The Father Hunt

by Rex Stout

  So as I said, I wasn't feeling any better as I drove back to town. Sometimes it's things that take the joy out of life, like a blowout when you're hitting sixty or a button coming off of a shirt when you're in a hurry, but usually it's people. Of course, of the three people who had made that weekend less than perfect Amy was the only one whose contribution would carry over. Lily would do some wondering for a week or so-who wouldn't?-but I certainly wasn't going to explain. When two people who want to get along start needing to have things explained, look out. I would tell the client about her mother's real name when I felt like it.

  9

  The trouble with putting a box number on an ad instead of your name and address and phone number, especially if it's in three papers, is getting the replies. Phoning at ten o'clock Monday morning and learning that there were some, I went for them, got two at the Times and four at the Gazette, opened them there, and found them so screwy that I bothered to take them home only because I always keep everything connected with a job until it's finished. One was from a man who said Carlotta Vaughn was his grandmother, and maybe a Carlotta Vaughn was, but he didn't mention Elinor Denovo.

  When I got back a little after eleven Fritz said there had been no calls, but as I entered the office the phone rang and I crossed to my desk, nodding to Wolfe on the way, and got it.

  "Nero Wolfe's office, Archie Goodwin speaking."

  Female voice: "Good morning. Mr. Jarrett would like to speak to Mr. Wolfe."

  "Good morning. Please put Mr. Jarrett on."

  "Is Mr. Wolfe there?"

  "Yes."

  "Please put him on."

  "Now listen." I motioned to Wolfe. "Last Friday I got Mr. McCray for Mr. Wolfe and I was forced to put Mr. Wolfe on first You can't have it coming and going. Put Mr. Jarrett on or I hang up."

  "May I have your name, please?"

  "Archie Goodwin."

  "Please hold the wire, Mr. Goodwin."

  I timed it: two minutes and twenty seconds. Wolfe bad his phone.

  "Eugene Jarrett speaking. Nero Wolfe?"

  Me: "Please hold the wire, Mr. Jarrett."

  Wolfe should have waited at least a minute, but he hates the phone, either holding or talking. "This is Nero Wolfe. Yes, Mr. Jarrett?"

  "I have your letter. I'll come around six."

  "Good. As I said in the letter, I'll appreciate it. I'll expect you."

  They hung up together. There was a case where the approach took five minutes and the meet about ten seconds. A piece by a scientist in the Sunday New York Times Magazine which I had read during the weekend had explained why this is the age of instant communication.

  There were some items in the morning mail that needed attention, or at least got it, but we were interrupted a few times by phone calls: from Saul, who had drawn nothing but blanks; from Fred, who had found three people who had recognized the photographs but hadn't been any help; and from Orrie, from Washington, who had verified most of Jarrett's places and dates and was working on the rest. The hospital part, which covered most of July, was airtight. You are probably thinking that the client was getting damned little for her money, and I agree. When I returned from a trip to1 the mailbox at the corner it was lunchtime, and as we crossed to the dining room Wolfe said something about Mr. Cramer and I asked if he had phoned. Wolfe said no, he had come, late Saturday afternoon.

  I was sorry I had missed it because talk by those two is always worth hearing. You get good examples of how much a man can say in a few words and also of how little he can say in a lot of words. So back in the office after lunch I said I would just as soon know what Cramer had wanted, and Wolfe said only what he always wanted, information; he had said nothing that would help us any.

  I settled back and crossed my legs. "I haven't kept count," I said, "but at least a thousand times I have given you a verbatim report of a conversation. I can't tell you

  to because I don't pay you, you pay me, but I can suggest it. I am suggesting it."

  A corner of his mouth went up a sixteenth of an inch. For him it was a broad smile. "My memory is as good as yours, Archie."

  "Then it would be no strain. I said verbatim."

  "I know you did." He squinted at me. "Well… Mr. Cramer, admitted by Fritz, arrived shortly after six o'clock. We ex-"

  "The exact time?"

  "I don't have it on my wrist, as you do. We exchanged greetings and he sat."

  "Cramer: 'Where's Goodwin?'

  "Wolfe: 'Not here, as you see.'

  "Cramer: 'Yeah. I doubt if there's a man on earth as good at fielding questions as you are. So I'll ask another one. Saturday the nineteenth, a week ago, Goodwin rang Sergeant Stebbins and asked him about a hit-and-run three months ago that killed a woman named Elinor Denovo. Some crap about you and him discussing crime. Last Monday morning, I came and asked Goodwin why he had called Stebbins. He said he knew nothing about that hit-and-run except what he had read in the papers, and neither did you, and you hadn't been consulted about it, and your only client was a girl who wanted to find her father. I want the name of that girl. I wish Goodwin was here. Where is he?'

  "Wolfe: 'Absent. Mr. Cramer. You may query me in that tone only when your questions are justified by your official function.'

  "Cramer: 'Okay, I'll ask one that is justified. If you haven't been consulted about that hit-and-run why do you offer to pay five hundred dollars for information about Elinor Denovo? That also justifies my question about the girl-and about Goodwin. He told me a goddam lie.'

  "Wolfe: 'No. I can repeat now what he told you a week ago, and I do, and it is true. I-' "

  He broke off and demanded, "How the devil did he know that advertisement was mine?"

  I turned my palms up. "Someone on some newspaper did a favor for some cop. If I find out who, you can write a letter to the publisher."

  "Pah. To resume:

  "Wolfe: '… and it is true. I am not investigating that hit-and-run. My client's concern with Elinor Denovo relates not to her death but to her life. You should have inferred that from the advertisement; it asks for information, not about her last day or even her last year, but about many years ago. The information-'

  "Cramer: 'Who is Carlotta Vaughn?'

  "Wolfe: 'You're not in good form, Mr. Cramer. The advertisement makes it obvious that Carlotta Vaughn is, or was, Elinor Denovo. The information my client has given me is confidential and has no bearing on the hit-and-run.'

  "Cramer: 'You don't know that. When I'm investigating a homicide / decide what has a bearing and what hasn't.'

  "Wolfe: 'Must we repeat ourselves? Must I remind you again that until events answer that question conclusively my judgment, for which I alone am responsible, need not bow to yours-nor yours to mine? Am I withholding information from an officer of the law? Yes. Is it pertinent to his investigation of a crime? No. You have never made me change that no to a yes. Do that and you'll have me.'

  "Cramer: 'By God, I will. Some day I will.' "

  Wolfe waved a hand toward the hall, waving Cramer out. "Next time I'll turn the recorder on. Questions."

  I uncrossed my legs and straightened up. "No questions, just two comments. First, I think you left out a word or two, particularly one that he often uses. That's censorship, which you condemn. Second, there's something about that hit-and-run that makes it special, and it would be nice to know what it is. Cramer wouldn't be bothering personally about a three-month-old hit-and-run, even with you interested in the victim, unless it had some- special kink. Maybe a hot lead that fizzled out-anyway, something. But as you said, it's her life we're working on, not her death. Thank you for the report. Satisfactory."

  He pushed a button, two short and one long, for beer.

  I spent most of the next three hours finding out next to nothing about Eugene Jarrett. He wasn't in Who's Who, and since there was no other likely source of information about him in the office I went for a walk, keeping on the

  sfiady side of the street. There were just four items about him in the Gaze
tte morgue, and the only two worth an entry in my notebook were that he had married a girl named Adele Baldwin on November 18, 1951, and he had become a vice-president of Seaboard Bank and Trust Company in December 1959. Lon Cohen knew absolutely nothing about him, and neither did a couple of others on the Gazette that he got on the phone. On the way out I stopped at the sixteenth floor to see if there were any more replies to the ad and got two that were more of the same.

  At the Times there was another reply, also impossible, and nothing in the morgue about Eugene Jarrett except such routine facts as that he graduated from Harvard in 1945 and he had been a sponsor of a dinner to honor somebody in 1963. The biggest blank was the New York public library, where I got stubborn and spent a full hour. You wouldn't believe that after all that expert research I didn't even know whether that vice-president of the third largest bank in New York had any children or not, when I returned to the old brownstone a little before six o'clock. But I didn't. I had supposed, when I left, that I would have to get back in time to go up to the plant rooms to brief Wolfe on him before he came, but it wasn't even worth buzzing him on the house phone. When he came down I told him that we would learn more about Eugene Jarrett in one glance at him than I had learned all afternoon, and the doorbell rang.

  I was right, too. What I learned looking at him, as I let him in and escorted him to the office and got him seated in the red leather chair, may have been irrelevant and immaterial, but at least it was definite. If a vice-president of a big bank is supposed to do any work, he didn't belong there. There was no resemblance to his father at all, especially the eyes. His were gray-blue too, but even when they were aimed straight at you, you had the feeling that they were seeing something else, maybe a ship he wanted to be on or a pretty girl sitting on a cloud. I don't often have fancy ideas, so that shows you the effect those eyes had. It would be dumb to expect a man like that to do any work. The rest of him was normal enough-about my height, square-shouldered, an ordinary face. Seated, he

  ignored Wolfe and me while Ms eyes took their time 'fa go around the room. Apparently they liked the rug, but they stayed longest on the globe over by the bookshelves. Not many people coming there have seen a globe as big as that one, 35Vi inches in diameter.

  He finally turned the eyes on Wolfe and said, "A fascinating occupation, yours, Mr. Wolfe. People come to you for answers as they did to the Pythia at Delphi or the Clarian prophet. But of course you make no claim to mantic divination. That is now only for charlatans. What are you, a scientist, or an artist?"

  Wolfe was frowning at him. "If you please, Mr. Jarrett, no labels. Labels are for the things men make, not for men. The most primitive man is too complex to be labeled. Do you have one?"

  "No. But I can label any man whose faculties are concentrated on a single purpose. I can label Charles de Gaulle or Robert Welch or Stokely Carmichael."

  "If you do, don't glue them on, and have replacements handy."

  Jarrett nodded. "Nothing is unalterable, not even a label. I have altered mine for my father several times. I mention him because it is apropos. The only reference to him in your letter was that Carlotta Vaughn was in his employ, but Bert McCray has told me about your poke at him and how he met it. He has also told me of your intention to transfer the poke to me. I would enjoy discussing my father with you-we might get a better label for him than the one I have-but your letter asks about Carlotta Vaughn. First we should dispose of me. You thought my father was the father of a child she bore, were confronted with evidence that he wasn't, and decided that I was. Is that correct?"

  "Not 'decided.' Conjectured or surmised-or even inferred."

  "No matter. You're in for another disappointment. When Bert McCray told me about it Saturday, and then when your letter came, I decided to save you time and expense -and of course avoid annoyance for myself-by telling you something that many people conjecture or surmise but only a few really know. But I realized that my telling you

  wouldn't settle it for you, so this morning I phoned my doctor."

  He turned to me. "You're Archie Goodwin?"

  I told him yes. He got a leather case from his pocket, fingered a card out, and extended his hand, and I went and took the card. The "James Odell Worthington, M.D." might actually have been engraved.

  "Dr. Worthington will see you at nine tomorrow morning," Jarrett said. "Be on time; he's a very busy man. He will tell you that I am incapable of impregnating a woman and always have been. He has a reputation and would on no account risk it by telling you that if there was any remote possibility that you would ever prove him wrong."

  He turned to Wolfe. "Your letter said that you want information about Carlotta Vaughn."

  I would have told him to go climb a tree. Wolfe probably would have liked to, but the only visible sign was the tip of his forefinger making a little circle on the desk blotter. He asked, "Did Dr. Worthington know you in nineteen forty-four?"

  "Yes, he was one of the doctors who had tried to save my mother. He's an internist and the cancer specialists had taken charge, but my mother depended on him. Don't ask me, ask him." He brushed it aside. "Ask me anything you want to about Carlotta Vaughn, but I doubt if I know anything that will help. She changed her name to Elinor Denovo, and she had a daughter now twenty-two years old, and during those twenty-two years my father sent her a check for a thousand dollars every month. Is that the situation?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I need a new label for him. This is fantastic. It doesn't fit anything I thought I knew about him. Not that he would ignore a responsibility; he fulfills any and all responsibilities; but he decides when he is responsible and when he isn't. He certainly wouldn't have felt responsible if I had impregnated Carlotta Vaughn or any other woman, or a dozen. Bert McCray thinks it was blackmail, but it wasn't. It's inconceivable that he has ever, submitted to blackmail by anybody for anything. It's fascinating. I understand from Avery Ballou that this Elinor Denovo is

  dead, but didn't she ever tell anyone what the money was for?"

  "While alive, no. But a letter opened by her daughter after her death said this money is from your father. And again, this money came from your father. Mr. Goodwin and I see no reason to question it."

  "Fantastic. Unbelievable." Jarrett narrowed his eyes to slits, put his elbows on the chair arms, and rubbed his left palm with his right. Then he came up and was on his feet. "I'm no good sitting down." He moved, across to the bookshelves and looked at titles, then to the globe and rotated it, slowly, twice around. He came and stood in the center of the room, looking down at me as if I were a pretty girl on a cloud, then turned to Wolfe. "I don't do anything at the bank, you know. I know nothing about banking. But they don't keep me and pay me only because my father owns stock that he won't sell. They say I have insight. I don't know what to call it, I can't label that, but I do sometimes see -things that they have not seen. I have never tried to force it, and I'm not going to try to force this, but I want to see it more than I have ever wanted to see anything. My father!"

  He went to the red leather chair and sat. "It would be pointless to ask me anything about Carlotta Vaughn. Bert McCray told me that her child was conceived in the summer of nineteen forty-four. I had been rejected by the army and spent that summer working in a war-materials plant in California. I know nothing that could possibly help you." He got up again. "Come and have dinner with me." He looked at me. "You too. Sometimes it helps to have people around, I don't know why."

  "I doubt," Wolfe said, "if it would help to have Mr. Goodwin and me around. We're in a pickle. I wrote you that I would appreciate it if you would call at my office. I retract that. I don't appreciate it at all."

  "I suppose not." He turned and sort of wandered toward the hall, but stopped and swung around. "The pickle you're in is nothing to mine. I thought I had my father plain and clear, and now this! I'm going to see it-I don't know when, but I will. I have to."

  I had circled around him and was in the hall, but he didn't see me as he came to the front,
where I had the

  door open. I shut the door after him, returned to the office, and stood looking down at Wolfe. With his chin down he had to have his eyes wide open to glare at the globe. After ten seconds of that he raised his head to growl at me. "Sit down. Confound it, you know I like eyes at a level."

  "Yeah. Shall I get the darts out?"

  "No. How much have we spent?"

  That was dangerous. That question meant, If I return the retainer and drop it, how much am I out? That hadn't happened often, but it wasn't unthinkable. I went to my chair and sat. "I admit," I said, "that we've never had a tougher one, and it may be too tough even for you, but why can't we just hang on until Eugene sees it? He'll tell us, and we'll check it and hand it to the client, and she'll think-"

  "Shut up!"

  That was better. There wasn't going to be a battle about

  quitting. He scowled at me and demanded, "Do we aban

  don that wretch?" ''

  I thought that was hitting below the belt, to call a vice-president a wretch just because he couldn't impregnate a woman. "Yes," I said, "any odds you want. Of course I'll see that doctor, but we might as well cross him off now."

  "Do we also abandon Mr. McCray?"

  I grinned at him. Even in that pickle, that called for a grin. "I'm right with you," I said. "We have never considered McCray; we were considering only Jarretts. You were considering McCray for the first time when I went to let that wretch out, and so was I. He is our only source for the fact that the checks were charged to Cyrus M. Jarrett. We have had no corroboration of it. Might they have been actually charged to McCray? Certainly. Might he have had opportunities to impregnate Carlotta Vaughn during the summer of nineteen forty-four? Certainly. But in that case, Jarrett knew nothing about the checks, and why didn't he just kick me out?"