The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

To hell with privilege, Bingham said. He flashed the big smile at Haft. I wouldn't say overcautious, I'd say cagey. You were born scared, Julian.

You have to make allowances. Buyers and sellers. To a literary agent a publisher is a customer, but to a television producer he's just another peddler. I have before me a copy of the expense account of the case in the files under V for Valdon. Its second stage, working on the names on the lists furnished by Willis Krug, Leo Bingham, Julian Haft, and the client (we never got one from Manuel Upton) lasted twenty-six days, from June 12 to July 7, and cost the client $8,674.30, not including any part of my salary, which is covered by the fee and is never itemized.

Lucy's list had 47 names, Haft's 81, Bingham's 106, and Krug's 55. One of Upton's daughters, married, was on Haft's and Bingham's lists, but not on Krug's. Haft's married daughter was on Lucy's list but none of the others. A certain friend of Bingham's was on nobody's list; Orrie picked up her name along the way. Of course there were many duplications on the four lists, but there were 148 different names, as follows:

Section Number Status A 57 Single B 52 Married, living with husbands C 18 Divorced D 11 Widowed E 10 Married, separated. Another statistic, those in each section who had babies between December 1, 1961, and February 28, 1962:

Section Number

A 1

B 2

C 0

D 1

E 0.

The one in Section A (single) who had a baby worked in Krug's office, but everybody knew about it and the baby had been legally given (or sold) to an adoption service. It took Saul nearly two weeks to cinch it that the baby had not got sidetracked somehow and ended up in Mrs. Valdon's vestibule. The one in Section D (widowed) may have been a problem for her friends and enemies, but not for us. Her husband had died two years before the baby came, but she was keeping it and didn't care who knew it. I saw it.

The two babies in Section B (married, living with husbands) were really three; one was twins. They were all living with their parents. Fred saw the twins and Orrie saw the single.

Besides the mothers, two girls in Section A, two women in B, two in C, and one in D, had been away from their homes and/or jobs for a part or all of the period. Orrie had to take a plane to France, the Riviera, to settle one of them, and Fred had to fly to Arizona to settle another one.