Рекс Стаут - The Father Hunt

“No. She walked in that morning and said she had heard that I needed a stenographer. I was in radio then — we got into television later — and I had only four people in three little rooms on Thirty-ninth Street. It was vacation time and my secretary had gone on hers, so I handed Mrs. Denovo a notebook and gave her some letters. And she was so good I kept her.”

“Had she been sent by an agency?”

“No. I asked who had sent her, and she said nobody, she had heard someone say I needed a stenographer.”

“But you checked on her references.”

“I never asked her for any. Three days was enough to see how good she was, not only as a stenographer, and I didn’t bother. After a week I didn’t give a damn where she had worked before or how she happened to walk in that morning. It didn’t matter.”

I closed the notebook and stuck it in my pocket. “But that makes it a blank. First you tell me to forget everybody connected with her work here, there’s not a chance it was one of them, and now are you saying you know nothing about her before the second of July, nineteen forty-five? What she had done or where she had been?”

“Yes, I am.

“After being closely associated with her for twenty-two years? I don’t believe it.”

He nodded. “You’re not the first detective that can’t believe it. Two of them from the police, at different times, couldn’t either. But it’s—”

“Were they here recently?”

“No, that was back in May, just after her death. But it’s true. She never spoke of her family or background — anything you could call personal, and she wasn’t a woman you would... Well, she kept her distance. I’ll give you an example. Once a woman — an important woman, important to us; she represented one of our clients — she was saying something about her sister, and she asked Mrs. Denovo if she had a sister, and she just ignored it. Not even a yes or no. I’m pretty quick at getting on to people, and within a month after I met her, less than that, I knew she had lines I wasn’t to cross. And I never did. If you want to ask some of the others here go ahead, but you’ll be wasting your time. Do you want to try?”

Ordinarily I would have said yes, and perhaps I should have, but I was only partly there. I had come only because Wolfe had said to. Where I wanted to be was with Avery Ballou. So I said I didn’t want to interfere with their lunch hours but I might be back later, tomorrow if not today, and thanked him on behalf of Miss Denovo. He said if I come tomorrow he would have the copies of the photographs by four o’clock, and I thanked him again.

As I went down the hall to the elevator I decided to head for Al’s diner and treat myself to bacon and eggs and home-fried potatoes. Eggs are never fried in Wolfe’s and Fritz’s kitchen, and neither are potatoes, but that wasn’t the main point. The idea of sitting through lunch with Wolfe and discussing something like the future of computers or the effect of organized sport on American culture, when we should be discussing how to handle Avery Ballou, didn’t appeal to me.

But knowing that Wolfe had done his reflecting and was as keen to go at Ballou as I was, I reflected as I sipped coffee and decided it would do him good to be stalled off a little, say half an hour, to even up for my being stalled by his sappy rule about table talk. So I watched the time. I left the diner at two on the dot, walked the three blocks to the old brownstone, and entered the office at 2:05, got the retainer from the safe, went across the hall to the dining-room door, and said, “You said to deposit this at an early opportunity and this is it. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

“No.” He put his coffee cup down. “That can wait. We have a decision to make.”

“Sorry,” I said, “I like to obey orders,” and went.

I admit I didn’t loiter walking to Lexington Avenue and back, but even so I was gone thirty-six minutes. The television was on and he was standing in the middle of the room glaring at it. Presumably he had been so riled that he had picked on the one thing there that would rile him more. As I put the bankbook in the safe he turned the television off and went to his desk, and as I went to mine he demanded, “What the devil has someone done?”

Not “What have you done?”

I crossed my legs. “My lunch was greasy and I ate too fast. I wanted to get that twenty grand in the bank before it closed. I hurried back because I knew you wanted to tell me how to approach Ballou. But first, of course, you want a full report on Raymond Thorne.”

“I do not. Unless you got something that makes it unnecessary to see Mr. Ballou.”

“I didn’t. Except for two photographs of Elinor Denovo, I drew a blank. A complete blank. Have you phoned to find out if he’s there?”

“No. You will.”

“Sure. A corporation president might be anywhere in August. If I get him do I ask to see him today? I suppose you’ve decided how I play it.”

“Not you.” He cleared his throat. “Archie. You have many aptitudes, some of them extraordinary, but it will be delicate and may be thorny. Besides, it was I who dealt with him before. You were present, but I did it. I must be sure of the facts. You said on the telephone that the checks cashed by Mrs. Denovo were drawn by the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company, payable to bearer. How sure is that?”

“The only way to make it any surer would be to look at them. It came straight from the top man at the Eighty-sixth Street branch of the Continental, where she cashed a hundred of them. His name’s Atwood.”

“And Mr. Ballou is now a director of the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company?”

“He is unless he quit or has been bounced very recently. It was this year’s edition of Rand McNally’s International Bank Directory .”

“How difficult would it be to learn about the checks without Mr. Ballou’s help?”

“Close to impossible. The Seaboard is a two-billion-dollar outfit. Their main office probably draws thousands of checks in a year, maybe tens of thousands, drawn by God knows how many clerks. And of course they have automation. I don’t see how we could even start. I suppose we could have Sue Corbett, or Miss Denovo herself, get to some assistant vice-president and seduce him, and if it didn’t work try another one, and in a year or so—”

“Get Mr. Ballou.”

“You’ll talk?”

“No. It will be more exigent from you. Tell him that if it will suit his convenience I would like to see him, here, at six o’clock.”

I wheeled my chair and reached for the book, got the number of the Federal Holding Corporation, and dialed. Once before, when I had tried for Ballou on the phone, it had taken three people to get me through, and this time it was the same — first the switchboard female, then another female who made me spell my name twice, and then a man. They were all so reserved that I didn’t even know if he was there until his voice came.

“Goodwin? Archie Goodwin?”

“Right.” Knowing the voice, I went on. “I’m glad I got you. I’m calling for Mr. Wolfe. If it will suit your convenience he would like to see you, here at his office, at six o’clock, or as soon after that as you can make it.”

Silence; then: “Today?”

“Yes. It’s a little urgent.”

A longer silence, and of course I knew why. He couldn’t ask what was up. He couldn’t ask anything on a phone that someone else might be on. But he did. He asked, “Will it take long?”

“Probably not. Half an hour ought to do it.”

A shorter silence; then: “I’ll be there at six.” He hung up.

I cradled it, turned to Wolfe, who had listened in, and said, “He’ll be expecting a holy mess,” and Wolfe said he should be relieved to find there wasn’t one. He looked at the clock, saw that he had an hour before leaving for the plant rooms, and told me to take my notebook. There was still unanswered mail from last week.