“Thank you very much, Miss Dunn.” Wolfe put the picture under a paperweight on top of Daisy Hawthorne’s card. “I’ll remember to return it.” He turned to the lawyer. “About Miss Karn? You know her, do you?”
“Not very well,” said Prescott. “That is — I’ve known her, in a way, for about six years. She was a stenographer in our office — my firm.”
“Indeed. Your personal stenographer?”
“Oh, no. We have thirty or more of them — it’s a large office. She was just one of them for a couple of years, and then she became the secretary of the junior partner, Mr. Davis. It was in Mr. Davis’s office that Mr. Hawthorne first met her. Not long after that—” Prescott stopped, and looked uncomfortable. “But that’s of no present significance. I wished to explain how I happened to know her. She left our employ about three years ago — uh — apparently at the suggestion of Mr. Hawthorne—”
“Apparently?”
“Well—” Prescott shrugged. “Admittedly, then. Since he himself made no attempt to be secretive about it, there is no call for caution from me.”
“The Hawthornes,” said May sweetly, “are much too egotistic to be sneaks. ‘How we apples swim.’”
“Obviously he wasn’t sneaking,” Wolfe agreed, glancing at the picture under the paperweight, “when he paraded with her on Fifth Avenue.”
“I think I should warn you,” Prescott said, “that your task will be a difficult one.”
“I expect it to be. To persuade anybody to turn loose of four million dollars.”