Рекс Стаут - The Father Hunt

“... for I have no intention or desire to make any demand or indictment, and I don’t think my client has either. I want only what I have been hired to get, information. I can’t name my client, but if my questions reveal her identity to you, that in itself would answer my basic question. The advertisement plainly implied that the woman once known as Carlotta Vaughn was later known as Elinor Denovo, but if you prefer to tell me nothing about Elinor Denovo we’ll restrict it to Carlotta Vaughn. By the way...”

He opened a drawer and took out the two photographs. I had cautioned him not to handle them in a way that would make it obvious that he was taking care not to leave prints — the Police Department files already had samples of his — and he did all right, perfectly normal as he handed them to me and I passed them on to Vance.

“She was Elinor Denovo when those were taken,” Wolfe said, “but had been Carlotta Vaughn only a year or two previously, so you should recognize her.”

Vance handled them normally too. He had put his glass down, and with one in each hand he gave them a look, first the three-quarters face and then the profile. He looked at Wolfe. “So what? Sure I recognize her.” He put the photographs on the stand. “I’m not denying that I once knew a woman named Carlotta Vaughn.” He picked up his glass and drank.

“When and where did you first meet her?”

“In the spring of nineteen forty-four.” He was no longer blurring his words; apparently a few swallows of Scotch with very little water had helped. “I think it was late March. My God, it was twenty-three years ago.”

“Where?” Wolfe had opened his bottle but hadn’t poured.

“I don’t remember. I suppose some party. I was under thirty and I got around.”

“And you hired her?”

“Well... yes.”

“You paid her a salary?”

Vance took a swallow. “Look,” he said, “I’m not going to toot my horn. As I said, I was under thirty, and girls were no problem. They seemed to like my style. This Carlotta Vaughn got it hard. I wasn’t setting any rivers on fire in my business and she knew it — what the hell, everybody knew it — and she wanted to help, and she was smart. So I let her help. No, I didn’t pay her.”

“How long did she continue to help?”

“Oh, all summer. Into fall. Six months, perhaps seven.”

“Why did she stop?”

“I didn’t ask her. She just stopped.”

“I think you can improve on that, Mr. Vance. Didn’t she stop because she was pregnant?”

Vance tapped ashes from the cigar into the ash tray, put it between his lips and found it was out, took the book of matches from the stand and lit it, and blew smoke. He looked at Wolfe, opened his mouth and shut it, reached for the bottle and poured Scotch, picked up the glass, took a swig, and looked at Wolfe again.

“Yes,” he said. “She was storked. So she said. It didn’t show.”

“So you had impregnated her.”

“The hell I had.”

“Certainly.”

“For God’s sake. She was a nymph. She was a goddam tart. She didn’t know herself who knocked her up. She admitted it. To me.”

That showed, if we had needed showing, how impossible it would be to tag him as the father. There were three people — Raymond Thorne, Bertram McCray, and Dorothy Sebor — who would contradict him on Carlotta Vaughn’s morals and habits, and we could probably get more, but that would just be a squabble. However, he had a wide-open flank. What would he or could he say to the question, why did Cyrus M. Jarrett send her a thousand dollars a month as long as she lived? I decided he could say, and almost certainly would say, search me. Wolfe was probably making the same decision. He had poured beer and was watching the bead go down; of course he could merely have been thinking that Vance had used a cliché that was still a vulgarism. He turned his head to me and asked, “Is there any point in persisting?”

Meaning, have we got enough fingerprints?

“No,” I said. Meaning yes.

He looked at his glass. The foam was down to the right level, exactly. He pushed his chair back, rose, and walked out. As he disappeared in the hall I told myself, for the twentieth time, that the furniture should be rearranged, so he wouldn’t have to detour around the red leather chair when there was someone in it. An exit like that should be a beeline so you can stride.

I told Vance, “Serves you right. You used another cliché.”

“Isn’t he coming back?”

“Sure, after you’ve gone.”

“What the hell, you could have asked me on the phone, any time, if I knocked her up and I would have told you.”

“Yeah, I tried to tell him that. He thought that question was too personal for the phone. Also he likes to do things the hard way, and he likes to hear himself talk.”

He looked at his glass, saw that there was a couple of fingers in it, picked it up, and drained it. “I thought he was going to...” He let it hang, and started over. “He said he would like to know why I tried to see that Elinor Denovo. What the hell, I wanted that account, Raymond Thorne Productions. I didn’t know she was Carlotta Vaughn. The first I heard of that was that ad in the paper.”

“You don’t hear an ad in the paper. You hear an ad on the radio. You see an ad in the paper. On television you both hear it and see it. It’s getting very complicated, and before we know it we’ll—”

“Balls. I’ve heard enough of you. You’re a pair of goddam loudmouths.” It wasn’t as easy as falling off a log to rise from that chair, and four of his fingertips pressed against the leather arm as he used leverage. When he was erect he told me to go do something, still another vulgar cliché, and I moved to get to the hall ahead of him; he might turn left instead of right, and Wolfe was in the kitchen. I didn’t go to the front to open the door for him. Not because he was a liar; it just didn’t seem to be called for.

When the door had shut behind him, with a bang, I went and opened the kitchen door enough to call through, “Company’s gone!” and then to the stairs down to the basement storeroom for empty cartons and tissue paper and twine.

When I got back up to the office, loaded, Wolfe was standing at the end of his desk, frowning around at everything in sight. I put the cartons down on the couch and the paper and twine on my desk, and said, “I wouldn’t trade images with that specimen, public or private. I have never felt so sorry for a client. If she had known what she was going to get for her twenty grand...”

He growled. “How long will that cigar smoke last?”

“The air conditioner will do it in about an hour.” I was gently wrapping in tissue paper the glass that had held Scotch. “I need your help on a decision. The bottle is more than half full of Johnnie Walker Black. About six dollars’ worth. Do we donate it to Cramer or do I empty it?”

“Empty it in the sink. It’s contaminated. Confound this smell. I’m going upstairs, but there’s a letter to write. Your notebook.”

I went and sat, and for the first time in I don’t know how long he dictated a letter standing.

“ Dear Mr, Cramer: Five days ago you told Mr. Goodwin you had in your possession a leather cigar case from which you had taken nine fingerprints. Period. The cartons he will deliver to you with this letter contain an assortment of objects, comma, some of which may have on them fingerprints which may possibly match those you secured from the cigar case. Period. This is merely a conjecture, comma, and I shall be obliged if you will tell me whether it is valid. Sincerely yours. Fritz can bring it up with my breakfast for my signature. By the time you and Saul finish here I may be asleep.”