Rex Stout - The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

Where are you bound for? I demanded.

The plant rooms, he said, and kept going, and the sound came of the elevator. He was off his hinges. I went down to the kitchen and got my second cup of coffee. When Wolfe entered the office at eleven o'clock, assuming that he followed his schedule, he found on his desk a note which read as follows: 9:22 a.m. I am leaving for the beach, having phoned Mrs. Valdon that I'm coming. If she hears a news broadcast it might hit her as hard as it did you and she might do something undesirable. I'm assuming that we intend to hold on and will tell her so. I should be back by lunchtime. The phone number of the cottage is on the card. AG

Actually the phone number was useless if he had something urgent to say, because at the moment he was reading the note I was in the Heron with the client beside me, parked under a tree at the roadside. There were two weekend guests at the cottage, in addition to the maid and cook and nurse, not a good setting for a strictly private conversation, and I had got Lucy in the car and away before telling her the news. Now, parked, I could give her my whole attention, and she needed it. She had a grip on my arm and her teeth were clamped on her lip.

Okay, I said, it's tough. It's damn tough. All the ifs. If you hadn't hired Nero Wolfe I wouldn't have found Ellen Tenzer, and if I hadn't found her she wouldn't have been murdered. If you hadn't helped with that article in the paper and the baby-carriage act we wouldn't have found Carol Mardus, and if we hadn't found her she wouldn't have been murdered. But you have simply Do you know that, Archie?

No. I only know what Saul told me and what I heard on the radio on the way here. Just what I told you. But it's a million to one that that's why she got it. You have simply got to ignore the ifs. If you want to turn loose because of the risks you'll be taking if you don't, that might be sensible I don't want to turn loose.

I guess I gawked. You don't?

No. I want Nero Wolfe to find him. To get him. The man who the murderer he killed both of them, didn't he?

Yes.

He put the baby in my vestibule, didn't he?

Yes. Almost certainly.

Then I want Nero Wolfe to get him.

The cops would get him sooner or later.

I want Nero Wolfe to get him.

I thought to myself, you never know. I had wasted my breath on the ifs; they were no longer bothering her. Maybe it was merely a matter of quantity; she could feel responsible for one murder but not for two. Anyhow, my errand had turned out to be quite different from what I had expected.

Mr. Wolfe would certainly like to get him, I said. So would I. But you're his client and you must understand that this changes the situation. On Ellen Tenzer we could claim that no connection had been established between her death and the job you hired Mr. Wolfe to do, and probably get away with it. Not on Carol Mardus. If we don't tell what we know about her, and the we' includes you, we are definitely withholding important evidence in a homicide case, and we couldn't claim we didn't know it was important evidence. Of course we know. So if we don't tell, and the cops dig it up themselves and get the murderer before we do, we're sunk. Mr. Wolfe and I would not only lose our licenses, we would also probably be sent up on a felony charge. You have no Archie, I don't Let me finish. You have no license to lose, but you would also be open to the felony charge. I doubt very much if they would press it, they probably wouldn't even charge you, but you would be wide open. I want to make that absolutely clear before you decide what to do.

But you mean… you would go to jail?

Probably.

All right.

All right what?

I'll turn loose.

Damn it, Lucy, you've twisted it all around. Or I have. We don't want you to turn loose. We positively don't. Mr. Wolfe is stiff with fury. He resented Ellen Tenzer being killed because he sent me to her, but that was nothing compared to this. If he doesn't nail the man who killed Carol Mardus he won't eat for a year. I merely had to make it plain what you might be in for if you stick.

But you'll go to jail.

That's my funeral. Also my business, I'm a detective. Leave that to us. The cops don't know there is any connection between Carol Mardus and Ellen Tenzer and you and us, and with any kind of a break they won't know until we've got the murderer, and then it won't matter. Have you mentioned Carol Mardus to anybody?

No.

Positive?

Yes. You ordered me not to.

So I did. I now order you to forget Mr. Wolfe and me and think only of yourself. Do you stick or let go?

She gripped my arm again. Her fingers were stronger than you would expect. Tell me honestly, Archie. Do you want me to stick? Thinking only of yourself?

Yes.

Then I stick. Kiss me.

That sounds like an order.

It is.

Twenty minutes later I turned the Heron into the driveway, circled around the curve, and stopped at the door of the cottage. No one was visible; they were all on the beach side. As Lucy was getting out I spoke. I just had an idea. I have one a year. I might possibly be walking past the house and feel like dropping in. May I have a key?

Her eyes widened. Nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of a thousand, as things stood between us, would have said, Of course, but why? She said only, Of course, swung the car door shut, and went. In a couple of minutes she was back. She handed me the key, said, No phone call for you, and tried hard to smile. I pressed the gas pedal and was off.

One of the various prospects for the future that I didn't care for was sitting down for lunch with Wolfe. It would be painful. He always talked at table, and one of two things would happen. Either he would grump through it without even trying, or worse, he would pick something as far as possible from babies or murders, say the influence of Freud on theological dogma, and fight his way through. The prospect was bad enough without that. So I stopped at a place along the way and ate duckling, with a sauce that Fritz would have turned up his nose at, and it was five minutes to two when, after leaving the Heron at the garage around the corner, I mounted the stoop of the old brownstone and used my key.

Wolfe would be toward the end of lunch. But he wasn't. Not in the dining room. Crossing the hall to the office door, I glanced in. He wasn't there either, but someone else was. Leo Bingham was in the red leather chair, and Julian Haft was in one of the yellow ones. Their heads turned to me, and their faces were not cheerful. I beat it to the kitchen, and there was Wolfe at my breakfast table, with a board of cheese, crackers, and coffee. He looked up, grunted, and chewed. Fritz said, The duckling's warm, Archie. Flemish olive sauce.

I swear I hadn't known duckling was on for lunch when I ordered it on the way. I had a bite at the beach, I lied. To Wolfe: Mrs. Valdon wants you to get the murderer. I told her the cops would get him sooner or later if she wanted to pull out, but she said, quote, I want Nero Wolfe to get him.' Unquote.

He growled. You know quite well that that locution is vile.

I feel vile. Do you know you have company?