forming a trick with sketches I shall certainly do so. With
Mr. Goodwin and Miss Rowan to swear that they saw me
making them, I think we may regard that point as estab-
lished.”
“What else?”
“That’s all. That’s enough.”
McMillan abruptly stood up. I was on my feet as soon
as he was, with my gun in sight. He saw it and grinned at me
without any humor, with his gums showing. “Go ahead and
stop me, son,” he said, and started, not fast but not slow, for
the door. “Make it good though.”
I dived past him and got to the door and stood with my
back against it. He halted three paces off.
Wolfe’s voice came, sharp, “Gentlemen! Please! If you start
a commotion, Mr. McMillan, the thing is out of my hands. You
must realize that. A wrestling match would bring people
here. If you get shot you’ll only be disabled; Mr. Goodwin
doesn’t like to kill people. Come back here and face it.
I want to talk to you.”
McMillan wheeled and demanded, “What the hell do you
think I’ve been doing for the past month except face it?”
“I know. But you were still struggling. Now the struggle’s
over. You can’t go out of that door; Mr. Goodwin won’t let
you. Come and sit down.”
McMillan stood for a minute and looked at him. Then
slowly he moved, back across the room to his chair, sat,
put his elbows on his knees, and covered his face with his
hands.
Wolfe said, “I don’t know how you feel about it. You asked
me what else. If you mean what other proof confronts you,
I repeat that no more is needed. If you mean can I offer salve
to your vanity, I think I can. You did extremely well. If I
had not been here you would almost certainly have escaped,
even the stigma of suspicion.”
Wolfe got his fingers laced again. I returned the gun to my
pocket and sat down. Wolfe resumed: “As I said, I suspected
Monday afternoon that the bull in the pasture was not the
champion Caesar. When Clyde offered to bet Pratt that he
would not barbecue Hickory Caesar Grindon, he opened up an
amusing field for conjecture. I diverted myself with it while
listening to Pratt’s jabber. How did Clyde propose to win his
bet? By removing the bull and hiding him? Fantastic; the
bull was guarded, and where could he be hid against a
search? Replace the bull with one less valuable? Little less
fantastic; again, the bull was guarded, and while a substitute
might be found who would deceive others, surely none would
deceive you, and you were there. I considered other alterna-
tives. There was one which was simple and plausible and
presented no obstacles at all: that the bull in the pasture was
not Hickory Caesar Grindon and Clyde had detected it. He
had just come from the pasture, and he had binoculars, and
he knew cattle. I regarded the little puzzle as solved and
dismissed it from my mind, since it was none of my business.
“When the shots fired by Mr. Goodwin took us all to
the pasture Monday night, and we found that Clyde had
been killed, it was still none of my business, but the puzzle
gained in interest and deserved a little effort as an intellectual
challenge. I examined the bull, looked for the weapon and
found it, and came to this room and sat in this chair and
satisfied myself as to the probabilities. Of course I was merely
satisfying myself as a mental exercise, not the legal require-
ments for evidence. First, if the bull wasn’t Caesar you cer-
tainly knew it, and therefore you had swindled Pratt. How
and why? Why, to get $45,000. How, by selling him Caesar
and then delivering another bull, much less valuable, who
resembled him. Then where was Caesar? Wouldn’t it be
highly dangerous for you to have him in your possession, since
he had been legally sold, and cooked and eaten? You couldn’t
call him Caesar, you wouldn’t dare to let anyone see him. Then
you didn’t have him in your possession. No one did. Caesar
was dead.”
Wolfe paused, and demanded, “Wasn’t Caesar dead when
you took the $45,000 from Pratt?”
McMillan, his face still covered with his hands, was mo-
tionless and made no sound.
“Of course he was,” Wolfe said. “He had died of anthrax.
Pratt mentioned at dinner Monday evening that he had first
tried to buy Caesar from you, for his whimsical barbecue,
more than six weeks ago, and you had indignantly refused.
Then the anthrax came. Your herd was almost entirely de-
stroyed. One morning you found that Caesar was dead. In your
desperation an ingenious notion occurred to you. Buckingham,
who resembled Caesar superficially but was worth only a
fraction of his value, was alive and well. You announced that
Buckingham had died, and the carcass was destroyed; and
you told Pratt that he could have Caesar. You couldn’t have
swindled a stockman like that, for the deception would soon
have been found out; but the swindle was in fact no injury
to Pratt, since Buckingham would make just as good roast
beef as Caesar would have made. Of course, amusing myself
with the puzzle Monday evening, I knew nothing of Buck-
ingham, but one of the probabilities which I accepted was
that you had delivered another bull instead of Caesar, and
that Caesar was dead.
“Clyde, then, had discovered the deception, and when
you heard him propose the bet to Pratt, and the way he stated
its terms, you suspected the fact. You followed him out to
his car and had a brief talk with him and got your suspicions
confirmed, and he agreed to return later that evening and
discuss it with you. He did so. You were supposed to be asleep
upstairs. You left the house secretly and met Clyde. I am
giving you the probabilities as I accepted them Monday eve-
ning. Clyde informed you that he knew of the deception
and was determined to expose it in order to win his bet with
Pratt. You, of course, faced ruin. He may have offered a com-
promise: for instance, if you would give him $20,000 of the
money Pratt had paid you he would use half of it to settle
his bet, keep the other half for himself, and preserve your
secret. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. What happened
was that you knocked him unconscious, evolved a plan to
make it appear that he had been killed by the bull, and pro-
ceeded to execute it. I was inclined to believe, looking at the
bull’s horns Monday night, that you had smeared blood on
them with your hands. You should have been much more
thorough, but I suppose you were in a hurry, for you had to
wash off the pick and get back to the house and into the
upstairs room unobserved. You didn’t know.’of course, whether
the thing would be discovered in 5 minutes or 5 hours—
since Mr. Goodwin was on the other side of the pasture talk-
ing to Miss Rowan.”
Wolfe opened his eyes. “Do I bore you or annoy you? Shall
I stop?”
No movement and no response.
“Well. That was the way I arranged the puzzle Monday
evening, but, as I say, it was none of my business. It didn’t
become my business until the middle of Tuesday afternoon,
when I accepted a commission from Mr. Osgood to solve the
murder, having first demonstrated that there had been one. At
that moment I expected to have the job completed within a
few hours. Only two things needed to be done to verify the
solution I had already arrived at: first, to question everyone
who had been at Pratt’s place Monday evening, for if it
turned out that you could not have left the house secretly—for
instance, if someone had been with you constantly—I would
have to consider new complexities; and second, to establish
the identity of the bull. The first was routine and I left it to
Mr. Waddell, as his proper province, while I investigated
Clyde’s background by conversing with his father and sister.
The second, the proof that the bull was not Caesar, I intended
to procure, with Mr. Bennett’s assistance, as soon as I heard
from the district attorney, and that delay was idiotic. I should
not have postponed it one instant. For less than 3 hours after
I had accepted the case I learned from your own lips that the
bull was dead and his carcass was to be immediately destroyed.
I tried; I phoned Mr. Bennett and learned that there was no
single distinguishing mark or brand on Guernsey bulls, and
Mr. Goodwin rushed over to take photographs; but the bull
was already half consumed by fire. You acted quickly there,
and in time. Of course you gave him the anthrax yourself. It