The Father Hunt

meeting, which I doubted, and left me there with Amy. I admit she thought she was being considerate, but it was no favor to me. I had been stalling Amy for two weeks and she wanted to know, and I couldn't blame her. Usually you can tell a client something, but I had already told her that her mother's name was Carlotta Vaughn, and there was absolutely nothing that I was ready to add. When I left I wasn't at all sure that I was still the one man in the world she could trust.

Of course I read every word in the Wednesday and Thursday papers about the hit-and-run driver the police had nabbed after three months, but learned nothing about motive. I got the impression that the fingerprints which had identified him had been secured by extremely competent detective work by the Homicide Bureau, but there were no published details about it. There was no mention of Nero Wolfe or Archie Goodwin. There was a lot of new information, new to me, about Floyd Vance, and one item cleared up a point that I had wondered about. In 1944 he had been in his late twenties and single, and why hadn't he been sent, either to Europe or to Asia, to help several million of his fellow citizens do some expert handling of the public image of the United States of America? According to Wednesday's Gazette and News, and Thursday's Times, he had been excused because he had some kind of a trick knee. Other items, though they cleared up nothing, told me more about him-for instance, that he had always been a tadpole in a big frog pond as a public-relations counselor. Evidently he had had very little effect on the dignity of man, either way.

When the phone rang at 6:38 p.m. Thursday, I was at my desk working on germination records and Wolfe was at his with a book he had just started on, an advance copy of The Future of Germany, by Karl Jaspers. I reached for the receiver.

"Nero Wolfe's office, Archie-"

"I want Wolfe, Goodwin. Cramer."

"Greetings." Without bothering to cover the transmitter, I turned my head and said, "Cramer," perhaps a little louder than usual, and Wolfe reached for his phone, perhaps a little faster than usual. I kept mine.

"Yes, Mr. Cramer?"

"About Floyd Vance. You read the papers."

"Yes."

"We're going for first-degree and we expect it to stick. We've followed the new rules and we don't even ask him if he's thirsty unless his lawyer's present. I'rh willing to give you some information we haven't released if you give me your word that you'll keep it in confidence."