for being undone by a predatory blonde, but she had said
the food there was the best available at the exposition
grounds, and Caroline’s reply to an inquiry during the mom-
ing ride to Crowfield had verified it, so I smothered my con-
science and went ahead.
It was another fine day and the crowd was kicking up
quite.a dust. Banners, balloons, booby booths and bingo games
were all doing a rushing business, not to mention hot dogs,
orange drinks, popcorn, snake charmers, lucky wheels, shoot-
ing galleries, take a slam and win a ham, two-bit fountain
pens and Madam Shasta who reads the future and will let
you in on it for one thin dime. I passed a platform whereon
stood a girl wearing a grin and a pure gold brassiere and a
Fuller brush skirt eleven inches long, and beside her a hoarse
guy in a black derby yelling that the mystic secret Dingaroola
Dance would start inside the tent in eight minutes. Fifty
people stood gazing up at her and listening to him, the men
looking as if they might be willing to take one more crack at
the mystic, and the women looking cool and contemptuous. I
moseyed along. The crowd got thicker, that being the main
avenue leading to the grandstand entrance. I got tripped up
by a kid diving between my legs in an effort to resume
contact with mamma, was glared at by a hefty milkmaid, not
bad-looking, who got her toe caught under my shoe, wriggled
away from the tip of a toy parasol which a sweet little girl
kept digging into my ribs with, and finally left the worst of
the happy throng behind and made it to the Methodist grub-
tent, having passed by the Baptists with the snooty feeling
of a man-about-town who is in the know.
Believe it or not, she was there, at a table against the can-
vas wall toward the rear. I pranced across the sawdust,
concealing my amazement. Dressed in a light tan jersey thing, .
with a blue scarf and a little blue hat, among those hearty
country folk she looked like an antelope in a herd of Guern-
seys. I sat down across the table from her and told her so.
She yawned and said that what she had seen of antelopes’
legs made it seem necessary to return the compliment for re-
pairs, and before I could arrange a comeback we were inter-
rupted by a Methodist lady in white apron who wanted to
know what we would have.
Lily Rowan said, “Two chicken fricassee with dumplings.”
“Wait a minute,” I protested. “It says there they have
beef pot roast and veal—”
“No.” Lily was firm. “The fricassee with dumplings is
made by a Mrs. Miller whose husband has left her four times
on account of her disposition and returned four times on
account of her cooking and is still there. So I was told yes-
terday by Jimmy Pratt.”
The Methodist bustled off. Lily looked at me with a comer
of her mouth curled up and remarked as if it didn’t matter
much, “The chief reason I came was to see how surprised
you would look when you found me here, and you don’t look
surprised at all and you begin by telling me I have legs
like an antelope.”
I shrugged. “Go ahead and nag. I admit I’m glad you
came, because if you hadn’t I wouldn’t have known about the
fricassee. Your harping on legs is childish. Your legs are
unusually good and you know it and so do I. Legs are made
to be walked with or looked at, not talked about, especially
not in a Methodist stronghold. Are you a Catholic? What’s
the difference between a Catholic and a river that runs up-
hill?”
She didn’t know and I told her, and we babbled on. The
fricassee came, and the first bite, together with dumpling
and gravy, made me marvel at the hellishness of Mrs. Miller’s
disposition, to drive a man away from that. It gave me an
idea, and a few minutes later, when I saw Wolfe and Charles
E. Shanks enter the tent and get settled at a table on the
other side, I excused myself and went over and told him
about the fricassee, and he nodded gravely.
I was corralling the last of my rice when Lily asked me
when I was going back to New York. I told her it depended
on what time the orchids were judged on Wednesday; we
would leave either Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morn-
ing.
“Of course,” she said, “we’ll see each other in New York.”
“Yeah?” I swallowed the rice. “What for?”
“Nothing in particular. Only I’m sure we’ll see each other,
because if you weren’t curious about me you wouldn’t be
so rude, and I was curious about you before I ever saw your
face, when I saw you walking across that pasture. You have a
distinctive way of walking. You move very … I don’t
know …”
“Distinctive will do. Maybe you noticed I have a dis-
tinctive way of getting over a fence too, in case of a bull.
Speaking of bulls, I understand the barbecue is off.”
“Yes.” She shivered a little. “Naturally. I’m thinking of
leaving this afternoon. When I came away at noon there was
a string of people gawking along the fence, there where your
car had been . ., . where we were last night. They would
have crossed the pasture and swarmed all over the place
if there hadn’t been a state trooper there.”
“With the bull in it?”
“The bull was at the far end. That what’s-his-name—Mc-
Millan—took him there and tied him up again.” She shivered.
“I never saw anything like last night … I had to sit on
the ground to keep from fainting. What were they asking
questions for? Why did they ask if I was with you all the
time? What did that have to do with him getting killed
by the bull?”
“Oh, they always do that in cases of accidental death.
Eye-witnesses. By the way, you won’t be leaving for New
York today if they hold an inquest, only I don’t suppose
they will. Did they ask if you had seen Clyde Osgood around
there after dinner, before you went for your walk and ran onto
me?”
“Yes. Of course I hadn’t. Why did they ask?”
“Search me.” I put sugar in my coffee and stirred. “Maybe
they thought you had deprived him of all hope or something
and he climbed into the pasture to commit suicide. All kinds
of romantic ideas, those birds get. Did they ask if Clyde had
come to Pratt’s place to see you?”
“Yes.” Her eyes lifted up at me and then dropped back
to her coffee cup. “I didn’t understand that either. Why should
they think he had come to see me?”
“Oh, possibly Clyde’s father sicked them on. I know when
I mentioned your name to him last night and said you were
there, he nearly popped open. I got the impression he had
seen you once in a nightmare. Not that I think you belong
in a nightmare, with your complexion and so on, but that
was the impression I got.”
“He’s just a pain.” She shrugged indifferently. “He has
no right to be talking about me. Anyway, not to you.” Her
eyes moved up me and over me, up from my chest over my
face to the top of my head, and then slowly traveled down
again. “Not to you, Escamillo,” she said. I wanted to slap
her, because her tone, and the look in her eyes going over
me, made me feel like a potato she was peeling. She asked,
“What did he say?”
“Not much.” I controlled myself. “Only his expression
was suggestive. He spoke of wringing your neck. I gathered
that you and his son Clyde had once been friends. I suppose
he told the police and sheriff that, or maybe they knew it
already, and that’s why they asked if Clyde came to see you
last night.”
“Well, he didn’t. He would have been more apt to come
to see Caroline than me.”
That was turning a new page for me, but I covered my
surprise and inquired idly, “You mean Miss Pratt? Why, did
they have dealings?”
“They used to have.” She opened the mirror of her compact
to study nature with an eye to improvement. “I guess they
were engaged, or about to be. Of course you don’t know
about the Osgood-Pratt situation. The Osgoods have been
rich for generations, they go back to a revolutionary general
I think it was—their relatives in New York think the Social
Register is vulgar. To me that’s all a bore … my mother was
a waitress and my father was an immigrant and made his
money building sewers.”
“Yet look at you. I heard Pratt say yesterday that he