Read Nipped in the Bud for Free Online Page B

you see what I meant about Fagan’s last program?”
    “Yes, but I don’t see why he wasn’t cut off the air much sooner.”
    “You have a point. But all of us there in the control room—”
    She perked up her ears. “ You were there?”
    “Ma’am, you didn’t know?” Wingfield shuddered. “I was monitoring the program. I sat in the control room, and I was the one who should have done something about shutting Fagan up, even if I had to go down on the sound stage and hit him over the head with his own milk bottle. Only I got buck fever. It was just too awful to believe. And of course for a while we all kept thinking that he would work himself out of it somehow as he had always done in the past, and wind up by saying a lot of nice things about Junior, taking out the sting.”
    “You were an eyewitness, and you just sat there?”
    “Believe me, cutting a show off TV isn’t like it is on radio. You don’t have a standby studio orchestra to carry on with. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing and hearing. The stunt was likely to finish off Fagan’s career, but I guess he just didn’t give a damn.”
    “A sort of compulsion, an irresistible impulse?”
    “Right. All radio and TV people hate sponsors, the necessary evil of this crazy business.” Wingfield looked at his watch.
    “I’ll not keep you, young man,” said Miss Withers. “I suppose that Miss Gordon is waiting? Romance is a wonderful thing, or so I’ve heard. Do you have an understanding with her?”
    “Yes,” he said glumly. “But we understand it two different ways.” He went up the steps to the door of the projectionist’s booth and took back the can of film.
    “By the way,” asked the schoolteacher, “I suppose that the district attorney has a print of this picture, and plans to show it to the jury at the trial?”
    “If he does,” Wingfield told her, “he’s apt to get a verdict of justifiable homicide, don’t you think?” They came out into the corridor, Talley in the lead.
    “In your opinion, what we have seen would constitute motive for murder?”
    “But definitely. I could have strangled Fagan myself. Only don’t get any ideas; I didn’t. It wasn’t until the next day that I found I’d lost my job over this wing-ding, and even then I didn’t think it would take four months to get back on salary.”
    “But the things that Fagan said about Junior were true, weren’t they?”
    “Basically,” Wingfield admitted slowly. “Or else they wouldn’t have hurt so much. Only Fagan put them in the worst light. And, you see, Junior was sitting there in his big duplex over on Park, with the Virginia-born blue-blood, Miss Dallas Trempleau, and some other café-society pals, and of course they’d tuned in the program. Junior saw what was happening and came busting over here with blood in his eye, but by the time he arrived the show was over and Fagan had taken a powder. Young Gault was really frothing at the mouth—he even took a poke at me and then rushed out looking all over town for Tony.”
    “And found him, or so I gather?”
    “Other way around. Some of us got hold of Fagan first and fed him some black coffee and straightened him up. We made it clear to him that the only hope for his career was to square himself quick, even if he had to eat dirt. A few strategic phone calls to headwaiters around town produced the information that Junior had wound up at the Stork, one of his old hangouts, so we rushed Fagan over there and sent him in to apologize. Only you know what happened, don’t you?”
    Miss Withers nodded. “Mr. Fagan added insult to injury by landing a sucker blow to Mr. Gault’s chin. Then he went home and threw a party. I’m interested in that party, by the way.”
    “So were the police at the time. But it was perfectly natural that Fagan wouldn’t want to be alone at a time like that. I can’t tell you much about it, though I dropped in for a while, along with Thallie and the three Boyle sisters and a