Before Midnight

"The first prize," she said confidently. "Half a million." Suddenly she leaned forward. "Do you ever have a flash?"

The frown won. "Of what? Anger? Wit?"

"Just a flash-of what is coming. I had two of them long ago, when I was young, and then never any more until the day I saw the advertisement. It came on me, into me, so swiftly that I only knew it was there--the certainty that we would get their money. Certainty can be a very sweet thing, very beautiful, and that day if filled me from head to foot, and I went to a mirror to see if I could see it. I couldn't, but it was there, so there has never been any question about it. The first prize. Our budget committee is already working on projects, what to do with it."

"Indeed." The frown was there, to stay. "The five new verses, those that Mr. Dahlmann gave you last evening-- how did you send them to your colleagues? Telephone or telegraph or airmail?"

"Ha," she said. Apparently that was all.

"Because," Wolfe observed matter-of-factly, "you have sent them, naturally, so they could go to work. Haven't you?"

Her back was straight again. "I fail to see that that is anybody's business. There is nothing in the rules about getting assistance. Nothing was said about it last night. This morning I telephoned my vice-president, Mrs. Charles Draper, because I had to, to tell her I couldn't return today and I didn't know when I could. It was a private conversation."

Evidently it was going to stay private. Wolfe dropped it and switched. "Another reason for seeing you, Miss Frazee, was to apologize on behalf of Lippert, Buff and Assa, my clients, for the foolish joke that Mr. Dahlmann indulged in last evening--when he exhibited a paper and said it was the answers to the verses he had just given you. Not only was it witless, it was in bad taste. I tender you the apologies of his associates."

"So that's how it is," she said. "I thought it would be something like that, that's why I came, to find out." Her chin went up and her voice hardened. "It won't work. Tel] them that. That's all I wanted to know." She stood up. "You think because I'm ugly I haven't got any brains. They'll regret it. I'll see that they regret it."

"Sit down, madam. I don't know what you're talking about"

"Ha. You're supposed to have brains too. They know that one of them went there and killed him and took the paper, and now they're going--"

"Please! Your pronouns. Are you saying that one of my clients took the paper?"