The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

Of course it was Ellen Tenzer that complicated it. If there had been nothing to it but the mother hunt, I could simply have gone to Carol Mardus, showed her the picture, and asked her how and where she had spent last winter; and if she had stalled I would have told her that it would be a cinch to find out if she had been carrying and having a baby, and she might as well save me time and trouble. But almost certainly, if she was the mother, she had either killed Ellen Tenzer or knew or suspected who had, so it wasn't so simple.

I ignored Wolfe's instruction to keep my eye on the client, women being the one thing he admits I know more about than he does, and took over for Saul at Washington Square. When I got to the office late Tuesday afternoon, after taking the day's crop of films to Al Posner, there had been developments. Willis Krug and Julian Haft and Leo Bingham had all phoned to say that they recognized none of the faces on the fifty-four prints, which was surprising in Krug's case, since he had been married to one of them. And Saul had phoned twice, first just before four o'clock, to get Wolfe before he went up to the plant rooms, to report that Carol Mardus had been absent from her job at Distaff for nearly six months, from Labor Day until the last of February, and again shortly after six to report that she had also been absent from her home, an apartment on East 83rd Street, and the apartment had not been sublet. That made it fifty to one. Wolfe enjoyed his dinner more than he had for weeks, and so did I.

A little before eleven the doorbell rang, and it was Saul. He preceded me to the office, sat in the red leather chair, and said, I just did something I'm glad my father will never know about. I swore to something with my hand on the New Testament. The Bible was upside down.

Wolfe grunted. Was it inescapable?

Yes. This person is a little twisted. He or she was taking fifty bucks to tell me something he or she had promised someone to keep secret, but first I had to swear on the Bible I would never tell who told me. That wasn't sensible. What if my price for telling was merely sixty bucks? Anyway I got the address. He got his notebook from a pocket and flipped it open. Care of Mrs. Arthur P. Jordan, 1424 Sunset Drive, Lido Shores, Sarasota, Florida. Things sent there to Carol Mardus last fall reached her. He or she didn't swear to it on the Bible, but I bought it and paid for it.

Satisfactory, Wolfe said. Perhaps.