Free The Father Hunt by Rex Stout Page A

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.