Rex Stout - The Father Hunt

"Go ahead."

"Look, Mr. Jarrett." I was meeting the frozen eyes and it wasn't easy to talk to them. "We didn't have to handle it like this. We could have let you wait and started digging away back for details. But that would have taken time and money, and all Amy wanted was to find you. I can't give you a written guarantee, but I doubt very much if she wants to start any fuss, try to make you acknowledge her, or anything like that. She might possibly want some money, but what the hell, you've got ten times more than you need. And don't get the idea that I'm just out fishing. We know all about the checks. We know they came from you, two hundred and sixty-four of them; that's on the record. We know they were endorsed by Elinor Denovo." I flipped a hand. "Now you talk a while."

"Go ahead, go ahead. What do you want? What does this Nero Wolfe want?"

"Mr. Wolfe wants nothing. As for me, what would

please me most would be something like this: you have Oscar call the cops and tell them to come and get me. When they come you tell them I tried to blackmail you, and I clam up, and they take me somewhere for questioning-the sheriff's office or a state barracks. It will be a pipe to handle it so they hold me, and then look out for the dust. For a start, our lawyer and a newspaperman I know-the Gazette. Today's Wednesday. By Friday ten million people will be sympathizing with you-all this trouble after twenty-two years. Of course we won't give them Amy's name, but that won't matter, it's your name that's newsworthy. Do you want me to call Oscar, or would you rather?"

The goddam eyes hadn't even blinked, I swear they hadn't, but the bony jaw had flicked once or twice. I was beginning to understand why a lot of people didn't like him. People want people to react. He did finally say something. He said, "Those checks are in the files of the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company. Who told you about them?"

I shook my head. Ballou had said he didn't give a damn if it became known that he had helped us find him, but I was giving this character nothing. "That's beside the point," I said. "The checks, endorsed by Elinor Denovo, are the point. I have a suggestion. You and I aren't hitting it off very well. I'll bring Amy tomorrow, and that may work better. She's okay. She's a very nice girl. As you probably know, she graduated from Smith, she has good looks and good manners, she wouldn't-"

I stopped because he was moving. He took his time getting his feet around and on the grass, turning on his rump, and getting upright. The eyes came down at me. "I know nothing," he said, "of any Amy, and nothing of any Elinor Denovo. If there is an Elinor Denovo and she endorsed checks that had been charged to my account, I don't know how they came into her hands and I am not concerned. If you publish any of this rubbish I'll get your hide." He turned and headed for the house.

It was a nice place to sit, with the view of the river and all the flowers and leaves, and I sat. Soon after Jarrett had entered the house Oscar came out and stationed himself in the shade of a tree with long narrow

leaves. I called to him, "What kind of a tree is that?" but got no answer. It would have been interesting to stay put for an hour or so and see how long he would stand there with nothing to do, but I was thirsty and doubted if he would leave his post to bring me a drink, so I moved. * The direct route to where the Heron was parked took me right past him, but I pretended he wasn't there.

The winding blacktop driveway was a good quarter of a mile. At its end, with its twenty-foot stone pillars, I turned left, and in about a mile right, and in twenty minutes, counting a stop for a root beer, I was at the entrance to the Taconic State Parkway, southbound. A sign said: new york 88 miles. I never try to do any deep thinking while I'm driving; the thinking gets you nowhere and the driving might get you where you would rather not be; and anyway there was nothing much to think about, since I knew what would come next. Wolfe and I had agreed on that, without argument, in case I got a brushoff from Jar-rett, after Amy left Tuesday evening.

I had promised I would let her know what happened, so I left the Henry Hudson Parkway at Ninety-sixth Street and took the Eighty-fifth Street transverse through Central Park. Trying to find a legal space at the curb would be like trying to find room for another kernel on an ear of corn, and I drove to the garage on Second Avenue where Elinor Denovo had kept her car. Don't ask me how or why, but I have always had a feeling that it helps to see places that are in any way connected with a job, even if they tell you nothing. Walking to Amy's address I took the route Elinor had taken the last time she had walked, and I saw that it would have been no trick at all, at that time of night, for someone who knew she had her car out, to park near the corner on Second Avenue, see her arrive in her car, and see her leave the garage and turn into Eighty-third Street. By then of course he would have had the engine started and would be ready to go.

I didn't give Amy a verbatim report. We rarely do to clients; they'll always ask why you didn't tell him this or that, or what you said that for, or you should have realized he was lying. Also I didn't tell her what was next on the program. That's even worse; they'll object for some cockeyed reason or they'll have something better to sug-

gest. When I had given her the facts that mattered, her big question was whether I thought Jarrett was her father, and of course I passed. I told her that while it was still the best guess that he was, I wouldn't personally risk a buck either way. I tried to get out of her exactly what she intended to do when we finally got it pinned down, but when I left I still didn't know and I doubted if she did. Apparently that was open and she wouldn't know the answer herself until she knew for sure who her father was. It was only ten minutes to dinnertime when I got home, so the verbatim report had to wait until we had taken on the curried beef roll, celery and cantaloupe salad, and blueberry grunt, and had gone to the office for coffee. When I had finished, including my stopover at Amy's, his first question was typical. He emptied the coffee pot into his cup, took a sip, and said, "I think it's quite possible that Paul Revere did make a silver abacus. What gave you the notion?"

I tapped my skull with knuckles. "You said once that the more you put in a brain the more it will hold. What about the things that come out that were never put in? That's why I can't answer your question."

"They had been put in. 'Paul Revere' was there and 'silver' was there and 'abacus' was there. The question you can't answer is what joined them when for the first and only time in your life their juncture would meet a need, and I concede that it's unanswerable. I withdraw it." He drank coffee. "Will you telephone Mr. Ballou in the morning or see him?"

"See him. I can't show him a photograph on the phone." "Will Mr. Jarrett do anything, and if he does, what?" "To the first, I doubt it. To the second, I couldn't guess. Of course you realize that if that hit-and-run was murder, not just homicide, it's possible that the client is now a mark. If you ask me if I think it's conceivable that that rich, retired, respectable upper-class citizen stole a car and ran it over a hard-working respectable middle-class woman, the answer is yes. That tough old fish-eyed buzzard? Yes."

He nodded. "It's remote, but… did you warn her?" "No. It's more than remote, it's up in the moon, which they haven't reached yet. From what I said and didn't