The Mother Hunt Read Online Free PDF Page B

“and I’d like to show my appreciation. If and when I’m through with the buttons I’ll donate one or more of them to your collection, and I’ll tell you where they came from. I hope.”
    It took me five minutes to get away and out. I didn’t want to be rude. He was probably the only button fiend in America, and I had been lucky enough to hit him before lunch.
    A question about lunch was in my mind as I left the building. It was ten minutes past noon. Did Nathan Hirsh lunch early or late? Since I could walk it in twelve minutes I decided not to take time to phone, and again I was lucky. As I entered the anteroom of the Hirsh Laboratories on the tenth floor of a building on 43rd Street, Hirsh himself entered from within, on his way out, and when I told him I had something from Nero Wolfe that shouldn’t wait he took me in and down the hall to his room. A few years back, the publicity from his testimony in court on one of Wolfe’s cases hadn’t hurt his business a bit.
    I produced the overalls and said, “One simple little question. What are the buttons made of?”
    He went to his desk for a glass and inspected one of them. “Not so simple,” he said, “with all the stuff thereis around. It looks like horsehair, but to be sure we’d have to rip into one of them.”
    “How long will it take?”
    “Anywhere from twenty minutes to five hours.”
    I told him the sooner the better and he knew the phone number.
    I got to 35th Street and into the house just as Wolfe was crossing the hall to the dining room. Since mention of business is not permitted at table, he stopped at the sill and asked, “Well?”
    “Well so far,” I told him. “In fact perfect. A man who knows as much about buttons as you do about food has never seen anything like them. Someone spent hours on each one of them. The material had him stumped, so I took them to Hirsh. He’ll report this afternoon.”
    He said satisfactory and proceeded to the table, and I went to wash my hands before joining him.
    With all the trick gadgets they had hatched, there may be one you could attach to Wolfe and me and find out if he riles me more than I do him or vice versa, but we haven’t got one, so I don’t know. I admit that there are times when there is nothing to do but wait, but the point is how you wait. In the office that day after lunch I riled Wolfe by glancing at my watch every few minutes while he was dictating a long letter to an orchid- hunter in Honduras, and then he riled me by settling back, completely at ease, with
Travels with Charley
by John Steinbeck. Damn it, he had a job. If he had to read a book, why not get
His Own Image
by Richard Valdon from the shelf? There might be some kind of a hint in it somewhere.
    It was 3:43 when the phone call came from Hirsh. I had my notebook ready in case it was complicated with long scientific words, but it took only common ones andnot many of them. I hung up and swiveled, and Wolfe actually moved his eyes from the book.
    “Horsehair,” I said. “No dye or lacquer or anything, just plain unadulterated white horsehair.”
    He grunted. “Is there time for an advertisement in tomorrow’s papers?
Times
and
News
and
Gazette
”
    “
Times
and
News
, maybe.
Gazette
, yes.”
    “Your notebook. Two columns wide, four inches or so. At the top, one hundred dollars, in figures, thirty- point or larger, boldface. Below in fourteen-point, also boldface: will be paid in cash for information regarding the maker, comma, or if not the maker the source, comma, of buttons made by hand of white horsehair. Period. Buttons of any size or shape suitable for use on clothing. Period. I want to know, comma, not who might make such buttons, comma, but who has actually done so. Period. The hundred dollars will be paid only to the person who first supplies the information. At the bottom, my name, address, and telephone number.”
    “Boldface?”
    “No. Standard weight, condensed.”
    As I turned and reached for the typewriter I