baby out to give the nurse a break, and also with the maid and cook. I don't know how she explained the new fancy carriage, which was delivered before we arrived. By the time the Gazette personnel came, shortly before three a lady journalist and a photographer with a helper Sally was in her uniform, the nurse had gone for the afternoon, the carriage was outfitted, and Lucy needed a drink.
Newspaper photographers work fast, and he was through in the nursery, with Lucy and Sally, by half past three. I tagged along to Washington Square, to see how Sally handled a baby carriage. I hadn't made a study of that, but I thought she did all right, dragging her feet a little and letting her shoulders sag. When I got back to the house the lady journalist was still there with Lucy, but she soon went, and I made martinis.
THURSDAY, FRIDAY, and SATURDAY. To the Gazette first thing Thursday morning to look it over. The picture they had picked of Sally and the carriage, with baby, in the square, was perfect. The two of the nursery one of Lucy with the baby in her arms, and one of Sally brushing the baby's hair with Lucy watching were good enough shots, but Lucy's expression was not exactly dosing. She looked like a woman trying to smile in spite of a toothache. Lon said the others had been even worse. I saw no point in using the one of the front of the house, but made no objection. Lon okayed the four changes I made in the text.
Sally wheeled the baby to Washington Square for its outing twice a day, all three days, but her camera, instruction and practice took place in the house, in the big room on the second floor, with Al Posner and Lucy and me. Lucy was needed because she was seven inches shorter than me and all levels had to be covered. Two of the cameras were concealed in ornaments at the ends of the hand bar, and one was in a narrow box at the front of the carriage with a rattle and other trinkets. That one was worked by remote control. During those three days I had my picture taken at least a thousand times. The Thursday ones were mostly off focus, the Friday ones were better, and by Saturday morning Sally had it down pat. Anyone looking at the baby from a distance of six yards or less was going to get shot, and shot good.
Saul and Fred and Orrie were in the old brownstone Saturday evening until after midnight. They spent the first half hour in the office getting briefed (Saul was to direct their deployment in the square in the morning), and the next three hours in the dining room with me, with refreshments, playing pinochle.
SUNDAY MORNING. To the kitchen for breakfast at nine thirty. At ten o'clock, the moment when Sally would be entering the square pushing the carriage, I was starting on my third sour-milk griddle cake with my right hand, while my left hand held the Gazette open to the full page spread entitled WOMEN LOVE BABIES. It's a matter of taste. In my opinion, WOMEN LIKE BABIES would have been more subtle.
When Lon Cohen said there would be a mob he had overrated something, perhaps the punch of the Gazette. The Sunday crop was twenty-six pictures, seven in the morning and nineteen in the afternoon. I was at the house when Sally returned with the carriage and its cargo a little after five, and helped her remove the films. There had been only two exposures with the camera in the box at the front of the carriage, but we rolled it through and took it. The way we were spending the client's dough, another couple of bucks was nothing.
Twenty-four hours later we still didn't know whether we had a picture of the mother or not. All we knew was that Lucy didn't recognize any of the twenty-six as someone she could name, and Julian Haft, Leo Bingham, and Willis Krug said they didn't. Wolfe had spoken to each of them on the phone in the morning, asking them to look at some pictures without explaining how we had got them, and when I got the prints from A1 Posner around noon, six of each, I had sent packets by messenger. By five o'clock they had all phoned. Negative from all three. I took a set to Lucy and she gave them a good look. There was one she wasn't sure about, but the woman she thought it resembled had been on her list and had been eliminated by Saul. She invited me to stay until Sally took the baby on the afternoon outing and returned, and get the day's crop of films, but I wanted to be at 35th Street to get the reports from Krug and Haft and Bingham.
At twenty minutes past four Haft and Bingham had called but not Krug, and when the phone rang I supposed it would be him. But after the first word of the routine I was interrupted.
Saul, Archie. A booth on University Place.
And?
Maybe a break. Something we thought might happen. At four-oh-four a taxi stopped on the north side of the square, double-parked, and a woman got out. She crossed the street and looked around. The taxi stayed put. She spotted the carriage halfway across the square and headed for it and went right up to it. She didn't bend over or put a hand on the carriage or in it, but she spoke to Sally. She was there looking less than a minute forty seconds. Orrie's car was around the corner, but with her hack waiting there was no point to that. She went back to it and it rolled. A Paragon. Do I stick here until five o'clock?
You do not. You find that hackie.
Do you want the number?
Sure. You might get run over or something.
He gave me the taxi's registration number, and I jotted it down and told him I would be out from 4:45 to 6:00, getting the films from Sally and taking them to Al Posner. When I hung up I sat for a minute, breathing, enjoying it more than I had for weeks. Then I buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone.
Yes?
Congratulations. Your theory that a woman who had a baby six months ago might like to see what it looks like was sound. The idea of having both the men and the cameras was also sound. I'm leaving in ten minutes and thought you might like to know. Two to one we have hooked the mother. Make it three to one.
Please report.
Glad to. I told him. So if she's the mother we've got her. Finding out where the taxi took her may not help much, but of course Saul will know which picture. Congratulations.
Satisfactory, he said, and hung up.
When Krug phoned a few minutes later, as I was getting up to go, to say that he didn't recognize any of the pictures I had sent him, he was probably surprised that I was so cheerful about it.
Monday's crop was more than twice as big as Sunday's, and Sally had changed the films at noon, so there were six rolls. Fifty-four exposures altogether, and one of them was worth its weight in rubies. I got them to 47th Street before six o'clock, but Al couldn't run them through that evening: two of his men were on vacation and one was home sick, and he was plugged up. I persuaded him to let me in at eight in the morning and took them home with me. While we were at the dinner table Saul phoned. The hackie's name was Sidney Bergman and he had welcomed a finif. He had picked up the fare on Madison Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets, taken her straight to the square, and back to 52nd and Park. He had never seen her before and knew nothing about her. I told Saul to keep an eye out for her at the square in the morning, she might come back for another look, and then come to the
