Free The Father Hunt by Rex Stout Page B

“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
    Elinor Denovo. Here are two photographs of her, taken twenty years ago.” I handed them to him. “Can you place her?”
    He gave them a good look, taking half of one of the five minutes, then shook his head. “No, I can’t. You say it’s Elinor Denovo?”
    “Right. That’s certain.”
    “And she endorsed the checks. And you’re expecting to connect her with Jarrett. Twenty years ago, that was nineteen forty-seven. I hadn’t known him long then, and I never have known him as a-socially. Practically all