The Mother Hunt Read Free

hard,maybe the hardest, that he had wanted me to have a baby and I had put it off. Now there is one, and I have it.” She pointed at the slip of paper on Wolfe’s desk. “I think what that says is right. I think a boy should live in his father’s house, and certainly he should have his father’s name. But the problem is, was Richard Valdon this baby’s father?” She gestured. “There!”
    Wolfe snorted. “Pfui. Never to be solved and you know it. Homer said it: no man can know who was his father. Shakespeare said it: it is a wise father that knows his own child. I can’t help you, madam. No one can.”
    She smiled. “I can say ‘pfui’ too. Of course you can help me. I know you can’t prove that Dick was the father, but you can find out who put the baby in my vestibule, and who its mother is, and then we can— Here.” She got her bag and opened it. “I have figured it out.” She produced another slip of paper, not the same size or kind. “The doctor said the baby was four months old, that evening, the day it came, May twentieth, so I used that date.” She looked at the paper. “So it was born about January twentieth, so it was conceived about April twentieth, last year. When you know who the mother is you can find out about her and Dick, how sure it is, or anyway how likely it is, that they were together then. That won’t prove this baby is his son, but it can come close—close enough. And besides, if it’s just a trick, if Dick wasn’t the father and couldn’t have been, and you find that out, that would help me, wouldn’t it? So the first thing is to find out who left it in my vestibule, and then who the mother is. Then I may want to ask her some questions myself, but I don’t— Well, we’ll see.”
    Wolfe was leaning back, scowling at her. It was beginningto look like a job he could refuse only with a phony excuse, and he hated to work, and the bank balance was fairly healthy. “You’re assuming too much,” he objected. “I’m not a magician, Mrs. Valdon.”
    “Of course not. But you’re the best detective in the world, aren’t you?”
    “Probably not. The best detective in the world may be some rude tribesman with a limited vocabulary. You say your lawyer knows about the baby. Does he know you are consulting me?”
    “Yes, but he doesn’t approve. He thinks it’s foolish to want to keep it. There are laws about it and he has attended to that so I can keep it temporarily, because I insisted, but he’s against my trying to find the mother. But that’s
my
business. His business is just the law.”
    Though she didn’t know it, that was a hit. Wolfe couldn’t have described his own attitude toward lawyers any better himself, with all his vocabulary. He let up a little on the scowl. “I doubt,” he said, “if you have sufficiently considered the difficulties. The inquiry would almost certainly be prolonged, laborious, and expensive, and possibly fruitless.”
    “Yes. I said, I know you’re not a magician.”
    “Can you afford it? My fees are not modest.”
    “I know that. I have an inheritance from my grandmother, and the income from my husband’s books. I own my house.” She smiled. “If you want to see a copy of my income-tax report my lawyer has it.”
    “Not necessary. It could take a week, a month, a year.”
    “All right. My lawyer says keeping the baby on a temporary basis can be extended a month at a time.”
    Wolfe picked up the slip of paper, glared at it, put itdown, and moved the glare to her. “You should have come to me sooner, if at all.”
    “I didn’t decide to until yesterday, definitely.”
    “Possibly too late. Sixteen days have passed since Sunday, May twentieth. Was it daylight when the phone call came?”
    “No, in the evening. A little after ten o’clock.”
    “Male voice or female?”
    “I’m not sure. I think it was a man trying to sound like a woman or a woman trying to sound like a man, I don’t know which.”
    “If you had to