Рекс Стаут - The Father Hunt

At four o’clock, when he took the elevator to the roof for his regular two-hour afternoon session with Theodore and the orchids, I took the stairs for the two flights to my room to do some little personal chores, like inspecting socks and changing the ribbon on my personal typewriter. Those operations always take longer than you expect, and when I heard the doorbell, which has a connection to my room, and glanced at my wrist, I was surprised to see that it was twenty to six. I left it to Fritz, who goes when I am not downstairs, but in a couple of minutes the house phone buzzed, and when I got it Fritz said that a young woman who said her name was Denovo wanted to see me, and I asked him to put her in the front room.

When, after mounting the stoop of the old brownstone, you enter, the second door down the hall on your left is the office. The first is to what we call the front room, which isn’t used much, mostly for parking people who aren’t wanted in the office. Its furniture is nothing much, not like the office or the kitchen, because Wolfe is seldom in it and doesn’t give a damn. When I entered, Amy Denovo was on a chair by a window. She stood up and said, “Well, here I am.”

“So I see.” I crossed to her. “It’s nice to see you and I don’t want to be rude, but I thought I made it clear yesterday.”

“Oh, you made it clear enough.” She started a smile but it didn’t quite come. “But I decided I had to see you again, and see Nero Wolfe, I suppose, and so I... I did something.” She had her bag, brown leather with a big clasp, under her left arm. She sat down and opened it, and took out a parcel wrapped in newspaper with rubber bands around it. She held it out and I took it, not wanting to be rude. “That’s twenty thousand dollars,” she said, “in hundred-dollar bills.” Now the smile came. “You would call it twenty grand. Of course you’ll want to count it.”

No suitable words seemed to be ready for the tongue, so I gave them time by removing the rubber bands, and unfolding the newspaper for a look. It was centuries, some new and some used, in batches fastened with paper clips, and they looked real when I flipped through some. There were ten in the batch I counted, and there were twenty batches. I rewrapped them in the newspaper and replaced the rubber bands.

“At five grand a week,” she said, “that’s enough for four weeks anyway.”

From the hall the sound came of the elevator rattling to a stop. Wolfe was down from the plant rooms.

“The five grand was just the fee,” I said. “It didn’t include expenses. But that was a little special, it isn’t always five grand a week. Are you telling me that you want to hire Nero Wolfe and you offer this as a retainer?”

“Yes. Certainly. Provided you’re in charge.”

“He’s always in charge. I merely do the work.”

“All right, if you do the work.”

“I will. He only does the thinking. I’ll explain it to him and then call you in. If you’ll wait here?”

She frowned and shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it to anybody but you.”

“Then it’s out. He wouldn’t take a client he hasn’t seen. He never has and he never will.”

She pressed her lips tight and took a couple of breaths, and finally said, “I guess I can. All right.”

“Good. You won’t cotton to him, but you can trust him as far as me.” I tapped the package. “Do you want to tell me anything about this?”

“No, I don’t. There’s nothing to tell except there it is.”

“I can assume it’s in your possession legally?”

“Of course.” She was still frowning. “I didn’t rob a bank.”

“It’s still in your possession until he takes the job.” I handed her the parcel. “It may take me five minutes or it could be half an hour. If you get tired waiting, there are magazines on the table.” I started for the connecting door to the office but decided to go around, and went to the door to the hall instead.

Wolfe was at his desk with his current book, Incredible Victory , by Walter Lord. He probably hadn’t got much reading in at Hewitt’s and would have to catch up. I went to my desk, sat facing him, and waited for him to finish a paragraph. It must have been a long one. He looked up and growled, “Something?”

“Somebody,” I said. “A girl in the front room named Amy Denovo. I believe I mentioned a while back that Miss Rowan was collecting material for a book about her father, and she hired this girl to help, and I met her there last week. As I was leaving there yesterday afternoon she — the girl — stopped me down in the lobby and we went to a place and had egg-and-anchovy sandwiches which I have told Fritz about but he wasn’t interested. She wanted me to do a job for her because I am the one man in the world she can trust, and I told her I couldn’t because I already had a job, and she said then she would hire you if I would do the work, and I explained that I always do the work. Of course the next question, my question, was about money, and I asked it. She said she had two thousand dollars in the bank, left to her by her mother, and that’s all. No other resources and no prospects. Since the job would be complicated and might take months and no telling what expenses, I told her nothing doing, I wouldn’t even mention it to you. I was sorry because—”

“Pfui.” He grunted. “Why do you mention it now?”

“I’ll finish the sentence. I was sorry because the job would probably be interesting, and tough, and it has none of the aspects that you won’t touch. I mention it now because she is in the front room with a package wrapped in newspaper containing two hundred hundred-dollar-bills, twenty thousand dollars, which she wants you to take as a retainer.”

“Where did she get it?”

“I don’t know. She says it’s in her possession legally.”

He put his bookmark, a thin strip of gold that was a gift from a client, at his page and put the book down. “What was said yesterday. In full.”

I had expected that. He hates to take on a job; anything to hold off a commitment. Also, there was the chance that there might be one or more details that he could find unacceptable. I reported. It had taken a lot of practice to get to where I could give a long conversation verbatim, but it was a cinch now, even with three or four talking. As usual, he leaned back and closed his eyes, and didn’t interrupt. There was no reaction even to the “pigheaded and high-nosed and toplofty.” I omitted nothing except the irrelevant chatter while we were eating. When I finished he stayed put for a minute and then opened his eyes and straightened up.

He regarded me. “That’s not like you, Archie. It’s hardly even a sketch. Barely a start.”

“Certainly. There was no point in going deeper with a poor little poor girl.”

He looked up at the wall clock and back at me. “You could have — no matter. Very well. Bring her.”

I went and opened the connecting door. She was still in the chair by the window, and hadn’t returned the parcel to her bag; it was in her lap. I told her to come.

Wolfe seldom rises when someone enters the office, and never if it’s a woman. His expression is always the same if it’s a woman, no matter who or what she is; he is concentrating on not making a face. There is no telling what he notices or doesn’t; for instance, whether he noticed that the skirt of Amy Denovo’s brown-striped summer dress wasn’t really a mini; it was only about two inches above her knees. Certainly he didn’t notice that the knees were worthy of notice, though they were, since that had no bearing on her acceptability as a client. The seat of the red leather chair near the end of his desk was too deep for her to settle back, so she sat on the front half, straight, and put her bag on the stand at her elbow, with the parcel in her lap.