“I’m afraid,” I told her with a grin, “that he wouldn’t accept unless you ran wires to his office and broadcast from there. He never leaves home on business, and rarely for anything at all.” I lowered myself on to one of the chairs Bill had brought up, and he and Deborah Koppel took the other two.
Madeline Fraser nodded. “Yes, I know.” She had turned on her side to see me without twisting her neck, and the hip curving up under the thin yellow gown made her seem not quite so slender. “Is that just a publicity trick or does he really like it?” “I guess both. He’s very lazy, and he’s scared to death of moving objects, especially things on wheels.” “Wonderful! Tell me all about him.” “Some other time, Lina,” Deborah Koppel put in. “Mr Goodwin has a suggestion for you, and you have a broadcast tomorrow and haven’t even looked at the script.” “My God, is it Monday already?” “Monday and half-past three,” Deborah said patiently.
The radio prima donna’s torso popped up to perpendicular as if someone had given her a violent jerk. “What’s the suggestion?” she demanded, and flopped back again.
“What made him think of it,” I said, “was something that happened to him Saturday. This great nation took him for a ride. Two rides. The Rides of March.”
“Income tax? Me too. But what—” “That’s good!” Bill Meadows exclaimed. “Where did you get it? Has it been on the air?” “Not that I know of. I created it yesterday morning while I was brushing my teeth.” “We’ll give you ten bucks for it—no, wait a minute.” He turned to Deborah. “What percentage of our audience ever heard of the Ides of March?” “One-half of one,” she said as if she were quoting a published statistic. “Cut.”
“You can have it for a dollar,” I offered generously. “Mr Wolfe’s suggestion will cost you a lot more. Like everyone in the upper brackets, he’s broke.” My eyes were meeting the grey-green gaze of Madeline Fraser. “He suggests that you hire him to investigate the murder of Cyril Orchard.” “Oh, Lord,” Bill Meadows protested, and brought his hands up to press the heels of his palms against his eyes. Deborah Koppel looked at him, then at Madeline Fraser, and took in air for a deep sigh. Miss Fraser shook her head, and suddenly looked older and more in need of makeup.
“We have decided,” she said, “that the only thing we can do about that is forget it as soon as possible. We have ruled it out of conversation.” “That would be fine and sensible,” I conceded, “if you could make everyone, including the cops and the papers, obey the rule. But aside from the difficulty of shutting people up about any old kind of a murder, even a dull one, it was simply too good a show. Maybe you don’t realize how good. Your programme has an eight million audience, twice a week. Your guests were a horse-race tipster and a professor of mathematics from a big university. And smack in the middle of the programme one of them makes terrible noises right into the microphone, and keels over, and pretty soon he’s dead, and he got the poison right there on the broadcast, in the product of one of your sponsors.” I darted glances at the other two and then back to the woman on the bed. “I knew I might meet any one of a dozen attitudes here, but I sure didn’t expect this one. If you don’t know, you ought to, that one like that doesn’t get ruled out of conversation, not only not in a week, but not in twenty years—not when the question is still open who provided the poison. Twenty years from now people would still be arguing about who was it, Madeline Fraser or Deborah Koppel or Bill Meadows or Nathan Traub or F. O. Savarese or Elinor Vance or Nancylee Shepherd or Tully Strong—” The door came open and the female wrestler entered and announced in a hasty breath: “Mr Strong is here.” “Send him in, Cora,” Miss Fraser told her.
I suppose I would have been struck by the contrast between Tully Strong and his name if I hadn’t known what to expect from his pictures in the papers. He looked like them in the obvious points—the rimless spectacles, the thin lips, the long neck, the hair brushed flat—but somehow in the flesh he didn’t look as dumb and vacant as the pictures. I got that much noted while he was being greeted, by the time he turned to me for the introduction.
“Mr Strong,” Deborah Koppel told me, “is the secretary of our Sponsors’ Council.” “Yes, I know.” “Mr Goodwin,” she told him, “has called with a suggestion from Nero Wolfe. Mr Wolfe is a private detective.” “Yes, I know.” Tully Strong smiled at me. With lips as thin as his it is often difficult to tell whether it’s a smile or a grimace, but I would have called it a smile, especially when he added, We are both famous, aren’t we? Of course you are accustomed to the glare of the spotlight, but it is quite new to me.” He sat down. “What does Mr Wolfe suggest?” “He thinks Miss Fraser ought to hire him to look into the murder of Cyril Orchard.” “Damn Cyril Orchard.” Yes, it had been a smile, for now it was a grimace, and it was quite different. “Damn him to hell!” “That’s pretty tough,” Bill Meadows objected, “since he may be there right now.”
Strong ignored him to ask me, “Aren’t the police giving us enough trouble without deliberately hiring someone to give us more?” “Sure they are,” I agreed, “but that’s a shortsighted view of it The person who is really giving you trouble is the one who put the poison in the Starlite. As I was explaining when you came, the trouble will go on for years unless and until he gets tapped on the shoulder. Of course the police may get him, but they’ve had it for six days now and you know how far they’ve got. The one that stops the trouble will be the one that puts it where it belongs. Do you know that Mr Wolfe is smart or shall I go into that?” “I had hoped,” Deborah Koppel put in, “that Mr Wolfe’s suggestion would be something concrete. That he had a…an idea.” “Nope.” I made it definite. “His only idea is to get paid twenty thousand dollars for ending the trouble.” Bill Meadows let out a whistle. Deborah Koppel smiled at me. Tully Strong protested indignantly: “Twenty thousand!” “Not from me,” said Madeline Fraser, fully as definite as I had been. “I really must get to work on my broadcast, Mr Goodwin.” “Now wait a minute.” I concentrated on her. “That’s only one of my points, getting the trouble over, and not the best one. Look at it this way. You and your programme have had a lot of publicity out of this, haven’t you?” She groaned. “Publicity, my God! The man calls it publicity!” “So it is,” I maintained, “but out of the wrong barrel. And it’s going to keep coming, still out of the wrong barrel, whether you like it or not. Again tomorrow every paper in town will have your name in a front-page headline. You can’t help that, but you can decide what the headline will say. As it stands now you know darned well what it will say. What if, instead of that, it announces that you have engaged Nero Wolfe to investigate the murder of the guest on your programme because of your passionate desire to see justice done? The piece would explain the terms of the arrangement: you are to pay the expenses of the investigation—unpadded, we don’t pad expenses—and that’s all you are to pay unless Mr Wolfe gets the murderer with evidence to convict. If he comes through you pay him a fee of twenty thousand dollars. Would that get the headline or not? What kind of publicity would it be, still out of the wrong barrel? What percentage of your audience and the general public would it persuade, not only that you and yours are innocent, but that you are a hero to sacrifice a fortune for the sake of justice? Ninety-nine and one-half per cent. Very few of them would stop to consider that both the expenses and the fee will be deductible on your income tax and, in your bracket, the actual cost to you would be around four thousand dollars, no more. In the public mind you would no longer be one of the suspects in a sensational murder case, being hunted—you would be a champion of the people, hunting a murderer.” I spread out my hands. “And you would get all that, Miss Fraser, even if Mr Wolfe had the worst flop of his career and all it cost you was expenses. Nobody could say you hadn’t tried. It’s a big bargain for you. Mr Wolfe almost never takes a case on a contingent basis, but when he needs money he breaks rules, especially his own.” Madeline Fraser had closed her eyes. Now she opened them again, and again her smile was just from her to me. “The way you tell it,” she said, “is certainly a bargain. What do you think, Debby?” “I think I like it,” Miss Koppel said cautiously. “It would have to be discussed with the network and agencies and sponsors.” “Mr Goodwin.” I turned my head. “Yes, Mr Strong?” Tully Strong had removed his spectacles and was blinking at me. “You understand that I am only the secretary of the Council of the sponsors of Miss Fraser’s programme, and I have no real authority. But I know how they feel about this, two of them in particular, and of course it is my duty to report this conversation to them without delay, and I can tell you off the record that it is extremely probable they would prefer to accept Mr Wolfe’s offer on their own account. For the impression on the public I think they would consider it desirable that Mr Wolfe should be paid by them—on the terms stated by you. Still off the record, I believe this would apply especially to the makers of Starlite.