The Father Hunt (7 page)

“I want you to do it, of course. I’ll come now. I-may I come now?”

“No. In the middle of a meal'We’ll expect you later.”

He hung up, got the photographs from the drawer, frowned at them, and dropped them on the desk. I swung my phone back and asked, “Shall I ring Cyrus M. Jarrett and tell him you want him here at eleven tomorrow morning if it will suit his convenience?”

“Yes,” he hissed. He never hisses. He got up and went to the kitchen.

At half past three Wednesday afternoon I sat in an all-weather chair under a maple tree on top of a cliff in Dutchess County. To my right was a scenic view of three or four miles of the Hudson River. About a hundred yards to my left was an ivy-covered end of a mansion or palace or castle which must have had between thirty and fifty rooms, depending on their size. In every direction there were bushes, trees, flowers, things like a statue of a deer eating out of a girl’s hand, and grass. Lily Rowan’s glade had never seen grass like that. Eight feet in front of me, on a chair like mine but with an attached footrest, was a lean, lengthy man with a long bony face, an ample crop of white hair, and a pair of gray-blue eyes so cold that, taking them straight, you got no impression at all. At half past three I was saying to him, “That was just a dodge. I have no silver abacus. In fact, I have never seen one.”

Having spent the morning at the public library and the Gazette morgue, I knew enough about Cyrus M. Jarrett to fill a dozen pages, but you don’t care or need to know that it was his left leg he broke when he fell off a horse in 1958. Here are a few items. His grandfather had paid for the palace; Cyrus M. had been born in it. He had had one wife, who had died in 1943, one daughter, now living in Rome with her husband, who was a count, and one son, named Eugene E., forty-three years old, one of the nine vice-presidents of the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company I had seen listed in the International Bank Directory. Cyrus M. was a member of nine boards of di-

rectors, topping Ballou by one. During the Second World War he had been a member of the Production Allotment Board. And so forth and so on.

The one essential item for me was that he used six of the rooms in the palace to house one of the three finest known collections of Colonial handiwork; that was the one I had used to get to him. At the library, after spotting that in the Fortune piece, I had consulted the library files and got a book, and in half an hour I had realized it would take a month to learn enough to put up a front for five minutes, so I created a piece of handiwork then and there, in my mind, went to a phone booth, and dialed area code 914 and a number.

The male voice that answered had to know precisely what I wanted to see Mr. Jarrett about, and I told him: a silver abacus made by Paul Revere that was in my possession. He told me to hold the wire, and in five minutes came back on and said that Mr. Jarrett said that Paul Revere never made a silver abacus. I said the hell he didn’t, tell him I’ve got it right here in my hand. It worked. After another wait he came back again and said Mr. Jarrett would see me and the abacus at three o’clock.

When I arrived, on the hour, I was shown the chairs under the maple tree and told that Mr. Jarrett would be with me shortly. “Shortly” ran into twenty-two minutes, one for each year of Amy’s life, which I would have regarded as a good sign if I believed in signs. As he approached I noted that he looked his seventy-six, but he walked more like fifty-six. Then he got closer and sat and I saw the eyes, and they looked like a thousand and seventy-six. He got his feet up before he said, “Where is it?”

“That was just a dodge,” I said. “I have no silver abacus. In fact, I have never seen one.”

He turned his head and sang out, “Oscar!”

“But,” I said, “I have something for you. A message from your daughter.”

“My daughter'You’re a liar.”

“Not Catherine. Amy. Amy Denovo.” I glanced at the man who had left the house and was coming. “It’s very- personal.”

“You’re not only a liar, you’re an idiot.”

“I’ll be glad to discuss that, but I’d rather do it privately.”

The man arrived. He stopped two steps from Jarrett’s chair and stood. “You called, sir?”

Jarrett, not looking at him, said, “I thought I wanted something, but I don’t. Leave.”

The man turned and went. I said, “I didn’t know that was still being done. What have you got on him?”

He said, “Who are you?”

“I gave my name on the phone, Archie Goodwin. I work for a private detective named Nero Wolfe. The message from Amy is that now, since her mother is dead, she would like to know something about her father.”

“I could have you kicked out,” he said, “but I prefer to let you commit yourself so I can have the police come and get you. I called you an idiot because anybody with any sense would know how I would treat a blackmailer and you must be one. Go ahead, commit yourself.”

“I already have.” I was leaning back, comfortable. “It would be a spot for a little fancy blackmailing, but Amy has paid Mr. Wolfe a good big retainer and we’re committed to her. Of course it’s your money, or it was. It came out of what you sent her mother, for her.”

“Go ahead.”

“Look, Mr. Jarrett.” I was meeting the frozen eyes and it wasn’t easy to talk to them. “We didn’t have to handle it like this. We could have let you wait and started digging away back for details. But that would have taken time and money, and all Amy wanted was to find you. I can’t give you a written guarantee, but I doubt very much if she wants to start any fuss, try to make you acknowledge her, or anything like that. She might possibly want some money, but what the hell, you’ve got ten times more than you need. And don’t get the idea that I’m just out fishing. We know all about the checks. We know they came from you, two hundred and sixty-four of them; that’s on the record. We know they were endorsed by Elinor Denovo.” I flipped a hand. “Now you talk a while.”

“Go ahead, go ahead. What do you want'What does this Nero Wolfe want?”

“Mr. Wolfe wants nothing. As for me, what would

please me most would be something like this: you have Oscar call the cops and tell them to come and get me. When they come you tell them I tried to blackmail you, and I clam up, and they take me somewhere for questioning-the sheriff’s office or a state barracks. It will be a pipe to handle it so they hold me, and then look out for the dust. For a start, our lawyer and a newspaperman I know-the Gazette. Today’s Wednesday. By Friday ten million people will be sympathizing with you-all this trouble after twenty-two years. Of course we won’t give them Amy’s name, but that won’t matter, it’s your name that’s newsworthy. Do you want me to call Oscar, or would you rather?”

The goddam eyes hadn’t even blinked, I swear they hadn’t, but the bony jaw had flicked once or twice. I was beginning to understand why a lot of people didn’t like him. People want people to react. He did finally say something. He said, “Those checks are in the files of the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company. Who told you about them?”

I shook my head. Ballou had said he didn’t give a damn if it became known that he had helped us find him, but I was giving this character nothing. “That’s beside the point,” I said. “The checks, endorsed by Elinor Denovo, are the point. I have a suggestion. You and I aren’t hitting it off very well. I’ll bring Amy tomorrow, and that may work better. She’s okay. She’s a very nice girl. As you probably know, she graduated from Smith, she has good looks and good manners, she wouldn’t-“

I stopped because he was moving. He took his time getting his feet around and on the grass, turning on his rump, and getting upright. The eyes came down at me. “I know nothing,” he said, “of any Amy, and nothing of any Elinor Denovo. If there is an Elinor Denovo and she endorsed checks that had been charged to my account, I don’t know how they came into her hands and I am not concerned. If you publish any of this rubbish I’ll get your hide.” He turned and headed for the house.

It was a nice place to sit, with the view of the river and all the flowers and leaves, and I sat. Soon after Jarrett had entered the house Oscar came out and stationed himself in the shade of a tree with long narrow

leaves. I called to him, “What kind of a tree is that?” but got no answer. It would have been interesting to stay put for an hour or so and see how long he would stand there with nothing to do, but I was thirsty and doubted if he would leave his post to bring me a drink, so I moved. * The direct route to where the Heron was parked took me right past him, but I pretended he wasn’t there.

The winding blacktop driveway was a good quarter of a mile. At its end, with its twenty-foot stone pillars, I turned left, and in about a mile right, and in twenty minutes, counting a stop for a root beer, I was at the entrance to the Taconic State Parkway, southbound. A sign said: new york 88 miles. I never try to do any deep thinking while I’m driving; the thinking gets you nowhere and the driving might get you where you would rather not be; and anyway there was nothing much to think about, since I knew what would come next. Wolfe and I had agreed on that, without argument, in case I got a brushoff from Jar-rett, after Amy left Tuesday evening.

I had promised I would let her know what happened, so I left the Henry Hudson Parkway at Ninety-sixth Street and took the Eighty-fifth Street transverse through Central Park. Trying to find a legal space at the curb would be like trying to find room for another kernel on an ear of corn, and I drove to the garage on Second Avenue where Elinor Denovo had kept her car. Don’t ask me how or why, but I have always had a feeling that it helps to see places that are in any way connected with a job, even if they tell you nothing. Walking to Amy’s address I took the route Elinor had taken the last time she had walked, and I saw that it would have been no trick at all, at that time of night, for someone who knew she had her car out, to park near the corner on Second Avenue, see her arrive in her car, and see her leave the garage and turn into Eighty-third Street. By then of course he would have had the engine started and would be ready to go.

I didn’t give Amy a verbatim report. We rarely do to clients; they’ll always ask why you didn’t tell him this or that, or what you said that for, or you should have realized he was lying. Also I didn’t tell her what was next on the program. That’s even worse; they’ll object for some cockeyed reason or they’ll have something better to sug-

gest. When I had given her the facts that mattered, her big question was whether I thought Jarrett was her father, and of course I passed. I told her that while it was still the best guess that he was, I wouldn’t personally risk a buck either way. I tried to get out of her exactly what she intended to do when we finally got it pinned down, but when I left I still didn’t know and I doubted if she did. Apparently that was open and she wouldn’t know the answer herself until she knew for sure who her father was. It was only ten minutes to dinnertime when I got home, so the verbatim report had to wait until we had taken on the curried beef roll, celery and cantaloupe salad, and blueberry grunt, and had gone to the office for coffee. When I had finished, including my stopover at Amy’s, his first question was typical. He emptied the coffee pot into his cup, took a sip, and said, “I think it’s quite possible that Paul Revere did make a silver abacus. What gave you the notion?”

I tapped my skull with knuckles. “You said once that the more you put in a brain the more it will hold. What about the things that come out that were never put in'That’s why I can’t answer your question.”

“They had been put in. ‘Paul Revere’ was there and ’silver’ was there and ‘abacus’ was there. The question you can’t answer is what joined them when for the first and only time in your life their juncture would meet a need, and I concede that it’s unanswerable. I withdraw it.” He drank coffee. “Will you telephone Mr. Ballou in the morning or see him?”

“See him. I can’t show him a photograph on the phone.” “Will Mr. Jarrett do anything, and if he does, what?” “To the first, I doubt it. To the second, I couldn’t guess. Of course you realize that if that hit-and-run was murder, not just homicide, it’s possible that the client is now a mark. If you ask me if I think it’s conceivable that that rich, retired, respectable upper-class citizen stole a car and ran it over a hard-working respectable middle-class woman, the answer is yes. That tough old fish-eyed buzzard'Yes.”

He nodded. “It’s remote, but& did you warn her?” “No. It’s more than remote, it’s up in the moon, which they haven’t reached yet. From what I said and didn’t

say, he knows that all we’ve got is the checks. So if Elinor knew or threatened something that made it necessary to cross her out, he has no reason to suspect that she passed it on to Amy. I can ring her and tell her to be ready to jump when she crosses streets, but she might get a wrong impression. She might think she’s more on my mind than the job is.”

“Very well.” His shoulders went up an eighth of an inch and down again. I have mentioned his screwy notion about young women and me. He removed the paperweight, a chunk of jade that a woman, not young, had used years ago to conk her husband, from some items on his desk. “If your evening is free, I have three or four letters.”

I said half of the evening was already gone and got my notebook.

Thursday morning I made a mistake I often make, crowding my luck. That’s fine when it works, but too often it doesn’t. Instead of ringing Avery Ballou for an appointment I just went, arriving a little after ten, and as a result I spent two hours in a reception room on the thirty-fourth floor of a forty-story financial castle on Wall Street. Mr. Ballou was in conference. That means anything from scouting around for indigestion pills to presiding at a gathering to decide something that will affect the future of thousands of people, but whatever it meant that morning, it was affecting my present. There was plenty for the eye in the marble-walled room, people coming and going and sitting around waiting and worrying, but I was too sore at my luck to get any fun out of it. It was five minutes past noon when a handsome junior financier came and took me inside and led me along a hall and around a corner to Ballou’s room.

It had six windows, five upholstered leather chairs, two other doors, and I suppose other things to fit, but that was all my glance caught as I crossed to Ballou. There was a king-size desk near the far end, but he was standing at a window. If he was sorry he had kept me waiting so long he didn’t mention it.

“What a morning,” he said. “I can give you five minutes, Goodwin.”

“That might do it,” I said. I took something from a pocket. “You told us that the checks were endorsed by