“That,” said my uncle Otto, “is Elias Bancroft Sudford, chairman of Consolidated Arms!”

He went on, “So when I saw that was all, I got up and very politely said: ’Gentlemen, dead drop!’ and walkedout.”

“Then you walked the streets all night.” I filled in for him, “and came here without even changing your clothes. You’re still in your tuxedo.”

My uncle Otto stretched out an arm and looked at its covering. “A tuxedo?” he said.

“A tuxedo!” I said.

His long, jowled checks turned blotchy red and he roared, “I come here on something of first-rate importance and you insist on about nothing but tuxedos talking. My own nephew!”

I let the fire burn out. My uncle Otto is the brilliant one in the family, so except for trying to keep him from falling into sewers and walking out of windows, we morons try not to bother him.

I said, “And what can I do for you, Uncle?”

I tried to make it sound businesslike; I tried to introduce the lawyer-client relationship.

He waited impressively and said, “I need money.”

He had come to the wrong place. I said, “Uncle, right now I don’t have -”

“Not from you,” he said.

I felt better.

He said, “There is a new Schlemmelmayer Effect; a better one. This one I do not in scientific journals publish. My big mouth shut I keep. It entirely my own is.” He was leading a phantom orchestra with his bony fist as he spoke.

“From this new Effect,” he went on, “I will make money and my own flute factory open.”

“Good,” I said, thinking of the factory and lying.

“But I don’t know how.”

“Bad,” I said. thinking of the factory and lying.