yours or not I can’t say, because you haven’t told me your
reason if any. I didn’t know your wishes in regard to goading
him with innuendo …”
Wolfe rinsed his mouth and spat. “I requested you merely
to give direct evidence.”
“There was no merely about it. I tell you Osgood is in
the peerage and he doesn’t believe it happened the way it
did happen, his chief reason being that Clyde was too smart
to fall for a bull in the dark and that there is no acceptable
reason to account for Clyde being in the pasture at all. He
offered those observations to Doc Sackett, along with others,
but Sackett thought he was just under stress and shock, which
he was, and refused to delay the certification, and arranged
for an undertaker to come in the morning. Whereupon Os-
good, without even asking permission to use the telephone,
called up the sheriff and the state police.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe hung the towel on the rack. “Remind
me to wire Theodore tomorrow. I found a mealy bug on one
of the plants.”
AT ELEVEN o’clock Tuesday morning I stood
working on a bottle of milk which I had
brought in from a dairy booth, one of hundreds lining the
enormous rotunda of the main exhibits building at the Crow-
field exposition grounds, and watching Nero Wolfe being
gracious to an enemy. I was good and weary. On account of
the arrival of the officers of the law at Pratt’s around mid-
night, and their subsequent antics, I hadn’t got to bed until
after two. Wolfe had growled me out again before seven.
Pratt and Caroline had been with us at breakfast, but not
Lily Kowan or Jimmy. Pratt, looking as if he hadn’t slept at
all, reported that McMillan had insisted on guarding the bull
the remainder of the night and was now upstairs in bed.
Jimmy had gone to Crowfield with a list of names which
probably wasn’t complete, to send telegrams cancelling the
invitations to the barbecue. It seemed likely that Hickory
Caesar Grindon’s carcass would never inspire a rustic festivity,
but his destiny was uncertain. All that had been decided
about him was that be wouldn’t be eaten on Thursday. He
had been convicted by the sheriff and the state police, who
had found lying in the pasture, near the spot where Clyde
Osgood had died, a tie-rope with a snap at one end, which
had been, identified as the one which had been left hanging
on the fence. Even that had not satisfied Frederick Osgood,
but it had satisfied the police, and they had dismissed Os-
good’s suspicions as vague, unsupported, and imaginary.
When, back upstairs packing, I had asked Wolfe if he was
satisfied too, he had grunted and said, “I told you last night
that Mr. Osgood was not killed by the bull. My infernal
curiosity led me to discover that much, and the weapon
that was used, but I refuse to let the minor details of the
problem take possession of my mind, so we won’t discuss it.”
“You might just mention who did it—”
“Please, Archie.”
I put it away with moth balls and went on with the luggage.
We were decamping for a Crowfield hotel. The contract for
bull-nursing was cancelled, and though Pratt mumbled some-
thing about our staying on to be polite, the atmosphere of the
house said go. So the packing, and lugging to the car, and
spraying the orchids and getting them on board too, and
the drive to Crowfield with Caroline as chauffeur, and the
fight for a hotel room which was a pippin—I mean the fight,
not the room—and getting both Wolfe and the crates out
to the exposition grounds and finding our space and getting
the plants from the crates without injury … It was in fact
quite a morning.
Now, at eleven o’clock, I was providing for replacement
of my incinerated tissue by filling up with milk. The orchids
had been sprayed and straightened and manicured and were
on the display benches in the space which had been allotted
to us. The above-mentioned enemy that Wolfe was being
gracious to was a short fat person in a dirty impressed mohair
suit with keen little black eyes and two chins, by name Charles
E. Shanks. I watched them and listened to them as I sipped
the milk, because it was instructive. Shanks knew that the
reason Wolfe had busted precedent and come to Crowfield
to exhibit albinos which he had got by three new crosses with
Paphiopedilum lawrenceanum hyeanum was to get an award
over one Shanks had produced by crossing P. callosum
sanderae with a new species from Burma; that Wolfe de-
sired and intended to make a monkey of Shanks because
Shanks had fought shy of the metropolitan show and had also
twice refused Wolfe’s offers to trade albinos; and that one
good look at the entries in direct comparison made it prac-
tically certain that the judges’ decision would render Shanks
not only a monkey but even a baboon. Furthermore, Wolfe
knew that Shanks knew that they both knew; but hearing
them gabbing away you might have thought that when a
floriculturist wipes his brow it is to remove not sweat but
his excess of brotherly love; which is why, knowing the stage
of vindictiveness Wolfe had had to arrive at before he de-
cided on that trip, I say it was instructive to listen to them.
I had been subjected to a few minor vexations in con-
nection with the pasture affair. During the battle for a room
at the hotel I had been approached by a bright-eyed boy with
big ears and a notebook who grabbed me by the lapel and
said he wanted, not only for the local Journal but also for the
Associated Press, as lurid an account as possible of the car-
nage and gore. I traded him a few swift details for his help
on the room problem. A couple of other news retrievers, in
town to cover the exposition I suppose, also came sniffing
around; and while I had been helping Wolfe get the orchids
primped up I had been accosted by a tall skinny guy in a
pin-check suit, as young as me or younger, wearing a smile
that I would recognize if I saw it in Siam—the smile of an
elected person who expects to run again, or a novice in train-
ing to join the elected person class at the first opportunity.
He looked around to make sure no spies were sneaking up on
us at the moment, introduced himself as Mr. Whosis, As-
sistant District Attorney of Crowfield County, and told me at
the bottom of his voice, shifting from the smile to Expression
9B, which is used when speaking of the death of a voter,
that he would like to have my version of the unfortunate
occurrence at the estate of Mr. Pratt the preceding evening.
Feeling pestered, I raised my voice instead of lowering
it. “District Attorney, huh? Working up a charge of murder
against the bull?”
That confused him, because he had to show that he ap-
preciated my wit without sacrificing Expression 9B; also I
attracted the attention of passers-by and a few of them stopped
in the aisle to look at us. He did it pretty well. No, he said,
not a charge of murder, nothing like that, not even against
the bull; but certain inquiries had been made and it was felt
desirable to supplement the reports of the sheriff and police
by firsthand information so there could be no complaint of
laxity. …
I drew the picture for him without any retouching or
painting out, and he asked a few fairly intelligent questions.
When he had gone I told Wolfe about him, but Wolfe had
orchids and Charles E. Shanks on his mind and showed no
sign of comprehension. A little later Shanks himself appeared
on the scene and that was when I went for the bottle of milk.
There was an ethical question troubling me which couldn’t
be definitely settled until one o’clock. In view of what had
happened at Pratt’s place I had no idea that Lily Rowan
would show up for the lunch date, and if she didn’t what
was the status of the two dollars Caroline had paid me?
Anyhow, I had decided that if the fee wasn’t earned it
wouldn’t be my fault, and luckily my intentions fitted in with
Wolfe’s plans which he presently arranged, namely to have
lunch with Shanks. I wouldn’t have eaten with them anyway,
since I had heard enough about stored pollen and nutritive
solutions and fungus inoculation for a while, so a little be-
fore one I left the main exhibits building and headed down
the avenue to the right in the direction of the tent which
covered the eatery operated by the ladies of the First Metho-
dist Church. That struck me as an incongruous spot to pick