The Father Hunt

by Rex Stout

  "My friend would be glad to come and discuss it with you," Thorne said.

  "That can wait," Wolfe said. "I'm fully occupied with the job I'm on. On behalf of Miss Denovo, I thank you for coming. I know you told Mr. Goodwin that you could supply no information that would help, but it is a common occurrence for a man to have knowledge of a fact and to be quite unaware of its significance. I once questioned a young woman for three days on what she regarded as irrelevant trivialities, and finally got a fact that exposed a murderer."

  "I'm afraid I can't spare three days." Thorne took a sip of brandy and stirred it in his mouth with his tongue. "This cognac is marvelous. Speaking of facts, evidently you knew one I didn't, from that ad… I suppose that ad in the Times was yours?"

  "Yes."

  "Alias Elinor Denovo. Carlotta something alias Elinor Denovo. Why the 'alias' if Denovo was her married name? Her daughter's name is Amy Denovo."

  "That's one of the complications, Mr. Thorne. A client's communications with a detective she has hired are not legally privileged, but they are often confidential."

  "Goodwin said on the phone that you're blocked."

  "We're stumped."

  "But you still think it was premeditated murder?"

  "Miss Denovo does, as Mr. Goodwin told you ten days ago. Do I? Yes, for reasons you might think deficient. But getting you here is not merely stumbling around in the dark. It isn't fatuous to assume that some recent event

  induced the murder and that something connected with that event, however remotely, was seen or heard by you. In conversation with her, how did you address her? Mrs. Denovo, or Elinor?"

  "Elinor."

  "Then I shall. How many others there called her Elinor?"

  "Why… Let's see… three. No, four."

  "Their names?"

  "Now listen." Thome flipped a hand. "That wouldn't be just irrelevant trivialities, it would be drivel. It would take three weeks, not just three days. Goodwin said someone at my place might be involved in it, and I told him there wasn't the slightest chance. Simply impossible. Nobody there had any personal relations with her. Even I didn't, actually. We often had meals together, lunch and dinner and even breakfast sometimes, but only to talk business." He turned to me. "I told you I soon saw she had lines she didn't want crossed." Back to Wolfe: "I can give you the names, sure, but I'm telling you, that will get you nowhere."

  "I would expect it to. On an excursion such as this you get nowhere again and again. Very well, we'll try another tack. When and where did you last see Elinor?"

  "That Friday around noon at the studio. I was taking a plane to the coast on business, to see a scriptwriter I wanted."

  "What studio?"

  "Mine, of course."

  "Did she speak of her plans for that evening?"

  "Yes. We did. She was going to see a preview of a movie for a look at an actor we thought we might want to use."

  "A preview where? At a theater?"

  "No, a studio in the Bronx. That's why she took her car. Of course I went over all this with the police. They said she left the studio a little after ten that evening, and I told them she probably went for a drive. She often did. She said it relaxed her. I never saw her relaxed, not really."

  "Who went to the preview with her?"

  "No one." Thome emptied his glass and put it on ttc stand, started a hand for the bottle, and pulled it back. "That's marvelous cognac."

  "Help yourself. I have nine bottles left. We'll start with that Friday and work back. How much were you with Elinor that morning?"

  "Not much. There was a staff conference, but she had to leave it when someone came. Later I-"

  "Who came?"

  "A woman from an agency about a replacement their client didn't like. Just routine. Agencies' clients never like anything. Later I dictated some notes to her. Of course I had my secretary and she had hers, but she still did shorthand, and dictating to her made it different. It came out better. She was a very remarkable woman. She had offers of twice, three, or four times as much as she could make with me, agencies and public-relations people, but she turned them all down."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know. My guess was that they were mostly big outfits and she liked the complete freedom she had with me."

  "What if I asked you to tell me everything you heard her say that morning? Could you do it?"

  "My God, no. Anyway it was just business. There couldn't possibly have been anything with any hint of what was going to happen to her that night. You know, I might be better at this if I knew why you think it was premeditated murder. Goodwin told me it was Amy's in-tution. Isn't a hit-and-run nearly always just a hit-and-run?"

  "Yes. I would Eke to oblige you, Mr. Thorne, if only as a token of Miss Denovo's appreciation of your willingness to help, but I can't divulge information that the police are reserving. Only five hours ago a police officer of high rank, discussing that hit-and-run with Mr. Goodwin, said, 'He got a cigar out to light it while he was parked on Second Avenue waiting for her, and there she came.' If I were free to tell you more I would. Help yourself to brandy. If you please, Archie, beer?"

  That was a fair example of how to lie while sticking to

  the truth. It was perfectly true that he couldn't, or anyhow shouldn't, divulge information that the police were reserving. It was also true that a high-ranking police officer had said that to me. So a truth plus a truth equaled a bare-faced lie.

  It was the only one he told during the four long hours that Thome sat in the red leather chair while downing a third of a bottle of marvelous cognac. I doubted if he knew how good it was; a man had once offered Wolfe fifty bucks for a bottle of it.

  The four hours took us an hour and a half past midnight, into Friday morning, and the brandy took Thome into a kind of talking trance that made him forget about time, and also seemed to oil his memory, which was just luck. He remembered Thursday a little better than Friday, and by the time they got back to Monday he was remembering so much that I began to suspect him. He had remarked at one point that he had done some script-writing, so he had had practice making things up.

  But he didn't make up the thing, the thing that hit. It wasn't a smack. I damned near let it slide by. I had been sitting there listening to irrelevant trivialities for more than three hours; it was well past midnight, I had covered at least a dozen yawns, and I had been drinking milk, not brandy. They had been on Monday for maybe twenty minutes, and had got to where Thorne and Elinor were on their way out to have lunch with somebody, and Thorne was telling how the receptionist had stopped Elinor to tell her that Floyd Vance had been there again and she had had to threaten to call in a policeman if he didn't leave. The receptionist said he might be out in the hall. Elinor had thanked her and they had left. Naturally Wolfe had asked who Floyd Vance was, but Thorne knew nothing about him; he said probably some nut who wanted to peddle an idea for a show that the networks would give a million for. They were a dime a dozen.

  As I said, I nearly let it slide by. It hit me a little later as I was telling my jaw and cheek muscles to get set to hide another yawn, and I made a mistake. I forgot the yawn and my jaws opened wide for it. That led me into a second mistake, which often happens. Preferring not to let Thorne know that he had told us a fact which might

  be significant, I tried to go on as I had been for an hour, looking more awake and alert than I was, and I overdid it. If he had been awake and alert he would have noticed it, but by that time his talking trance was in command and it would have made no impression on him if I had wiggled my ears.

  But Wolfe noticed it, and that was what kept him from going on and on and making a night of it unless Thome ran down. So it was only half past one and they had only got to the middle of Monday afternoon when he looked at the clock and said he was too tired to continue, and Thome must be too. Miss Denovo would deeply appreciate Thome's cooperation, and he and Mr. Goodwin would see if they could find a hint in any of the items Thome had supplied. As Thome used both hands on t
he chair arm to get to his feet I was thinking that I would have to steer him out and down the stoop steps, and possibly even go and get the Heron to cart him home, but he did all right. Going down the hall he put a hand to the wall once to steady himself, and outside he stood and brought his shoulders up and took a couple of deep breaths, but he made it down to the sidewalk without any trouble. I stayed to watch him for about thirty paces. Okay.

  As I entered the office Wolfe growled at me, "You got something. What?"

  I went to my desk and sat. "Nothing would please me more than to catch one you should have caught and missed, but I can't claim it on this. I think we've got a nibble. I don't know whether it's the father or the murderer, or possibly both, but I think it's a nibble. Last Sunday afternoon at Miss Rowan's place in the country three people came who had not been invited and weren't expected. Two of them were friends of hers-well, acquaintances; I had met them there before-who have a place half an hour away. The third one was their weekend house guest, a man named Floyd Vance. They said they had mentioned to him that Archie Goodwin was often at Lily Rowan's for weekends, and he had got them to drive him over because he wanted to meet me. I gathered from what he said that what he really wanted was to meet you. He said he was a public-relations counselor. He

  said that if anybody needed expert handling of his public image a private detective did, and he would like to create a presentation to propose to you. He also said that if we were working on a case and I would tell him about it, he could use that as a basis for the presentation. At that, naturally, I looked and listened, but decided he was just trying to find another sucker for his racket. I now sincerely hope I was wrong. Two comments. One, there are probably very few Floyd Vances around. Two, allowing for the twenty-three years, he fits Salvatore Manzoni's description just fine."

  "I would like some beer," Wolfe said.

  "You're already two bottles ahead and it's going on two o'clock."

  "Satisfactory," he said, leaving it open whether he meant the beer or the nibble. He gripped the edge of the desk to push his chair back, rose, and headed for the hall. For a second I thought he was walking out, to go to bed with the nibble, but he turned left in the hall. He was going for beer. When he returned he had a bottle and a glass in one hand and a snifter in the other. He put the bottle and glass on his desk, got the cognac bottle from the stand and poured a couple of ounces in the snifter,

  "You might easily have missed it," he said, and went around to his chair, opened the bottle, and poured.

  I whirled the brandy around in the snifter and said, "I almost did. If it's only a coincidence I'm through with the detective business for good. We'll soon know, one way or another. The quickest and most obvious would be to have Salvatore Manzoni take a look at the public-relations Floyd Vance, but twenty-three years is a long time and it might not prove anything. Of course the receptionist at Thome's could settle it that it was the public-relations Floyd Vance that she shooed out that May day, but that would only prove that it's a real nibble."

  I put the snifter to my lips and tilted my head back enough to get a good gulp. Wolfe, having waited until the bead was down to precisely the right level, raised bis glass.

  "Fingerprints," I said.

  "Yes," he said.

  "We get his and give them to Cramer and they match or they don't."

  "No." He licked foam from his lips. "If they matched we'd be in a fix. Mr. Cramer would have a murderer, but we would still need a father, and he would be locked up and inaccessible. You said he wanted to meet me."

  "Yeah. If he's it, what he really wanted was to find out if we had got anywhere and if so how far. How he knew we were on it is a question, but we don't have to answer it. Sure, I could get him here, and then what? Do you think you could ask him anything that would help without giving him a guess that we're on him? I don't. There would be the same risk in seeing the receptionist at Thome's. She might tell him."

  He poured beer, leaned back and closed his eyes, and pushed his lips out. He pulled them in and pushed them out again. That was a new one; it had never happened before. The lip act, leaning back and closing his eyes and working his lips out and in, was routine; that meant he was working, working hard, and interruptions were not allowed. But that was the first time he had ever started it with beer just poured, and how would he handle it? How would he know when the bead was down to the right level with his eyes shut? By God, he did. When it was down to where it would just cover his lips as he drank, he opened his eyes, reached for the glass, drank, put the glass down, leaned back, closed his eyes, licked the foam off, and sent Ms lips out and in. I decided he must have practiced it when I wasn't around.

  I usually time the lip act, since there's nothing else to do except try to guess what he'll come up with. That time it was three minutes and ten seconds. He opened his eyes, straightened up, and asked, "They're coming at nine o'clock?"

  I said yes.

  "I suppose a public-relations person has an address? An office?"

  I got the Manhattan book and found the page. "Four-. ninety Lexington Avenue. Not the best. It should be Madison."

  "Tell them to trace him back and cover nineteen forty-four thoroughly, but not to risk prompting him. That will

  be no problem with Saul and Fred, but with Orrie make it emphatic as usual."

  "Right." I had emptied the snifter during the lip act, and as he pushed his chair back I went to pour another swallow. It might put me to sleep a few seconds quicker.

  12

  Not a fly. Flies don't buzz. Mosquito. No. Too loud. What the… Oh. House phone, for God's sake. I opened an eye, stretched an arm and got it, said, "Well?"

  Fritz's voice said, "Good morning, Archie. He wants you."

  I glared at the clock on the bedstand, realized that it actually said twenty-five minutes past eight, and swung my feet around. Figuring out whether I had failed to turn the alarm on, or it had tried to stir me and it had failed, would have to wait. I called for will power, gave it time to deliver, made it to my feet, concentrated on locating the door, and stepped.

  The door of Wolfe's room, which is above the kitchen, at the rear of the house where he gets the sun in winter, stood open. When I entered, with my bare feet making no sound, he was seated at the table, with the Times propped on the rack, dropping a bit of toast into the sauce of eggs au beurre noir. When I cleared my throat he got the toast to and into his mouth before he turned his head.

  "The time is out of joint," I said.

  He frowned. "I don't talk in quotations, even Shakespeare, and neither do you."

  "Miss Rowan does sometimes and she likes that one. As you see, I am no longer on daylight saving. Apparently you are." He was fully dressed: a nice clean yellow shirt with narrow maroon stripes, a maroon tie, and a brown summerweight self-striped suit. Up in the plant rooms he would shed the jacket and put on a smock.

  He swallowed a bite of egg and said, "It's nearly nine o'clock."

  "By daylight saving, yes, sir. I'll brief them while I'm eating breakfast."

  "Only Saul. We won't risk it with Fred and Orrie. Tell them to be on call. You and Saul will decide on your approach and you may need them later. First, is he involved? If yes, merely as the murderer, with a motive that doesn't concern us, or also as the father? We can't waste our time and the client's money just on finding a culprit for Mr. Cramer." He dropped toast in the sauce.

  "I'm waking up," I said. "Or I got ideas in my sleep. Last night I said we don't have to answer the question how he knew we were on it, but if he's the father it may be important. If he's the father there's some connection between him and Cyrus Jarrett, or why did Jarrett send the checks? And if Jarrett told him that Nero Wolfe is out to find the father, and if he is also the murderer, what about Miss Denovo? We might lose a client. I doubt if you want another casualty like Simon Jacobs on the record, and I certainly don't. I suggest that we'd better get her out of circulation."

  He made a face. "Fritz."

  That was what
he calls flummery. It was true that when, for security reasons, it had been necessary to have a female guest sleeping and eating in the South Room, which is above Wolfe's, Fritz hadn't been able to hide how he felt about it, but Wolfe hadn't even tried to hide how he felt.

  "I'm aware," I said, "that if we did it again Fritz might leave and you might too. I don't mean here. She spends most of her days at Miss Rowan's, and she could spend her nights there too until we get him or drop him. Miss Rowan has two spare rooms. I'll suggest it. Anything else?"

  He said no and I went back up a flight to do in ten minutes what usually takes me thirty. By the time I got down to the kitchen, having stopped in the office to tell Fred and Orrie that Saul and I were going to pick up a trail and might need them later, my fog was starting to clear.

  A detective is supposed to get onto things and people,

  but I gave up long ago trying to get onto Fritz all the way, so I didn't bother to try to guess how he had known Fred and Orrie would be leaving and Saul would be staying. He knows Saul loves his eggs au beurre noir, and there were two chairs and two places ready at my breakfast table. Saul went to the range to watch him baste, and said he had tried it a hundred times but it never tasted the same. As we ate I told Saul about Floyd Vance and the various angles, and we took our second cups of coffee to the office to consider ways and means. Wolfe had said that the first question was, Is he involved? but Saul agreed with me that it couldn't do any harm to regard that as answered and proceed accordingly. He also agreed that it would help if he had a look at him, and I got at the phone and dialed the number of Nathaniel Parker, the lawyer.

  "Yes, Archie?" I like the way Parker says yes, Archie. He knows that handling something for Wolfe can be interesting but that it may be tough and ticklish, so the yes, Archie is half glad and half sad.

  I told him it was nothing much this time. "Just a little chore. A man named Floyd Vance has an office at Four-ninety Lexington Avenue. He's a counselor, but not at law, at public relations, which as you know is a much newer profession. The chore is to ring him and tell him you have a client who is thinking of engaging his services, and you would like to send a man to discuss it with him. The name of the man is Saul Panzer, whose qualifications you know about. He can go any time, the sooner the better. I'm going out, but Saul will be here to take your call. You have the name? Floyd Vance."