The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

More blah. I wouldn't hake supposed you'd try that old worn-out trick she came to see you, and she told you something, and she's dead. I suppose she told you I had threatened to kill her. Something like that?

No. Wolfe shifted in the chair. The back was too high for him to lean back properly as he did at home. If we're to talk to any purpose I'll have to expound it. I engaged with Mrs. Valdon to find the mother of a baby that had been left in the vestibule of her house. I did so, at great expense and after much floundering about. It was Carol Mardus. She came to me on Friday to learn how much I knew, and I obliged her. To dispose of the baby when she returned from Florida with it, she had enlisted the help of a friend, a man. Call him X.

Make it Z. X has been overworked.

Wolfe ignored it. There were four men whom Miss Mardus might have gone to for help in such a matter: Willis Krug, Julian Haft, Leo Bingham, and yourself. Her choice, X, was not a happy one. The problem of the immediate disposal of the infant was well solved; it was placed in the care of one Ellen Tenzer, a retired nurse who lived alone in a house she owned in Mahopac. But Miss Mardus had told X that Richard Valdon was the father of the baby, and that was a mistake. For two reasons. There were two facts about X that Miss Mardus had not sufficiently considered: one, that he had himself been denied, and was still denied, the pleasure of her intimate favors, and resented it; and two, that he had the soul of an imp. Imp defined as a little malignant spirit. Being an editor, you know words.

Upton didn't say.

So when the baby was four months old, and the expense of its upkeep made it desirable to dispose of it differently and permanently, X indulged himself in what he no doubt regarded as merely a prank. Choosing a Sunday in May because he knew Mrs. Valdon would be at home alone that evening, he got the baby from Ellen Tenzer, pinned to its blanket a slip of paper on which he had printed a message, deposited it in the vestibule of Mrs. Valdon's house, and telephoned her that there was something in her vestibule. The message is in my office safe. It said Your memory is more exact than mine, Archie.

I was in the chair Upton had passed by. Quote, I said. Mrs. Richard Valdon this baby is for you because a boy should live in his father's house.' End quote.

Repeat it, Upton commanded me.

I repeated it.