Rex Stout

The Father Hunt

1

It happens once or twice a week. Lily Rowan and I, returning from a show or party or hockey game, leave the elevator and approach the door of her penthouse on top of the apartment building on Sixty-third Street between Madison and Park, and there is the key question. Mine is, Do I stay back and let her do it? Hers is, Does she stay back and let me do it? We have never discussed it, and it is always handled the same way. When she gets out her key as we leave the elevator she gives me a smile which means, "Yes, you have one, but it's my door," and I smile back and follow her to it. It is understood that mine is for situations that seldom arise.

That Thursday afternoon in August we had been to Shea Stadium to watch the Mets clobber the Giants, which they had done, 8 to 3, and it was only twenty past five when she used her key. Inside, she called out to Mimi, the maid, that she was home, and went to the bathroom, and I went to the bar in a corner of the oversized living room, with its 19-by-34 Kashan rug, for gin and ice and tonic and glasses. By the time I got out to the terrace with the tray she was there, at a table under the awning, studying the scorecard I had kept.

"Yes, sir," she said as I put the tray down, "Harrelson got three hits and batted in two runs. If he was here I'd hug him. Good."

"Then I'm glad he's not here." I gave her her drink and sat. "If you hugged that kid good you'd crack a rib."

A voice came. "I'm going, Miss Rowan."

Our heads turned. The young woman in the doorway to the living room was a newcomer to the penthouse. I had