tion whether rapid and accurate brain work results from
superior equipment or from good training. In my case, what-
ever my original equipment may have been, it has certainly
had the advantage of prolonged and severe training. One re-
sult, not always pleasant and rarely profitable, is that I am
likely to forget myself and concentrate on problems which
are none of my business. I did so last night. Within thirty
seconds after inspecting the bull’s clean face, I had guessed
at a possible weapon. Knowing where it was, I went and in-
spected it, and verified my guess. I then returned to the house.
By the time I arrived there I had reached a conclusion as to
how the crime had been committed—and I have not altered
it since.”
“What was the weapon? Where was it?”
“It was rustic too. An ordinary pick for digging. In the
afternoon, in an emergency created by the bull—preceded by
Mr. Goodwin’s destruction of my car—1 had been conveyed
from the pasture by Miss Pratt in an automobile. We had
passed by an excavation—the barbecue pit as I learned after-
wards—with freshly dug earth and picks and shovels lying
there. My guess was that a pick might have been used. I went
with a flashlight to see, and found confirmation. There were
two picks. One of them was perfectly dry, with bits of dried
soil clinging to it, and the other was damp. Even the metal
itself was still damp on the under side, and the wooden han-
dle was positively wet. There was no particle of soil clinging
to the metal. Obviously the thing had been thoroughly and
recently washed, not more than an hour previously at the
outside. Not far away I found the end of a piece of garden
hose. It was connected somewhere, for when I turned the
nozzle a little, water came. Around where the nozzle lay the
grass was quite wet when I pressed my palm into it. It was
more than a surmise, it was close to a certainty, that the pick
had done the goring, got deluged with blood, been carefully
washed with the garden hose and replaced on the pile of
excavated soil where I found it.”
“You mean—” Frederick Osgood stopped with his jaw
clamped. His clenched fists, resting on his hams, showed
white knuckles. He went on, harshly, “My son … was killed
like that … dug at with a pick?”
Waddell was looking decomposed. He tried to bluster. “If
all this is true—you knew it last night, didn’t you? Why the
hell didn’t you spill it when the sheriff was there? When the
cops were there on the spot?”
“I represented no interest last night, sir.”
“What about the interest of justice? You’re a citizen, aren’t
you? Did you ever hear of withholding evidence—”
“Nonsense. I didn’t withhold the bull’s face or the pick.
You must know you’re being silly. My cerebral processes, and
the conclusions they lead me to, belong to me.”
“You say the pick handle was wet and there was no dirt
sticking to the metal. Couldn’t it have been washed for some
legitimate reason? Did you inquire about that?”
“I made no inquiries of anybody. At eleven o’clock at night
the pick handle was wet. If you regard it as a rational project
to find a legitimate nocturnal pick-washer, go ahead. The
time might be better spent, if you need confirmation, in look-
ing for blood residue in the grass around the hose nozzle and
examining the pick handle with a microscope. It is hard to
remove all vestige of blood from a piece of wood. Those steps
are of course obvious, and others as well.”
“You’re telling me.” The District Attorney sent a glance,
half a glare, at Osgood, and away again, back at Wolfe. “Now
look here, don’t get me wrong .. . you neither, Fred Osgood.
I’m the prosecutor for this county and I know my duty and
I intend to do it and I try to do it. If there’s been a crime
I don’t want to back off from it and neither does Sam Lake,
but I’m not going to raise a stink just for the hell of it and
you can’t blame me for that. The people who elected me
wouldn’t want it and nobody ought to want it. And the way
it looks to me—in spite of no blood on the bull and whether
I find a legitimate nocturnal pick-washer or not—it still strikes
me as cuckoo. Did he climb into the pasture carrying the
pick—where the bull was-and then Clyde Osgood climbed
in after him and obligingly stood there while he swung the
pick? Or was Clyde already in the pasture, and he climbed
in with the pick and let him have it? Can you imagine aiming
anything as clumsy and heavy as a pick at a man in the dark,
and him still being there when it landed? And wouldn’t the
blood spurt all over you too? Who is he and where did he go
to, covered with blood?”
Osgood snarled, “I told you, Wolfe. Listen to the damn
fool-Look here. Carter Waddell! Now I’ll tell you some-
thing—”
“Please, gentlemen!” Wolfe had a palm up. “We’re wasting
a lot of time.” He regarded the District Attorney and said
patiently, “You’re going about it wrong. You should stop
squirming and struggling. Finding yourself confronted by an
unpleasant fact… you’re like a woman who conceals a stain
on a table cover by putting an ash tray over it. Ineffectual,
because someone is sure to move the ash tray. The fact is
that Clyde Osgood was murdered by someone with that pick,
and unhappily your function is to establish the fact and re-
veal its mechanism; you can’t obliterate it merely by invent-
ing unlikely corollaries.”
“I didn’t invent anything, I only—”
“Pardon me. You assumed the fictions that Clyde climbed
the fence into the pasture and obligingly stood in the dark
and permitted himself to be fatally pierced by a clumsy pick.
I admit that the first is unlikely and the second next to in-
credible. Those considerations occurred to me last night on
the spot. As I said, by the time I reached the house I had
satisfied myself as to how the crime was committed, and I am
still satisfied. I don’t believe Clyde Osgood climbed the fence.
He was first rendered unconscious, probably by a blow on
the head. He was then dragged or carried to the fence, and
pushed under it or lifted over it, and further dragged or car-
ried ten or fifteen yards into the pasture, and left lying on his
side. The murderer then stood behind him with the pick and
swung it powerfully in the natural and ordinary manner, only
instead of piercing and tearing the ground it pierced and
tore his victim. The wound would perfectly resemble the
goring of a bull. The blood-spurt would of course soil the
pick, but not the man who wielded it. He got the tie-rope
from where it was hanging on the fence and tossed it on the
ground near the body, to make it appear that Clyde had en-
tered the pasture with it; then he took the pick to the con-
venient hose nozzle, washed it off, returned it where he had
got it,, and went—” Wolfe shrugged “—went somewhere.”
“The bull,” Waddell said. “Did the bull just stand and look
on and wait for the murderer to leave, and then push the body
around so as to have bloody horns? Even a rustic sheriff might
have noticed it if he had had no blood on him at all.”
“I couldn’t say. It was dark. A bull may or may not attack
in the dark. But I suggest (1) the murderer, knowing how to
handle a bull in the dark, before performing with the pick,
approached the bull, snapped the tie-rope onto the nose ring,
and led him to the fence and tied him. Later, before releasing
him, he smeared blood on his horns. Or (2), after the pick
had been used the murderer enticed the bull to the spot and
left him there, knowing that the smell of blood would lead
him to investigate. Or (3), the murderer acted when the bull
was in another part of the pasture and made no effort to
manufacture the evidence of bloody horns, thinking that in
the excitement and with the weight of other circumstances as
arranged, it wouldn’t matter. It was his good luck that Mr.
Goodwin happened to arrive while the bull was satisfying
his curiosity … and his bad luck that I happened to arrive
at all.”
Waddell sat frowning, his mouth screwed up. After a mo-
ment he blurted, “Fingerprints on the pick handle.”
Wolfe shook his head. “A handkerchief or a tuft of grass, to
carry it after washing it. I doubt if the murderer was an idiot.”
Waddell frowned some more. “Your idea about tying the