I've seen lots of people knocked dizzy by sudden death, and if that's all that's wrong with you there's nothing anyone can give you ex- cept sympathy, but if you're really working on an idea the best thing you can do is turn it over to professionals. Have you got a suspicion you can communicate?'
'I have.'
'Suspicion of what?'
'I don't know, but I don't understand what happened. I don't believe my son walked into that pasture alone, for any purpose whatever. Pratt says he was there to get the bull. That's an idiotic supposition. My son wasn't an idiot. He wasn't a greenhorn with cattle, either. Is it likely he would go up to a loose bull, and if the bull showed temper, just stand there in the dark and let it come?'
Another rumble from Pratt: 'You heard what McMillan said. He might have slipped or stumbled, and the bull was too close-'
'I don't believe it! What was he there for?'
'To win ten thousand dollars.'
Osgood got to his feet. He was broad-shouldered, and a little taller than Pratt, but a bit paunchy. He advanced on Pratt with fists hanging and spoke through his teeth. 'You damn skunk. I warned you not to say that again…'
I slipped in between them, being more at home there than I was with bulls. I allotted the face to Osgood: 'And when the doctor comes his duty would be to get you two bandaged up. That would be nice. If Pratt thinks your son was trying to win a bet that's what he thinks, and you asked for his opinion and you got it. Cut out the playing. Either wait till morning and get some daylight on it, or go ahead and send for the sheriff and see what he thinks of Pratt's opinion. Then the papers will print it, along with Dave's opinion and Lily Rowan's opinion and so forth, and we'll see what the public thinks. Then some intelligent reporters from New York will print an interview with the bull-'
'Well, Mr. Pratt! I'm sorry I couldn't make it sooner…'
We turned. It was a stocky little man with no neck, carry- ing a black bag.
'I was out when the call… oh. Mr. Osgood. This is terrible. A very terrible thing. Terrible.'
I followed the trio into the next room, where the piano was, and the divan. There was no sense in Osgood going in there again, but he went. Jimmy Pratt, who had been sitting on the piano stool, got up and left. The doctor trotted over to the divan and put his bag down on a chair. Osgood crossed to a window and stood with his back to the room. When the sound came of the canvas being opened, and the doctor's voice saying 'My God!' quite loud, involuntarily, Osgood turned his head half around and then turned it back again.
Thirty minutes later I went upstairs and reported to Wolfe, who, in yellow pajamas, was in the bathroom brushing his teeth:
'Doc Sackett certified accidental death from a wound in- flicted by a bull. Frederick Osgood, bereaved father, who would be a duke if we had dukes or know the reason why, suspects a fly in the soup, whether for the same reason as 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.'
6
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
