traffic, and although she was impulsive with the wheel and
jerky on the gas pedal, she did it pretty well. I glanced
around once and saw Wolfe hanging onto the strap for dear
life. We finally rolled up to the curb in front of a stretch of
lawn and a big old stone building with its status carved above
the entrance: CROWFIELD COUNTY COURT HOUSE.
Osgood, climbing out, spoke to his daughter: “You go on
home. Nancy, to your mother. There was no sense in your
coming anyway. I’ll phone when there is anything to say.”
Wolfe intervened, “It would be better for her to wait for
us here. In case I take this job I shall need to talk with her
without delay.”
“With my daughter?” Osgood scowled. “What for? Non-
sense!”
“As you please, sir.” Wolfe shrugged. “It’s fairly certain
I won’t want the job. For one thing, you’re too infernally com-
bative for a client.”
“But why the devil should you need tp talk to my
daughter?”,
“To get information. I offer you advice, Mr. Osgood: go
home with your daughter and forget this quest for vengeance.
There is no other form of human activity quite so impertinent
as a competent murder investigation, and I fear you’re not
equipped to tolerate it. Abandon the idea. You can mail me
a check at your convenience—”
“I’m going on with it.”
“Then prepare yourself for annoyance, intrusion, plague,
the insolence of publicity—”
“I’m going on with it.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe inclined his head an inch toward the
lovely but miserable face of the daughter at the steering
wheel. “Then you will please wait here. Miss Osgood.”
IN ALL ordinary circumstances Wolfe’s cocky
and unlimited conceit prevents the develop-
ment of any of the tender sentiments, such as compassion
for instance, but that afternoon I felt sorry for him. He was
being compelled to break some of his most ironclad rules.
He was riding behind strange drivers, walking in crowds,
obeying a summons from a prospective client, and calling
upon a public official, urged on by his desperate desire to
find a decent place to sit down. The hotel room we had man-
aged to get—since we hadn’t arrived Monday evening to
claim the one we had reserved—was small, dark and noisy,
and had one window which overlooked a building operation
where a concrete mixer was raising cain. If you opened the
window, cement dust entered in clouds. There was nowhere
at all to sit near our space in the exhibits building. At the
Methodist tent they had folding chairs. The ones at the
room where we had gone to meet Osgood, where Wolfe had
probably expected something fairly tolerable, had been little
better; and obviously Wolfe regarded the District Attorney’s
office as a sort of forlorn last hope. I never saw him move
faster than when we entered and a swift glance showed him
there was just one upholstered, in dingy black leather, with
arms. You might almost have called it a swoop. He stood in
front of it for the introduction and then sank.
Carter Waddell, the District Attorney, was pudgy and
middle-aged and inclined to bubble. I suppose he did Special
bubbling for Osgood, on account of sympathy for bereave-
ment and to show that the 1936 election had left no hard
feelings, not to mention his love for his country of which
Osgood owned 2000 acres. He said he was perfectly willing
to reopen the discussion they had had earlier in the day,
though his own opinion was unaltered. Osgood said he didn’t
intend to discuss it himself, that would be a waste of time
and effort, but that Mr. Nero Wolfe had something to say.
“By all means,” Waddell bubbled. “Certainly. Mr. Wolfe’s
reputation is well known, of course. Doubtless we poor rustics
could learn a great deal from him. Couldn’t we, Mr. Wolfe?”
Wolfe murmured, “I don’t know your capacity, Mr. Wad-
dell. But I do think I have something pertinent to offer
regarding the murder of Clyde Osgood.”
“Murder?” Waddell stretched his eyes wide. “Now I don’t
know. Petitio principii isn’t a good way to begin. Is it?”
“Of course not.” Wolfe wriggled himself comfortable, and
sighed. “I offer the word as something to be established, not
as a postulate. Did you ever see a bull kill a man, or injure
one with his hom?”
“No, I can’t say I have.”
“Did you ever see a bull who had just gored a man or a
horse or any animal? Immediately after the goring?”
“No.”
“Well, I have … long ago … a dozen times or more, at
bullfights. Horses killed, and men injured … one man killed.”
Wolfe wiggled a finger. “Whether you’ve seen it or not, surely
you can imagine what happens when a bull thrusts his hom
deep into a living body, and tosses, and tears the wound.
While the heart of the victim is still furiously pumping. Blood
spurts all over the bull’s face and head, and often clear to his
shoulders and beyond. The bleeding of a man killed in that
manner is frightful; the instant such a wound is made a tor-
rent gushes forth. It was so in the case of Clyde Osgood. His
clothing was saturated. I am told that the police report that
where he was killed there is an enormous caked pool of it.
Is that correct? You acknowledge it. Last night Mr. Goodwin,
my assistant, found the bull turning Clyde Osgood’s body over
on the ground, with his horns, without much force or en-
thusiasm. The natural supposition was that the bull had killed
him. Not more than fifteen minutes later, when the bull had
been tied to the fence, I examined him at close range with
a flashlight. He has a white face, and there was only one
smudge of blood on it, and his horns were bloody only a few
inches down from the tips. Was that fact included in the police
report?”
Waddell said slowly, “I don’t remember … no.”
“Then I advise that the bull be inspected at once, provided
he hasn’t been already washed off. I assure you that my report
is reliable.” Wolfe wiggled a finger again. “I didn’t come here
to offer a conjecture, Mr. Waddell. I don’t intend to argue it
with you. Often in considering phenomena we encounter a
suspicious circumstance which requires study and permits de-
bate, but the appearance of the bull’s face and head last night
is not that, it is much more. It is conclusive proof that the
bull didn’t kill Clyde Osgood. You spoke of my reputation; I
stake it on this.”
“By God,” Clyde Osgood’s father muttered. “Well, by God.
I looked at that bull myself, and I never thought…”
“I’m afraid you weren’t doing much thinking last night,”
Wolfe told him. “It couldn’t be expected of you. But it might
have been expected of the police by the sanguine … par-
ticularly the rustic police.”
The District Attorney, without any sign of bubbling, said,
“You’ve made a point, I grant that. Of course you have. But
I’d like to have a doctor’s opinion about the bleeding—”
“It was all over his clothes and the grass. Great quantities.
If you consult a doctor, let it be the one who saw the wound.
In the meantime, it would be well to act, and act soon, on the
assumption that the bull didn’t do it, because that’s the fact.”
“You’re very positive, Mr. Wolfe. Very.”
“I am.”
“Isn’t it possible that the bull withdrew his horn so quickly
that he escaped the spurt of blood?”
“No. The spurt is instantaneous, and bulls don’t gore like
that anyway. They stay in to tear. Has the wound been de-
scribed to you?”
Waddell nodded. I noticed that he wasn’t looking at Os-
good. “That’s another thing,” he said. “That wound. If it
wasn’t made by the bull, what could possibly have done it?
What kind of weapon?”
“The weapon is right there, not thirty yards from the pas-
ture fence. Or was. I examined it.”
I thought, uh-huh, see the bright little fat boy with all the
pretty skyrockets! But I stared at him, and so did the others.
Osgood ejaculated something, and Waddell’s voice had a
crack in it as he demanded, “You what?”
“I said, I examined it.”
“The weapon that killed him?”
“Yes. I borrowed a flashlight from Mr. Goodwin, because
of a slight difficulty in believing that Clyde Osgood would
let himself be gored by a bull in the dark. I had heard him
remark, in the afternoon, that he knew cattle. Later his father
experienced the same difficulty, but didn’t know how to re-
solve it. I did so by borrowing the light and inspecting the
bull, and perceived at once that the supposition which al-
ready prevailed was false. The bull hadn’t killed him. Then
what had?”
Wolfe squirmed in his chair, which was after all eight
inches too narrow, and continued, “It is an interesting ques-