The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

Then I'll have to brief you. I got a chair and moved it up to a polite distance, and sat. If you never read the papers I suppose you didn't see Mr. Wolfe's ad on Thursday.

No. An ad?

Right. You may remember that I thought the buttons on the overalls were unusual, and he thought so too. The ad offered a reward for information about white horsehair buttons, and we got some. After some maneuvering that wouldn't interest you, I went to Mahopac Friday morning do you know where Mahopac is?

Of course.

And called on a woman named Ellen Tenzer, having learned that she made white horsehair buttons. We have now learned more about her, not from her. She made the buttons that are on the baby's overalls. And the baby came from her house. It's a small house, no one lived there but her, except the baby. It was there about three months.

Then she's the mother!

No. For various good reasons, no. I won't. But she knows who the mother is!

Probably she did. At least she knew where she got it and who from. But she won't tell because she's dead. She was Dead?

I'm telling you. After a short talk with her Friday morning I left to get to a phone and send for help, and when I got back to the house her car was gone and so was she. I spent three hours searching the house. I'm reporting only the details that you need to understand the situation. Ellen Tenzer never returned to her house. At six o'clock yesterday morning a cop found a dead woman in a parked car here in Manhattan, Thirty-eighth Street near Third Avenue. She had been strangled with a piece of cord. It was Ellen Tenzer, and it was her car. You would know about that if you read the papers. So she can't tell us anything.

Her eyes were wide. You mean… she was murdered?

Right.

But what That's terrible.