The Father Hunt

by Rex Stout

  "Good. A question. Have there been any bank checks in the mail for your mother since she died? Either here or at the office?"

  "No, not here. If there had been any at the office of course Mr. Thorne would have told me."

  "Okay. I should mention that I no longer think it may take a year. A week may do it, or even less. Your mother made a mistake in that letter. If she didn't want you to find out who your father was, and obviously she didn't, she shouldn't have mentioned that it came in bank checks. There was and is a trail, there has to be, between those checks and the sender, and she probably cashed them at a bank, since they're centuries. Ten centuries every month. It must have been a bank, and probably her bank. We'll

  find out Monday." I opened my notebook. "Now for questions, and some of them will be very personal."

  That took a full hour, and I barely made it home by lunchtime. Wolfe was standing in the doorway to the dining room when I entered. By standing there he was asking me, without putting it into words, why I hadn't phoned that I might be late, but since I was only three minutes late I ignored it and merely asked him if he wanted to take a glance inside the box before lunch. He said no, and I took it to the office and put it on his desk and then went and joined him at the table. As I sat I said it wouldn't hurt his appetite to know that she had taken our suggestion and would meet me at her bank Monday morning, so if more than the retainer was needed it would be available.

  As a rule we stay at the table for coffee at lunch, though not at dinner, but sometimes, when I have or may have something to report about a job he is committed to, he tells Fritz to bring it to the office, and my bringing the box showed that he was committed. So when we had put away the diced watermelon, which had been sprinkled with granulated sugar and refrigerated in a cup of sherry for an hour, we moved across the hall and Fritz brought coffee. I opened the box, but he merely gave it a brief glance and sat, and I went to my desk, swung my chair around, and got my notebook from a pocket.

  "I was there nearly three hours," I said. "Do you want the crop?"

  "No." He was pouring coffee. "Only what may be useful."

  "Then you should be back at your book in about ten minutes. To simplify it I'll make it Elinor and Amy. The most interesting item is the fact that Elinor had no photographs anywhere, not even at the bottom of a drawer. Not one. That's extremely significant, so please tell me what it signifies."

  He made a noise, not enough of one to be called a grunt. "Did you get nothing at all?" He sipped coffee.

  "Close to it. The trouble is, Amy doesn't know anything. I doubt if there's another girl anywhere who had a mother for twenty-two years and knows so little about her. One thing she knows, or thinks she does, is that her mother

  hated her and tried hard to hide it. She says that Amy means 'beloved,' and that Elinor probably wasn't aware that she was being sarcastic when she named her that."

  I went to the pot of coffee on Wolfe's desk, poured a full cup, returned to my chair, and took a couple of sips. "Did Elinor have any close friends, men or women? Amy doesn't know. Of course she has been away at college for most of the last four years. What was Elinor's basic character? Careful, correct, and cold about covers it, according to Amy. One of the words she used was 'introvert,' which I would have supposed was moth-eaten for a girl just out of Smith."

  I nipped a page of my notebook. "Elinor must have dropped some hints without thinking, at least one little one in twenty years, about her background, her childhood, but Amy says no. She doesn't know what Elinor did for a living before she went to work for Raymond Thome Productions, the firm she was with when she died. She doesn't even know what Elinor did, specifically, at Thome's; she only knows it must have been an important job."

  I nipped another page and took some coffee. "Believe it or not, Amy doesn't know where she was born. She thinks it might have been Mount Sinai Hospital, because that's where Elinor went for an appendectomy about ten years ago, but that's just a guess. Anyway it probably wouldn't help much, since Elinor certainly wasn't letting things she didn't want known get into the record. Amy does know one thing, and of course it's essential, the date. She was bom April twelfth, nineteen forty-five. About five years ago she decided to see the doctor who signed her birth certificate but found he was dead. So she was conceived around the middle of July nineteen forty-four, so that's the time to place Elinor, but Amy doesn't know where she was living. The first home Amy remembers was a walkup, two flights, on West Ninety-second Street, when she was three. When she was seven they moved to a better one on West Seventy-eighth Street, and when she was thirteen they jumped the park to the East Side, to the one I inspected this morning."

  I emptied my cup and decided it was enough. "I'll skip the details of the inspection unless you insist. As I said,

  no photographs, which is fantastic. The letters and other papers, a washout. If we fed them to a computer I would expect it to come up with something like so what or tell it to the marines. It would have been a pleasure to find for instance a newspaper clipping about a man, no matter what it said, but nothing doing. Did I mention that Amy has no photograph of her mother? We'll have to snare one somehow." I shut the notebook and tossed it on the desk. "Questions?"

  He said, "Grrrhh."

  "I agree. Oh, you asked me last evening if Amy is interested not so much in genes but in gold. Does she think that a father who could be so free with bank checks must have a barrel of it and she would like to dip in? I passed, and I still do. After spending three hours with her I doubt it, and anyway, does it matter? To us?"

  "No." He put his cup down and pushed it back. "Monday should be more fruitful. You're off, I suppose."

  I nodded. "I was expected last evening, as you know." I rose. "Shall I put that in the safe?"

  He said no, he would, and I gave him the key to the box, put the notebook in a drawer, whirled my chair and pushed it against my desk as always, and went-out and up to my room to change and pack a bag. I had phoned Lily that I would make it in time for dinner.

  It was a quarter to three when I left the house, walked around the corner to the garage, got the Heron, and headed up Tenth Avenue. At Thirty-sixth Street I turned right. The direct route would have been left on Forty-fifth Street for the West Side Highway, but I don't like to have something itching me when I'm stretched out at the edge of Lily's swimming pool and flowers are smelling and birds are flying and so on. On East Forty-third Street parking was no problem on Saturday afternoon.

  Entering the Gazette building, I took the elevator to the twentieth floor. For the file I could have gone to the morgue instead, but Lon Cohen might know of some recent development that the Gazette hadn't had room for. When I entered his room, two doors down from the publisher's corner room, he was talking to one of the three phones on his desk and I sat on the one other chair, at

  the end of the desk, and waited. When he hung up he swung around and said, "After what happened Thursday night how did you get here? Walk? You sure didn't have taxi fare."

  I answered suitably, and when personal comments were, in my opinion, even, I said I knew I shouldn't bother an assistant to a publisher about something trivial; I only wanted to get the details of a hit-and-run that had killed a woman named Elinor Denovo, the last week in May, and would he ring the morgue and tell them to oblige me. He got at a phone and did what he knew I expected him to, told someone to bring the file up to him. When a boy came with it, in about six minutes, no more, he was at another phone and I had moved my chair about a foot back to be discreet. The boy put the file on his desk and I reached and got it.

  There were only seven items: four clippings and three typed reports. It hadn't made the front page, but was on page 3 for Saturday, May 27, and the first thing I noticed was that there was no picture of her, so even the Gazette hadn't dug one up. I went through everything. Mrs. Elinor Denovo (so she was Mrs. to the world) had returned her car to the garage where she kept it, on Second Avenue near Eighty-third Street, Friday night after midnight, and told th
e attendant she would want it around noon the next day. Three minutes later, as she was crossing Eighty-third Street in the middle of the block, presumably bound for her apartment on Eighty-second Street, a car had hit her, tossed her straight ahead, and run over her with two wheels. Only four people had seen it happen: a man on the sidewalk walking east, a hundred feet or more away, a man and woman on the sidewalk going west, the same direction as the car, about the same distance away, and a taxi driver who had just turned his cab into Eighty-third Street from Second Avenue. They all said that the car that hit her hadn't even slowed down, but were unanimous on nothing else. The hackie thought the driver, alone in the car, was a woman. The man coming east said it was a man, alone. The man and woman thought it was two men, both in the front seat. The hackie thought the car was a Dodge Coronet but wasn't sure; the man coming

  east said it was a Chewy; the man and woman didn't know. Two of them said the car was dark green, one said it was dark blue, and one said it was black. So much for eyewitnesses. Actually, it was a dark-gray Ford. It was hot. Mrs. David A. Ernst of Scarsdale, who owned it, had gone for it at ten o'clock Friday evening where she had parked it on West Eleventh Street, and it wasn't there. A cop had spotted it Saturday afternoon parked on East 123rd Street, and by Monday the scientists had cinched it that it was the one that had got Elinor Denovo.

  By the time the Gazette went to press on Thursday, June first, the date of the last clipping, the police had got nowhere. They didn't even claim that anyone had been invited in for questioning, let alone name a suspect; they only said that the investigation was being vigorously pursued, which was probably true, since they hate a hit-and-run and don't quit until it's absolutely hopeless, and even then they don't forget it.

  There was nothing about Elinor Denovo that I didn't already know, except that she was vice-president of Raymond Thome Productions, Inc. Miss Amy Denovo had been interviewed but hadn't said much. Raymond Thome had said that Mrs. Denovo had made valuable contributions to the art of television production and her death was a great loss not only for his company but for the whole television industry and therefore for the country. I thought he should make up his mind whether television was an art or an industry.

  I put the file on Lon's desk, waited until he had finished at a phone, and said, "Many thanks. I was curious about a detail. The latest item is June first. Would you know if there has been any progress since?"

  He got at a phone, the green one this time, pressed a button, and in a moment talked, and then waited. While he waited another phone buzzed, and stopped when he pushed a button. In a couple of minutes he told the green phone, "Yeah, sure." In another couple of minutes he cradled it, turned to me and said, "Apparently it's dead. Our last word, more than a month ago, was that we might as well cross it off. They had only one man still on it. But now of course, with Nero Wolfe horning in, it's far from dead. So it was murder. I don't expect you to name

  him, even oS the record, but I want enough for a page one box."

  I was on my feet. "Journalists," I said, "are the salt and pepper of the earth. I would enjoy discussing that with you, but I'm on my way to a rustic swimming pool in the middle of a tailor-made glade in the Westchester woods, and I'm twenty hours late. I said it was something trivial, but have it your way. Yes, it was murder, and the driver of the car was the skunk who topped my three aces with four deuces Thursday night. I hope they get him."

  I turned and went.

  But down in the lobby I went to a phone booth, dialed a number I didn't have to look up, gave my name, asked if Sergeant Stebbins was around, and after a long wait got his voice:

  "Stebbins. Something up, Archie?"

  He must have just won a bet or got a raise. He called me Archie only about once in two years, and sometimes he wouldn't even say Goodwin but made it just you. I returned the compliment. "Nothing with a bite, Purley, just a routine question, but to answer it you may have to look at a file. You may have forgotten it, it was nearly three months ago-a hit-and-run on East Eighty-third Street, a woman named Elinor Denovo-"

  "We haven't forgotten it. We don't forget a hit-and-run."

  "I know you don't, I was just being impolite for practice. Someone asked me if you've dug up a lead on it, and of course I didn't know. Have you?"

  "Who asked you?"

  "Oh, Mr. Wolfe and I were discussing crime and whether cops are as good as they ought to be, and he mentioned this Elinor Denovo. As you know, he misses nothing in the papers. I said you would probably get that one, and I was curious. Of course I'm not asking for any inside dope…"

  "There isn't any dope, inside or outside. It's hanging. But we're not forgetting it."

  "Right. I hope you get him. Nobody likes a hit-and-run."

  Walking to Forty-third Street for the car, I had to concede that I had got no relief at all for the itch.

  4

  You would suppose that at ten minutes to ten Monday morning, as I sat in a taxicab headed uptown, with the box on the seat beside me and the breast pocket of my jacket bulging with envelopes containing letters to twelve savings banks because I never lug a brief case if I can help it, my mind would be on the morning's program, but it wasn't. It was on the hour just past, or part of it, instead of the one just ahead. I don't like to have people bellow at me, particularly not Wolfe.

  Also I had had only six hours' sleep, a full two hours less than I need and nearly always get. Getting home after midnight Sunday, I had decided against typing twelve letters before turning in, and so had to set the alarm for seven o'clock. When it went off I opened one eye to glare at it, but I knew I would have to hustle, much as I hate hustling before breakfast, and in six minutes, maybe seven, I was on my feet. At 7:45 I was at the little table in the kitchen where I eat breakfast, on the last swallow of orange juice, and Fritz was crossing to me with the grilled ham and corn fritters, and at 8:10 I was in the office at the typewriter. At 9:15 I had finished the twelfth letter and had started folding and putting them in envelopes when the doorbell rang, and I went to the hall for a look through the one-way glass in the front door, and saw a big burly male with a big round red face topped by a big battered broad-brimmed felt hat. The hat alone would have been enough. Inspector Cramer of Homicide South must be the only man in New York who wears such a hat on a hot sunny day in August.

  Nuts, I thought, let him ring. But it must be just for

  me, since he knew Wolfe was never available before eleven o'clock, so I went and opened the door and said, "Good morning and greetings, but I'm busy and I'm in a rush. I really mean it."

  "So am I." It was gruff, but it always is. "I'm just stopping by on my way down. Why did you call Stebbins on that hit-and-run?"

  "What the hell, I told him why."

  "I know you did. Also I know you and I know Wolfe. Discussing crime my ass. All right, discuss it with me now. I want to know why you're working on that hit-and-run."

  "I'm not. Mr. Wolfe isn't." I glanced at my wrist. "I would like to ask you in for some give and take, you know I enjoy that, but I've got a date. Except for what was in the papers, I know absolutely nothing about that hit-and-run, and neither does Mr. Wolfe. No one has consulted with us about it. The only client we've got is a girl who can't find her father and wants us to." I glanced at my wrist. "Damn it, I'll be late." I started the door around. He opened his mouth, clamped it shut, about-faced, and started down the seven steps of the stoop. His PD car was there, double-parked. By the time he reached it I was back in the office.

  Time was short, but it was quite possible that Cramer would phone while I was gone, and Wolfe didn't know about my call to Purley Stebbins. He is not to be disturbed short of an emergency when he is up in the plant rooms, but he had to be told, so I took the house phone and pushed a button, and after a wait his voice came.

  "Yes?"

  "Me in a hurry. Cramer was here just now, stopping on his way downtown. I haven't had a chance to tell you that Saturday afternoon I rang Stebbins and-"

  "I'm busy!" h
e 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."