The Father Hunt

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-"