Death on Deadline (5 page)

Lon nodded. “Our story in the late edition doesn’t go into any detail on this, of course. Just a few graphs quoting MacLaren and a comment from Mrs. Haverhill saying only that the
Gazette
was interested in learning more about the offer.”

Wolfe asked more questions about MacLaren, the
Gazette,
and the family, but you’ve already gotten the flavor. It was nearly eleven when Lon yawned, stretched, and lapped up the last of his fourth snifter of Remisier.

“I still don’t know why you’re so interested in that miserable Scotsman. But if anything I’ve said tonight gives you an inspiration about how to stop him, it will bring me more satisfaction than this meal has, which is saying a lot. Don’t bother getting up, Archie, I’ll see myself out.”

I walked him to the front door anyway, partly because a guest in the brownstone is a 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 nappy 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.

A
T 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 statement about offering forty bucks a share, but didn’t use his “sizable-percentage” comment. Harriet Haverhill was quoted as saying she would “carefully study Mr. MacLaren’s offer.” There wasn’t much else, other than a short biography of MacLaren and a listing of the newspapers and other properties he owned.

After clipping the
Gazette
article and adding it to my collection, I called the
Times,
but found that the advertising department was closed until Monday. I debated ringing Wolfe in the plant rooms, but decided to wait till eleven, when he came down. He handles bad news better when he’s behind his desk with beer and book.

As it turned out, he seemed unconcerned that we couldn’t make any progress on the advertisement (he hates the word “ad”) until Monday, and seemed equally unfazed when I reminded him that I would be spending the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday with Lily Rowan at the country place she’d just bought up in Dutchess County. Lily liked to call it a cottage, which I thought was a quaint way to refer to a layout including a four-bedroom, three-bathroom house with a sauna and two fireplaces and an in-ground pool and tennis court on a ten-acre spread overlooking a stretch of the Hudson which looks like the setting for a travel poster.

I won’t bore you with details of my weekend, except to say it was relaxing. I kept in touch with the outside world just enough to know that the MacLaren Organisation offer for the
Gazette
rated thirty seconds on a national TV news show Saturday night, and that the Sunday
Times
carried an extensive piece on MacLaren’s meteoric rise to fame and fortune in the business section.

Monday morning after breakfast, I called the
Times,
and after being passed around to a half-dozen voices, I got a syrupy-sounding woman who told me that the “open, one-time rate” for the type of advertisement I had in mind would be $32,932 on a weekday, $39,699 on a Sunday. I then buzzed Wolfe in the plant rooms, per his instructions, and gave him the two figures. “If you still want to go through with this, I assume we do it on a weekday?”

“Yes!” he snarled, banging down the receiver. One thing he hates even more than being interrupted when he’s playing with his plants is spending money on anything other than food, beer, books, and orchids.

The rest of my morning was taken up trying to get the advertisement into the
Times.
My first stop was the local branch of the Metropolitan Trust Company, where I had a cashier’s check drawn for almost thirty-three grand. Then it was off to the
Times.
They liked my check, all right, but one very polite, very attractive, very redheaded young woman patiently explained in a voice like bells that because of what she called the “controversial nature of the copy,” it would have to be approved.

“How long will that take?” I flashed my most sincere smile.

“We might be able to get back to you today,” she answered with a sincere grin of her own. “It depends on how busy Mr. Warner is. He’s the one who decides if it’s acceptable, and he may want to make some changes. Or he may not want to run it at all.”

“If we do get this worked out today, when can the ad run?”

“Probably Wednesday’s editions.” Another sincere smile. We were on the same wavelength.

“Not tomorrow?” I asked, smiling again and raising one eyebrow, which Lily once told me is my most appealing expression.

“No, not tomorrow,” she said, raising an eyebrow of her own. Bright girl. “We’ll make sure you get a call right away, Mr. Goodwin, when a decision has been made.”

After a few more feeble attempts to speed things up, which got nowhere, I wound up by giving the redhead our phone number, and she expertly filled out an impressive array of paperwork on the order. I was revising my opinion of redheads.

It was after eleven when I got back to the brownstone. Wolfe was at his desk going through seed catalogs when I sat at my own desk and turned to him.

“Well, the check’s been cut and the ad—advertisement—is in the hands of the
Times,
but it may not pass their censors.”

“Indeed?” he said, looking up from the catalog. “On what grounds?”

“They didn’t tell me. They just said that because of its controversial nature, it would have to go through some sort of approval process.”

“Pah!” Wolfe spat. “They won’t alter a syllable.”

“I don’t care how confident you are,” I shot back. “A sawbuck says they make some changes. Even money.”

“Archie, your ten dollars is lost,” Wolfe said smugly, turning back to the seed catalog.

I actually hoped he was right, but I felt my money would be doubled. What bothered me just then was that the
Times
might not call back, for whatever reason, and the whole damn thing would be delayed several more days. Then I’d have to wait longer to find out what Wolfe had in mind. I worried needlessly, though; just after lunch, the phone rang.

“Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“Yes. Mr. Goodwin, this is
The New York Times.
May I please speak to Mr. Wolfe?” A clipped male voice.

I mouthed the name of the paper silently to Wolfe and he picked up his receiver while I stayed on the line.

“This is Nero Wolfe.”

“Ah, yes, Mr. Wolfe, my name is Bob Warner, of the
Times.
I’m phoning to tell you that your ad copy is acceptable as written. We can have it ready to run in Wednesday’s editions. If you have no specific instructions other than the forty-eight-point headline, we’ll set it up in one of our standard body type sizes. Is that agreeable?”

“Yes, it is, Mr. Warner,” Wolfe answered.

“Also, we can have a proof to show you tomorrow morning.”

“Mr. Goodwin will come to look it over. Thank you.”

After we hung up, I shook my head. “All right, gloat all you want to. I’m told it’s healthy.”

“Archie, I do not gloat,” he said, but the folds in his cheeks deepened, which gave him away. That’s his version of a smile.

I reached for my wallet, pulled out a ten, and walked over to his desk, laying it on the blotter with a flourish.

“Nuts, I still call it a gloat,” I said as he folded the bill neatly and slipped it into his vest pocket.

Every morning, three copies of the
Times
are delivered to the brownstone, one each for Wolfe, Fritz, and me. But I was so antsy on Tuesday night to see how our page came out that at ten-thirty I left Wolfe reading in the office and walked out into the balmy night, heading east to Ninth Avenue, where I hailed a cab to the Times Building, the one place I knew for sure I could get the next day’s edition at that hour.

The cabbie waited while I went into the lobby and got a paper from the box. As we headed back south, I riffled through the first section, toward the back. There it was. Not that I worried about how it read, mind you. I had been to the
Times
that morning for a look at a page proof, which seemed fine to me except for a couple of typos their proofreaders already had caught.

I just had to see how the finished thing looked, though. I couldn’t read it in the cab—the light was too dim. When I got back to the office after an absence of twenty minutes, Wolfe didn’t even look up from his book, and I could study the text uninterrupted. So you can keep up, here it is:

As most of you know from reading this newspaper and others and from watching television news programs, the New York
Gazette
currently is the acquisition target of Mr. Ian MacLaren of Edinburgh, Scotland, who owns numerous other newspapers around the world.

Many of you read the
Gazette
as well as the
Times.
Others do not. For those not familiar with the
Gazette,
a few facts:

1.
According to the most recent figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it has the sixth-largest daily circulation of any American newspaper and the eighth-largest Sunday circulation.

2.
It was named—along with the
Times
—as one of the ten best American papers last year in a poll of college journalism professors. It also finished in the top ten in a similar poll three years earlier.

3.
In the last fifteen years, the
Gazette
has won eight Pulitzer prizes, four of them for local reporting. Only three other newspapers, one being the
Times,
have won more Pulitzers during the same period.

Whatever significance you may attach to any or all of the above items, one point is inarguable: the New York
Gazette
is an excellent newspaper, flawed to be sure, but with a balanced and independent editorial voice, a commitment to local coverage, and a genuine concern for this city and its environs. The
Gazette
is a precious asset to New York and its residents, more than 900,000 of whom pay thirty cents a day to read it.

Now a few facts about Ian MacLaren:

1.
He controls newspapers in England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, and the United States.

2.
His three American papers have not won a single Pulitzer prize in the years he has owned them—more than a decade in each case. Yet his Los Angeles paper won Pulitzers in three of the last five years before he purchased it in 1974.

3.
His American papers speak with a single editorial voice—Mr. MacLaren’s. For instance, in each of the last three presidential campaigns, all three of his newspapers supported the Republican candidate. And in every campaign for the Senate or House of Representatives in that period, his papers have endorsed the Republican.

Again, each of you will attach your own degree of significance to the above information, which can be documented. But I suggest that you buy a copy of any of his publications at an out-of-town newspaper stand. His United States papers are the Los Angeles
Globe-American,
Detroit
Star,
and Denver
Times-Arrow.
His Canadian paper, the Toronto
Banner,
also may be available. You will find them interesting reading, and I invite comparison between each of these newspapers and the
Gazette.

My bias is of course apparent, and it is the reason I purchased this advertisement. Although my work as a private investigator has enabled me to live in relative comfort, I am by no means a rich man, and the cost of this page has made a substantial impact on my balance sheet.

However, I feel strongly that the
Gazette
should remain free of Mr. MacLaren’s control, and I offer my services as a catalyst to bring together individuals or groups interested in the future of the
Gazette.

I stress that I have no financial holding in the
Gazette.
I have never met Mr. MacLaren or any of the current owners of the paper. I have not the capital, nor the inclination, to become one of its principals. I represent no individual or syndicate—indeed, I am not aware if any potential buyers exist, other than Mr. MacLaren. My concern is solely as a newspaper reader and a resident of the city of New York.

In both of these roles, I will be the poorer if the
Gazette
becomes the property of Mr. MacLaren. I bear him no ill will, but I will do whatever I can, given my limited resources, to prevent him from gaining control of the newspaper.

If you have a serious interest in pursuing an ownership role in the
Gazette,
I will be happy to meet with you, although it must be with the understanding that I have no credentials and am in no way an agent for the current owners of the newspaper. My telephone number and address are printed below.

—NERO WOLFE