The Mother Hunt Read Online Free Page A

that I had assured Mrs. Valdon that a talk with them would settle it as far as they were concerned, which was a lie. You can’t know what a talk is going to settle until you have had it, even when you do all the talking yourself. We parted friends, more or less.
    There was an elevator, smoother and quieter than the one in Wolfe’s old brownstone on West 35th Street, but it was only one flight up to where Mrs. Valdon had said she would be, and I hoofed it. It was a large room, bigger than our office and front room combined, with nothing modern in it except the carpet and a television cabinet at the far end. Everything else was probably period, but I am not up on periods. The client was on acouch, with a magazine, and nearby was a portable bar that had not been there an hour ago. She had changed again. For her appointment with Wolfe she had worn a tailored suit, tan with brown stripes; on my arrival she had had on a close-fitting gray dress that went with her eyes better than tan; now it was a lower-cut sleeveless number, light blue, apparently silk, though now you never know. She put the magazine down as I approached.
    “All clear,” I told her. “They’re crossed off.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Positive.”
    Her head was tilted back. “It didn’t take you long. How did you do it?”
    “Trade secret. I’m not supposed to tell a client about an operation until I have reported to Mr. Wolfe. But they took it fine. You still have a maid and a cook. If we get any ideas I may phone you in the morning.”
    “I’m going to have a martini. Won’t you? Or what?”
    Having looked at my watch as I left the kitchen, and knowing that Wolfe’s afternoon session with the orchids would keep him up in the plant rooms until six o’clock, and remembering that one of my functions was to understand any woman we were dealing with, and seeing that the gin was Follansbee’s, I thought I might as well be sociable. I offered to make, saying I favored five to one, and she said all right. When I had made and served and sat, on the couch beside her, and we had sampled, she said, “I want to try something. You take a sip of mine and I’ll take a sip of yours. Do you mind?”
    Of course I didn’t, since the idea was to understand her. She held her glass for me to sip, and I held mine for her.
    “Actually,” I said, “this good gin is wasted on me. I just had a glass of milk.”
    She didn’t hear me. She didn’t even know I had spoken. She was looking at me but not seeing me. How was I to understand that? Not wanting to sit and stare at her, I moved my eyes to her shoulder and arm, which weren’t really skinny.
    “I don’t know why I suddenly wanted to do that,” she said. “I haven’t done it since Dick died. I’ve never done it with anybody but him. All of a sudden I knew I had to try it, I don’t know why.”
    It seemed advisable to keep it professional, and the simplest way was to bring Wolfe in. “Mr. Wolfe says,” I told her, “that nobody ever gets to the real why of anything.”
    She smiled. “And upstairs, when you were looking at the baby, I nearly called you Archie. I’m not trying to flirt with you. I don’t know how to flirt. I don’t suppose— You’re not a hypnotist, are you?”
    I sipped the martini. “What the hell,” I said. “Relax. Exchanging sips is an old Persian custom. As for calling me Archie, that’s my name. Don’t call me Svengali. As for flirting, let’s discuss it. Men and women flirt. Horses flirt. Parakeets flirt. Undoubtedly oysters flirt, but they must have some special—”
    I stopped because she was moving. She left the couch, went and put the glass, still half full, on the bar, turned, and said, “Don’t forget the suitcase when you go,” and walked out.
    That took some fancy understanding. I sat and worked on it while I finished the martini, four or five minutes, got up and put my glass on the bar, touching hers to show I understood, which I didn’t, and departed.In the