The Father Hunt

Ballou didn't have to wait long. There was a buzz and he took a phone. "Ballou… Good morning, Bert. A man named Archie Goodwin is here… That's right, I told you yesterday, for Nero Wolfe… He has asked me a question I can't answer, but you probably could. Can I send him over? It wouldn't take long… Yes, of course… No, he's presentable, jacket, tie-hell, he's neater than I am… Good. I knew you would."

He hung up and turned to me. "You'll have lunch at the Bankers Club with Bertram McCray." He spelled the McCray. "One-twenty Broadway. He'll be there in ten minutes. Check in as McCray's guest. He's a vice-president at Seaboard. Twenty years ago he was Jarrett's secretary and protege; he was often at his home. He has a grudge because Jarrett didn't move up around nineteen fifty and make him president-of course that was absurd -and he switched to our side in fifty-three. He got that information for me yesterday about the checks. He said he'd like to meet Nero Wolfe, so ask him anything you want to. Have you got that?"

I said yes and he pushed a button and said, "Ready for that man from Boston."

So at one o'clock I was seated at a table by a wall in a room with about a hundred other tables. With an average of three men to a table, I supposed around twenty billion dollars was represented, either in person or by proxy. I was certainly glad I had a necktie on. My host, facing me, had ears that were a little too big and a nose that was a little too small, and a slight pinch at the corner of his right eye. He was either very polite or he had no initiative; when I had chosen sole Veronique and salad and lemon ice he had taken the same. We were both polite, though; we talked about the heat wave and air pollution and the summer crop of riots until we had finished the sole and salad, but as we waited for the ices and coffee he said he only took an hour for lunch and Ballou had told him I wanted to ask him something. I said Ballou had told me that he had known Cyrus M. Jarrett for many years and might be able to identify a woman Nero Wolfe wanted to know about, and produced the photographs and handed them to him. He looked at the top one, the three-quarters face, widened his eyes at me, looked at the profile, then again at the other one, and again at me.

"Why," he said, "it's Lottie Vaughn."