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The eighth time I quit was when I knew.
It was during the Bigley case. Wolfe had gotten in a funk, and his brain decided it didn't feel like working, thank you very much. I had tried being reasonable, pointing out to him that our client quite naturally expected us to do some detecting in return for the hefty retainer he'd paid us. He just grunted and said, "Don't be hasty, Archie."
Hasty? I would have settled for a slow crawl. He'd been sitting on his fundament for three days, and the situation didn't look like it was going to change anytime soon. I picked up the granite paperweight on my desk, felt the rough surface under my thumb, and briefly considered using it to kick-start his detecting process.
"Look, sir, why don't I just go down to Bigley's office and start asking--"
"No."
He barely glanced up from the book he was reading. I waited until he turned a page before I blew up.
"Fine. When the client calls, you can report a whole lot of nothing to him, because I'm not doing it again. I don't know what kind of pisspoor excuse you'll come up with, and I don't much care, either."
"Archie--" His tone had dropped 20 degrees.
"No, sir. I'm done. I quit." I stood up, ignored the glare he threw at me, and left the office.
I was out the front door and down the steps to the sidewalk before I realized I'd left my hat and coat behind, but I'd have cheerfully gotten frostbite before I'd willingly go back, so I just tucked my hands in my pockets and walked a little faster.
I walked, but I didn't know where I was going, and that just made me madder. Finally, I stopped at a diner I'd never been to before and ordered a piece of rhubarb pie and a glass of milk. It was decent pie, and putting forkfuls in my mouth gave me something to do while I thought about what happened.
That was when I realized: I didn't know where I was going because there was no place else I wanted to be. The whole damned world to choose from, and the only place I could see myself was in a brownstone on West 35th Street. With him.
Oh, I went back, of course--eventually. The case got solved, and life went on. But now I knew, and things would never be the same.