The Father Hunt

I was on my feet. "Journalists," I said, "are the salt and pepper of the earth. I would enjoy discussing that with you, but I'm on my way to a rustic swimming pool in the middle of a tailor-made glade in the Westchester woods, and I'm twenty hours late. I said it was something trivial, but have it your way. Yes, it was murder, and the driver of the car was the skunk who topped my three aces with four deuces Thursday night. I hope they get him."

I turned and went.

But down in the lobby I went to a phone booth, dialed a number I didn't have to look up, gave my name, asked if Sergeant Stebbins was around, and after a long wait got his voice:

"Stebbins. Something up, Archie?"

He must have just won a bet or got a raise. He called me Archie only about once in two years, and sometimes he wouldn't even say Goodwin but made it just you. I returned the compliment. "Nothing with a bite, Purley, just a routine question, but to answer it you may have to look at a file. You may have forgotten it, it was nearly three months ago-a hit-and-run on East Eighty-third Street, a woman named Elinor Denovo-"

"We haven't forgotten it. We don't forget a hit-and-run."

"I know you don't, I was just being impolite for practice. Someone asked me if you've dug up a lead on it, and of course I didn't know. Have you?"

"Who asked you?"

"Oh, Mr. Wolfe and I were discussing crime and whether cops are as good as they ought to be, and he mentioned this Elinor Denovo. As you know, he misses nothing in the papers. I said you would probably get that one, and I was curious. Of course I'm not asking for any inside dope…"

"There isn't any dope, inside or outside. It's hanging. But we're not forgetting it."

"Right. I hope you get him. Nobody likes a hit-and-run."

Walking to Forty-third Street for the car, I had to concede that I had got no relief at all for the itch.

4

You would suppose that at ten minutes to ten Monday morning, as I sat in a taxicab headed uptown, with the box on the seat beside me and the breast pocket of my jacket bulging with envelopes containing letters to twelve savings banks because I never lug a brief case if I can help it, my mind would be on the morning's program, but it wasn't. It was on the hour just past, or part of it, instead of the one just ahead. I don't like to have people bellow at me, particularly not Wolfe.