Rex Stout - The Father Hunt

say, he knows that all we've got is the checks. So if Elinor knew or threatened something that made it necessary to cross her out, he has no reason to suspect that she passed it on to Amy. I can ring her and tell her to be ready to jump when she crosses streets, but she might get a wrong impression. She might think she's more on my mind than the job is."

"Very well." His shoulders went up an eighth of an inch and down again. I have mentioned his screwy notion about young women and me. He removed the paperweight, a chunk of jade that a woman, not young, had used years ago to conk her husband, from some items on his desk. "If your evening is free, I have three or four letters."

I said half of the evening was already gone and got my notebook.

Thursday morning I made a mistake I often make, crowding my luck. That's fine when it works, but too often it doesn't. Instead of ringing Avery Ballou for an appointment I just went, arriving a little after ten, and as a result I spent two hours in a reception room on the thirty-fourth floor of a forty-story financial castle on Wall Street. Mr. Ballou was in conference. That means anything from scouting around for indigestion pills to presiding at a gathering to decide something that will affect the future of thousands of people, but whatever it meant that morning, it was affecting my present. There was plenty for the eye in the marble-walled room, people coming and going and sitting around waiting and worrying, but I was too sore at my luck to get any fun out of it. It was five minutes past noon when a handsome junior financier came and took me inside and led me along a hall and around a corner to Ballou's room.

It had six windows, five upholstered leather chairs, two other doors, and I suppose other things to fit, but that was all my glance caught as I crossed to Ballou. There was a king-size desk near the far end, but he was standing at a window. If he was sorry he had kept me waiting so long he didn't mention it.

"What a morning," he said. "I can give you five minutes, Goodwin."

"That might do it," I said. I took something from a pocket. "You told us that the checks were endorsed by

Elinor Denovo. Here are two photographs of her, taken twenty years ago." I handed them to him. "Can you place her?"

He gave them a good look, taking half of one of the five minutes, then shook his head. "No, I can't. You say it's Elinor Denovo?"

"Right. That's certain."

"And she endorsed the checks. And you're expecting to connect her with Jarrett. Twenty years ago, that was nineteen forty-seven. I hadn't known him long then, and I never have known him as a-socially. Practically all my contacts with him have been business." He handed me the photographs. "Of course you think it's important to connect her."

"It's essential."

He went to the king-size desk, sat, pushed a button, and said, "Get Mr. McCray at Seaboard." I'm glad we don't have an intercom at the old brownstone. It would annoy me to be up in my room ready for a shower and just as I reached to turn it on hear Wolfe's voice, "Where's that letter from Mr. Hewitt?"

Ballou didn't have to wait long. There was a buzz and he took a phone. "Ballou… Good morning, Bert. A man named Archie Goodwin is here… That's right, I told you yesterday, for Nero Wolfe… He has asked me a question I can't answer, but you probably could. Can I send him over? It wouldn't take long… Yes, of course… No, he's presentable, jacket, tie-hell, he's neater than I am… Good. I knew you would."

He hung up and turned to me. "You'll have lunch at the Bankers Club with Bertram McCray." He spelled the McCray. "One-twenty Broadway. He'll be there in ten minutes. Check in as McCray's guest. He's a vice-president at Seaboard. Twenty years ago he was Jarrett's secretary and protege; he was often at his home. He has a grudge because Jarrett didn't move up around nineteen fifty and make him president-of course that was absurd -and he switched to our side in fifty-three. He got that information for me yesterday about the checks. He said he'd like to meet Nero Wolfe, so ask him anything you want to. Have you got that?"

I said yes and he pushed a button and said, "Ready for that man from Boston."

So at one o'clock I was seated at a table by a wall in a room with about a hundred other tables. With an average of three men to a table, I supposed around twenty billion dollars was represented, either in person or by proxy. I was certainly glad I had a necktie on. My host, facing me, had ears that were a little too big and a nose that was a little too small, and a slight pinch at the corner of his right eye. He was either very polite or he had no initiative; when I had chosen sole Veronique and salad and lemon ice he had taken the same. We were both polite, though; we talked about the heat wave and air pollution and the summer crop of riots until we had finished the sole and salad, but as we waited for the ices and coffee he said he only took an hour for lunch and Ballou had told him I wanted to ask him something. I said Ballou had told me that he had known Cyrus M. Jarrett for many years and might be able to identify a woman Nero Wolfe wanted to know about, and produced the photographs and handed them to him. He looked at the top one, the three-quarters face, widened his eyes at me, looked at the profile, then again at the other one, and again at me.

"Why," he said, "it's Lottie Vaughn."

I tried not to bat an eye. "Good," I said. "At least we have her name. Who is Lottie Vaughn?" But I realized I was being silly; I had told Ballou. So I went on, "The name we have is Elinor Denovo. Those pictures are of her, taken twenty years ago."

"I don't see…" He was frowning. "I don't get it." He looked at the photographs. "This is Carlotta Vaughn, I'm absolutely certain. What do you mean, it's Elinor Denovo?"

"Those are the only pictures we have of her," I said, "and we need them." I put out a hand. As he hesitated the waiter came with the ices and coffee, and I let him go on hesitating until we were served and the waiter had gone, then reached again and he handed them over. "It's a long story," I said, "and most of it is confidential information from our client. From what Mr. Ballou told me I don't think you would pass anything on to Jarrett.

I know you wouldn't, but you're a banker and you know it's always better to be too careful than not careful enough. You also know that Mr. Wolfe is hoping and expecting to get Jarrett out on a limb. So I'll appreciate it if you'll tell me about Carlotta Vaughn. Did Jarrett know her?"

He nodded. "That's where I met her. At his home."

"Was she a guest?"

"No. She was Mrs. Jarrett's secretary when I met her. When Mrs. Jarrett died he kept her. I was his secretary then, dividing my time between his home-his homes- and the office, and you might say she was my assistant. She was very intelligent and competent."

The ices didn't get eaten and not much of the coffee was drunk, and McCray's hour for lunch got stretched. That was one of the times that my memory, which I'll match with anybody, came in handy, because I didn't want to take out my notebook. I doubted if my host would approve there with all those billions around. I submit these facts about Carlotta Vaughn, of course all of them according to Bertram McCray.

He had first seen her at the Jarrett town house in New York, when she had started as Mrs. Jarrett's secretary, in May 1942. She had continued at that job until November 1943, when Mrs. Jairett had died of cancer, and then had stayed to work for Jarrett. At that time McCray had been spending about two-thirds of his time at the bank and one-third at the house, either in town or in the country, and she was extremely useful. She almost never did anything at the bank, only two or three times in four or five months.