offer an observation or two before seeing your daughter. First, I must warn you of the practical certainty that the official theory will be that your son did enter the pasture to molest the bull, in spite of my demonstration to Mr. Waddell. They will learn that Clyde bet Mr. Pratt that he would not barbecue Hickory Caesar Grfndon this week. They will argue that all Clyde had to do to win the bet was to force a postponement of the feast for five days, and he might have tried that. They will be fascinated by the qualification this week. It is true that there is something highly significant in the way the terms of the bet were stated, but they'll miss that.'
'What's significant about it? It was a damned silly-'
'No. Permit me. I doubt if it was silly. I'll point it out to you when I'm ready to interpret it. Second, whatever line Mr. Waddell takes should have our respectful attention. If he offends, don't in your arrogance send him to limbo, for we can use his facts. Many of them. We shall want, for in- stance, to know what the various persons at Mr. Pratt's house were doing last night between 9 o'clock and 10:30. I don't know, because at 9 o'clock I felt like being alone and went up to my room to read. We shall want to know what the doctor says about the probable time of your son's death. The presumption is that it was not more than, say 15 minutes, before Mr. Goodwin arrived on the spot, but the doctor may be helpful. We shall want to know whether my conclusions have been supported by such details as the discovery of blood residue in the grass by the hose nozzle, and on the pick handle, et cetera. Third, I'd like to repeat a question which you evaded a while ago. Why do you hate Mr. Pratt?'
'I didn't evade it. I merely said it has no bearing on this.' 'Tell me anyway. Of course I'm impertinent, but I'll have to decide if I'm also irrelevant.'-
Osgood shrugged. 'It's no secret. This whole end of the state knows it, I don't hate him, I only feel contempt for him. As I told you, his father was one of my father's stablehands. As a boy Tom was wild, and aggressive, but he had ambition, iЈ you want to call it that. He courted a young woman in the neighborhood and persuaded her to agree to marry him. I came home from college, and she and I were mutually at- tracted, and I married her. Tom went to New York and never made an appearance around here. Apparently he was nursing a grievance all the time, for about eight years ago he began to make a nuisance of himself. He had made a lot of money, and he used some of it and all his ingenuity con- cocting schemes to pester and injure me. Then two years ago he bought that land next to mine, and built on it, and that made it worse.'
'Have you tried retaliation?'
'If I ever tried retaliation it would be with a horsewhip. I ignore him.'
'Not a democratic weapon, the whip. Yesterday afternoon your son accused him of projecting the barbecue as an offense to you. The idea seemed to be that it would humiliate you and make you ridiculous if a bull better than your best bull was cooked and eaten. It struck me as farfetched. Mr. Pratt maintained that the barbecue was to advertise his busi- ness.'
'I don't care a damn. What's the difference?'
'None, I suppose. But the fact remains that the bull is a central character in our problem, and it would be a mis- take to lose sight of him. So is Mr. Pratt, of course. You reject the possibility that his festering grievance might have impelled him to murder.'
'Yes. That's fantastic. He's not insane… at least I don't think he is.'
'Well.' Wolfe sighed. 'Will you send for your daughter?'
Osgood scowled. 'She's with her mother. Do you insist on speaking to her? I know you're supposed to be competent, but it seems to me the people to ask questions of are at Pratt's, not here.'
'It's my competence you're hiring, sir. Your daughter comes next. Mr. Waddell is at Pratt's, where he belongs, since he has authority.' Wolfe wiggled a finger. 'If you please.'
Osgood got up and went to a table to push a button, and then came back and downed his highball, which must have been as warm as Wolfe's beer by that time, in three gulps. The pug-nosed lassie appeared and was instructed to ask Miss Osgood to join us. Osgood sat down again and said:
'I don't see what you're accomplishing, Wolfe. If you think by questioning me you've eliminated everybody at Pratt's-'
'By no means. I've eliminated no one.' Wolfe sounded faintly exasperated, and I perceived that it was up to me to arrange with Pug-nose for more and colder beer. 'Elimination, as such, is tommyrot. Innocence is a negative and can never be established; you can only establish guilt. The only way I can apodictically eliminate any individual from consideration as the possible murderer is to find out who did it. You can't be expected to see what I am accomplishing; if you could do that, you could do the job yourself. Let me give you a conjecture for you to try your hand on: for example, is Miss Rowan an accomplice? Did she join Mr. Goodwin last night and sit with him for an hour on the running board of my car, which he had steered into a tree, to distract him while the crime was being committed? Or if you would prefer another sort of problem…'
He stopped with a grimace and began preparations to arise. I got up too, and Osgood started across the room toward the door which had opened to admit his daughter, and with her an older woman in a dark blue dress with her hair piled on top of her head. Osgood made an effort to head off the latter, and protested, but she advanced toward us any- how. He submitted enough to introduce us:
'This is Mr. Nero Wolfe, Marcia. His assistant, Mr. Good- win. My wife. Now dear, there's no sense in this, it won't help any…'
While he remonstrated with her I took a polite look. The farmer's beautiful daughter who, according to one school of thought, was responsible for Tom Pratt's unlucky idea of making beefsteak out of Hickory Caesar Grindon, was still beautiful I suppose; it's hard for me to tell when they're around fifty, on account of my tendency to concentrate on details which can't be expected to last that long. Anyway, with her eyes red and swollen from crying and her skin blotchy, it wasn't fair to judge.
She told her husband, 'No, Fred, really. I'll be all right. Nancy has told me what you've decided. I suppose you're right… you always are right… now you don't need to look like that… you're perfectly right to want to find out about it, but I don't want just to shut myself away… you know Clyde always said it wasn't a pie if I didn't have my finger in it…' her lip quivered '… and if it is to be discussed with Nancy I want to be here…'
'It's foolish, Marcia, there's no sense in it.' Osgood had hold of her arm. 'If you'll just-'
'Permit me.' Wolfe was frowning, and made his tone crisp. 'Neither of you will stay. I wish to speak with Miss Osgood alone.-Confound it, sir, I am working, and for you! However I may want to sympathize with grief, I can't afford to let it interfere with my job. The job you want done. If you want it done.'
