The Father Hunt

"We'll send some to that Dorothy Sebor, and I'll go up and get them now. I intended to bring them down but those intruders came. Also I brought none for my desk." He pushed his chair back.

"Instructions?"

"No. There is nothing you can do."

"Saul is standing by. So are Fred and Orrie."

"Release them. There is nothing. Our next step is obvious, but it must wait until Mr. Cramer learns his motive. // he learns his motive. He should, with a thousand trained men."

After the sound came of the elevator starting up I sat and looked it over from every angle. It was nice to know the next step was obvious, but it would have been even nicer to know what it was.

15

I didn't know then, and I still don't, exactly how long it took the city employees to find out why Floyd Vance killed Elinor Denovo. I mean really wrap it up. All I know is that Cramer's phone call didn't come until 6:38 p.m. Thursday, just in time to make me late at the poker party again. And I still didn't know what the obvious step was. One of the eighty-seven facts about Wolfe that I would change if I knew how is that he doesn't believe in talking merely to satisfy anyone's curiosity, even mine. I admit that in this case there might have been other factors -for instance, he might have wanted to see if I would dope it out for myself and make some suggestions. You probably have, but maybe you wouldn't if you had been in my shoes, waiting for a development which depended entirely on other people, and you didn't know what they were doing and not doing.

I did do one thing. When I learned from the noon news broadcast on Wednesday that Floyd Vance was being held without bail, and rang Lon Cohen to check it, I phoned Lily Rowan to say I wanted to see the client and was invited to lunch; and after we had finished the lobster salad and cantaloupe mousse and had gone out' to the terrace, I told Amy that there was no more danger of her being a special target and if she went out for a walk her chances of getting back in one piece were as good as anybody else's. Naturally she wanted to know what had happened, and Lily did too, and I think that was the first and only time that Lily suspected me of putting on an act in connection with my work. She remembered that she had a date, some kind of a committee