The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

Monday To Archie Goodwin Call me Lucy. Lucy Valdon Picture it. In Wolfe's office, in his presence, his client hands me a note which she must know I would prefer not to show him. It took handling. I raised one brow high, which always annoys him because he can't do it, put the paper in my pocket, and cocked my head at her, back in the red leather chair. Not if you're no longer a client, I told her.

But I am. I hate it, the way it is now, but of course I am.

I looked at Wolfe and met his eye. Mrs. Valdon prefers us to the cops. Good for our self-esteem.

She spoke, to him. It was the way you said it, tracking a murderer on my behalf. Do you mean must you do that first?

No, he snapped. She was not only a woman, she was a creature who had passed me a private note before his eyes. That will be incidental but it must be done. So I proceed?

Yes.

Then you'll have to help. For the present we leave Ellen Tenzer to the police and start at the other end the birth of the baby, and its conception. On Tuesday you gave Mr. Goodwin, with reluctance, the names of four women. We must have more. We want the names of all women who were or might have been in contact with your husband, however briefly, in the spring of last year. All of them.

But that's impossible. I couldn't name all of them. She gestured with the wedding-ring hand. My husband met hundreds of people that I didn't meet for instance, I almost never went to literary cocktail parties with him. They bored me, and anyway he had a better time if I wasn't there.

Wolfe grunted. No doubt. You will give Mr. Goodwin all the names you do know, reserving none. Their owners will not suffer any annoyance, since inquiry about them can be restricted to one point, their whereabouts at the time the baby was born. It is an advantage that a woman can't carry a baby, and bear it, without interruption of her routine. Very few of them will have to be approached directly, possibly none. You will omit no one.

All right. I won't.

You also gave Mr. Goodwin some names of men, and we shall now make use of them, at least some, but for that we need your help. We can start with only a few of them, say three or four, and go on to others if we must. I shall want to see them, and they will come here, since I never leave my house on business. I need not see them separately; in a group will do. You will arrange that, after they have been selected.

You mean I'll ask them to come to see you?

Yes.

But what will I tell them?