The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

The plant rooms, he said, and kept going, and the sound came of the elevator. He was off his hinges. I went down to the kitchen and got my second cup of coffee. When Wolfe entered the office at eleven o'clock, assuming that he followed his schedule, he found on his desk a note which read as follows: 9:22 a.m. I am leaving for the beach, having phoned Mrs. Valdon that I'm coming. If she hears a news broadcast it might hit her as hard as it did you and she might do something undesirable. I'm assuming that we intend to hold on and will tell her so. I should be back by lunchtime. The phone number of the cottage is on the card. AG

Actually the phone number was useless if he had something urgent to say, because at the moment he was reading the note I was in the Heron with the client beside me, parked under a tree at the roadside. There were two weekend guests at the cottage, in addition to the maid and cook and nurse, not a good setting for a strictly private conversation, and I had got Lucy in the car and away before telling her the news. Now, parked, I could give her my whole attention, and she needed it. She had a grip on my arm and her teeth were clamped on her lip.

Okay, I said, it's tough. It's damn tough. All the ifs. If you hadn't hired Nero Wolfe I wouldn't have found Ellen Tenzer, and if I hadn't found her she wouldn't have been murdered. If you hadn't helped with that article in the paper and the baby-carriage act we wouldn't have found Carol Mardus, and if we hadn't found her she wouldn't have been murdered. But you have simply Do you know that, Archie?

No. I only know what Saul told me and what I heard on the radio on the way here. Just what I told you. But it's a million to one that that's why she got it. You have simply got to ignore the ifs. If you want to turn loose because of the risks you'll be taking if you don't, that might be sensible I don't want to turn loose.

I guess I gawked. You don't?

No. I want Nero Wolfe to find him. To get him. The man who the murderer he killed both of them, didn't he?

Yes.

He put the baby in my vestibule, didn't he?

Yes. Almost certainly.

Then I want Nero Wolfe to get him.

The cops would get him sooner or later.

I want Nero Wolfe to get him.

I thought to myself, you never know. I had wasted my breath on the ifs; they were no longer bothering her. Maybe it was merely a matter of quantity; she could feel responsible for one murder but not for two. Anyhow, my errand had turned out to be quite different from what I had expected.