After she was in the red leather chair I put her coat, which was at least a match for a sable number for which a friend of mine had paid eighteen grand, on the couch, sat at my desk, and took her in. She was a little too short and too much filled out to be rated elegant, even if her tan woolen dress was a Dior, and her face was too round, but there was nothing wrong with the brown-black eyes she aimed at Wolfe as she asked him if she needed to tell him who she was.

He was regarding her without enthusiasm. The trouble was, a new year had just started, and it seemed likely that he was going to have to go to work. In a November or December, when he was already in a tax bracket that would take three-quarters-more, formerly-of any additional income, turning down jobs was practically automatic, but January was different, and this was the fifth of January, and this woman was stacked. He didn't like it. "Mr Goodwin named you," he said coldly, "and I read newspapers."

She nodded. "I know you do. I know a great deal about you, that's why I'm here. I want you to do something that perhaps no other man alive could do. You read books too. Have you read one entitled The FBI Nobody Knows?"

"Yes."

"Then I don't need to tell you about it. Did it impress you?"

"Yes."

"Favorably?"

"Yes."

"My goodness, you're curt."

"I answered your questions, madam."

"I know you did. I can be curt too. That book impressed me. It impressed me so strongly that I bought ten thousand copies of it and sent them to people all over the country."

"Indeed." Wolfe's brow was up an eighth of an inch.

"Yes. I sent them to the members of the cabinet, the Supreme Court justices, governors of all the states, all senators and representatives, members of state legislatures, publishers of newspapers and magazines, and editors, heads of corporations and banks, network executives and broadcasters, columnists, district attorneys, educators, and others-oh yes, chiefs of police. Do I need to explain why I did that?"