by Rex Stout
"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 Directory 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.
"Yes?"
He knows darned well that's no way to answer a phone, but try to change him.
"Me," I said. "In a drugstore with the client, having refreshments. The letters have been mailed, with enclosures, and she is taking the box home as a souvenir of her mother or father, I don't know which. Three items. First, what I started to tell you this morning when you bellowed at me. Cramer may phone, so you ought to know that I rang Stebbins Saturday afternoon. I told him that you and I were discussing crime the other day and the hit-and-run that killed a woman named Elinor Denovo came up, and I wondered if they had got a lead. He told Cramer, and of course Cramer thinks that the simplest question from you or me means that we've got something hot. I told him that we only knew what we read in the papers. If he phones, you-"
"Pfui. What else?"
"Second, you said Friday evening that my next stop after the bank would be Raymond Thorne. Any change?"
"No."
"Third, the bank was pie. The checks were drawn by the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company, the third largest bank in town, payable to bearer, and I took a look at it in the International Bank Directory. I won't mention his name on the phone, but you remember that one winter evening about a year and a half ago a man sat in the office and said to you, quote, 'I have never spent an hour in a pink bedroom,' end quote. Well, he's on the Board of Directors of the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company."
"Indeed." A five-second pause. "Satisfactory."
"All of that. The kind of break you read about. Shall I take him first instead of Thorne?"
"I think not." Another pause. "It needs reflection."
"Okay. Don't stand in the hall at lunchtime. I may not make it."
When I got back to the table Amy had started her third cup of coffee. As I sat she said, "I've been thinking. You're wonderful, Mr. Goodwin. Simply wonderful. 1 wish… I want to call you Archie."
"Try it and see what happens. I might like it. Since you say your mother was being sarcastic when she tagged you Amy I suppose you wish your name was Araminta or Hephzibah, or you pick it."
"I could pick a better one."
"I'll bet you could. Now we have a problem. I have to ask people questions about your mother, a few of those whose names you gave me yesterday, and I am to start with Raymond Thorne. You'll phone him and tell him you're sending me and you hope he'll cooperate, but I can't just say I'm after men your mother knew in the summer of nineteen forty-four-that's when the genes met -since you don't want anyone to know or even suspect that it's a father hunt. So I have a suggestion, approved by Mr. Wolfe, which we expect you to approve."
"Oh, I'll approve anything you-" She stopped and tightened her lips. Then she smiled. "Listen to me. You might think I had no brains at all. Tell me and we'll see." I told her.
5
&nb
sp; The office of Raymond Thome Productions was on the sixth floor of one of the newer steel-and-glass hives on Madison Avenue in the Forties. Judging from its size, and the furniture and fixtures, and the cordial smile of the receptionist, the television art, or maybe industry, was doing fine. Also I had to wait twenty minutes to get in to Thorne, though he had told Amy on the phone that his door would always be open for her or anyone she sent.
Of course I wasn't suspecting that he might himself be the target. In her letter Elinor had told Amy that she hadn't seen or heard from her father since four months before she was born, and there was no reason to suppose that that might be flam and she had seen him every work day for twenty years. The idea that a detective should suspect everything that everybody says is a good general rule, but there's a limit.
Thorne and his room went together fine. The room was big and modern and so was he. After giving me a man-to-man handshake and saying how much he would like to help Amy any way he could, and telling me to sit, he returned to his desk and said he didn't know what it was I wanted because Amy had been rather vague on the phone.
I nodded. "She thought I could tell it better, but it's really very simple. She wants Nero Wolfe-you may have heard the name."
"Oh, sure."
"She wants him to find out who killed her mother. I think she's a little hipped on it, but that's her privilege.
She thinks the cops should have nailed him long ago, and also she thinks they went at it wrong. She thinks it was premeditated murder. In fact, she's sure it was. Don't ask me why she's sure; I have asked her, and she says it's intuition. How old were you when you learned not to argue with intuition?"
"It's so long ago I've forgotten."
"Me too. But intuition hasn't told her who it was. She has made a list of names, twenty-eight of them, people who were friends of her mother, everybody who had personal contact that could be called close even by stretching it, and she has said no to all of them. She says none of them could possibly have had a reason, so it must have been someone she doesn't know about-someone connected with her work here, or someone from many years ago when she was too young to remember. Therefore I come to you first, naturally. She worked here, and you knew her-how long?"
"More than twenty years." He had his head cocked. "Do you think it was premeditated murder?"
"Mr. Wolfe would say it's 'cogitable.' He likes words like that. It could have been; none of the facts say no. If we find someone with a healthy motive that will make it interesting. The first thing I would like from you is a photograph of Mrs. Denovo. You must have some."
His eyes left me for a quick glance down and to the right, then up again. "I don't think…" He let that go. "Didn't you get one from Amy?"
"She hasn't any. There aren't any in the apartment. Surely you have some. At least one."
"Well…" He glanced down again. "I'm not surprised that there are none in the apartment. Mrs. Denovo had a thing about photographs-I mean of her. When we wanted pictures of the staff, for promotion, we had to leave her out. She couldn't be persuaded. Once we got up a folder with separate pictures of seven of us, but not of her, though she should have been up front, after me. No picture of her at all, period." He rubbed his chin with fingertips, eying me. "But I've got one."
"Yeah." I gestured with a hand. "There in the bottom drawer."
His head jerked up. "How the hell do you know?"
"Any detective just learning how would have known, and I've been at it for years. When I said 'photograph' you glanced down there; you did it twice."
His head went back to normal. "Well, you're wrong. They're in the next to the bottom drawer. Two of them. They were taken years ago by a camera man trying angles, and she didn't know they existed. A week or so after her death I remembered about them and took a look in the old files and found them. But I don't think I should… Well, if she had known they were there she would have destroyed them long ago. Wouldn't she?"
"Probably. But she's dead. And if Amy's intuition happens to be right and it was murder, and if the photos would help us get him, do you want to destroy them?"
"No. Of course I don't."
"I should hope not. May I see them, please?"
He leaned over to reach down to the drawer, came up with a brown envelope, slipped two prints out, and gave them a look. They were about five by eight inches. "Until I saw these," he said, "I had forgotten how attractive she was. It must have been nineteen forty-six or forty-seven, a year or so after she came here. My God, how people change."
I had got up and circled the end of the desk, and he handed them to me. One was about three-quarters face and the other was profile. There wasn't much of her figure, not down to her waist, but they were good shots of a good face. There was some resemblance to Amy, but the forehead was a Little wider and the chin a little more pointed. I looked at the back, but there was no date or other data.
"I can't let you take them," Thorne said, "but I can have copies made. As many as you want."
I gave them another look. "They could be extremely useful. I can have copies made and return these to you."
He said no, they were the only pictures he had of a woman who had been a big help to him for many years, and he was going to hang on to them, and I handed them over. I told him I needed at least six copies, ten would be better, and returned to my chair and got out my notebook.
"Now a leading question," I said. "You'll dodge it, naturally, but I'll ask it anyway. Amy thought it might be
someone connected with her work here. Could you suggest a candidate?"
He shook his head. "You mentioned that before. I don't have to dodge. Forget it. There are forty-six people in this organization, counting everybody. Over the years there have been, oh, I suppose around a hundred and fifty. They haven't all thought Mrs. Denovo was perfect, we've had our share of scraps and grudges, but murder? Not a chance. Forget it."
Of course I was glad to, since Amy's father couldn't f have been one of the hundred and fifty unless Elinor had lied in the letter, and I decided it wasn't necessary to nag him just to keep up appearances. I opened the notebook. "Okay, we'll pass that for now. Now some dates. When did Mrs. Denovo start with you?"
"I looked that up the day I found the pictures. It was July second, nineteen forty-five."
"You had known her before that?"
"No. She walked in that morning and said she had heard that I needed a stenographer. I was in radio then- we got into television later-and I had only four people in three little rooms on Thirty-ninth Street. It was vacation time and my secretary had gone on hers, so I handed Mrs. Denovo a notebook and gave her some letters. And she was so good I kept her."
"Had she been sent by an agency?"
"No. I asked who had sent her, and she said nobody, she had heard someone say I needed a stenographer."
"But you checked on her references."
"I never asked her for any. Three days was enough to see how good she was, not only as a stenographer, and I didn't bother. After a week I didn't give a damn where she had worked before or how she happened to walk in that morning. It didn't matter."
I closed the notebook and stuck it in my pocket. "But that makes it a blank. First you tell me to forget everybody connected with her work here, there's not a chance it was one of them, and now are you saying you know nothing about her before the second of July, nineteen forty-five? What she had done or where she had been?"
"Yes, I am."
"After being closely associated with her for twenty-two years? I don't believe it."
He nodded. "You're not the first detective that can't believe it. Two of them from the police, at different times, couldn't either. But it's-"
"Were they here recently?"
"No, that was back in May, just after her death. But it's true. She never spoke of her family or background- anything you could call personal, and she wasn't a woman you would… Well, she kept her distance. I'll give you an example. Once a woman-an important woman, important to us; she represent
ed one of our clients-she was saying something about her sister, and she asked Mrs. Denovo if she had a sister, and she just ignored it. Not even a yes or no. I'm pretty quick at getting on to people, and within a month after I met her, less than that, I knew she had lines I wasn't to cross. And I never did. If you want to ask some of the others here go ahead, but you'll be wasting your time. Do you want to try?"
Ordinarily I would have said yes, and perhaps I should have, but I was only partly there. I had come only because Wolfe had said to. Where I wanted to be was with Avery Ballou. So I said I didn't want to interfere with their lunch hours but I might be back later, tomorrow if not today, and thanked him on behalf of Miss Denovo. He said if I come tomorrow he would have the copies of the photographs by four o'clock, and I thanked him again.
As I went down the hall to the elevator I decided to head for Al's diner and treat myself to bacon and eggs and home-fried potatoes. Eggs are never fried in Wolfe's and Fritz's kitchen, and neither are potatoes, but that wasn't the main point. The idea of sitting through lunch with Wolfe and discussing something like the future of computers or the effect of organized sport on American culture, when we should be discussing how to handle Avery Ballou, didn't appeal to me.
But knowing that Wolfe had done his reflecting and was as keen to go at Ballou as I was, I reflected as I sipped coffee and decided it would do him good to be stalled off a little, say half an hour, to even up for my being stalled by his sappy rule about table talk. So I
watched the time. I left the diner at two on the dot, walked the three blocks to the old brownstone, and entered the office at 2:05, got the retainer from the safe, went across the hall to the dining-room door, and said, "You said to deposit this at an early opportunity and this is it. I'll be back in half an hour."
"No." He put his coffee cup down. "That can wait. We have a decision to make."
