursome, feeling sure his father wouldn’t mind. When they had reached the tee his father had been off to one side, practicing with a mashie. Peter Oliver Barstow had been cordial with the Kimballs and had greeted his caddy with delight and sent him off to chase balls.

They had waited for two or three other matches to get started and had then teed off. Manuel Kimball had driven first, then Larry, then Barstow, and last the elder Kimball. Larry couldn’t remember seeing his father take the driver from the bag or from his caddy-- while they were waiting he had been busy talking with Manuel, and during the moments immediately preceding his father’s drive Larry had been driving himself. But he remembered well his father’s actual swing at the ball, on account of an unusual circumstance. At the end of the swing there had been a peculiar jerk of the club, and as the ball sailed away with a bad slice Barstow had made an exclamation, with a startled look on his face, and begun rubbing his belly. Larry had never seen his father so suddenly and completely abandon his accustomed dignity in public. They had asked him what was wrong, and he had said something about a wasp or a hornet and started to open his shirt. Larry had been impressed by his father’s agitation and had looked inside his shirt at the skin. There had been a tiny puncture, almost invisible, and his father had regained his composure and insisted that it would be nothing. The elder Kimball had made his drive and they had proceeded down the fairway.