The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

Haft hadn't decided how to handle it. He must have been working at it ever since he had seen Anne Tenzer enter with Wolfe, but he had taken his cheaters off three times, and put them back on again three times, and if he couldn't decide what to do with his hands of course he hadn't decided what to do with his tongue. So he blurted. No, I don't, he blurted.

You don't recall those occasions?

No.

Do you contradict her? Do you say she lies?

He licked his lips. I don't say she lies. I say she's mistaken. She must be confusing me with someone else.

That's ill-advised. More, it's puerile. You should either acknowledge the facts she reports and challenge the implication, or call her a liar. But of course you're a dunce. You foolishly called attention to yourself that day in my office, back in June, when I told you and the others about the anonymous letters. You resisted my request for lists of names and were reluctant to give me one, but you asked to see the envelopes, saying that one of you might get a hint from the handwriting. That invited an assumption. Not the assumption that you had ground for a suspicion regarding the letters, for there were none, but that you knew there were none; and if you knew there had been no anonymous letters you Cramer broke in. You're saying there were no anonymous letters?

I am.

That was all phony?

It was a maneuver. I told you gaps could be filled in later. Wolfe went back to Haft. If you knew there had been no anonymous letters, and didn't say so, you probably knew what Mrs. Valdon had hired me to do. As I say, you foolishly called attention to yourself, but you incurred no real hazard since you had removed your link to peril by killing Ellen Tenzer. It would have. That's a lie. I call you a liar.