Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 25 by Before Midnight

contest and decided to win it. I’m going to have a nice home and a car—two cars, one for my husband and one for me—and I’m going to have some clothes, and I’m going to send my husband to school and make him a CPA if he has it in him. That day I saw the contest, I took charge that day. You know what I mean.”
    “Indeed I do,” Wolfe muttered.
    “So when they got hard there was no one I could ask for help, and anyway, if I had got help I would have had to share the prize. I didn’t do much eating or sleeping the last seven weeks of the main contest, but the worst was when they sent us five to do in a week to break the tie. I didn’t go to bed that week, and I was afraid I had one of them wrong, and I didn’t get them mailed until just before midnight—I went to the post office and made them let me see them stamp the envelope. After all that, do you think I’m going to let somebody get it by cheating? With three hundred women working at it while we’re not allowed to go home?”
    After seeing her handle the fit I didn’t think she was going to let somebody get anything she had made up her mind to have, with or without cheating.
    “It is manifestly unfair,” Wolfe conceded, “but I doubt if it can be called cheating, at least in the legal sense. And as for cheating, it’s conceivable that someone else had a bolder idea than Miss Frazee and acted upon it. By killing Mr. Dahlmann in order to get the answers.”
    “I’m not going to say anything about that,” she declared. “I’ve decided not to.”
    “The police have talked with you, of course.”
    “Yes. They certainly have. For hours.”
    “And they asked you what you thought last eveningwhen Mr. Dahlmann displayed a paper and said it contained the answers. What did you tell them?”
    “I’m not going to talk about it.”
    “Did you tell the police that? That you wouldn’t talk about it?”
    “No. I hadn’t decided then. I decided later.”
    “After consultation with someone?”
    She shook her head. “With whom would I consult?”
    “I don’t know. A lawyer. A phone call to your husband.”
    “I haven’t got a lawyer. I wouldn’t call my husband—I know what he’d say. He thinks I’m crazy. I couldn’t pay a lawyer anyway because I haven’t got any money. They paid for the trip here, and the hotel, but nothing for incidentals. I was late for my appointment with you because I got on the wrong bus. I haven’t consulted anybody. I made the decision myself.”
    “So you told the police what you thought when Mr. Dahlmann displayed the paper?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then why not tell me? I assure you, madam, that I have only one interest in the matter, on behalf of my clients, to make sure that the prizes are fairly and honestly awarded. You see, of course, that that will be extremely difficult if in fact one of the contestants took that paper from Mr. Dahlmann and it contains the answers. You see that.”
    “Yes.”
    “However, it is the belief of my clients—and their contention—that the paper did not contain the answers, that Mr. Dahlmann was only jesting; and that therefore the secrecy of the answers is still intact. Do you challenge that contention?”
    “No.”
    “You accept it?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you must have told the police that when Mr. Dahlmann displayed the paper you regarded it as a joke, and the sequel is plain: it would be absurd to suspect you of going to his apartment and killing him to get it. So it is reasonable to suppose that you are not suspected.—Archie, your phone call from the corner. Did you see anyone?”
    “Yes, sir. Art Whipple. He was here on the Heller case.”
    “Tell Mrs. Wheelock about it.”
    I met her eyes. “I was hanging out up the street when you came, and a Homicide detective was following you. I exchanged a few words with him. If you want to spot him when you leave, he’s about my size, drags his feet a little, and is wearing a dark gray suit and a gray snap-brim hat.”
    “He was