depending on how he was standing. Mrs. Linville has one, over the other side of Crow- field, that would do even better than Orinoco, but I'm not sure if he's home. I understand she was sending him to Syracuse. Then of course another one would have been Hickory Bucking- ham Pell, Caesar's double brother, but he's dead.'
'When did he die?'
'About a month ago. Anthrax. With most of the rest of McMillan's herd.'
'Yes. That was a catastrophe. Was Buckingham also a champion?'
'Hell no. He and Caesar were both sired by old Hickory Gabriel, a grand and beautiful bull, but no matter how good a sire may be he can't be expected to hit the combination every time. Buckingham was good to look at, but his pigment secretion was bad and his daughters were inferior. He hadn't been shown since 1936, when he scored a 68 at Jamestown.'
'In any case, he was dead. What about the Osgood herd? Any candidates there?'
Bennett slowly shook his head. 'Hardly. There's a prom- ising junior sire, Thistleleaf Lucifer, that might be figured in, but he's nearer brindle than red fawn. However, you might miss it if you had no reason to suspect it, and if you didn't have Caesar's pattern well in mind.'
'What is Lucifer's value?'
'That's hard to say. At an auction, it all depends…'
'But a rough guess?'
'Oh, between $500 and $800.'
'I see. A mere fraction of $45,000.'
Bennett snorted. 'No bull ever lived that was worth $45,000. McMillan didn't get that for Caesar as a proper and reasonable price for him. It was only a bribe Pratt offered to pull him in on a shameful and discreditable stunt. One or two of the fellows are inclined to excuse McMillan, saying that losing 80% of his herd with anthrax was a terrible blow and he was desperate and it was a lot of money, but I say nothing in God's world could excuse a thing like that and most of them agree with me. I'd rather commit suicide than let myself-hey, George, over here! I was just coming. What's up?'
One of the men I had noticed in the judging enclosure, a big broad-shouldered guy with a tooth gone in front, ap- proached us, bumping the backs of chairs as he came.
'Can't they get along without me for 10 minutes?' Bennett demanded. 'What's wrong now?'
'Nothin's wrong at the lot,' the man said. 'But we can't lead from the shed and back, on account of the crowd. There's a million people around there. Somebody found a dead man under a straw pile in the Holstein shed with a pitchfork through him. Murdered.'
'Good God!' Bennett jumped up. 'Who?'
'Don't know. You can't find out anything. You ought to see the mob…'
That was all I heard, because they were on their way out. A Methodist started after Bennett, but I intercepted her and told her I would pay for the meal. She said 90 cents, and I relinquished a dollar bill and sat down again across from Wolfe.
'The natural thing,' I said, 'would be for me to trot over there and poke around.'
Wolfe shook his head. 'It's after 3 o'clock, and we have business of our own. Let's attend to it.'
He got himself erect and turned to give the folding chair a dirty look, and we departed. Outside it was simpler to navigate than formerly, because instead of moving criss- cross and every other way the crowd was mostly moving fast in a straight line, toward the end of the grounds where the cattle sheds were, in the opposite direction from the one we took. They looked excited and purposeful, as if they had just had news of some prey that might be pounced on for dinner. By keeping on one edge we avoided jostling.
Charles E. Shanks wasn't anywhere in sight around the orchid display, but Raymond Plehn, who was showing Laeliocattleyas and Odontoglossums, was there. It was the first we had seen of him, though of course we had looked over his entry, which wasn't in competition with ours. The building, with its enormous expanse of tables and benches ex- hibiting everything from angel food cake to stalks of corn 14 feet high, seemed to have about as many afternoon visitors as usual, who either hadn't heard the news from the Holstein shed or were contrary enough to be more interested in flowers and vegetables than in corpses.
Wolfe exchanged amenities with Plehn and then he and I got busy. One of our 18 plants had got temperamental and showed signs of wilt, so I stuck it under the bench and covered it with newspaper. We went over the others thoroughly, straightening leaves that needed it, re-staking a few, and removing half a dozen blossoms whose sepals had started to brown at the tips.
'On the whole, they look perky,' I told Wolfe.
'Dry,' he grunted, inspecting a leaf. 'Thank heaven, no red spider yet.-Ah. Good afternoon, Mr. Shanks.'
At 4 o'clock the judges came, with retinue and scale sheets.
One of than was a moonfaced bird from the Eastern States Horticultural Society and the other was Cuyler Ditson, who had been a judge several times at the Metropolitan. The pair started to squint and inspect and discuss, and a modest crowd collected.
It was such a pushover, and was over and done with so soon as far as the albinos were concerned, that it seemed pretty silly after all the trouble we had gone to, even though Wolfe got the medal and all three ribbons, and all Shanks got was a consoling pat on the back. But they both knew how it would look in the next issue of the American Orchid Gazette, and they knew who would read it. Shanks was dumb enough to get mad and try to start an argument with Cuyler Ditson, and Raymond Plehn gave him the horselaugh.
When the judges left the crowd dispersed. Wolfe and Plehn started to exercise their chins, and when that began I knew it would continue indefinitely, so I saw myself con- fronted by boredom. Wolfe had said that when the judging was over he would want to spray with nicotine and soap, and I dug the ingredients from the
