the Manhattan Yellow Pages, formerly the Red Book. I found what I was after, under Children's & Infants' Wear Whol. & Mfrs., which filled four and a half pages. I started a hand for the phone, but drew it back. He might spot it the second time around and should have the chance without a tip from me. I got up and went to the hall and up two flights to my room, and at the phone on my bedstand I dialed the number, but got what was to be expected at that time of day, no answer. I tried another number, a woman I knew who was the mother of three young ones, and got her, but she was no help; she said she would have to see the overalls. So it would have to wait until morning. I went back down to the office. Wolfe had turned his chair and was holding the overalls up to get the full light, and in his other hand was his biggest magnifying glass. He was examining a button. As I crossed to him I asked, Find something?
He swiveled and put the glass down. Possibly. The buttons on this garment. Four of them.
What about them?
They seem inappropriate. Such garments must be made by the million, including the buttons. But these buttons were surely not mass-produced. The material looks like horsehair, white horsehair, though I presume it could be one of the synthetic fibers. But there is considerable variation in size and shape. They couldn't possibly have been made in large quantities by a machine.
I sat. That's very interesting. Congratulations.
I suggest you examine them.
I already have, not with a glass. Of course you saw that the brand label of the overalls is Cherub. That brand is made by Resnick and Spiro, Three-forty West Thirty-seventh Street. I just dialed their number but got no answer, since it's after six. A five-minute walk from here in the morning, unless you want me to find Mr. Resnick or Mr. Spiro now.
The morning will do. Should I apologize for pulling a feather from your cap?
We'll split it, I said and rose to get the overalls and the glass.
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 fresh-water 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.
