The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

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 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. Wolfs 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!