The Mother Hunt

Chapter 3

The Manhattan garment district has got everything from thirty-story marble palaces to holes in the wall. It is no place to go for a stroll, because you are off the sidewalk most of the time, detouring around trucks that are backed in or headed in, but it’s fine as a training ground for jumping and dodging, and as a refresher for reflexes. If you can come out whole from an hour in those cross streets in the Thirties you’ll be safe anywhere in the world. So I felt I had accomplished something when I walked into the entrance of 340 West 37th Street at ten o’clock Wednesday morning.

But then it got complicated. I tried my best to explain, first to a young woman at a window on the first floor and then to a man in an anteroom on the fourth floor, but they simply couldn’t understand, if I didn’t want to sell something or buy something, and wasn’t looking for a job, why I was in the building. I finally made it in to a man at a desk who had a broader outlook. Naturally he couldn’t see why the question, had those buttons been put on those overalls by Resnick & Spiro? was important enough for me to fight my way through 37th Street to get it answered, but he was too busy to go into that. It was merely that he realized that a man who had gone to so much trouble to ask him a question deserved an answer. After one quick look he said that Resnick & Spiro had never used such a button and never would. They used plastic almost exclusively. He handed me the overalls.

“Many thanks,” I said. “Why I’m bothering about this wouldn’t interest you, but it’s not just curiosity. Do you know of any firm that makes buttons like these?”

He shook his head. “No idea.”

“Have you ever seen any buttons like them?”

“Never.”

“Could you tell me what they’re made of?”

He leaned over for another look. “My guess would be some synthetic, but God only knows.” Suddenly he smiled, wide, human, and humorous. “Or maybe the Emperor of Japan does. Try him. Pretty soon everything will come from there.”

I thanked him, stuffed the overalls back in the paper bag, and departed. Having suspected that that would be all I would get from Resnick & Spiro, I had spent an hour Tuesday evening with the Yellow Pages, the four and a half pages of listings under Buttons, and in my pocket notebook were the names of fifteen firms within five blocks of where I was. One was only fifty paces down the street, and I headed for it.

Ninety minutes later, after calling on four different firms, I knew a little more about buttons in general, but still nothing specific about the ones on the overalls. One of the firms made covered buttons, another polyester and acrylic, another freshwater and ocean pearl, another gold and silver plated. Nobody had any notion who had made mine or what they were made of, and nobody cared. It was looking as if all I would get was a collection of negatives, which was all right in a way, as I walked down the hall on the sixth floor of a building on 39th Street to a door that was lettered: EXCLUSIVE NOVELTY BUTTON co.

That was where I would have gone first if I had known. A woman who knew exactly what I was after before I said ten words took me to an inner room which had no racks on the walls, not a button in sight. A little old geezer with big ears and a mop of white hair, sitting at a table looking at a portfolio, didn’t look up until I was beside him and had the overalls out of the bag, and when his eyes moved they lit on one of the buttons. He jerked the overalls out of my hands, squinted at each of the buttons in turn, the two on the bib and the two at the sides, raised his eyes to me, and demanded, “Where did these buttons come from?”

I laughed. It may not strike you as funny, but that was the question I had been working on for nearly two hours. There was a chair there and I took it. “I’m laughing at me, not you,” I told him. “A definite answer to that question is worth a hundred dollars, cash, to anyone who has it. I won’t explain why, it’s too complicated. Can you answer it?”

“Are you a button man?”

“No.”

“Who are you?”

I got my case from my pocket and produced a card. He took it and squinted at it. “You’re a private detective?”

“Right.”

“Where did you get these buttons?”

“Listen,” I said, “I only want to—”

“You listen, young man. I know more about buttons than any man in the world. I get them from everywhere. I have the finest and most comprehensive collection in existence. Also I sell them. I have sold a thousand dozen buttons in one lot for forty cents a dozen, and I have sold four buttons for six thousand dollars. I have sold buttons to the Duchess of Windsor, to Queen Elizabeth, and to Miss Bette Davis. I have given buttons to nine different museums in five countries. I know absolutely that no man could show me a button that I couldn’t place, but you have done so. Where did you get them?”

“All right,” I said, “I listened, now it’s your turn. I know less about buttons than any man in the world. In connection with a case I’m working on I need to know where those overalls came from. Since they’re a standard product, sold everywhere, they can’t be traced, but it seemed to me that the buttons are not standard and might be traced. That’s what I’m trying to find out, where they came from. Apparently you can’t tell me.”

“I admit I can’t!”

“Okay. Obviously you know about unusual buttons, rare buttons. Do you also know about ordinary commercial buttons?”

“I know about all buttons!”

“And you have never seen buttons like these or heard of any?”

“No! I admit it!”

“Fine.” I reached to a pocket for my wallet, extracted five twenties, and put them on the table. “You haven’t answered my question, but you’ve been a big help. Is there any chance that those buttons were made by a machine?”

“No. Impossible. Someone spent hours on each one. It’s a technique I have never seen.”

“What are they made of? What material?”

“That may be difficult. It may take some time. I may be able to tell you by tomorrow afternoon.”

“I can’t wait that long.” I reached for the overalls, but he didn’t turn loose.

“I’d rather have the buttons than the money,” he said. “Or just one of them. You don’t need all four.”

I had to yank to get the overalls. With them back in the bag, I stood. “You’ve saved me a lot of time and trouble,” I told him, “and I’d like to show my appreciation. If and when I’m through with the buttons I’ll donate one or more of them to your collection, and I’ll tell you where they came from. I hope.”

It took me five minutes to get away and out. I didn’t want to be rude. He was probably the only button fiend in America, and I had been lucky enough to hit him before lunch.

A question about lunch was in my mind as I left the building. It was ten minutes past noon. Did Nathan Hirsh lunch early or late? Since I could walk it in twelve minutes I decided not to take time to phone, and again I was lucky. As I entered the anteroom of the Hirsh Laboratories on the tenth floor of a building on 43rd Street, Hirsh himself entered from within, on his way out, and when I told him I had something from Nero Wolfe that shouldn’t wait he took me in and down the hall to his room. A few years back, the publicity from his testimony in court on one of Wolfe’s cases hadn’t hurt his business a bit.

I produced the overalls and said, “One simple little question. What are the buttons made of?”

He went to his desk for a glass and inspected one of them. “Not so simple,” he said, “with all the stuff there is around. It looks like horsehair, but to be sure we’d have to rip into one of them.”

“How long will it take?”

“Anywhere from twenty minutes to five hours.”

I told him the sooner the better and he knew the phone number.

I got to 35th Street and into the house just as Wolfe was crossing the hall to the dining room. Since mention of business is not permitted at table, he stopped at the sill and asked, “Well?”

“Well so far,” I told him. “In fact perfect. A man who knows as much about buttons as you do about food has never seen anything like them. Someone spent hours on each one of them. The material had him stumped, so I took them to Hirsh. He’ll report this afternoon.”

He said satisfactory and proceeded to the table, and I went to wash my hands before joining him.

With all the trick gadgets they had hatched, there may be one you could attach to Wolfe and me and find out if he riles me more than I do him or vice versa, but we haven’t got one, so I don’t know. I admit that there are times when there is nothing to do but wait, but the point is how you wait. In the office that day after lunch I riled Wolfe by glancing at my watch every few minutes while he was dictating a long letter to an orchid- hunter in Honduras, and then he riled me by settling back, completely at ease, with Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. Damn it, he had a job. If he had to read a book, why not get His Own Image by Richard Valdon from the shelf? There might be some kind of a hint in it somewhere.

It was 3:43 when the phone call came from Hirsh. I had my notebook ready in case it was complicated with long scientific words, but it took only common ones and not many of them. I hung up and swiveled, and Wolfe actually moved his eyes from the book.

“Horsehair,” I said. “No dye or lacquer or anything, just plain unadulterated white horsehair.”

He grunted. “Is there time for an advertisement in tomorrow’s papers? Times and News and Gazette”

“Times and News, maybe. Gazette, yes.”

“Your notebook. Two columns wide, four inches or so. At the top, one hundred dollars, in figures, thirty- point or larger, boldface. Below in fourteen-point, also boldface: will be paid in cash for information regarding the maker, comma, or if not the maker the source, comma, of buttons made by hand of white horsehair. Period. Buttons of any size or shape suitable for use on clothing. Period. I want to know, comma, not who might make such buttons, comma, but who has actually done so. Period. The hundred dollars will be paid only to the person who first supplies the information. At the bottom, my name, address, and telephone number.”

“Boldface?”

“No. Standard weight, condensed.”

As I turned and reached for the typewriter I would have given a dozen polyester buttons to know whether he had planned it while he was dictating letters or while he was reading Travels with Charley.