Read Online The Wrong Venus by Charles Williams - Free Book Online

did even better. Before she could show up, we hooked a real man-sized chump with circulation.”
    “Who?”
    “Some joker named Muffett or Moffatt, from the Los Angeles Chronicle . He just walked in on the setup, cold, and went for it like some kid from the Pleasanton Weekly Argus.”
    “Oooooh, wonderful! And he’s already sent in the story?”
    “No, no, of course not. Dudley’s got him locked in the house—”
    “But why?” She shook her head in baffled wonder. “Lawrence, it’s so complicated.”
    He sighed. “Look, baby, honey, Nadja darling—the Chronicle’s an afternoon paper, and there’s the difference in time—”
    “Doll,” Elkins said. “See? You’ve got this orange here, and over here’s a candle, and the orange is turning—”
    “Oh, I know about that,” she said. “It gets late earlier in Los Angeles than it does here. Or is it early later?”
    “That’s it! You’ve got it,” Elkins approved. “Astronomers call it the Yogi Berra Effect.”
    “Dudley’s selling him the clincher,” Colby explained. “He’s pretending to hold him there so he can make it onto a plane for Brazil before the story breaks. Actually, of course, the idea is to keep him from filing the story until just before deadline of today’s final, so they won’t have time to check with the embassy in Athens to see if some American named Manning did die in the Cyclades. So they’ll run the story without the check, because if Dudley’s taking it on the lam it’s bound to be true.
    “The wire services will pick it up, and the morning papers can’t check with the embassy either, because it’ll be closed. So the wire services and all the papers that have Paris bureaus will be calling the house here and sending men around. No answer. Nothing. So it’s true, and Dudley’s flown the coop. So the morning papers will run it. Boy, the headlines! Best-selling Author Dead. Fraud Suspected.
    “Then about this time tomorrow, when somebody finally does get in the house, here’s Manning typing away to beat hell on another door-stopper, laying ‘em three to a page. What’s all the uproar? Of course she didn’t answer the phone, she never does when she’s working. And her secretary was off last night.
    “Other writers? Here? Dudley? What drunk poured that one out of a bottle? Dudley’s not even in Paris; he’s in New York.
    “So all the papers that ran the original story will run a retraction, and there’ll be fifty to a hundred that didn’t run it the first time that will now because they can’t resist the temptation to quote Mark Twain—”
    “Isn’t that the living end?” Martine caught Elkins’ arm and cooed with admiration. “Who’s Mark Twain?”
    “The book goes on sale day after tomorrow,” Colby went on, “right in the middle of it, with a big ad campaign. And in our shy little way we break down and admit that Rumford Productions has bought the motion-picture rights and that it’s going to be your first starring vehicle, and it just happens we have all those stills of you and Manning discussing the role in the old book-lined study around the famous typewriter—” He paused, shaking his head with wonder. “Brother. It gets you, right in here.”
    Martine’s eyes were suddenly filled with bathos. “But, Lawrence, what about this poor Mr. Muffett? He might have kiddies. Won’t he lose his job?”
    “So we’ll send him a Christmas basket, Colby said. “Look, he’ll get another job. . . .”
    A chair scraped behind him, and then a shoe. I hope the waiter didn’t leave a bottle on his table, he thought. Then he was looking up into a beefy face dominated by its landmark of a nose and very nasty expression. Moffatt was standing at his left, leaning over the table with the telegraph forms in his hand.
    “I was just wondering if I couldn’t buy you charming people a drink,” he said. “I’m Moffatt of the Pleasanton Weekly Argus.”
    Colby stared in confusion. “What? Moffatt? Now wait