Read And Be a Villain for Free Online

FOUR ROOMS on the ground floor of Wolfe’s old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street not far from the Hudson River. As you enter from the stoop, on your right are an enormous old oak clothes rack with a mirror, the elevator, the stairs, and the door to the dining room. On your left are the doors to the front room, which doesn’t get used much, and to the office. The door to the kitchen is at the rear, the far end of the hall.
    The office is twice as big as any of the other rooms. It is actually our living room too, and since Wolfe spends most of his time there you have to allow him his rule regarding furniture and accessories: nothing enters it or stays in it that he doesn’t enjoy looking at. He enjoys the contrast between the cherry of his desk and the cardato of his chair, made by Meyer. The bright yellow couch has to be cleaned every two months, but he likes bright yellow. The three-foot globe over by the bookshelves is too big for a room that size, but he likes to look at it. He loves a comfortable chair so much that he won’t have any other kind in the place, though he never sits on any but his own.
    So that evening at least our guests’ fannies were at ease, however the rest of them may have felt. There were nine of them present, six invited and three gate-crashers. Of the eight I had wanted Deborah Koppel to get, Nancylee Shepherd hadn’t been asked, and Professor F. O. Savarese couldn’t make it. The three gate-crashers were Hi-Spot’s president and public relations man, Anderson and Owen, who had previously only got as far as the stoop, and Beech, the FBC vice-president.
    At nine o’clock they were all there, all sitting, and all looking at Wolfe. There had been no friction at all except a little brush I had with Anderson. The best chair in the room, not counting Wolfe’s, is one of red leather which is kept not far from one end of Wolfe’s desk. Soon after entering Anderson had spotted it and squat-claimed it. When I asked him courteously to move to the other side of the room he went rude on me. He said he liked it there.
    “But,” I said, “this chair, and those, are reserved for the candidates.”
    “Candidates for what?”
    “For top billing in a murder trial, Mr. Wolfe would like them sort of together, so they’ll all be under his eye.”
    “Then arrange them that way.”
    He wasn’t moving. “I can’t ask you to show me your stub,” I said pointedly, “because this is merely a private house, and you weren’t invited, and my only argument is the convenience and pleasure of your host.”
    He gave me a dirty look but no more words, got up, and went across to the couch. I moved Madeline Fraser to the red leather chair, which gave the other five candidates more elbow room in their semicircle fronting Wolfe’s desk. Beech, who had been standing talking to Wolfe, went and took a chair near the end of the couch. Owen had joined his boss, so I had the three gate-crashers off to themselves, which was as it should be.
    Wolfe’s eyes swept the semicircle, starting at Miss Fraser’s end. “You are going to find this tiresome,” he said conversationally, “because I’m just starting on this and so shall have to cover details that you’re sick of hearing and talking about. All the information I have has come from newspapers, and therefore much of it is doubtless inaccurate and some of it false. How much you’ll have to correct me on I don’t know.”
    “It depends a lot,” said Nathan Traub with a smile, “on which paper you read.”
    Traub, the agency man, was the only one of the six I hadn’t seen before, having only heard his smooth low-pitched voice on the phone, when he had practically told me that everything had to be cleared through him. He was much younger than I had expected, around my age, but otherwise he was no great surprise. The chief difference between any two advertising executives is that one goes to buy a suit at Brooks Brothers in the morning and the other one