The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

Ninety minutes later, after calling on four different firms, I knew a little more about buttons in general, but still nothing specific about the ones on the overalls. One of the firms made covered buttons, another polyester and acrylic, another fresh-water and ocean pearl, another gold and silver plated. Nobody had any notion who had made mine or what they were made of, and nobody cared. It was looking as if all I would get was a collection of negatives, which was all right in a way, as I walked down the hall on the sixth floor of a building on 39th Street to a door that was lettered: EXCLUSIVE NOVELTY BUTTON CO.

That was where I would have gone first if I had known. A woman who knew exactly what I was after before I said ten words took me to an inner room which had no racks on the walls, not a button in sight. A little old geezer with big ears and a mop of white hair, sitting at a table looking at a portfolio, didn't look up until I was beside him and had the overalls out of the bag, and when his eyes moved they lit on one of the buttons. He jerked the overalls out of my hands, squinted at each of the buttons in turn, the two on the bib and the two at the sides, raised his eyes to me, and demanded, Where did these buttons come from?

I laughed. It may not strike you as funny, but that was the question I had been working on for nearly two hours. There was a chair there and I took it. I'm laughing at me, not you, I told him. A definite answer to that question is worth a hundred dollars, cash, to anyone who has it. I won't explain why, it's too complicated. Can you answer it?

Are you a button man?

No.

Who are you?

I got my case from my pocket and produced a card. He took it and squinted at it. You're a private detective?

Right.

Where did you get these buttons?

Listen, I said, I only want to. You listen, young man. I know more about buttons than any man in the world. I get them from everywhere. I have the finest and most comprehensive collection in existence. Also I sell them. I have sold a thousand dozen buttons in one lot for forty cents a dozen, and I have sold four buttons for six thousand dollars. I have sold buttons to the Duchess of Windsor, to Queen Elizabeth, and to Miss Bette Davis. I have given buttons to nine different museums in five countries. I know absolutely that no man could show me a button that I couldn't place, but you have done so. Where did you get them?