And Be a Villain by Rex Stout Read Free Book Online Page B

Wolfe’s attitude maybe he wouldn’t.
    “Indeed.” Wolfe’s brows went up a sixteenth of an inch. “Then you’d better notify the press immediately. Do you want to use the phone?”
    “By God, I wish I could. I have a right to—”
    “You have no right whatever, Mr. Anderson, except to pay your share of my fee if I earn it. You are here in my office on sufferance. Confound it, I am undertaking to solve a problem that has Mr. Cramer so nonplused that he desperately wants a hint from me before I’ve even begun. He doesn’t mind my rudeness; he’s so accustomed to it that if I were affable he’d haul me in as a material witness. Are you going to use the phone?”
    “You know damn well I’m not.”
    “I wish you were. The better I see this picture the less I like it.” Wolfe went back to the line of candidates. “You say, Miss Koppel, that this adolescent busybody, Miss Shepherd, put the tray of glasses on the table?”
    “Yes, she—”
    “She took them from me,” Elinor Vance put in, “when I got them from the cabinet. She was right there with her hand out and I let her take them.”
    “The locked cabinet that the Hi-Spot is kept in?”
    “Yes.”
    “And the glasses are heavy and dark blue, quite opaque so that anything in them is invisible?”
    “Yes.”
    “You didn’t look into them from the top?”
    “No.”
    “If one of them had something inside you wouldn’t have seen it?”
    “No.” Elinor went on, “If you think my answers are short and quick, that’s because I’ve already answered these questions, and many others, hundreds of times. I could answer them in my sleep.”
    Wolfe nodded. “Of course. So now we have the bottles in the refrigerator and the glasses on the table, and the program is on the air. For forty minutes it went smoothly. The two guests did well. None of Mr. Traub’s fears were realized.”
    “It was one of the best broadcasts of the year,” Miss Fraser said.
    “Exceptional,” Tully Strong declared. “There were thirty-two studio laughs in the first half hour.”
    “How did you like the second half?” Traub asked pointedly.
    “We’re coming to it.” Wolfe sighed. “Well, here we are. The moment arrives when Hi-Spot is to be poured, drunk, and eulogized. Who brought it from the refrigerator? You again, Miss Vance?”
    “No, me,” Bill Meadows said. “It’s part of the show for the mikes, me pushing back my chair, walking, opening the refrigerator door and closing it, and coming back with the bottles. Then someone—”
    “There were eight bottles in the refrigerator. How many did you get?”
    “Four.”
    “How did you decide which ones?”
    “I didn’t decide. I always just take the four in front. You realize that all Hi-Spot bottles are exactly alike. There wouldn’t be any way to tell them apart, so how would I decide?”
    “I couldn’t say. Anyway, you didn’t?”
    “No. As I said, I simply took the four bottles that were nearest to me. That’s natural.”
    “So it is. And carried them to the table and removed the caps?”
    “I took them to the table, but about removing the caps, that’s something we don’t quite agree on. We agree that I didn’t do it, because I put them on the table as usual and then got back into my chair, quick, to get on the mike. Someone else always takes the caps from the bottles, not always the same one, and that day Debby—Miss Koppel was right there, and Miss Vance, and Strong, and Traub. I was on the mike and didn’t see who removed the caps. The action there is a little tight and needs help, with taking off the caps, pouring into the glasses, and getting the glasses passed around—and the bottles have to be passed around too.”
    “Who does the passing?”
    “Oh, someone—or, rather, more than one. You know, they just get passed—the glasses and bottles both. After pouring into the glasses the bottles are still about half full, so the bottles are passed too.”
    “Who did the pouring and passing