Рекс Стаут - The Father Hunt

In arranging for Amy Denovo, who was eight inches shorter than me, to hear and see from the alcove I could have put phone books for her to stand on, but the show might last an hour or more, and for her price of admission of twenty grand she deserved something better than standing room. So after breakfast Friday morning I took the kitchen stepladder to the alcove, sat on it, and found that my eyes were five inches above the center of the hole. I had never measured Amy and me to determine how much of my extra inches was below the hips and how much was above, but I decided that would be close enough.

Amy arrived at 10:21 and Saul at 10:29. I took Amy to the alcove, had her perch on the stepladder, slid the panel open, and saw that her eyes were about right. “The size of that seat,” I said, “it’s a good thing it’s your fanny and not Mr. Wolfe’s.”

“What is this?” she demanded.

“For you, spectator sport. You’re going to hear and see the man who sent those two hundred and sixty-four checks to your mother. Cyrus M. Jarrett is due at eleven o’clock, by appointment. We thought you ought to hear it firsthand, and with him in the red leather chair his face will be about ten feet from yours. Take a look.”

She leaned to get her eyes closer to the hole. “Won’t he see me?”

“No. From that side it’s just a picture.”

She turned to me. “But why do... What’s he going to say?”

“We’re waiting to hear him. Among other things he may tell us, and you, the name of your father. That may—”

The doorbell rang and I went, and it was Saul. I had told him what the program was and needed only to take him to the alcove and introduce him to the client who had paid him, through me, a little less than a grand in two weeks.

“Since you call me Archie,” I told Amy, “you’ll have to call him Saul not to hurt his feelings. He’ll be here with you and if you get the idea that we’re not asking Jarrett the right questions and decide to come and help, Saul will block you. Jarrett must not suspect that he has any audience but Mr. Wolfe and me. Have your shoes off, and if you feel a cough or a sneeze coming, for God’s sake feel it soon enough to beat it to the kitchen.” I looked at my watch. “He’s due in twenty-five minutes, but he’s driving ninety miles and he might be early. Saul will now take you to the kitchen for a coffee break. I’ll be in the office taking tranquilizers to steady my nerves.”

“You won’t,” Amy said.

“Then I won’t,” I said, and left them. It would take Saul about five minutes to get acquainted with her.

There had been one big danger. A man of Jarrett’s position, financially and otherwise, might be able to put enough pressure on someone like the Police Commissioner or the Mayor or the New York Secretary of State, who issues private investigator licenses, to gag us. I blamed that fact, which had been on my mind ever since Jarrett had hung up, for something that had happened Thursday evening, when I had let Lon Cohen rake in a fat pot without showing, though it was at least three to two that my tens would have taken it. But now, as eleven o’clock came closer and closer, that danger got slimmer and slimmer, and it looked surer and surer that Jarrett’s tie-in was so very personal that he couldn’t risk it.

Wolfe came down at eleven on the dot, put the daily display in the vase on his desk, sat, and went at the morning mail. I had the expense book at my desk, checking entries and additions and getting totals, on the theory that they were final totals, except for Saul today. Just a pair of private detectives starting the daily grind, yeah. The reason they weren’t holding their breath was that a man can’t hold his breath more than about two minutes, and the doorbell didn’t ring until a quarter past eleven.

The first two things I noticed when I opened the front door were that the car Jarrett had come in was a Heron town car, and that his eyes were exactly the same as they had been two weeks ago. I felt that I deserved a credit mark for the way I said, “Good morning.” I could have made it a jab or even a jeer, but I swear it was just a cordial welcome.

He also said, “Good morning,” but it wasn’t a cordial anything. It was probably merely the way he had always said good morning, and always would, to everybody from the office boy to the senior vice-president. What was different from before was his walk as he went down the hall to the office. He didn’t totter, but his steps were short and he made sure of each one before he took the next one. I waited until he had got safely lowered into the red leather chair to say, “Mr. Jarrett. Mr. Wolfe.”

Jarrett said, “A footstool and a glass of water.”

The only footstools in the house were in Fritz’s room in the basement. On my way to the kitchen to ask to borrow it and tell him a glass of water was wanted, a glance showed me Saul and Amy in the alcove, and her shoes were off. In Fritz’s big cluttered den in the basement, with its 294 cookbooks on eleven shelves, there were three footstools, and I took the biggest one, which was topped with a tapestry with a woven hunter aiming a spear at a woven wild boar.

Back up and in the office, I found that I hadn’t missed any conversation. Jarrett was taking a large blue pill from a little gold box, and I stood with the footstool until he had put the pill in his mouth and got it down with a swallow of water. He may have expected me to lift his feet to get the stool under, presumably Oscar would have, but I wasn’t that cordial. After he got the glass back on the stand he lifted them himself and I slid the stool under.

“There’s a competent doctor a few doors away,” Wolfe said.

“No,” Jarrett said. The eyes were as frozen as ever and the bony jaw as set. “I told you mornings are difficult. Talk.”

Wolfe shook his head. “I will not hector a sick man. Will the pill help?”

“Damn your impudence.” The bony jaw twitched. “I’m old. I’m not sick. You will not hector me, sick or well. Talk.”

Wolfe’s shoulders went up a little and down. “Very well, sir, I’ll talk, but it will go faster if you accept the realities of the situation. You say I won’t hector you, but I already have. I bullied you into coming this morning, and in doing so I completely exposed my position. I made it clear that you are faced with an alternative: either you will answer my questions about certain matters, answers that will satisfy me, or I will give the police information that will move them to investigate thoroughly your relations over the years with two people — Floyd Vance and Carlotta Vaughn, later Elinor Denovo. If you are not conversant with criminal law you may not know why the police will be concerned. Floyd Vance’s lawyer, if he knows he can’t get his client acquitted, and he can’t, because of evidence supplied by Mr. Goodwin and me, will try to get a verdict of accidental homicide or second-degree murder. The police and the District Attorney will want a verdict of first-degree murder, and to get it they will need to establish a motive. You could verify this by communicating with the police or the District Attorney, but of course you can’t do that, since you don’t want the details of your connection with those two people to be disclosed. And they would inevitably be disclosed; once the police get the concrete evidence of the connection, the checks you sent Elinor Denovo during those twenty-three years, they will uncover all the facts. That’s a task for which they are admirably equipped.”

Wolfe turned a hand over and said, with no change of tone, “You had an early breakfast and a long ride. Will you have refreshment of any kind? Coffee or other drink? A sandwich, pastry, fruit? Thyme honey on corn fritters?”