sisted—”
“Come on, beat it. Ten people have stopped to look in here
at us in the last three minutes.”
“But I’ve got to know—”
“Damn it, do what I say!”
“Please, Jimmy.”
He took her hand and looked her in the eye and said her
name twice as if he was leaving her bound to a railroad track,
and tore himself away. I told her to come on and left the stall
and turned right with her, toward the door by which I had
entered. Outside I took her elbow and talked as we walked:
“I’ve got work to do and I’m leaving you. You’ve acted like
a female nincompoop. It’s true that emotions are emotions,
but brains are also brains. To go running to Jimmy Pratt for
help when you already had Nero Wolfe’s! You get away from
here. I suppose you have a date to meet your father some-
where. If so, go there and wait for him and practice thinking.”
“But I haven’t … you talk as if—”
“I don’t talk as if anything. Don’t worry about how I talk.
Here’s where I turn off. See you in kindergarten.”
I left her in the middle of a crowd, thinking that was as
good a place as any, and elbowed my way across the current
to where I could make better time without displaying any in-
dications of panic. It took less than five minutes to get from
there to the Methodist tent. Wolfe was still there, at the table,
looking massively forlorn on the folding chair. He had prob-
ably never before digested good food under such difficult cir-
cumstances.
He frowned up at me. “Well? Mr. Bennett?”
I sat down and nodded and restrained my voice. “I have
to make a brief but tiresome report. Item 1, Mr. Bennett will
be here in 10 minutes or so. He said. Item 2, I found Nancy
Osgood and Jimmy Pratt in a cowshed, discussing means of
getting the paper which I have in my pocket. Item 3, in the
same shed I found Mr. Bronson lying under a pile of straw,
dead, with a pitchfork stuck through his heart. No one knows
of the last item but me … or didn’t when I left.”
Wolfe’s eyes went shut, then came half-open again. He
heaved a deep sigh. “The fool. I told that man he was a fool.”
I NODDED. “Yeah. You also told him you were be-
ginning to suspect that he was engaged in an en-
terprise which might prove to be a big blunder. Madam
Shasta, in a booth down the line, calls it reading the future
and charges a dime for it.” I fished for a pair of nickels and
shoved them across at him. “I’ll bite. How did you know it?”
He ignored my offer. “Confound it,” he muttered. “Too late
again. I should have phoned Saul or Fred last evening to
take a night train. Bronson should have been followed this
morning. Once compelled to talk, he would have been all the
evidence we needed. I am not myself, Archie. How the devil
can I be, dashing around in all this furor … I have that
scoundrel Shanks to thank for it. Well.” He sighed again.
“You say no one knows it?”
“Correct. Except the guy that did it. I was waiting around
for Bennett and saw Nancy enter a cowshed and followed her
in. She joined Jimmy Pratt in a stall which also contained a
pile of straw. I made it three and we conversed. A cow nurse
came and removed part of the straw, exposing a shoe and a
trouser cuff. No one saw it but me and I kicked straw over
it. A pitchfork was thrust into the pile, upright, with straw
covering it part way up the handle, and I took a sounding
with my hand and discovered what its pincushion was. Right
through his chest. His pump was gone. I accused Romeo and
Juliet of indiscretion and hustled them out in separate direc-
tions, and came here.”
“Then the discovery awaits removal of more straw.”
“Yes. Which may have already happened, or may not occur
until tomorrow.”
“But probably sooner. You came away to escape clamor?”
“To notify you. And to tell you about Bennett. And to save
Nancy from being annoyed, by her father for the company
she keeps, and by the cops for practically sitting on a corpse.”
“You were all seen by the man who removed the straw.”
“Sure, and by various others. Shall I go back now and dis-
cover him?”
Wolfe shook his head. ‘That wouldn’t help. Nor, probably,
will there be a trail for the official pack, so there’s no hurry.
I wouldn’t have guessed Bronson would be idiot enough to
give him such a chance, but of course he had to meet him
somewhere. But it is now all the more imperative—ah, thank
goodness! Good afternoon, sir.”
Lew Bennett, still in his shirt sleeves, out of breath, stood
beside him and curtly acknowledged the greeting. “You want
to see me? Worst time you could have picked. The very
worst.”
“So Mr. Goodwin has told me. I’m sorry, but I can’t help it.
Be seated, sir. Have some coffee?”
“I’ll just stand. If I once sat down … what do you want?”
“Have you had lunch?”
“No.”
“Preposterous.” Wolfe shook his head at him. “In the midst
of the most difficult and chaotic problems, I never missed a
meal. A stomach too long empty thins the blood and discon-
certs the brain.—Archie, order a portion of the fricassee.—For
God’s sake, sir, sit down.”
I doubt if Wolfe influenced him much, it was the smell of
food. I saw his nostrils quivering. He hesitated, and when I
flagged a Methodist and told her to bring it with an extra
dime’s worth of dumplings, which was an idea Wolfe had in-
vented, he succumbed and dropped into a chair.
Wolfe said, “That’s better. Now. I’ve been hired by Mr. Os-
good to solve a murder, and I need to know some things. You
may think of my questions irrelevant or even asinine; if so
you’ll be wrong. My only serious fault is lethargy, and I toler-
ate Mr. Goodwin, and even pay him, to help me circumvent it.
48 hours ago, Monday afternoon on Mr. Pratt’s terrace, you
told him that there were a dozen members of your league wait-
ing for you to get back, and that when they heard what you
had to say there would be some action taken. You shouted
that at him with conviction. What sort of action did you have
in mind?”
Bennett was staring at him. “Not murder,” he said shortly.
“What has that got—”
“Please.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “I’ve told you
I’m not an ass. I asked you a simple straightforward question.
Can’t you simply answer it? I know you were shouting at Mr.
Pratt in a rage. But what sort of action did you have in mind?”
“No sort.”
“Nothing whatever?”
“Nothing specific. I was furious. We all were. What he
intended to do was the most damnable outrage and insult—”
“I know. Granting your viewpoint, I agree. But hadn’t
ways and means of preventing it been discussed? For example,
had anyone suggested the possibility of removing Hickory
Caesar Grindon secretly and putting another bull in his
place?”
Bennett started to speak, and stopped. His eyes looked
wary. “No,” he said curtly.
Wolfe sighed. “All right. I wish you would understand that
I’m investigating a murder, not a conspiracy to defraud. You
should eat those dumplings hot. It might be better to let
this wait until you’re through—”
“Go ahead. When I’m through I’m going.”
“Very well. I didn’t ask if some of you had substituted an-
other bull or tried, I asked merely if it had been suggested
in the heat of indignation. What I really want to know is,
would such a plan have been feasible?”
“Feasible?” Bennett swallowed chicken. “It would have
been a crime. Legally.”
“Of course. But—please give this consideration as a serious
question—might it have worked?”
He considered, chewing bread and butter. “No. Monte
McMillan was there.”
“If Mr. McMillan hadn’t been there, or had been a party
to the scheme, might it have worked?”
“It might have.”
“It would have been possible to replace Caesar with an-
other bull sufficiently resembling him so that the substitution
would be undetected by anyone not thoroughly familiar
with his appearance, without a close inspection?”
“It might have.”
“Yet Caesar was a national grand champion.” Wolfe shifted,
grimacing, on the folding chair. “Didn’t he approach the
unique?”
“Hell no. There’s plenty of good bulls, and quite a few
great ones. The grand champion stuff is all right, and it’s
valid, but sometimes the margin is mighty slim. Last year
at Indianapolis, Caesar scored 96 and Portchester Compton
95. Another thing of course is their get. The records of
their daughters and sons. Caesar had 51 A R daughters—”