Rex Stout - The Father Hunt

"I'm busy!" he bellowed and hung up.

I assumed he had just found a thrip on a favorite plant or dry rot on a pseudobulb, but as I said, I do not like to be bellowed at. If Cramer called they could discuss crime. When the letters were in the envelopes and in my pocket I still had a chore left, ringing Mortimer M. Hotchkiss, the vice-president who bossed the Thirty-fourth Street branch of the Continental Bank and Trust Company. That didn't take long; he was always glad to

be of service to a depositor-not me, Nero Wolfe-whose balance never went below five figures and sometimes hit six. That done, I got the box from the safe and was off. Nothing was in it but the money; the letter was on a shelf with some other classified items.

At the Eighty-sixth Street branch I found that Hotchkiss had been prompt. I was only six steps inside when a man at a desk got up and motioned me over and asked if I was Mr. Goodwin, and then took me inside the rail and along an aisle to a door at the front. He opened it and bowed me in, and there was Amy Denovo on a chair facing a big glass-topped desk. Behind the desk was a middle-aged banker with a shiny dome and rimless cheaters. As I crossed he rose and offered a hand, saying that it was a pleasure, Mr. Goodwin, a real pleasure, which was par, since Hotchkiss was a vice-president and he wasn't. I said, "Mr. Atwood?" and he said yes and told me to sit, but after telling Amy good morning I put the box on the desk, fished the key from my pocket and used it, and opened the lid wide. Then I sat. Atwood had started to, but was up again, staring at the contents of the box. It rated a stare, even from a banker.

"That belongs to Miss Denovo," I said. "I assume that Mr. Hotchkiss told you that I work for Nero Wolfe. Miss Denovo has engaged Mr. Wolfe's services, and I'm here for her. That's two hundred and forty-four thousand dollars, all in centuries. Miss Denovo would like to have twelve bank checks for twenty grand each, payable to her, and the remaining four grand deposited in her account."

"Certainly," he said. He looked at her and back at me. "That's quite a… quite a… certainly. Do you want… it will take a while, a little while-counting it and making out the checks."

I nodded. "Sure. Certainly. Anyway, if you're not too busy, we'd like to discuss something with you."

"Cer-I'll be glad to, Mr. Goodwin." His hand started for the phone on the desk, but he changed his mind. He closed the lid of the box, tucked it under his arm, said he would be back soon, and went.

When the door was shut Amy asked, "What's he going to do?"

"His duty," I said. "The slogan of this bank is: the

bank you can bank on. You have crossed and uncrossed your ankles three times. Relax."

What "soon" means depends on the circumstances. For there and then I would have supposed about five minutes, but twelve had passed when the door opened and At-wood entered, closed the door, crossed to his desk, and sat. He looked at me, then at her, and back at me, trying to decide which one the bank wanted to bank on it "It will take a little while," he said. "You wanted to discuss something?"

"Right," I said. "Of course a bank is choosy about handing out information about its customers, but I am speaking for Miss Denovo. Her mother had an account here for nine years. Naturally, when you saw what was in that box you wondered where it came from. We think a lot of it came from your bank."

He gawked at me. A banker shouldn't gawk, but he did. He opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again to say, "I'll ask you to explain that statement, Mr. Goodwin."

"I'm going to. Every month for twenty-two years Mrs. Elinor Denovo cashed a bank check for a thousand dollars. She always asked for and got it in hundred-dollar bills. That's where the contents of that box came from. She never spent a dollar of it. From your expression I suppose you're thinking this may be leading to something ugly, blackmail for instance, but it isn't. It's perfectly clean. The point is, we have assumed that Mrs. Denovo cashed the checks here, probably a hundred of them in nine years, and her daughter wants to know the name of the bank that drew them. She would also like to know if they were payable to Elinor Denovo, or to cash or bearer."

His eyes went to Amy and he thought he was going to ask her something, but returned to me. His face had cleared some, but he was still a banker and always would be. He spoke. "As you said, Mr. Goodwin, banks are choosy about giving out information regarding their customers. They should be."

"Sure. I wasn't crabbing."

"But since it's for Miss Denovo, and it's about her mother, I'm not going to, uh, hem and haw. I don't have to consult my staff to answer your questions. As a man of

wide experience, you probably know that it is considered proper and desirable for a bank official to keep informed about the-well, call it habits, of the customers. I have known about those checks cashed by Mrs. Denovo for several years. One each and every month. They were drawn by the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company, the main office on Broad Street, payable to bearer." He looked at Amy and back at me. "As a matter of fact, I tell you frankly that I'm obliged to you. Any banker, if someone walked in with a quarter of a million dollars in currency, would be… well, curious. He should be. You understand that. So I'm glad you told me… well, I'm obliged to you. And to you, Miss Denovo." He actually grinned- a real, frank grin. "A bank you can bank on. But that's all I can tell you about those checks because it's all I know."

"It's all we wanted."

"Good." He rose. "I'll see how they're getting on." He went. When the door was shut Amy started to say something, but I shook my head at her. There were probably ten thousand rooms in the five boroughs that were bugged. The office of the top guy at a branch bank might be one of them, and if so that was no place to discuss any part of a secret that the client had kept the lid on for most of her life, or even give a hint. So to pass the time, since it wouldn't be sociable just to sit and stare back at Amy, I got up and went to take a look at the titles of books on shelves at the wall, and when International Bank Direc tory caught my eye I slid it out, opened it at New York, and turned to the page I wanted.

I would have said that the odds were at least a million to one against one of the officers or directors of the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company being someone we had a good line to, and when I saw that name, Avery Ballou, the second one on the alphabetical list of the Board of Directors, I said, "I'll be damned," so loud that Amy twisted around.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

I told her nothing was the matter, just the contrary; we had just got a break I would explain later.

The rest of the errand at the bank was merely routine. At eleven o'clock Amy and I were sitting at a table in a

drugstore on Madison Avenue, her with coffee and me with a glass of milk. The twelve letters had been dropped into a mailbox at the corner and the empty box was beside me on a chair. I had told her why I had shushed her at the bank, and about the break, of course not mentioning Ballou's name, and had offered to bet her a Snif that we would spot her father within three days, but she said she wouldn't bet against what she wanted. At 11:10 I said I had to make a phone call, went to the booth, dialed the number I knew best, and after eight rings got what I expected.