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editors, and decided to go down himself in hopes of rounding up one or two for Skinny Simon’s show. The walk was only a few blocks and in the sunny April weather he didn’t mind it a bit.
    The craft session was just breaking up as he got there. He stood in the back for a few minutes, listening to the closing remarks by Ernie Hutter from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Then he bought a drink for Clayton Rawson and stood at the bar downstairs talking to him until he spotted an agent he knew slightly, hurrying across the lobby.
    “Dick!” he called out “Dick, wait a minute. Can I talk to you?”
    Dick McMullen was a friendly, unassuming sort of guy. He’d been connected with various literary agencies in his career, but now he was in business for himself, operating out of his apartment in Greenwich Village. Barney knew he sometimes placed things for Max Winters and he used that as an opening wedge. “Dick, did you handle Max’s last novel?”
    “No, not that one, Barney. He placed that direct I’m trying to get him tied down, though. I think he’s a good writer and I can really do something for him. Since you’re asking me, I would take a wild guess that he’s going to be the Edgar winner tonight.”
    Barney smiled. “Maybe, maybe. Look, Dick, you’re a nice talkative guy. How’d you like to go on an all-night radio show Sunday night?”
    Dick McMullen frowned, adding more creases to his already wrinkled forehead. He was still in his late thirties, but his face was weathered, as if he had stood in the bow of a ship during a tropical storm.
    “What about it? Interested?”
    McMullen kept on frowning. “Sunday night. All night? That’s a long stretch! What is it? Long John’s show?”
    “Skinny Simon’s. What do you think?”
    “Who else is going to be there?”
    “Harry Fox for sure. I just might ask Max, if he’s still going to be around then.”
    “Get Max and I’ll go on. How’s that for a deal?”
    “You’re really trying to pin him down, aren’t you?”
    “I need writers Barney! What good’s an agent without writers? I need novelists. If they get two thousand a crack, I get a couple of hundred out of it. And with foreign sales, a lot more. A novelist has a chance of hitting the TV markets, too—and the movies, of course. That’s where the big money is these days.”
    “Okay, Dick. Let me see what I can do with Max. I’ll let you know at the dinner tonight. You’re going to be there, aren’t you?”
    “Sure! Wouldn’t miss it. I can take it off my income tax.”
    Barney patted him on the shoulder and moved off, glad that it had gone so well. They’d talked like old friends, even though they had nothing really in common. Agents had stopped trying to sell Barney, and sometimes he felt a little bad about it, but then he didn’t write that much any more. Though he still received occasional royalty cheques, soon, he knew, he’d have to find a job like everyone else, if only to keep up the alimony payments to his ex-wife.
    Barney was on the nineteenth floor of the Biltmore at exactly six-thirty to greet the first arrivals. Betty Rafferty and a couple of the other girls were working the desk, checking invitations. Barney moved out to the elevator, shook hands with James Reach and his wife, Alice, as they got off. He kept busy checking over the stack of mimeographed table seatings. There were to be 303 people at the dinner this year—a good crowd. They’d had more some years, but less in others.
    He saw Rex Stout get off the elevator, and hurried to meet him. Rex still carried himself well and anyone seeing him might have guessed his age at sixty or sixty-five—certainly not at over eighty. There was someone else, too, a photographer from Associated Press. He’d come to get pictures of the winners, which was always awkward because Barney didn’t want any of the winners to know about it until the formal presentation at the dinner itself.
    He glanced around for Max and finally