The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

I don't know. He glowered at me. Confound it, I am not lightning. I'll consider it. I shall probably want to see Mr. Bingham, Mr. Haft, and Mr. Krug, to ask why they failed to recognize her picture, though that may be inconsequential. I'll consider it. Will she approach Mrs. Valdon? Is she on her way there now?

No. Any odds you name.

Is Mrs. Valdon in danger? Or the baby?

I took five seconds and shook my head. I can't see it.

Nor can I. Report to her and tell her to return to the beach. Escort her. Return this evening. If you're anchored here you'll badger me and we'll squabble. Tomorrow we'll do something, I don't know what.

I objected. Mrs. Valdon will want her own car at the beach. After reporting to her I'll have the afternoon and evening for checking on Carol Mardus for May twentieth.

No! He slapped the desk. A jackass could do that. Have I no imagination? No wit? Am I a dolt?

I stood. Don't ask me if I'll answer. I might. Tell Fritz to save some lobster for me for when I come home tonight. The food at the beach is apt to be spotty. I went, first upstairs for a clean shirt.

So five hours later I was stretched out on the sand at the edge of the Atlantic. If I had extended an arm my fingers would have touched the client. Her reaction to the report had been in the groove for a woman. She had wanted to know what Carol Mardus had said, every word, and also how she had looked and how she had been dressed. There was an Implication that the way she had been dressed had a definite bearing on the question, was Richard Valdon the father of the baby? but of course I let that slide. No man with any sense assumes that a woman's words mean to her exactly what they mean to him.

Naturally she wanted to know what we were going to do now. I told her if I knew the answer to that I wouldn't be there with her, I would be somewhere else, doing it. The difficulty, I said, is that Mr. Wolfe is a genius. A genius can't be bothered with just plain work like having someone tailed. He has to do stunts. He has to take a short cut. Anybody can get a rabbit out of a hat, so he has to get a hat out of a rabbit. This evening he will be sitting in the office, leaning back with his eyes closed, working his lips, pushing them out and pulling them in, out and in. That's probably how Newton discovered the law of gravitation, leaning back with his ayes closed and working his lips.

He did not. It was an apple falling.

Sure. His eyes were closed and it hit him on the nose.