“I really must get to work on my broadcast, Mr Goodwin.” “Now wait a minute.” I concentrated on her. “That's only one of my points, getting the trouble over, and not the best one. Look at it this way. You and your programme have had a lot of publicity out of this, haven't you?” She groaned. “Publicity, my God! The man calls it publicity!” “So it is,” I maintained, “but out of the wrong barrel. And it's going to keep coming, still out of the wrong barrel, whether you like it or not. Again tomorrow every paper in town will have your name in a front-page headline. You can't help that, but you can decide what the headline will say. As it stands now you know darned well what it will say. What if, instead of that, it announces that you have engaged Nero Wolfe to investigate the murder of the guest on your programme because of your passionate desire to see justice done? The piece would explain the terms of the arrangement: you are to pay the expenses of the investigation-unpadded, we don't pad expenses-and that's all you are to pay unless Mr Wolfe gets the murderer with evidence to convict. If he comes through you pay him a fee of twenty thousand dollars. Would that get the headline or not? What kind of publicity would it be, still out of the wrong barrel? What percentage of your audience and the general public would it persuade, not only that you and yours are innocent, but that you are a hero to sacrifice a fortune for the sake of justice? Ninety-nine and one-half per cent. Very few of them would stop to consider that both the expenses and the fee will be deductible on your income tax and, in your bracket, the actual cost to you would be around four thousand dollars, no more. In the public mind you would no longer be one of the suspects in a sensational murder case, being hunted-you would be a champion of the people, hunting a murderer.” I spread out my hands. “And you would get all that, Miss Fraser, even if Mr Wolfe had the worst flop of his career and all it cost you was expenses.