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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 favorably inclined toward 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 FBC 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 program where bottles of Hi-Spot 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 Hi-Spot 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 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