The Father Hunt

"Yeah. Excuse me for interrupting. I expected that, that's why I'm phoning. Please tell Mr. Jarrett that I want to ask him for some information about Carlotta Vaughn." I repeated the name, distinctly. "Carlotta Vaughn. He'll recognize that name. I'll hold the wire."

"But I assure you, Mr. Goodwin-"

"I assure you, sir. He won't thank you for the message, but he'll see me."

A brief silence; then: "Hold the wire."

The wait was longer than the ones the day before. Wolfe, with his receiver in one hand, was adjusting the spray of Miltonia hellemense in the vase on his desk with the other. Finally the voice came.

"Mr. Goodwin?"

"I'm here."

"You say in two hours?"

"More or less. Maybe a little more."

"Very well. You will be admitted."

As I hung up, Wolfe growled, "That creature has been so reduced to chronic subservience that he was deferential even to you. I would like to deal with Mr. Jarrett. I am almost minded to go along."

Just chatter. Before leaving I typed the resume of the life of Carlotta Vaughn as we knew it, which I had arranged in my mind on the way. You have seen it.

Now, as I put my raincoat on a bench and followed Oscar across a reception hall, along a wide corridor, and around a turn into a narrower hall that took us to an open door at the end, I forgot to observe things because I was too busy looking forward to dealing with Mr. Jarrett. One would have got you ten that this time I would get a reaction. But I did observe the room I entered. It had a fifteen-foot ceiling, a rug twice the size of Lily Rowan's 19-by-34 Kashan, a big desk that was presumably Colonial handiwork, and more books than Wolfe owned, on shelves that reached nearly to the ceiling. Not one of the chairs

was occupied. Oscar turned on some lights and said Mr. Jarrett would come shortly, and this time "shortly" was more like it, only a couple of minutes. As he entered by another and narrower door between two tiers of shelves, a dazzle of lightning darted in through the windows, and as he halted and stood after five or six steps, the boom of thunder shook them. Good staging. He focused the frozen eyes on me and said, "What do you want to know about Carlotta Vaughn?"