Рекс Стаут: The Mother Hunt

He did. “Yes?” He has never answered a telephone right and never will.

“Me. From a booth in Mahopac. Has Saul phoned in?”

“No.”

“Then he will around noon. I suggest that you send him up here. The niece can wait. The aunt knows who put the overalls on the baby.”

“Indeed. She told you so?”

“No. Three points. First, she didn’t ask the right questions. Second, she got nervous and bounced me. Third, yesterday’s Times was there on a table. She doesn’t know I saw it. It was folded and there was a bowl of fruit on it, but at the top of the page that showed was a headline that started with the words ‘JENSEN REFUSES’. The ad was on that page. So she had seen the ad, but when I dropped in and said I was interested in the horsehair buttons she made she didn’t mention it. When she got around to the right question she put it wrong. She asked how I found out she made buttons. She might as well have asked how did Nero Wolfe get results from his ad so soon. Then she realized she wasn’t handling it right and bounced me. One will get you twenty that she’s not the mother. If she’s not sixty she’s close. But one will get you forty that she knows what the baby was wearing, that’s the least she knows. Am I being impetuous?”

“No. Do you want to turn her over to Saul?”

“I do not. If he could crack her I could. I don’t think anybody could until we know more about her. She may be phoning someone right now, but that can’t be helped. I’m going back and stake out. If she’s phoning, someone may come, or she may go. We can cover her around the clock if you get Fred and Orrie. You’ll send Saul?”

“Yes.”

“He’ll need directions and you need a pencil.”

“I have one.”

“Okay.” I gave the directions, not forgetting to mention the fork. “Three-tenths of a mile from where he hits the gravel there’s a wide spot where he can pull off and sit in his car. If I don’t show within an hour I’m not around, she has left and so have I, and he’d better go to a phone and call you to see if you’ve heard from me. He could go to the house first for a look. She might have a visitor and I might have my head stuck in a window trying to hear. Have you any suggestions?”

“No. Ill get Fred and Orrie. When will you eat?”

I told him tomorrow maybe. Returning to the Heron and climbing in, and deciding that as the day wore on it might not be so funny, I headed for Main Street, found a market, and got chocolate bars, bananas, and a carton of milk. I should have told Wolfe I would. He can’t stand the notion of a man skipping a meal.

Driving back, I was considering where to leave the car. There were spots not too far from the mailbox where I could ease it in among the trees, but if she went for a ride I would have to get it out to the road in a hurry, and she might go the other way; I didn’t know where the gravel road went over the hill. I decided that getting it into the woods far enough to hide it was out, and therefore it might as well be handy. Anyway she had seen it, and if and when it tailed her in broad daylight she would know it. I could only hope she would stay put until Saul came with a car she hadn’t seen. I left the Heron in the open, less than a hundred yards from the mailbox, where a gap between trees left enough roadside room, and took to the woods. I am neither an Indian nor a Boy Scout, but if she had been looking out a window I don’t think she would have seen me as I made my way to where I had a view of the house from behind a bush. Also a view of the garage.

The garage was empty.

It called for profanity, and I used some, out loud. I don’t apologize for either the profanity or the situation. I would have done it again in the same circumstances. If we were going to keep her covered I had to leave sooner or later to get to a phone, and right away, while she was looking it over and perhaps making a phone call, and deciding what to do, was not only as good a time as any, it was the best — until the empty garage showed me that it had been the worst.

All right, my luck was out. I dodged through the trees to the clearing, crossed it, went to the door, and banged on it. There might be someone else in the house, though no one had been visible when I was in it. I waited half a minute and banged again, louder, and bellowed, “Anybody home?” After another half a minute I tried the doorknob. Locked. There were two windows to the right, and I went and tried them. Also locked. I went around the corner of the house, taking care not to step in flower beds, which was damn good manners in the circumstances, and there was a window wide open. She had left in a hurry. I didn’t have to touch the window. All I had to do was stick a leg in, wiggle my rump onto the sill, and pull the other leg in, and I had broken and entered.

It was a bedroom. I sang out good and loud, “Hey, the house is on fire!” and stood and listened. Not a sound, but to make sure I did a quick tour — two bedrooms, bathroom, living room, and kitchen. Nobody, not even a cat.

She might have merely gone to the drugstore for aspirin and be back any minute. If so, I decided, let her find me in the house. I would tackle her. Almost certainly she was an accessory to something. I don’t know all the New York statutes by heart, but there must be a law about leaving babies in people’s vestibules, so I wouldn’t bother to keep an ear cocked for the sound of a car coming up the hill.

The most likely find was letters or phone numbers, or maybe a diary, and I started in the living room. The Times was still on the table under the bowl of fruit. I unfolded it to see if she had clipped the ad; it was intact. There was no desk, but the table had a drawer, and there were three drawers in the stand in a corner that held the telephone. In one of the latter was a card with half a dozen phone numbers, but they were all local. No letters anywhere. There were bookshelves at one wall, some with books and some with magazines and knick- knacks. Going through books takes time, so I left that for the second time around and moved to a bedroom, the one that was obviously hers.

That was where I rang the bell, in the bottom drawer of the bureau. A once-over isn’t very thorough and I nearly missed it, but at the bottom, underneath a winter-weight nightgown, there it was — or rather, there they were. Not one, two — two pairs of blue corduroy overalls, each with four white horsehair buttons. The same size as those in the glove compartment of the Heron. A week ago I wouldn’t have thought it possible that I would ever get so much pleasure from looking at baby clothes. After gloating a full minute I put them back in the drawer and went and opened a door to a closet. I wanted more.

Eventually I got more, but not in the closet. Not even in the house, strictly speaking, but in the cellar. It was a real cellar, not just a hole for an oil-burning furnace. The space for the furnace was partitioned off, and the rest was what a cellar ought to be, with cupboards and shelves with canned goods. There was even a rack with bottles of wine. Also there were some metal objects propped against the wall in a corner, and I didn’t have to assemble them to tell that they were a baby’s crib. Also there were three suitcases and two trunks, and one of the trunks contained diapers, rubber pants, bibs, rattles, balloons (not inflated), undershirts, T-shirts, sweaters, and various other garments and miscellaneous items.

With my hankering for baby clothes fully satisfied, and with the house still to myself, I started over again, in the living room. There must be something some- where that would give a hint on where and who the baby had come from. But there wasn’t. I’ll skip the next hour and a half, except to say that I know how to look for something that isn’t supposed to be found, and I did a job on that house. It takes more time when you leave everything the way it was, but I did a job. All I had when I finished was a few names and addresses, from letters and envelopes in a drawer in the bedroom, and a few phone numbers, and none of them looked promising.