Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 43

by The Father Hunt

  He nodded. “I’m on the board. I’m on several boards. Eight, I think.”

  “Indeed. I don’t know much about boards, but I assume a director is on speaking terms with the people who do the work. Now the problem. Twenty-two years ago, in June nineteen forty-five, someone got a bank check from the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company for one thousand dollars, payable to bearer. Call him X. The next month, July, he got another bank check for the same amount, and the next, and the next. That continued through month after month and year after year—two hundred and sixty-four checks in twenty-two years. The last one was in May of this year; there have been none since and there will be none. I need to know who X is. I must ask him something. That’s my problem.”

  Ballou took a sip of gin. “What’s the rest of it?”

  “There isn’t any ‘rest.’ That’s it.”

  “My God. All this performance, getting me here and all your jabber, for something as simple as that?”

  “I didn’t know it would be simple.”

  “Well, it is. It would be even simpler if the checks were to a specific payee instead of bearer, but it’s still simple, since it was the same amount every month for twenty-two years. All it will take is some digging by a clerk. Goodwin could have asked me on the phone. I’ll call him tomorrow, or someone at Seaboard will.” He took a sip. “You gave me a good scare and I certainly don’t appreciate that, but now that I’m here I might as well say that I still fully appreciate what you did for me when I needed help a hell of a lot more than you do now.” He emptied the glass and put it down. “How’s the detective business?” He turned to me. “I’m surprised at you, Goodwin. He may not have known how simple it was, since he doesn’t get out and around, but you should have. I’ll have someone give you a ring tomorrow.”

  He got up, offered Wolfe a shake, and came to give me one too. I escorted him to the front and out, and when I returned to the office told Wolfe, “Not the one he had last year, a new one. It isn’t true that everyone keeps his Rolls Royce forever.”

  You may be agreeing with Ballou, that all that performance, scaring him into coming and Wolfe’s long and eloquent speech, which I wouldn’t call jabber, was unnecessary, but you shouldn’t. He didn’t know that X was almost certainly a father who didn’t want to be spotted and might possibly be a murderer, but you do. You may also be thankful that you have seen and heard the last of Ballou except for a brief phone call that would be just routine, but if so you have an unwelcome surprise coming. I got a surprise too, at a quarter past six the next afternoon, Tuesday, when the doorbell rang and I went to the hall and saw Ballou on the stoop.

  I had guessed earlier that it hadn’t been quite so simple, when no phone call came. Expecting it, I had stayed in all day, except for a quick trip to the mailbox on the corner, but at four o’clock, having called Raymond Thorne and learned that the copies of the photographs were ready, I told Wolfe I was flipping the switch for the plant rooms for incoming calls and went for a walk. It was even hotter outdoors than the day before and I was glad to get back to the air-conditioned brownstone. The copies were fine, just as good as the originals. At 6:15 Wolfe, at his desk, was looking them over when the doorbell rang and I went. When I told him it was Ballou he grunted, and when I ushered him in the photographs were not in sight.

  Ballou didn’t offer a hand. He got settled in the red leather chair, apparently expecting to be there a while. His face had no sag. He aimed his eyes at Wolfe and said, “I would give something to know how much you knew yesterday.”

  Wolfe adjusted his bulk. It looked as if it was going to take another performance. “You don’t mean that,” he said. “It’s much too broad. I knew innumerable things that wouldn’t interest you. If you confine it to what I knew about the identity of X, the answer is nothing. I not only had no knowledge, I had no basis for a conjecture. I was completely—”

  “You talk too much. You knew why you wanted to know. You knew why it was important enough to get me here. You can tell me that now, and you will.”

  Wolfe’s head retreated to the chair’s high back and his eyes closed. Often, when some visitor gives him a tough one, he looks at me, but that wouldn’t help with that one. It was too simple. Stalling wouldn’t help. Maneuvering might do it, just possibly, but with that buck probably not. And after all, telling him wouldn’t hurt either the job or the client. I figured it like that in about ten seconds, and so did he. He opened his eyes, moved his head, and said, “I would have told you that yesterday if you had asked. A young woman has engaged me to learn who her father was. Or is. I have reason to suppose that it would be relevant to know who had those checks drawn. To tell you my client’s name would violate a confidence, and I—”

  He stopped because he had lost his audience. Ballou’s head was back and he was laughing good and loud. Wolfe looked at me and I put my palms and my brows up. Ballou finished his laugh, gave both of us a broad smile, and said, “Wonderful. By God, this is good. He shelled out for twenty-two years? I’ll be damned.”

  “Evidently you know him.”

  “I certainly do. Does it help to know that the checks were endorsed by Elinor Denovo?”

  “It doesn’t hurt. That isn’t the name of my client, but it’s pertinent. Since you know him … Mr. Ballou. There should be no misunderstanding. If you name him, and I hope you will, I can’t engage to regard it as a confidence. I’ll use it as required in the interest of my client.”

  “I would expect you to.” Ballou was enjoying himself. The laugh was still in his eyes. “A couple of hours ago I didn’t think I was going to name him; I was going to phone you that the information you wanted wasn’t available, but I decided to come and find out why you wanted it. Now that you’ve told me I will name him. Provided—you’re not stringing me? It’s just that, a woman wants to know who her father was? Is.”

  “Yes. It’s just that. The name of the endorser, Elinor Denovo, makes it certain that the name you know is the one I need.”

  “I’ll be damned. Wonderful. How old is the woman?”

  “Twenty-two. The first check came two weeks after she was born.”

  “Let’s see … twenty-two from seventy-six; he was fifty-four. I didn’t know him then as well as I do now. His name is Jarrett, Cyrus M. Jarrett. Nothing about this is confidential, what I’m telling you now, it’s known by everybody in banking circles. Twenty-two years ago he was the president of Seaboard. In nineteen fifty-three—he was sixty-two then—he became Chairman of the Board. Some of us wanted him out of management entirely, but he had a big block of stock and that wasn’t all he had. He’s a very wealthy man. At sixty-five he should have retired, that’s usual, but he wouldn’t. But by then a majority of us—of the board—wanted him out, and we finally managed it. That was in nineteen fifty-nine, eight years ago. He’s still on the board, but he seldom comes to meetings.”

  He paused to enjoy a smile, not for us, it was private. He went on. “All that is known to everybody, of course. I’m telling you because you might wonder why I was willing to name him. I never liked him and I don’t like him now. A lot of people don’t. As for being confidential, I don’t give a damn if it becomes known that I helped you find him. I doubt if you’ll be able to make him lose any sleep, nobody ever has, but I wish you luck. If you have any questions I’ll be glad—”

  He looked at his watch. “No, I won’t.” He stood up. “I was late yesterday, and I’ll be late again now if the traffic’s bad.” He headed for the door, turned to say, “Come to my office, Goodwin, if you have questions,” and moved so fast that I would have had to trot to open the door for him, so I didn’t go.

  As the sound came of the front door closing, Wolfe looked at the clock. Dinner in thirty-five minutes. He looked at me. “Do you like it?”

  “Well.” I pinched my nose. “I’m not going to jump up and down and yell three cheers for us. So he’s old and tough. If he was fifty-four in nineteen forty-five he’s seventy-six now. I’ve read a few things about him, there was a
piece about him in Fortune once and I read it, but that doesn’t give me an in.”

  “You have Miss Denovo’s telephone number?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Get her. I’ll talk.”

  I consulted my pocket notebook to check the number, swung the phone around and dialed, and while I waited decided to say Archie Goodwin, not just Archie. I didn’t care to give Wolfe a peg for another of his rusty comments about what he called my aptitude for establishing personal relations with young women. When the hello came, her voice, I said, “Amy Denovo?”

  “Yes. Archie?”

  That changed the script. “Right. I’m calling from the office. Mr. Wolfe wants to talk.”

  He had his phone. I kept mine. “This is Nero Wolfe, Miss Denovo. I need to ask a question. Has your telephone an extension?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll be circumspect anyway. I don’t like the telephone and I don’t trust it. Don’t ask indiscreet questions. We have discovered the source of the checks. The informa—”

  “You have? Already?”

  “It isn’t necessary to interrupt. I’ll tell you all that is tellable on this machine. The information about the source is reliable—in fact, certain. We know who had the checks drawn. He is alive, seventy-six years old, wealthy, retired, of what is called the upper class. He lives in New York—no, I don’t know that, but I do know he’s reachable. So I have a question. You know what you hired me to do. The source of the checks is established, but not that he is himself the person you want found. That is merely a reasonable surmise. Do you want me to—”

  “I want to know his name!”

  “You will. If you’ll come this evening, at nine o’clock or after, we’ll tell you. What I ask now: Do you want me to proceed with the inquiry or do you want to deal with him yourself? I would like to know that before dinner.”

  “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.

  Chapter 6

  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 directors, 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 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 flinched 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.