The Father Hunt

'Why did she stop?'

'I didn't ask her. She just stopped.'

'I think you can improve on that, Mr. Vance. Didn't she stop because she was pregnant?'

Vance tapped ashes from the cigar into the ash tray, put it between his lips and found it was out, took the book of matches from the stand and lit it, and blew smoke. He looked at Wolfe, opened his mouth and shut it, reached for the bottle and poured Scotch, picked up the glass, took a swig, and looked at Wolfe again.

'Yes,' he said. 'She was storked. So she said. It didn't show.'

'So you had impregnated her.'

'The hell I had.'

'Certainly.' '

'For God's sake. She was a nymph. She was a goddam tart. She didn't know herself who knocked her up. She admitted it. To me.'

That showed, if we had needed showing, how impossible it would be to tag him as the father. There were three people-Raymond Thome, Bertram McCray, and Dorothy Sebor-who would contradict him on Carlotta Vaughn's morals and habits, and we could probably get more, but that would just be a squabble. However, he had a wide-open flank. What would he or could he say to the question, why did Cyrus M. Jarrett send her a thousand dollars a month as long as she lived? I decided he could say, and almost certainly would say, search me. Wolfe was probably making the same decision. He had poured beer and was watching the bead go down; of course he could merely have been thinking that Vance had used a cliche that was still a vulgarism. He turned his head to me and asked, 'Is there any point in persisting?'

Meaning, have we got enough fingerprints?

'No,' I said. Meaning yes.

He looked at his glass. The foam was down to the right level, exactly. He pushed his chair back, rose, and walked out. As he disappeared in the hall I told myself, for the twentieth time, that the furniture should be rearranged, so he wouldn't have to detour around the red leather chair when there was someone in it. An exit like that should be a beeline so you can stride.

I told Vance, 'Serves you right. You used another cliche.'

'Isn't he coming back?'

'Sure, after you've gone.'

'What the hell, you could have asked me on the phone, any time, if I knocked her up and I would have told you.'

'Yeah, I tried to tell him that. He thought that question was too personal for the phone. Also he likes to do things the hard way, and he likes to hear himself talk.'

He looked at his glass, saw that there was a couple of fingers in it, picked it up, and drained it. 'I thought he was going to…' He let it hang, and started over. 'He said he would like to know why I tried to see that Elinor Denovo. What the hell, I wanted that account, Raymond Thome Productions. I didn't know she was Caflotta Vaughn. The first I heard of that was that ad in the paper.'

'You don't hear an ad in the paper. You hear an ad on the radio. You see an ad in the paper. On television you both hear it and see it. It's getting very complicated, and before we know it we'll-'

'Balls. I've heard enough of you. You're a pair of goddam loudmouths.' It wasn't as easy as falling off a log to rise from that chair, and four of his fingertips pressed against the leather arm as he used leverage. When he was erect he told me to go do something, still another vulgar cliche, and I moved to get to the hall ahead of him; he might turn left instead of right, and Wolfe was in the kitchen. I didn't go to the front to open the door for him. Not because he was a liar; it just didn't seem to be called for.

When the door had shut behind him, with a bang, I went and opened the kitchen door enough to call through, 'Company's gone!' and then to the stairs down to the basement storeroom for empty cartons and tissue paper and twine.

When I got back up to the office, loaded, Wolfe was standing at the end of his desk, frowning around at everything in sight. I put the cartons down on the couch and the paper and twine on my desk, and said, 'I wouldn't trade images with that specimen, public or private. I

have never felt so sorry for a client. If she had known what she was going to get for her twenty grand…'

He growled. 'How long will that cigar smoke last?'

'The air conditioner will do it in about an hour.' I was gently wrapping in tissue paper the glass that had held Scotch. 'I need your help on a decision. The bottle is more than half full of Johnnie Walker Black. About six dollars' worth. Do we donate it to Cramer or do I empty it?'

'Empty it hi the sink. It's contaminated. Confound this smell. I'm going upstairs, but there's a letter to write. Your notebook.'

I went and sat, and for the first tune in I don't know how long he dictated a letter standing.

'Dear Mr. Cramer: Five days ago you told Mr. Goodwin you had in your possession a leather cigar case front which you had taken nine fingerprints. Period. The cartons he will deliver to you with this letter contain an assortment of