“I know, but I mean exceptionally difficult.” Prescott shook his head doubtfully. “God knows I wish you luck, but from what I know of Miss Karn... it’ll be a job. Ask Stauffer, he’ll tell you what he thinks of it. That’s why we asked him to come down here with us.”
“Stauffer?”
A voice came from the left: “I’m Osric Stauffer.”
Wolfe looked at the good-looking face that was living up to something. “Oh. Are you...” He trailed it off.
The face looked faintly annoyed. “Osric Stauffer of Daniel Cullen and Company. The foreign department was under the direction of Mr. Hawthorne and I was next to him. Also I was fairly intimate with him.”
So it was Daniel Cullen and Company he was living up to. Judging from the way he had been hovering in the neighborhood of April Hawthorne, I had guessed wrong entirely; I had thought he was dignifying a passion.
Wolfe inquired, “You know Miss Karn, do you?”
“I have met her, yes.” Stauffer’s voice was clipped and precise. “What Mr. Prescott was referring to, I went to see her this morning about this will business. I was requested to go by him and Mrs. Dunn — and in a way, unofficially, as a representative of my firm. A will contest — this sort of thing — would be highly undesirable in the case of a Cullen partner.”
“So you saw Miss Karn this morning?”
“Yes.”