And Be a Villain Read Online Free PDF

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:
     
     
Percent of Expenses
Share of fee
Hi-Spot
50
$10,000
FBC
28
5,500
M. Fraser
15
3,000
White Birch Soap
5
1,000
Sweeties
  2
     500
 
100
$20,000
     
    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