The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

I glanced around. Woods on all sides. For my taste, too many trees and too close to the house. The clearing was only sixty paces long and forty wide, and the graveled turnaround was barely big enough. The overhead door of a one-car garage was open and the car was there, a Rambler sedan. The garage was connected to the house, one story, the boarding of which ran up and down instead of horizontal and had grooves, and was painted white. The paint was as good as new, and everything was clean and neat, including the flower beds. I headed for the door, and it opened before I reached it.

A disadvantage of not wearing a hat is that you can't take it off when you meet a nice little middle-aged lady, or perhaps nearer old than middle-aged, with gray hair bunched in a neat topknot and gray eyes clear and alive. When I said, Miss Ellen Tenzer? she nodded and said, That's my name.

Mine's Goodwin. I suppose I should have phoned, but I was glad to have an excuse to drive to the country on such a fine day. I'm in the button business, and I understand you are too in a way well, not the business. I'm interested in the horsehair buttons you make. May I come in?

Why are you interested in them?

That struck me as slightly off key. It would have been more natural for her to say. How do you know I make horsehair buttons? or Who told you I make horsehair buttons?

Well, I said, I suppose you would like me better if I pretended it's art for art's sake, but as I said, I'm in the button business, and I specialize in buttons that are different. I thought you might be willing to let me have some. I would pay a good price, cash.

Her eyes went to the Heron and back to me. I only have a few. Only seventeen.

Still no curiosity about where I had heard of them. Maybe, like her niece, she was curious only about things that mattered to her. That would do for a start, I said. Would it be imposing on you to ask for a drink of water?

Why no. She moved, and with the doorway free I entered, and as she crossed to another door at the left I advanced and used my eyes. I have good eyes, plenty good enough to recognize from six yards away an object I had seen before or rather, one just like it. It was on a table between two windows at the opposite wall, and it changed the program completely as far as Ellen Tenser was concerned. It had been quite possible, even probable, that the buttons on the overalls were some she had given to somebody, maybe years ago, but not now. Perhaps still possible, but just barely.