Rex Stout - The Father Hunt

He leaned over to reach down to the drawer, came up with a brown envelope, slipped two prints out, and gave them a look. They were about five by eight inches. "Until I saw these," he said, "I had forgotten how attractive she was. It must have been nineteen forty-six or forty-seven, a year or so after she came here. My God, how people change."

I had got up and circled the end of the desk, and he handed them to me. One was about three-quarters face and the other was profile. There wasn't much of her figure, not down to her waist, but they were good shots of a good face. There was some resemblance to Amy, but the forehead was a Little wider and the chin a little more pointed. I looked at the back, but there was no date or other data.

"I can't let you take them," Thorne said, "but I can have copies made. As many as you want."

I gave them another look. "They could be extremely useful. I can have copies made and return these to you."

He said no, they were the only pictures he had of a woman who had been a big help to him for many years, and he was going to hang on to them, and I handed them over. I told him I needed at least six copies, ten would be better, and returned to my chair and got out my notebook.

"Now a leading question," I said. "You'll dodge it, naturally, but I'll ask it anyway. Amy thought it might be

someone connected with her work here. Could you suggest a candidate?"

He shook his head. "You mentioned that before. I don't have to dodge. Forget it. There are forty-six people in this organization, counting everybody. Over the years there have been, oh, I suppose around a hundred and fifty. They haven't all thought Mrs. Denovo was perfect, we've had our share of scraps and grudges, but murder? Not a chance. Forget it."

Of course I was glad to, since Amy's father couldn't fhave been one of the hundred and fifty unless Elinor had lied in the letter, and I decided it wasn't necessary to nag him just to keep up appearances. I opened the notebook. "Okay, we'll pass that for now. Now some dates. When did Mrs. Denovo start with you?"

"I looked that up the day I found the pictures. It was July second, nineteen forty-five."

"You had known her before that?"

"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 Thome."

"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?"