Рекс Стаут - The Father Hunt

Ballou didn’t offer a hand. He got settled in the red leather chair, apparently expecting to be there a while. His face had no sag. He aimed his eyes at Wolfe and said, “I would give something to know how much you knew yesterday.”

Wolfe adjusted his bulk. It looked as if it was going to take another performance. “You don’t mean that,” he said. “It’s much too broad. I knew innumerable things that wouldn’t interest you. If you confine it to what I knew about the identity of X, the answer is nothing. I not only had no knowledge, I had no basis for a conjecture. I was completely—”

“You talk too much. You knew why you wanted to know. You knew why it was important enough to get me here. You can tell me that now, and you will.”

Wolfe’s head retreated to the chair’s high back and his eyes closed. Often, when some visitor gives him a tough one, he looks at me, but that wouldn’t help with that one. It was too simple. Stalling wouldn’t help. Maneuvering might do it, just possibly, but with that buck probably not. And after all, telling him wouldn’t hurt either the job or the client. I figured it like that in about ten seconds, and so did he. He opened his eyes, moved his head, and said, “I would have told you that yesterday if you had asked. A young woman has engaged me to learn who her father was. Or is. I have reason to suppose that it would be relevant to know who had those checks drawn. To tell you my client’s name would violate a confidence, and I—”

He stopped because he had lost his audience. Ballou’s head was back and he was laughing good and loud. Wolfe looked at me and I put my palms and my brows up. Ballou finished his laugh, gave both of us a broad smile, and said, “Wonderful. By God, this is good. He shelled out for twenty-two years? I’ll be damned.”

“Evidently you know him.”

“I certainly do. Does it help to know that the checks were endorsed by Elinor Denovo?”

“It doesn’t hurt. That isn’t the name of my client, but it’s pertinent. Since you know him... Mr. Ballou. There should be no misunderstanding. If you name him, and I hope you will, I can’t engage to regard it as a confidence. I’ll use it as required in the interest of my client.”

“I would expect you to.” Ballou was enjoying himself. The laugh was still in his eyes. “A couple of hours ago I didn’t think I was going to name him; I was going to phone you that the information you wanted wasn’t available, but I decided to come and find out why you wanted it. Now that you’ve told me I will name him. Provided — you’re not stringing me? It’s just that, a woman wants to know who her father was? Is.”

“Yes. It’s just that. The name of the endorser, Elinor Denovo, makes it certain that the name you know is the one I need.”

“I’ll be damned. Wonderful. How old is the woman?”

“Twenty-two. The first check came two weeks after she was born.”

“Let’s see... twenty-two from seventy-six; he was fifty-four. I didn’t know him then as well as I do now. His name is Jarrett, Cyrus M. Jarrett. Nothing about this is confidential, what I’m telling you now, it’s known by everybody in banking circles. Twenty-two years ago he was the president of Seaboard. In nineteen fifty-three — he was sixty-two then — he became Chairman of the Board. Some of us wanted him out of management entirely, but he had a big block of stock and that wasn’t all he had. He’s a very wealthy man. At sixty-five he should have retired, that’s usual, but he wouldn’t. But by then a majority of us — of the board — wanted him out, and we finally managed it. That was in nineteen fifty-nine, eight years ago. He’s still on the board, but he seldom comes to meetings.”

He paused to enjoy a smile, not for us, it was private. He went on. “All that is known to everybody, of course. I’m telling you because you might wonder why I was willing to name him. I never liked him and I don’t like him now. A lot of people don’t. As for being confidential, I don’t give a damn if it becomes known that I helped you find him. I doubt if you’ll be able to make him lose any sleep, nobody ever has, but I wish you luck. If you have any questions I’ll be glad—”

He looked at his watch. “No, I won’t.” He stood up. “I was late yesterday, and I’ll be late again now if the traffic’s bad.” He headed for the door, turned to say, “Come to my office, Goodwin, if you have questions,” and moved so fast that I would have had to trot to open the door for him, so I didn’t go.

As the sound came of the front door closing, Wolfe looked at the clock. Dinner in thirty-five minutes. He looked at me. “Do you like it?”

“Well.” I pinched my nose. “I’m not going to jump up and down and yell three cheers for us. So he’s old and tough. If he was fifty-four in nineteen forty-five he’s seventy-six now. I’ve read a few things about him, there was a piece about him in Fortune once and I read it, but that doesn’t give me an in.”

“You have Miss Denovo’s telephone number?”

“Certainly.”

“Get her. I’ll talk.”

I consulted my pocket notebook to check the number, swung the phone around and dialed, and while I waited decided to say Archie Goodwin, not just Archie. I didn’t care to give Wolfe a peg for another of his rusty comments about what he called my aptitude for establishing personal relations with young women. When the hello came, her voice, I said, “Amy Denovo?”

“Yes. Archie?”

That changed the script. “Right. I’m calling from the office. Mr. Wolfe wants to talk.”

He had his phone. I kept mine. “This is Nero Wolfe, Miss Denovo. I need to ask a question. Has your telephone an extension?”

“No.”

“I’ll be circumspect anyway. I don’t like the telephone and I don’t trust it. Don’t ask indiscreet questions. We have discovered the source of the checks. The informa—”

“You have? Already?”

“It isn’t necessary to interrupt. I’ll tell you all that is tellable on this machine. The information about the source is reliable — in fact, certain. We know who had the checks drawn. He is alive, seventy-six years old, wealthy, retired, of what is called the upper class. He lives in New York — no, I don’t know that, but I do know he’s reachable. So I have a question. You know what you hired me to do. The source of the checks is established, but not that he is himself the person you want found. That is merely a reasonable surmise. Do you want me to—”

“I want to know his name!”

“You will. If you’ll come this evening, at nine o’clock or after, we’ll tell you. What I ask now: Do you want me to proceed with the inquiry or do you want to deal with him yourself? I would like to know that before dinner.”

“I want you to do it, of course. I’ll come now. I... may I come now?”

“No. In the middle of a meal? We’ll expect you later.”

He hung up, got the photographs from the drawer, frowned at them, and dropped them on the desk. I swung my phone back and asked, “Shall I ring Cyrus M. Jarrett and tell him you want him here at eleven tomorrow morning if it will suit his convenience?”

“Yes,” he hissed. He never hisses. He got up and went to the kitchen.

At half past three Wednesday afternoon I sat in an all-weather chair under a maple tree on top of a cliff in Dutchess County. To my right was a scenic view of three or four miles of the Hudson River. About a hundred yards to my left was an ivy-covered end of a mansion or palace or castle which must have had between thirty and fifty rooms, depending on their size. In every direction there were bushes, trees, flowers, things like a statue of a deer eating out of a girl’s hand, and grass. Lily Rowan’s glade had never seen grass like that. Eight feet in front of me, on a chair like mine but with an attached footrest, was a lean, lengthy man with a long bony face, an ample crop of white hair, and a pair of gray-blue eyes so cold that, taking them straight, you got no impression at all. At half past three I was saying to him, “That was just a dodge. I have no silver abacus. In fact, I have never seen one.”