And Be a Villain (4 page)

When it was over and I had turned the radio off Wolfe muttered:

“That’s an extremely dangerous woman.”

I would have been more impressed if I hadn’t known so well his conviction that all women alive are either extremely dangerous or extremely dumb. So I merely said:

“If you mean she’s damn clever I agree. She’s awful good.”

He shook his head. “I mean the purpose she allows her cleverness to serve. That unspeakable prepared biscuit flour! Fritz and I have tried it. Those things she calls Sweeties! Pfui! And that salad dressing abomination—we have tried that too, in an emergency. What they do to stomachs heaven knows, but that woman is ingeniously and deliberately conspiring in the corruption of millions of palates. She should be stopped!”

“Okay, stop her. Pin a murder on her. Though I must admit, having seen—”

The phone rang. It was Mr. Beech of FBC, wanting to know if we had made any promises to Tully Strong or to anyone else connected with any of the sponsors, and if so whom and what? When he had been attended to I remarked to Wolfe:

“I think it would be a good plan to line up Saul and Orrie and Fred—”

The phone rang. It was a man who gave his name as Owen, saying he was in charge of public relations for the Hi-Spot Company, asking if he could come down to West Thirty-fifth Street on the run for a talk with Nero Wolfe. I stalled him with some difficulty and hung up. Wolfe observed, removing the cap from a bottle of beer which Fritz had brought:

“I must first find out what’s going on. If it appears that the police are as stumped as—”

The phone rang. It was Nathan Traub, the agency man, wanting to know everything.

Up till lunch, and during lunch, and after lunch, the phone rang. They were having one hell of a time trying to get it decided how they would split the honor. Wolfe began to get really irritated and so did I. His afternoon hours upstairs with the plants are from four to six, and it was just as he was leaving the office, headed for his elevator in the hall, that word came that a big conference was on in Beech’s office in the FBC building on Forty-sixth Street.

At that, when they once got together apparently they dealt the cards and played the hands without any more horsing around, for it was still short of five o’clock when the phone rang once more. I answered it and heard a voice I had heard before that day:

“Mr. Goodwin? This is Deborah Koppel. It’s all arranged.”

“Good. How?”

“I’m talking on behalf of Miss Fraser. They thought you should be told by her, through me, since you first made the suggestion to her and therefore you would want to know that the arrangement is satisfactory to her. An FBC lawyer is drafting an agreement to be signed by Mr. Wolfe and the other parties.”

“Mr. Wolfe hates to sign anything written by a lawyer. Ten to one he won’t sign it. He’ll insist on dictating it to me, so you might as well give me the details.”

She objected. “Then someone else may refuse to sign it.”

“Not a chance,” I assured her. “The people who have been phoning here all day would sign anything. What’s the arrangement?”

“Well, just as you suggested. As you proposed it to Miss Fraser. No one objected to that. What they’ve been discussing was how to divide it up, and this is what they’ve agreed on …”

As she told it to me I scribbled it in my notebook, and this is how it looked:

I called it back to check and then stated, “It suits us if it suits Miss Fraser. Is she satisfied?”

“She agrees to it,” Deborah said. “She would have preferred to do it alone, all herself, but under the circumstances that wasn’t possible. Yes, she’s satisfied.”

“Okay. Mr. Wolfe will dictate it, probably in the form of a letter, with copies for all. But that’s just a formality and he wants to get started. All we know is what we’ve read in the papers. According to them there are eight people that the police regard as—uh, possibilities. Their names—”

“I know their names. Including mine.”

“Sure you do. Can you have them all here at this office at half past eight this evening?”

“All of them?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But is that necessary?”

“Mr. Wolfe thinks so. This is him talking through me, to Miss Fraser through you. I ought to warn you, he can be an awful nuisance when a good fee depends on it. Usually when you hire a man to do something he thinks you’re the boss. When you hire Wolfe he thinks he’s the boss. He’s a genius and that’s merely one of the ways it shows. You can either take it or fight it. What do you want, just the publicity, or do you want the job done?”

“Don’t bully me, Mr. Goodwin. We want the job done. I don’t know if I can get Professor Savarese. And that Shepherd girl—she’s a bigger nuisance than Mr. Wolfe could ever possibly be.”

“Will you get all you can? Half past eight. And keep me informed?”

She said she would. After I had hung up I buzzed Wolfe on the house phone to tell him we had made a sale.

It soon became apparent that we had also bought something. It was only twenty-five to six, less than three-quarters of an hour since I had finished with Deborah Koppel, when the doorbell rang. Sometimes Fritz answers it and sometimes me—usually me, when I’m home and not engaged on something that shouldn’t be interrupted. So I marched to the hall and to the front door and pulled it open.

On the stoop was a surprise party. In front was a man-about-town in a topcoat the Duke of Windsor would have worn any day. To his left and rear was a red-faced plump gentleman. Back of them were three more, miscellaneous, carrying an assortment of cases and bags. When I saw what I had to contend with I brought the door with me and held it, leaving only enough of an opening for room for my shoulders.

“We’d like to see Mr. Nero Wolfe,” the topcoat said like an old friend.

“He’s engaged. I’m Archie Goodwin. Can I help?”

“You certainly can! I’m Fred Owen, in charge of public relations for the Hi-Spot Company.” He was pushing a hand at me and I took it. “And this is Mr. Walter B. Anderson, the president of the Hi-Spot Company. May we come in?”

I reached to take the president’s hand and still keep my door block intact. “If you don’t mind,” I said, “it would be a help if you’d give me a rough idea.”

“Certainly, glad to! I would have phoned, only this has to be rushed if we’re going to make the morning papers. So I just persuaded Mr. Anderson, and collected the photographers, and came. It shouldn’t take ten minutes—say a shot of Mr. Anderson looking at Mr. Wolfe as he signs the agreement, or vice versa, and one of them shaking hands, and one of them side by side, bending over in a huddle inspecting some object that can be captioned as a clue—how about that one?”

“Wonderful!” I grinned at him. “But damn it, not today. Mr. Wolfe cut himself shaving, and he’s wearing a patch, and vain as he is it would be very risky to aim a camera at him.”

That goes to show how a man will degrade himself on account of money. Meaning me. The proper and natural thing to do would have been to kick them off the stoop down the seven steps to the sidewalk, especially the topcoat, and why didn’t I do it? Ten grand. Maybe even twenty, for if Hi-Spot had been insulted they might have soured the whole deal.

The effort, including sacrifice of principle, that it took to get them on their way without making them too sore put me in a frame of mind that accounted for my reaction somewhat later, after Wolfe had come down to the office, when I had explained the agreement our clients had come to, and he said:

“No. I will not.” He was emphatic. “I will not draft or sign an agreement one of the parties to which is that Sweeties.”

I knew perfectly well that was reasonable and even noble. But what pinched me was that I had sacrificed principle without hesitation, and here he was refusing to. I glared at him:

“Very well.” I stood up. “I resign as of now. You are simply too conceited, too eccentric, and too fat to work for.”

“Archie. Sit down.”

“No.”

“Yes. I am no fatter than I was five years ago. I am considerably more conceited, but so are you, and why the devil shouldn’t we be? Some day there will be a crisis. Either you’ll get insufferable and I’ll fire you, or I’ll get insufferable and you’ll quit. But this isn’t the day and you know it. You also know I would rather become a policeman and take orders from Mr. Cramer than work for anything or anyone called Sweeties. Your performance yesterday and today has been highly satisfactory.”

“Don’t try to butter me.”

“Bosh. I repeat that I am no fatter than I was five years ago. Sit down and get your notebook. We’ll put it in the form of a letter, to all of them jointly, and they can initial our copy. We shall ignore Sweeties”—he made a face—”and add that two per cent and that five hundred dollars to the share of the Federal Broadcasting Company.”

That was what we did.

By the time Fritz called us to dinner there had been phone calls from Deborah Koppel and others, and the party for the evening was set.

T
HERE ARE FOUR ROOMS on the ground floor of Wolfe’s old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street not far from the Hudson River. As you enter from the stoop, on your right are an enormous old oak clothes rack with a mirror, the elevator, the stairs, and the door to the dining room. On your left are the doors to the front room, which doesn’t get used much, and to the office. The door to the kitchen is at the rear, the far end of the hall.

The office is twice as big as any of the other rooms. It is actually our living room too, and since Wolfe spends most of his time there you have to allow him his rule regarding furniture and accessories: nothing enters it or stays in it that he doesn’t enjoy looking at. He enjoys the contrast between the cherry of his desk and the cardato of his chair, made by Meyer. The bright yellow couch has to be cleaned every two months, but he likes bright yellow. The three-foot globe over by the bookshelves is too big for a room that size, but he likes to look at it. He loves a comfortable chair so much that he won’t have any other kind in the place, though he never sits on any but his own.

So that evening at least our guests’ fannies were at ease, however the rest of them may have felt. There were nine of them present, six invited and three gate-crashers. Of the eight I had wanted Deborah Koppel to get, Nancylee Shepherd hadn’t been asked, and Professor F. O. Savarese couldn’t make it. The three gate-crashers were Hi-Spot’s president and public relations man, Anderson and Owen, who had previously only got as far as the stoop, and Beech, the FBC vice-president.

At nine o’clock they were all there, all sitting, and all looking at Wolfe. There had been no friction at all except a little brush I had with Anderson. The best chair in the room, not counting Wolfe’s, is one of red leather which is kept not far from one end of Wolfe’s desk. Soon after entering Anderson had spotted it and squat-claimed it. When I asked him courteously to move to the other side of the room he went rude on me. He said he liked it there.

“But,” I said, “this chair, and those, are reserved for the candidates.”

“Candidates for what?”

“For top billing in a murder trial, Mr. Wolfe would like them sort of together, so they’ll all be under his eye.”

“Then arrange them that way.”

He wasn’t moving. “I can’t ask you to show me your stub,” I said pointedly, “because this is merely a private house, and you weren’t invited, and my only argument is the convenience and pleasure of your host.”

He gave me a dirty look but no more words, got up, and went across to the couch. I moved Madeline Fraser to the red leather chair, which gave the other five candidates more elbow room in their semicircle fronting Wolfe’s desk. Beech, who had been standing talking to Wolfe, went and took a chair near the end of the couch. Owen had joined his boss, so I had the three gate-crashers off to themselves, which was as it should be.

Wolfe’s eyes swept the semicircle, starting at Miss Fraser’s end. “You are going to find this tiresome,” he said conversationally, “because I’m just starting on this and so shall have to cover details that you’re sick of hearing and talking about. All the information I have has come from newspapers, and therefore much of it is doubtless inaccurate and some of it false. How much you’ll have to correct me on I don’t know.”

“It depends a lot,” said Nathan Traub with a smile, “on which paper you read.”

Traub, the agency man, was the only one of the six I hadn’t seen before, having only heard his smooth low-pitched voice on the phone, when he had practically told me that everything had to be cleared through him. He was much younger than I had expected, around my age, but otherwise he was no great surprise. The chief difference between any two advertising executives is that one goes to buy a suit at Brooks Brothers in the morning and the other one goes in the afternoon. It depends on the conference schedule. The suit this Traub had bought was a double-breasted gray which went very well with his dark hair and the healthy color of his cheeks.

“I have read them all.” Wolfe’s eyes went from left to right again. “I did so when I decided I wanted a job on this case. By the way, I assume you all know who has hired me, and for what?”

There were nods. “We know all about it,” Bill Meadows said.

“Good. Then you know why the presence of Mr. Anderson, Mr. Owen, and Mr. Beech is being tolerated. With them here, and of course Miss Fraser, ninety-five per cent of the clients’ interest is represented. The only one absent is White Birch Soap.”