The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

No. Your picture has been in the paper too often. We can slow down when we're around the corner. I have a suggestion. At the beach this morning I had an idea that we might need a dugout, and I asked Mrs. Valdon for a key to her house. It's in my pocket.

Isn't it under surveillance?

Why would it be? They went to the beach yesterday. There's no one there.

At the corner we waited for a green light, crossed 34th Street, and were headed downtown on Ninth Avenue. We let up a little. It's under two miles, I said. Exercise in the open air keeps the body fit and the mind alert. Hackies talk too much. For instance, one having a bowl of soup at a lunch counter says, Nero Wolfe is out. I just took him to that house on Eleventh Street where the woman's got that baby.' Within an hour it's all over town. We can stop at a bar for a beer break. Say when.

You talk too much. You have seen me tramp through valleys and mountains for days.

Yeah, and I'll never forget it.

We did stop on the way, at a delicatessen on Sixth Avenue and Twelfth Street, and when we entered the vestibule that had once lodged a baby in a blanket we were both loaded down. Ham, corned beef, sturgeon, anchovies, lettuce, radishes, scallions, cucumbers, oranges, lemons, peaches, plums, three kinds of crackers, coffee, butter, milk, cream, four kinds of choose, eggs, pickles, olives, and twelve bottles of beer. No bread. If Fritz dies Wolfe will probably never eat bread again. It was ten minutes past seven when I got my arm unloaded enough, in the kitchen, to look at my watch, and it was a quarter to eight by the time I had things put away and Wolfe had dinner laid out on the kitchen table.

His salad dressing, from ingredients in the cupboard, wasn't as good as Fritz's, but of course he didn't have the materials. I washed the dishes and he dried.

There was now no point in punching or even poking. He was an exile from his house, his plant rooms, his chair, and his dining table, and there was only one way he could get back with his tail up. Of course I couldn't be sent on errands since I was an exile too, but there were Saul and Fred and Orrie, and presumably they were on his mind, where to start them digging, as we left the kitchen. But he asked me where the nursery was. I told him I doubted if he would find any clues there.

The rug, he said. You said there's a fine Tekke.