jewel resting on a cushion of hospitality and partly because I feel better when I do the final bolting of the front door for the night myself. It’s force of habit, spurred by the knowledge that there are at least ten people loose in Manhattan who would be more than happy to help arrange Nero Wolfe’s funeral, not to mention a few who’d chip in to buy me a tombstone too.
When I walked back into the office, Wolfe was sitting upright, staring straight ahead, with his palms down on the desk.
“Archie, what does a full-page advertisement in the Times cost?”
“Beats me,” I answered, raising one eyebrow and easing into my desk chair. “Well up in the thousands, I suppose. You planning a spectacular new way to solicit clients? A little showy, isn’t it?”
He glared but said nothing, then closed his eyes. Because I have a thing about time, I checked my wrist and waited. After seven minutes, he woke up and blinked. “Instructions,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” I flipped open my notebook.
“Call the Times tomorrow morning and determine the cost of a full page. Let me know the price, although it will make little difference. Then go to their office and place the advertisement that—”
“What advertisement?”
“Don’t interrupt! The advertisement that I’m about to give you. First, the headline, in forty-eight-point type . . .”
With that, he began dictating one of the most unusual messages a reader of the Times is ever likely to see. It took almost forty minutes, and he stopped occasionally to check a fact in his World Almanac. When he was done, I read my shorthand back to him, and he made a few minor changes.
“They won’t print this,” I ventured.
“I disagree. Through the years, the Times has run thousands of open letters and advocacy advertisements from individuals and organizations. It’s part of their tradition. You like wagers, Archie; I’ll be happy to give you odds they will accept it.”
I grinned. “You’re too confident; I pass.”
“Make sure to keep a carbon when you type it,” he said, getting up to go to bed. That was totally uncalled for. I always make carbons.
Four
At a few minutes before eight the next morning, Saturday, I was where I preferred to be at that time of day: sitting at the small table in the kitchen with grapefruit juice, Canadian bacon, eggs, pancakes, toast, black coffee, and the Times propped up on the rack in front of me.
“Well, there it is,” I said to no one in particular as I scanned the front page.
“There is what, Archie?” Fritz asked. He was fussing with a tray to take up to Wolfe in his bedroom, where he always has breakfast.
“A man named MacLaren is trying to scoop up the Gazette,” I said. “The story’s on page one of the Times.”
“Mr. Cohen’s paper? Bought by that rogue?”
Whenever I think I’ve got Fritz completely pegged, he does something to throw me off. Because he spends so much time creating world-class meals, I tend to forget how well-read he is. He sees a copy of the Times every day, although he doesn’t usually get to read it until evening. And then there are all those European magazines he subscribes to. I guess what really bothered me was that I seemed to be the only one around who hadn’t known much about the Scots Citizen Kane until the last day or so.
The Times story, under a two-column headline in the lower-right-hand corner of the page, added nothing to what Lon had told us last night. In essence, it reported that MacLaren had issued a statement saying he was offering forty dollars a share for Gazette stock, and that he already had a “sizable percentage” in his control.
According to the story, he refused to be specific about how much he held.
There also was a comment from a securities analyst on Wall Street who specializes in media companies. He said his firm currently valued Gazette stock at about thirty-two dollars, and was quoted as saying MacLaren’s offer was “unrealistically high, based on the company’s estimated profits over the last year.”
The Times reporter had reached Harriet Haverhill, but all she gave him was a “no comment” to anonymous reports that various members of the family had already sold their holdings to MacLaren.
I clipped the Times article and slid it into my top-right desk drawer for later reference, then turned to the Gazette, whose own story was briefer than the one in the Times and was back on page five. It reported MacLaren’s