'No. Out of the question. Not Dave.' Wolfe opened his eyes at me. 'What about Miss Rowan? She seems inclined to friendship. Emphatically, since she visited you in Jail.'
'How the devil did you know that?'
'Not knowledge. Surmise. Your mother's voice on the tele- phone was hers. We'll discuss that episode after we get home. You must have suggested that performance to her, therefore you must have been in communication with her. People in jail aren't called to the telephone, so she couldn't have phoned you. She must have gone to see you. Surely, if she is as friendly as that, she would be pliant.'
'I don't like to use my spiritual appeal for business pur- poses.'
'Proscriptions carried too far lead to nullity,'
'After I analyze that I'll get in touch with you. My first im- pulse is to return it unopened.'
'Will she lie?'
'Good lord, yes. Why not?'
'It's important. Can we count on it?'
'Yes.'
'Then another detail is for you to telephone, find her, and make sure she will be at Mr. Pratt's place from 3 o'clock on. Tell her you will want to speak to her as soon as we arrive there.' He caught the eye of a Methodist, and when she came to his beckoning requested more coffee. Then he told me, 'It's after 1 o'clock. Mr. Bennett is over halfway to Fern- borough. You haven't much time.' I emptied my cup and left him.
The program went without a hitch, but it kept me on the go. I phoned Pratt's first thing, for Lily Rowan, and she was there, so I checked that off. I warmed up the concrete out to Osgood's, and by going in the rear entrance and up the back stairs avoided contact with the enraged father. I prob- ably wouldn't have been noticed anyway, for the place was nearly as crowded as the exposition. There must have been a hundred cars, which was why I had to park long before I got to the end of the drive, and of course I had to carry the luggage. Upstairs I caught a glimpse of Nancy, and exchanged words with the housekeeper in the back hall downstairs, but didn't see Osgood. The service began at 2 o'clock, and when I left the only sound in the big old house, coming from the part I stayed away from, was the rise and fall of the preacher's voice pronouncing the last farewell for Clyde Os- good, who had won a bet and lost one simultaneously.
At 5 minutes to 3, with clean clothes and a clean body, not to mention the mind, with the car, filled with luggage and the other requisites, parked conveniently near, and without any satisfactory notion of the kind of goods Wolfe's factory was turning out in the line of evidence, though I had a strong inkling of who the consignee was to be, I sought Room 9 in the exposition offices. Sturtevant had apparently made good on his schedule, for the factory was in operation. Wolfe was there alone, seated at a table, with half a dozen sketches of bulls, on small sheets of white paper about 6 by 9 inches, arranged neatly in a row. One of them, separate, was directly under his eye, and he kept glancing back and forth from it to the sheet of my memo pad on which he was working with my pencil. He looked as concentrated as an artist hell bent for a masterpiece. I stood and observed operations over his shoulder for a few minutes, noting that the separate sheet from which he seemed to be drawing his inspiration was marked 'Hickory Buckinham Pell,' and then gave it up and sat down.
'What about Bennett keeping his sketches under his eye?' I demanded. 'Did you worm yourself into his confidence, or bribe him?'
'He went to eat. I'm not hurting his sketches. Keep quiet and don't disturb me and don't scratch.'
'I don't itch any more.'
'Thank heaven.'
I sat and diverted myself by trying different combinations on the puzzle we were supposed to be solving. At that point, thanks to various hints Wolfe had dropped, I was able to provide fairly plausible answers to most of the questions on the list, but was still completely stumped by the significance of the drawing practice he was indulging HI. It seemed fanciful and even batty to suppose that by copying one of Bennett's sketches he was manufacturing evidence that would solve a double murder and earn us a fee and fulfil his engagement with Waddell, but the expression on his face left no doubt about his expectations. He was, by his calculations, sewing it up. I tried to work it into my combinations somehow, but couldn't get it to fit. I quit, and let my brain relax.
Lew Bennett entered with a toothpick in his mouth. As he did so Wolfe put my memo pad, with the pages he had worked on still attached, into his breast pocket, and the pencil, Then he sighed, pushed back his chair and got to his feet, and inclined his head to Bennett.
'Thank you, sir. There are your sketches intact. Guard them; preserve them carefully; you already thought them precious; they are now doubly so. It is a wise precaution for you to insist that they be made in ink, since that renders any alteration impossible without discovery. Doubtless Mr. Os- good will find occasion to thank you also. Come, Archie.'
When we left, Bennett was leaning over the table squinting at the sketches.
Down at the parking space Wolfe climbed into the front seat beside me, which meant that he had things to say. As I threaded my way slowly along the edge of the darting crowds, he opened up: 'Now, Archie. It all depends on the execution. I'll go over it briefly for you…'
20
AT PRATT'S place I parked in the graveled space in front of the garage, and we got out. Wolfe left me and headed for the house. Over at a corner of the lawn Caroline was absorbed in putting practice, which might have been thought a questionable occupation for a young woman, even a Metropolitan champion, on the afternoon of her former fiance's funeral, but under the circumstances it was open to differing interpretations. She greeted me from a distance as I passed by on my way to meet Lily Rowan as arranged on
the phone.
Lily stayed put in the hammock, extending a hand and going over me with a swift and comprehensive eye.
