Rex Stout - The Father Hunt

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. Ill 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.

6

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."

Having spent the morning at the public library and the Gazette morgue, I knew enough about Cyrus M. Jarrett to fill a dozen pages, but you don't care or need to know that it was his left leg he broke when he fell off a horse in 1958. Here are a few items. His grandfather had paid for the palace; Cyrus M. had been born in it. He had had one wife, who had died in 1943, one daughter, now living in Rome with her husband, who was a count, and one son, named Eugene E., forty-three years old, one of the nine vice-presidents of the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company I had seen listed in the International Bank Di rectory. Cyrus M. was a member of nine boards of di-

rectors, topping Ballou by one. During the Second World War he had been a member of the Production Allotment Board. And so forth and so on.

The one essential item for me was that he used six of the rooms in the palace to house one of the three finest known collections of Colonial handiwork; that was the one I had used to get to him. At the library, after spotting that in the Fortune piece, I had consulted the library files and got a book, and in half an hour I had realized it would take a month to learn enough to put up a front for five minutes, so I created a piece of handiwork then and there, in my mind, went to a phone booth, and dialed area code 914 and a number.

The male voice that answered had to know precisely what I wanted to see Mr. Jarrett about, and I told him: a silver abacus made by Paul Revere that was in my possession. He told me to hold the wire, and in five minutes came back on and said that Mr. Jarrett said that Paul Revere never made a silver abacus. I said the hell he didn't, tell him I've got it right here in my hand. It worked. After another wait he came back again and said Mr. Jarrett would see me and the abacus at three o'clock.

When I arrived, on the hour, I was shown the chairs under the maple tree and told that Mr. Jarrett would be with me shortly. "Shortly" ran into twenty-two minutes, one for each year of Amy's life, which I would have regarded as a good sign if I believed in signs. As he approached I noted that he looked his seventy-six, but he walked more like fifty-six. Then he got closer and sat and I saw the eyes, and they looked like a thousand and seventy-six. He got his feet up before he said, "Where is it?"

"That was just a dodge," I said. "I have no silver abacus. In fact, I have never seen one."

He turned his head and sang out, "Oscar!"

"But," I said, "I have something for you. A message from your daughter."

"My daughter? You're a liar."

"Not Catherine. Amy. Amy Denovo." I glanced at the man who had left the house and was coming. "It's very- personal."

"You're not only a liar, you're an idiot."

"I'll be glad to discuss that, but I'd rather do it privately."

The man arrived. He stopped two steps from Jarrett's chair and stood. "You called, sir?"

Jarrett, not looking at him, said, "I thought I wanted something, but I don't. Leave."

The man turned and went. I said, "I didn't know that was still being done. What have you got on him?"

He said, "Who are you?"

"I gave my name on the phone, Archie Goodwin. I work for a private detective named Nero Wolfe. The message from Amy is that now, since her mother is dead, she would like to know something about her father."

"I could have you kicked out," he said, "but I prefer to let you commit yourself so I can have the police come and get you. I called you an idiot because anybody with any sense would know how I would treat a blackmailer and you must be one. Go ahead, commit yourself."

"I already have." I was leaning back, comfortable. "It would be a spot for a little fancy blackmailing, but Amy has paid Mr. Wolfe a good big retainer and we're committed to her. Of course it's your money, or it was. It came out of what you sent her mother, for her."