That’s the bottled drink the poison was put into.” “Yeah, I know it is.” I looked around at the four faces. “I’m sort of in a hole.
I hoped to close a deal with Miss Fraser before I left here, but Miss Koppel says it has to be discussed with others, and now Mr Strong thinks the sponsors may want to take it over. The trouble is the delay. It’s already six days old, and Mr Wolfe should get to work at once. Tonight if possible, tomorrow at the latest.” “Not to mention,” Bill Meadows said, smiling at me, “that he has to get ahead of the cops and keep ahead if he wants to collect. It seems to me—Hello, Elinor!” He left his chair in a hurry. “How about it?” The girl who had entered without announcement tossed him a nod and a word and came towards the bed with rapid steps. I say girl because, although according to the newspapers Elinor Vance already had under her belt a Smith diploma, a play written and nearly produced, and two years as script writer for the Madeline Fraser programme, she looked as if she had at least eight years to go to reach my deadline. As she crossed to us the thought struck me how few there are who still look attractive even when they’re obviously way behind on sleep and played out to the point where they’re about ready to drop.
“I’m sorry to be so late, Lina,” she said all in a breath, “but they kept me down there all day, at the District Attorney’s office…I couldn’t make them understand…they’re terrible, those men are…” She stopped, and her body started to shake all over.
“Goddam it,” Bill Meadows said savagely. “I’ll get you a drink.” “I’m already getting it, Bill,” Tully Strong called from a side of the room.
“Flop here on the bed,” Miss Fraser said, getting her feet out of the way.
“It’s nearly five o’clock.” It was Miss Koppel’s quiet, determined voice. “We’re going to start to work right now or I’ll phone and cancel tomorrow’s broadcast.”
I stood up, facing Madeline Fraser, looking down at her. “What about it? Can this be settled tonight?” “I don’t see how.” She was stroking Elinor Vance’s shoulder. With a broadcast to get up, and people to consult…” “Then tomorrow morning?” Tully Strong, approaching with the drink for Elinor Vance, handed it to her and then spoke to me: “I’ll phone you tomorrow, before noon if possible,” “Good for you,” I told him, and beat it.
CHAPTER Four
Without at all intending to, I certainly had turned it into a seller’s market.
The only development that Monday evening came not from the prospective customers, but from Inspector Cramer of Homicide, in the form of a phone call just before Fritz summoned Wolfe and me to dinner. It was nothing shattering.
Cramer merely asked to speak to Wolfe, and asked him: “Who’s paying you on the Orchard case?” “No one,” Wolfe said curtly.
“No? Then Goodwin drives your car up to Seventy-eighth Street just to test the tyres?” “It’s my car, Mr Cramer, and I help to pay for the streets.” It ended in a stalemate, and Wolfe and I moved across the hall to the dining-room, to eat fried shrimps and Cape Cod clam cakes. With those items Fritz serves a sour sauce thick with mushrooms which is habit-forming.
Tuesday morning the fun began, with the first phone call arriving before Wolfe got down to the office. Of course that didn’t mean sunup, since his morning hours upstairs with ineodore and the orchids are always and forever from nine to eleven. First was Richards of the Federal Broadcasting Company. It is left to my discretion whether to buzz the plant rooms or not, and this seemed to call for it, since Richards had done us a favour the day before. When I got him through to Wolfe it appeared that what he wanted was to introduce another F.B.C.
vice-president, a Mr Beech. What Mr Beech wanted was to ask why the hell Wolfe hadn’t gone straight to the F.B.C. with his suggestion about murder, though he didn’t put it that way. He was very affable. The impression I got, listening in as instructed, was that the network had had its tongue hanging out for years, waiting and hoping for an excuse to hand Wolfe a hunk of dough. Wolfe was polite to him but didn’t actually apologize.
Second was Tully Strong, the secretary of the Sponsors’ Council, and I conversed with him myself. He strongly hoped that we had made no commitment with Miss Fraser or the network of anyone else because, as he had surmised, some of the sponsors were interested and one of them was excited. That one, he told me off the record, was the Starlite Company, which, since the poison had been served to the victim in a bottle of Starlite, The Drink You Dream Of, would fight for its exclusive right to take Wolfe up. I told him I would refer it to Wolfe without prejudice when he came down at eleven o’clock.
Third was Lon Cohen of the Gazette, who said talk was going around and would I kindly remember that on Saturday he had moved heaven and earth for me to find out where Madeline Fraser was, and how did it stand right now? I bandied words with him.
Fourth was a man with a smooth low-pitched voice who gave his name as Nathan Traub, which was one of the names that had been made familiar to the public by the newspaper stories. I knew, naturally, that he was an executive of the advertising agency which handled the accounts of three of the Fraser sponsors, since I had read the papers. He seemed to be a little confused as to just what he wanted, but I gathered that the agency felt that it would be immoral for Wolfe to close any deal with anyone concerned without getting an okay from the agency. Having met a few agency men in my travels, I thought it was nice of them not to extend it to cover any deal with anyone about anything. I told him he might hear from us later.
Fifth was Deborah Koppel. She said that Miss Fraser was going on the air in twenty minutes and had been too busy to talk with the people who must be consulted, but that she was favourably inclined towards Wolfe’s suggestion and would give us something definite before the day ended.
So by eleven o’clock, when two things happened simultaneously—Wolfe’s entering the office and my turning on the radio and tuning it to the F.B.C. station, WPIT—it was unquestionably a seller’s market.
Throughout Madeline Fraser’s broadcast Wolfe leaned back in his chair behind his desk with his eyes shut. I sat until I got restless and then moved around, with the only interruptions a couple of phone calls. Bill Meadows was of course on with her, as her stooge and feeder, since that was his job, and the guests for the day were an eminent fashion designer and one of the Ten Best-Dressed Women.
The guests were eminently lousy and Bill was nothing to write home about, but there was no getting away from it that Fraser was good. Her voice was good, her timing was good, and even when she was talking about White Birch Soap you would almost as soon leave it on as turn it off. I had listened in on her the preceding Friday for the first time, no doubt along with several million others, and again I had to hand it to her for sitting on a very hot spot without a twitch or a wriggle.
It must have been sizzling hot when she got to that place in the programme where bottles of Starlite were opened and poured into glasses—drinks for the two guests and Bill Meadows and herself. I don’t know who had made the decision the preceding Friday, her first broadcast after Orchard’s death, to leave that in, but if she did she had her nerve. Whoever had made the decision, it had been up to her to carry the ball, and she had sailed right through as if no bottle of Starlite had ever been known even to make anyone belch, let alone utter a shrill cry, claw at the air, have convulsions, and die. Today she delivered again.
There was no false note, no quiver, no slack or speedup, nothing; and I must admit that Bill handled it well too. The guests were terrible, but that was the style to which they had accustomed us.
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 F.B.C., 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 Starlite 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.