The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

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. I'll 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 save 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.