Рекс Стаут: The Mother Hunt

He went to his desk for a glass and inspected one of them. “Not so simple,” he said, “with all the stuff there is around. It looks like horsehair, but to be sure we’d have to rip into one of them.”

“How long will it take?”

“Anywhere from twenty minutes to five hours.”

I told him the sooner the better and he knew the phone number.

I got to 35th Street and into the house just as Wolfe was crossing the hall to the dining room. Since mention of business is not permitted at table, he stopped at the sill and asked, “Well?”

“Well so far,” I told him. “In fact perfect. A man who knows as much about buttons as you do about food has never seen anything like them. Someone spent hours on each one of them. The material had him stumped, so I took them to Hirsh. He’ll report this afternoon.”

He said satisfactory and proceeded to the table, and I went to wash my hands before joining him.

With all the trick gadgets they had hatched, there may be one you could attach to Wolfe and me and find out if he riles me more than I do him or vice versa, but we haven’t got one, so I don’t know. I admit that there are times when there is nothing to do but wait, but the point is how you wait. In the office that day after lunch I riled Wolfe by glancing at my watch every few minutes while he was dictating a long letter to an orchid- hunter in Honduras, and then he riled me by settling back, completely at ease, with Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. Damn it, he had a job. If he had to read a book, why not get His Own Image by Richard Valdon from the shelf? There might be some kind of a hint in it somewhere.

It was 3:43 when the phone call came from Hirsh. I had my notebook ready in case it was complicated with long scientific words, but it took only common ones and not many of them. I hung up and swiveled, and Wolfe actually moved his eyes from the book.

“Horsehair,” I said. “No dye or lacquer or anything, just plain unadulterated white horsehair.”

He grunted. “Is there time for an advertisement in tomorrow’s papers? Times and News and Gazette ”

“ Times and News , maybe. Gazette , yes.”

“Your notebook. Two columns wide, four inches or so. At the top, one hundred dollars, in figures, thirty- point or larger, boldface. Below in fourteen-point, also boldface: will be paid in cash for information regarding the maker, comma, or if not the maker the source, comma, of buttons made by hand of white horsehair. Period. Buttons of any size or shape suitable for use on clothing. Period. I want to know, comma, not who might make such buttons, comma, but who has actually done so. Period. The hundred dollars will be paid only to the person who first supplies the information. At the bottom, my name, address, and telephone number.”

“Boldface?”

“No. Standard weight, condensed.”

As I turned and reached for the typewriter I would have given a dozen polyester buttons to know whether he had planned it while he was dictating letters or while he was reading Travels with Charley.

The house rules in the old brownstone on West 35th Street are of course set by Wolfe, since he owns the house, but any variation in the morning routine usually comes from me. Wolfe sticks to his personal schedule: at 8:15 breakfast in his room on the second floor, on a tray taken up by Fritz, at nine o’clock to the elevator and up to the plant rooms, and down to the office at eleven. My schedule depends on what is stirring and on what time I turned in. I need to be flat a full eight hours, and at night I adjust the clock on my bedstand accordingly; and since I spent that Wednesday evening at a theater, and then at the Flamingo, with a friend, and it was after one when I got home, I set the pointer at 9:30.

But it wasn’t the radio, nudged by the clock, that roused me Thursday morning. When it happened I squeezed my eyes tighter shut to try to figure out what the hell it was. It wasn’t the phone, because I had switched my extension off, and anyway it wasn’t loud enough. It was a bumblebee, and why the hell was a bumblebee buzzing around 35th Street in the middle of the night? Or maybe the sun was up. I forced my eyes open and focused on the clock. Six minutes to nine. And it was the house phone, of course, I should have known. I rolled over and reached for it.

“Archie Goodwin’s room, Mr. Goodwin speaking.”

“I’m sorry, Archie.” Fritz. “But she insists—”

“Who?”

“A woman on the phone. Something about buttons. She says—”

“Okay, I’ll take it.” I flipped the switch of the extension and got the receiver. “Yes? Archie Goodwin speak—”

“I want Nero Wolfe and I’m in a hurry!”

“He’s not available. If it’s about the ad—”

“It is. I saw it in the News. I know about some buttons like that and I want to be first—”

“You are. Your name, please?”

“Beatrice Epps. E-P-P-S. Am I first?”

“You are if it fits. Mrs. Epps, or Miss?”

“Miss Beatrice Epps. I can’t tell you now—”

“Where are you, Miss Epps?”

“I’m in a phone booth at Grand Central. I’m on my way to work and I have to be there at nine o’clock, so I can’t tell you now, but I wanted to be first.”

“Sure. Very sensible. Where do you work?”

“At Quinn and Collins in the Chanin Building. Real estate. But don’t come there, they wouldn’t like it. Ill phone again on my lunch hour.”

“What time?”

“Half past twelve.”

“Okay, I’ll be at the newsstand in the Chanin Building at twelve-thirty and I’ll buy you a lunch. I’ll have an orchid in my buttonhole, a small one, white and green, and I’ll have a hundred—”

“I’m late, I have to go. I’ll be there.” The connection went. I flopped back onto the pillow, found that I was too near awake for another half-hour to be any good, swung around, and got my feet on the floor.

At ten o’clock I was in the kitchen at my breakfast table, sprinkling brown sugar on a buttered sour-milk griddle cake, with the Times before me on the rack. Fritz, standing by, asked, “No cinnamon?”

“No,” I said firmly. “I’ve decided it’s an aphrodisiac.”

“Then for you it would be — how is it? Taking coal somewhere.”

“Coals to Newcastle. That’s not the point, but you mean well and I thank you.”

“I always mean well.” Seeing that I had taken the second bite, he stepped to the range to start the next cake. “I saw the advertisement. Also I saw the things on your desk that you brought in the suitcase. I have heard that the most dangerous kind of case for a detective is a kidnaping case.”

“Maybe and maybe not. It depends.”

“And in all the years I have been with him this is the first kidnaping case he has ever had.”

I sipped coffee. “There you go again, Fritz, circling around. You could just ask, is it a kidnaping case? and I would say no. Because it isn’t. Of course the baby clothes gave you the idea. Just between you and me, in strict confidence, the baby clothes belong to him. It isn’t decided yet when the baby will move in here, and I doubt if the mother ever will, but I understand she’s a good cook, and if you happen to take a long vacation...”

He was there with the cake and I reached for the tomato and lime marmalade. With it no butter. “You are a true friend, Archie,” he said.

“They don’t come any truer.”

“Vraiment. I’m glad you told me so I can get things in. Is it a boy?”

“Yes. It looks like him.”

“Good. Do you know what I will do?” He returned to the range and gestured with the cake turner. “I will put cinnamon in everything!”