He went to the king-size desk, sat, pushed a button, and said, 'Get Mr. McCray at Seaboard.' I'm glad we don't have an intercom at the old brownstone. It would annoy me to be up in my room ready for a shower and just as I reached to turn it on hear Wolfe's voice, 'Where's that letter from Mr. Hewitt?'
Ballou didn't have to wait long. There was a buzz and he took a phone. 'Ballou… Good morning, Bert. A man named Archie Goodwin is here… That's right, I told you yesterday, for Nero Wolfe… He has asked me a question I can't answer, but you probably could. Can I send him over? It wouldn't take long… Yes, of course… No, he's presentable, jacket, tie-hell, he's neater than I am… Good. I knew you would.'
He hung up and turned to me. 'You'll have lunch at the Bankers Club with Bertram McCray.' He spelled the McCray. 'One-twenty Broadway. He'll be there in ten minutes. Check in as McCray's guest. He's a vice- president at Seaboard. Twenty years ago he was Jarrett's secretary and protege; he was often at his home. He has a grudge because Jarrett didn't move up around nineteen fifty and make him president-of course that was absurd -and he switched to our side in fifty-three. He got that information for me yesterday about the checks. He said he'd like to meet Nero Wolfe, so ask him anything you want to. Have you got that?'
I said yes and he pushed a button and said, 'Ready for that man from Boston.'
So at one o'clock I was seated at a table by a wall in a room with about a hundred other tables. With an average of three men to a table, I supposed around twenty billion dollars was represented, either in person or by proxy. I was certainly glad I had a necktie on. My host, facing me, had ears that were a little too big and a nose that was a little too small, and a slight pinch at the corner of his right eye. He was either very polite or he had no initiative; when I had chosen sole
'Why,' he said, 'it's Lottie Vaughn.'
I tried not to bat an eye. 'Good,' I said. 'At least we have her name. Who is Lottie Vaughn?' But I realized I was being silly; I had told Ballou. So I went on, 'The name we have is Elinor Denovo. Those pictures are of her, taken twenty years ago.'
'I don't see…' He was frowning. 'I don't get it.' He looked at the photographs. 'This is Carlotta Vaughn, I'm absolutely certain. What do you mean, it's Elinor Denovo?'
'Those are the only pictures we have of her,' I said, 'and we need them.' I put out a hand. As he hesitated the waiter came with the ices and coffee, and I let him go on hesitating until we were served and the waiter had gone, then reached again and he handed them over. 'It's a long story,' I said, 'and most of it is confidential information from our client. From what Mr. Ballou told me I don't think you would pass anything on to Jarrett.
I know you wouldn't, but you're a banker and you know it's always better to be too careful than not careful enough. You also know that Mr. Wolfe is hoping and expecting to get Jarrett out on a limb. So I'll appreciate it if you'll tell me about Carlotta Vaughn. Did Jarrett know her?'
He nodded. 'That's where I met her. At his home.'
'Was she a guest?'
'No. She was Mrs. Jarrett's secretary when I met her. When Mrs. Jarrett died he kept her. I was his secretary then, dividing my time between his home-his homes- and the office, and you might say she was my assistant. She was very intelligent and competent.'
The ices didn't get eaten and not much of the coffee was drunk, and McCray's hour for lunch got stretched. That was one of the times that my memory, which I'll match with anybody, came in handy, because I didn't want to take out my notebook. I doubted if my host would approve there with all those billions around. I submit these facts about Carlotta Vaughn, of course all of them according to Bertram McCray.
He had first seen her at the Jarrett town house in New York, when she had started as Mrs. Jarrett's secretary, in May 1942. She had continued at that job until November 1943, when Mrs. Jairett had died of cancer, and then had stayed to work for Jarrett. At that time McCray had been spending about two-thirds of his time at the bank and one-third at the house, either in town or in the country, and she was extremely useful. She almost never did anything at the bank, only two or three times in four or five months.
As for her background, he knew she had come from Wisconsin, some small town near Milwaukee, and that was all. He didn't know how long she had been hi New York, or where she had gone to school, or how she had got the job with Mrs. Jarrett.
So much for her entrance. Where he flunked worst was on her exit. Since starting with Mrs. Jarrett she had lived there, town and country; and in the early spring of 1944, he thought late in March, she suddenly wasn't there, but she might still have been doing something for Jarrett because she came to the house three or four times in the
next six or seven months. The last time he saw her was in late September or early October 1944, when she spent part of an evening with Jarrett in the library.
Exit. Curtain.
He wasn't much more helpful on relationships. He had liked her and admired her, and he thought she had liked him, but he had been married just the year before, at the age of thirty, and his first son had just been born, so his intimate concerns were elsewhere. He remembered vaguely that he had got the idea that something might be developing between her and Jarrett's son Eugene, who was twenty years old in 1944, but he recalled no specific incidents. On her relations with Jarrett himself, he had an internal tussle that was so apparent that I had one too, to keep from grinning. Of course he knew from Ballou what we expected to get on Jarrett, and he would have loved to help by supplying some good salty evidence, but he had been born either too honest or too shy on invention. He rang the changes on what was obvious, that Jarrett and Carlotta were alone together a lot, but when he tried to remember that he had seen things that had made him suspect that Carlotta's services weren't exclusively secretarial, he couldn't make it.
