The Father Hunt

Saul and I each took half of the list of tenants and went to work on them. I could make a full report on the first four I tackled, but this is not a treatise on economics or sociology. It was the fifth one that rang the gong, a little before five o'clock in the afternoon-a woman named Dorothy Sebor, fifty, gray-haired and blue-eyed and fully as smart as the young man at the Kauffman Management

Company-who beaded and probably owned the Sebor Shopping Service in a tenth-floor suite at Rockefeller Center. She was busy. The forty minutes I spent with her wouldn't have been more than half that if the phone hadn't interrupted several times, and I might have had a problem getting to her if I hadn't sent in word that I wanted to ask her something about Ten East Thirty-ninth Street. When I entered her room she asked if I was the Archie Goodwin who worked for Nero Wolfe, and when I said yes she asked, 'But what can I possibly tell you about Ten East Thirty-ninth Street? I left eighteen years ago. I loved that dump. Sit down.'

I sat. 'I don't know what you can tell me, Miss Sebor, but I know what I want to ask. A job we're on goes back pretty far and it's nineteen forty-four we're interested in. Would you mind telling me what floor you were on?'

'No, why should I? The ninth. In the rear.'

'We understand that another of the tenants was named Floyd Vance. Did you know him?'

'I wouldn't say I knew him. I knew him by sight, he was on the same floor, the ninth, down the hall toward the front. We exchanged nods, remarks about the weather; you know how it is.'

My hand didn't want to go to my pocket. It had pulled those damn pictures out too many times for too many people. But it obeyed orders and out came lie seven photographs. 'The quickest way,' I said, 'is for you to take a look at these and tell me if you recognize anyone.' As I stretched an arm to hand them to her the phone rang, and she put the pictures on the desk. When she finished telling someone what to do and hung up she picked them up and started looking. At the fourth one-I always had it in the middle-she widened her eyes, looked at me, looked at the photograph again, and said, 'It's… not Vance… Vaughn, that's it. Carlotta. Carlotta Vaughn.' The blue eyes aimed at me, a little narrowed. 'I saw her name not long ago, in an ad in two papers. The ad said something about alias somebody.'

'You knew her?'

'Yes. She worked for that Floyd Vance. Or with him,

I didn't know which.' –

I had two strong conflicting impulses simultaneously:

to give her a good hug and kiss her on both cheeks, and to pull her nose for not answering the ad a week ago. I put one of them into words. 'Miss Sebor,' I said, 'you are the most beautiful woman I ever laid eyes on and if I knew what color you like I would buy you ten do/en roses. With our client's money, of course.'

She smiled, more with her eyes than her mouth. 'My shopping service hasn't worked much on florists, but it would be interesting to try. Apparently I've dealt you an ace.'

'Four of them. You've answered a question that I was beginning to think would never be answered. If you will-'

'Is Carlotta Vaughn your client? No, of course not, not if you placed that ad. You're trying to find her?'

'No. She's dead. I'd like to tell you about it, but you're busy and it's a long story, and as our client says, it's very personal. If you'll answer a few more questions I'll be extremely grateful. Was it in-'

The phone. That time it took longer; she was telling someone what not to do. She finally finished it and returned to me. 'I'll ask you a question, Mr. Goodwin. I liked Carlotta Vaughn, and she impressed me as a very competent young woman. I didn't see a lot of her-we had lunch together a few times-but I saw enough of her to be impressed. I was trying to get my business started and it was hard going, and I tried to persuade her to go in with me, as a partner, but she wouldn't. I liked her very much. You say she's dead. Would she approve of what you're doing?'

I lied. I could have dodged and wriggled, a lot of guff, that I hadn't known Carlotta Vaughn and therefore could only guess, and if and but and even so, but I preferred a straight lie. 'Yes,' I said, 'she certainly would. It was a long time ago, but you may remember. When did you first see her?'

'That's easy. I'll never forget that first winter; I still have the scars. I started, rented that one room, in the fall • of nineteen forty-three, and I first saw Carlotta the next spring-early spring, April, or it could have been March. I suppose the first time was in the hall or the elevator, I don't remember.'

'Then she was there in the spring and summer of nineteen forty-four.'

She nodded. 'That's right, nineteen forty-four.'

'Do you remember when you saw her last?'

'Not definitely, no. Not to name a date, but when I hadn't seen her for a while I asked Floyd Vance about her and he said…' She frowned and shook her head. 'Something vague. She had gone somewhere or something.'

'Was that in summer, or fall, or winter?'

'Not winter. By November my business was beginning to show some signs of life, and I wanted to tell Carlotta, but she wasn't there. It was probably in October.'

'That would make it a total of six or seven months. You said you didn't know if she worked for Floyd Vance, or with him. But she was there every day, in his office?'