Before Midnight

"That would suit Miss Frazee perfectly. She would send in her answers before the agreed deadline and demand the first prize, and if she didn't get it she could sue and probably collect. You'll have to do better than that if you want to head her off-emulate her, perhaps. Of course you've had help too-your husband, your friends; get them started."

"I've had no help."

She started to tremble, first her hands and then her shoulders, and I thought we were in for it, but she pulled one that I had never expected to see. Women of all ages and shapes and sizes have started to have a fit hi that office. Some I have caught in time with a good shot of brandy, some I have stopped with a smack or other physical contact, and some I have had to ride out--with Wolfe gone because he can't stand it. I left my chair and started for her, but she stuck her tongue out at me. So I thought, but that wasn't it. She was only getting the tongue between her teeth and clamping down on it. Its end bulged and curled up and was purple, but she only clamped harder. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. She stopped trembling, opened her fists and closed them and opened them again, and got her shoulders set, rigid. Then she retrieved her tongue. I had a notion to give her a pat before returning to my chair, in recognition of an outstanding performance, but decided that a woman who could stand off a fit like that in ten seconds flat probably didn't care for pats.

"I beg your pardon," she said.

"Brandy," Wolfe told me.

"No," she said, "I'm all right. I couldn't drink brandy. I guess what did it was what you said about help. I haven't had any. The first few weeks weren't bad, but after that they got harder, and later, when they got really hard… I don't know how I did it. I said I wasn't going to say anything, but after what you said about Miss Frazee having three hundred women helping her… well. I'm thirty-two years old, and I have two children, and my husband is a bookkeeper and makes fifty dollars a week. I was a schoolteacher before I married. I had been going along for years, just taking it, and I saw this 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," Wdlfe muttered.