The Father Hunt

"Good." He rose. "I'll see how they're getting on." He went. When the door was shut Amy started to say something, but I shook my head at her. There were probably ten thousand rooms in the five boroughs that were bugged. The office of the top guy at a branch bank might be one of them, and if so that was no place to discuss any part of a secret that the client had kept the lid on for most of her life, or even give a hint. So to pass the time, since it wouldn't be sociable just to sit and stare back at Amy, I got up and went to take a look at the titles of books on shelves at the wall, and when International Bank Directory caught my eye I slid it out, opened it at New York, and turned to the page I wanted.

I would have said that the odds were at least a million to one against one of the officers or directors of the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company being someone we had a good line to, and when I saw that name, Avery Ballou, the second one on the alphabetical list of the Board of Directors, I said, "I'll be damned," so loud that Amy twisted around.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

I told her nothing was the matter, just the contrary; we had just got a break I would explain later.

The rest of the errand at the bank was merely routine. At eleven o'clock Amy and I were sitting at a table in a

drugstore on Madison Avenue, her with coffee and me with a glass of milk. The twelve letters had been dropped into a mailbox at the corner and the empty box was beside me on a chair. I had told her why I had shushed her at the bank, and about the break, of course not mentioning Ballou's name, and had offered to bet her a Snif that we would spot her father within three days, but she said she wouldn't bet against what she wanted. At 11:10 I said I had to make a phone call, went to the booth, dialed the number I knew best, and after eight rings got what I expected.

"Yes?"

He knows darned well that's no way to answer a phone, but try to change him.