The Father Hunt

by Rex Stout

  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.

  As for her background, he knew she had come from Wisconsin, some small town near Milwaukee, and that was all. He didn't know how long she had been hi New York, or where she had gone to school, or how she had got the job with Mrs. Jarrett.

  So much for her entrance. Where he flunked worst was on her exit. Since starting with Mrs. Jarrett she had lived there, town and country; and in the early spring of 1944, he thought late in March, she suddenly wasn't there, but she might still have been doing something for Jarrett because she came to the house three or four times in the

  next six or seven months. The last time he saw her was in late September or early October 1944, when she spent part of an evening with Jarrett in the library.

  Exit. Curtain.

  He wasn't much more helpful on relationships. He had liked her and admired her, and he thought she had liked him, but he had been married just the year before, at the age of thirty, and his first son had just been born, so his intimate concerns were elsewhere. He remembered vaguely that he had got the idea that something might be developing between her and Jarrett's son Eugene, who was twenty years old in 1944, but he recalled no specific incidents. On her relations with Jarrett himself, he had an internal tussle that was so apparent that I had one too, to keep from grinning. Of course he knew from Ballou what we expected to get on Jarrett, and he would have loved to help by supplying some good salty evidence, but he had been born either too honest or too shy on invention. He rang the changes on what was obvious, that Jarrett and Carlotta were alone together a lot, but when he tried to remember that he had seen things that had made him suspect that Carlotta's services weren't exclusively secretarial, he couldn't make it.

  That's what my memory took home for me. I accompanied him on the short walk back to bis job, for a look at the main office of the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company from the outside, thanked him for the lunch, and spent ten minutes on the toughest job in New York, finding a vacant hack. I finally beat a guy with a limp to one. When it rolled to a stop in front of the old brown-stone at twenty minutes to three, I had arranged in my mind a draft all ready for the typewriter. As follows:

  CARLOTTA VAUGHN RESUME

  from Bertram McCray, August 24, 1967

  Up to May 1942

  Not known, but according to her via McCray, somewhere in Wisconsin for most of it.

  May 1942, to November 1943

  Mrs. Jarrett's secretary. Lived there.

  November 1943, to March 1944

  Jarrett's home secretary. Lived there. March 1944, to October 1944, which includes the month Amy was conceived.

  Living elsewhere, presumably in oar near New York,

  since McCray saw her at Jarrett's house three or

  four times.

  October 1944, to July 2, 1945, which includes April 12,1945, Amy's birthday.

  Nothing known. July 2,1945

  Elinor Denovo walked in on Raymond Thome.

  7

  When, at five minutes to six that afternoon, I braked the Heron to a stop at the edge of the gravel in front of the main entrance to the Jarrett mansion, it was dark enough for midnight. Clouds had been making passes as far south as Hawthorne Circle. At Shrub Oak they had closed ranks, and at Millbrook they had cut loose on three fronts: for the ears, noise to scare you; for the eyes, flashes to blind you; and for the skin, water to soak you. It stayed right with me the rest of the way, and having made it to my destination in spite of the big try at stopping me, I turned off the engine and pocketed the key, switched the lights off, reached to the back seat for my raincoat, the spare that is always there, draped it over my head, opened the door, and dashed across the gravel for cover.

  My reception was fully down to expectations. It was Oscar who opened the door after I had pushed the button three times. In the circumstances it wasn't only natural, it was compulsory, for any fellow being to say "Quite a storm" or "Are you wet?" or "Nice day for ducks." He barely gave me room enough to enter without brushing him.

  I was expected. Often, after I make a report to Wolfe, there is a long discussion, and sometimes an argument which stops just short of me quitting or him firing me, about what comes next, but that time it had been obvious. The discussion had lasted maybe three minutes, then I had pulled the phone around and dialed area code 914 and a number, and got the same male voice I had got the day before. I didn't know if it was Oscar because Oscar in person had said very little in my hearing.

  "This is Archie Goodwin," I said. "I was there yesterday. Please tell Mr. Jarrett that I am coming again. I'll be there in about two hours."

  "I can't do that, Mr. Goodwin. Mr. Jarrett has given orders that you are not to be admitted. There's a man at the entrance, and he-"

  "Yeah. Excuse me for interrupting. I expected that, that's why I'm phoning. Please tell Mr. Jarrett that I want to ask him for some information about Carlotta Vaughn." I repeated the name, distinctly. "Carlotta Vaughn. He'll recognize that name. I'll hold the wire."

  "But I assure you, Mr. Goodwin-"

  "I assure you, sir. He won't thank you for the message, but he'll see me."

  A brief silence; then: "Hold the wire."

  The wait was longer than the ones the day before. Wolfe, with his receiver in one hand, was adjusting the spray of Miltonia hellemense in the vase on his desk with the other. Finally the voice came.

  "Mr. Goodwin?"

  "I'm here."

  "You say in two hours?"

  "More or less. Maybe a little more."

  "Very well. You will be admitted."

  As I hung up, Wolfe growled, "That creature has been so reduced to chronic subservience that he was deferential even to you. I would like to deal with Mr. Jarrett. I am almost minded to go along."

  Just chatter. Before leaving I typed the resume of the life of Carlotta Vaughn as we knew it, which I had arranged in my mind on the way. You have seen it.

  Now, as I put my raincoat on a bench and followed Oscar across a reception hall, along a wide corridor, and around a turn into a narrower hall that took us to an open door at the end, I forgot to observe things because I was too busy looking forward to dealing with Mr. Jarrett. One would have got you ten that this time I would get a reaction. But I did observe the room I entered. It had a fifteen-foot ceiling, a rug twice the size of Lily Rowan's 19-by-34 Kashan, a big desk that was presumably Colonial handiwork, and more books than Wolfe owned, on shelves that reached nearly to the ceiling. Not one of the chairs

  was occupied. Oscar turned on some lights and said Mr. Jarrett would come shortly, an
d this time "shortly" was more like it, only a couple of minutes. As he entered by another and narrower door between two tiers of shelves, a dazzle of lightning darted in through the windows, and as he halted and stood after five or six steps, the boom of thunder shook them. Good staging. He focused the frozen eyes on me and said, "What do you want to know about Carlotta Vaughn?"

  "It might be better," I said, "for me to tell you first what I already know, or some of it. She was your wife's secretary from May nineteen forty-two untl your wife died. She lived here-and at your house in town. You kept her on. She stopped living with you in March nineteen forty-four, and I can't prove that you still kept her, with a different meaning for 'kept,' but there's no law against guessing, and we've only been on this five days." I got something from a pocket. "Here are two photographs of her, taken in nineteen forty-six, but she wasn't Carlotta Vaughn then, she was Elinor Denovo, and her daughter Amy was a year old. Take a look."

  I offered them, but he didn't take them. He said, "Who's paying you, Goodwin? Just McCray? He's probably only the errand boy for them-he would be-but you must have their names. If I could prove conspiracy to defame… Would you like to pocket ten thousand dollars?"

  "Not particularly. That's peanuts. Only last week I took home a box that contained two hundred and forty-four grand-and by the way, it had come from you." I put the photographs back in my pocket. "The checks you sent Elinor Denovo, formerly Carlotta Vaughn-"

  "That's enough!" He was reacting. Not the eyes, but the voice. He fired those two words at me as if they were bullets. "This is ridiculous. The brainless idiots. You're expecting to show that I am the father of a girl named Amy, that her mother is the Carlotta Vaughn who once worked for my wife and me and is now known as Elinor Denovo. Is that correct?"

  "That's obvious."

  "When was this girl Amy born?"

  "Two weeks before you sent the first check to Elinor Denovo. April twelfth, nineteen forty-five."

  "Then she was conceived in the summer of nineteen forty-four. July, unless the birth was abnormally premature or delayed. I suppose you have a notebook. Get it out."

  I wasn't subservient enough yet. I tapped my skull. "I file things here."

  "File this. In late May nineteen forty-four I went to

  England on a mission for the Production Allotment Board

  to consult with Eisenhower's staff and the British. Seven

  days after the landing in Normandy I flew to Cairo for

  more consultations, and then to Italy. On July first I was

  put to bed with pneumonia in an army hospital in Naples.

  On July twenty-fourth I was still shaky and I was flown

  to Marrakech to recuperate. My room in the villa was

  the one Churchill had once occupied. On August twen

  tieth I flew to London and was there until September

  sixth, when I returned to Washington. If you had got

  your notebook when I told you to you'd have those dates."

  He turned his head and called, "Oscar!" "

  The door, the big one, opened and Oscar entered and stood with a hand on the knob.

  "Brainless idiots," Jarrett said. "Especially McCray; he

  was born an idiot. If they didn't know how and where I

  spent that summer they could have found out. Anyone

  with a spoonful of brains would have. Oscar, this man's

  going and he isn't coming back." He turned and left by

  the door he had come in at.,

  I was in no mood for another waiting match with Oscar. ! I moved-out by the big door, down the hall and the corridor, and on out. I damn near forgot my raincoat, but the corner of my eye caught it as I was passing, and I got it. I didn't bother to use it crossing the gravel to the car because the downpour had thinned out to a drizzle.

  It was just luck that I didn't get a ticket. I usually hold to sixty on the Taconic and the Saw Mill, but I must have hit at least seventy a dozen times and it was probably a personal record for that route. I suppose the idea was that I wanted to get the driving done so I could start thinking, but evidently one thing kept pushing, because at one point on the Saw Mill I braked down, eased off onto

  the grass, got out my notebook, and jotted down the places and dates Jatrett had rattled off. As I bumped back over the curb to the lane I said out loud, "By God, if I can't even trust my memory I'd better quit."

  It was exactly eight o'clock when I mounted the stoop of the old brownstone and used my key, and Wolfe was in the dining room. I stuck my head in at the door and said I'd get a bite in the kitchen, and continued to the rear. Fritz, who always eats his evening meal around nine o'clock, was on his stool at the big center table doing something with artichokes. When I entered he crinkled his eyes at me and said, "Ah. You're back on the feet. Have you eaten?"

  "No."

  "He was worried about you." He left the stool. "As you know, I never worry about you. There's a little mussel bisque-"

  "No, thanks. No soup. I want to chew something. Don't tell me he ate a whole duck."

  "Oh, no. I knew a man, a Swiss, who ate two ducks." He was at the range, putting on a plate to warm. "Was it a good trip?"

  "It was a lousy trip." I was at a cupboard getting out a bottle. "No milk or coffee. I'm going to drink a quart of whisky."

  "Not here, Archie. In your room is the place for that. Some carottes Flamande?"

  I said, "Yes, please," poured a shot of bourbon, sat at my breakfast table, took a swallow, and scowled. Fritz, seeing the scowl, didn't talk.

  As I lifted lie glass for the third swallow the door swung open and Wolfe was there. He said to Fritz, "I'll have coffee here," and went and mounted the stool at the near side of the center table. Once in the past he had bought a chair big enough for the back of his lap and had it put in the kitchen, but the next day it wasn't there. Fritz had taken it to the basement. As far as I know it has never been mentioned by either of them-not then, and not since.

  Another thing that had never been mentioned but was mutually understood was that the rule about talk at meals didn't apply when I was eating alone in the kitchen

  or office, because it was a snack, not a meal. So when my snack was on my plate and I had chewed and swallowed a man-size morsel of duck Mondor and a forkful of carrots, I told Wolfe, "I appreciate this. You knew I had something on my chest I wanted to unload and you came to have coffee perched on that roost instead of in your chair. I appreciate it."

  He made a face. "You're drinking whisky with food." "It should be hemlock. Who drank hemlock?" "You're posing. We have discussed that at length more than once. Your chest?"

  I was using the knife on the duck-a knife with a wooden handle and a blade dull to the eye but sharp enough to filet a fish. There is plenty of stainless steel up in the plant rooms-the bench frames-but it's taboo in the kitchen or dining room. "This knife would be fine for hara-kiri," I said, "but you'll have to know how it stands so you can carry on. I'll tell you in installments between bites. And swigs of bourbon."

  I did so, word for word, a couple of sentences at a time. By the time I got to Jarrett's exit line the carrots were gone and there wasn't much left of my share of the duck but bones, and most of the sauce had been mopped up with pieces of rolls. Wolfe had finished his first cup of coffee and poured the second.

  I swallowed the last bite of duck and said, "I don't like flie idea of hara-kiri on a full stomach, and anyway I've got about a dime's worth of comments. Do you want to go first?"

  "No. You've had two hours to consider it." "I was driving, not considering. Okay. First, of course, his alibi. Almost certainly it's tight, since he knows it can be checked, but I think Saul or Orrie should be put on it, not only the details but also whether she was with him for any part of it-even granting that he spent the month of July in a hospital with pneumonia. Opinion: it will be a waste of time and money. One will get you fifty that he is not Amy's father. He's too damned sure we're stopped. But I suppose it must be checked."r />
  He nodded. "Orrie. Saul will be needed for chores more difficult." "He sure will. Now me. It's entirely my fault. Fritz,

  I've changed my mind. May I have some coffee? You pour it, please, my hand might shake." I moved my chair around to face Wolfe. "I can't blame it on McCray. Even if he knew all about where Jarrett spent that summer, he didn't know when Amy was born. We hadn't told Ballou, so Ballou hadn't told him. But me? If I had the brains of a half-wit I would have asked McCray where Ballou was during July nineteen forty-four. It's entirely my fault that I drove up there through a cloudburst and invited that ape to push my nose in. Bounce me. Don't pay me for this week. I'll get a job sewing on buttons."

  Fritz, who was there pouring coffee, said, "Not if you commit hara-kiri, Archie." He wouldn't have, with Wolfe there, if it had been the dining room or the office, but we were in his kitchen.

  "It wasn't wholly futile," Wolfe said. "He gave you confirmation of what had been only a valid assumption, that he knew the date of birth. That's now established. Those places and dates had been arranged in his head before you arrived."

  "Uh^huh." I drank coffee and burned my mouth. "Thanks for the bone. That about covers comment. A question, Do I tell the client about Carlotta Vaughn?"

  "I think not. Not now. The telephone will do for telling her that we think it highly improbable that Mr. Jarrett sired her. What time is it?" He would have had to pivot his head to ask the kitchen clock.

  "Eight thirty-five."

  "You'll be late for poker. At Saul's apartment?"

  "Yes. It always is."

  "If Saul will be free tomorrow morning ask him to come at ten, and call Fred and Orrie. Also at ten. When they come give them everything; they'll need it all and there's nothing we should reserve. You have seen Mr. Jarrett and I haven't. I need your opinion. Elinor Denovo's letter said, "This money is from your father.' We know it was sent by Mr. Jarrett, the first check two weeks after the birth, but it appears that he is not the father. Well? You have seen him. What impelled him?"