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 would be… perhaps you would tell me how and when you did it.'
McMillan said nothing.
Wolfe shrugged. 'Anyhow, you were prompt and energetic. As long as the bull was destined to be cooked and eaten-this was to be the day for that, by the way-you ran little risk of exposure. But when all thought of the barbecue was aban- doned, and it was suspected that Clyde had been murdered, the bull's presence, alive or dead, was a deadly peril to you. You acted at once. You not only killed him, you did it by a method which insured that his carcass would be immediately destroyed. You must have been prepared for contingencies.
'As for me, I was stumped. You had licked me. With all trace of the bull gone but his bones, there seemed no possible way of establishing your motive for murdering Clyde. I had no evidence even for my own satisfaction that my surmise had been correct-that the bull was not Caesar. Tuesday eve- ning I floundered in futilities. I had an interview with you and tried to draw you out by suggesting absurdities, but you were too wary for me. You upbraided me for trying to smear some of the mess on you, and left. Then I tried Bronson, hoping for something-anything. That kind of man is always impervious unless he can be confronted with facts, and I had no facts. It's true that he led me to assumptions: that Clyde had told him how and why he expected to win the bet, and that Bron- son therefore knew you were guilty-might even have been there himself, in the dark-and that he was blackmailing you. I assumed those things, but he admitted none of them, and of course I couldn't prove them.
'Yesterday morning I went for Bennett. I wanted to find out all I could about identifying bulls. He was busy. Mr. Goodwin couldn't get him. After lunch I was still waiting for him. Finally he came, and I got a great deal of information, but nothing that would constitute evidence. Then came the news that Bronson had been murdered. Naturally that was obvious. Suspecting that he was blackmailing you, I had told the man he was a fool and he had proved me correct. There too you acted promptly and energetically. Men like you, sir, when once calamity sufficiently disturbs their balance, be- come excessively dangerous. They will perform any desperate and violent deed, but they don't lose their heads. I wouldn't mind if Mr. Goodwin left me with you in this room alone, be- cause it is known that we are here; but I wouldn't care to offer you the smallest opportunity if there were the slightest room for your ingenuity.'
McMillan lifted his head and broke his long silence. 'I'm through,' he said dully.
Wolfe nodded. 'Yes, I guess you are. A jury might be re- luctant to convict you of first degree murder on the testimony of my sketches, but if Pratt sued you for $45,000 on the ground that you hadn't delivered the bull you sold, I think flie sketches would clinch that sort of case. Convicted of that swindle, you would be through anyway. About the sketches. I had to do that. 3 hours ago there wasn't a shred of evidence in existence to connect you with the murders you committed. But as soon as I examined the official sketches of Buckingham and Caesar I no longer surmised or deduced the identity of the bull in the pasture; I knew it. I had seen the white patch on the shoulder with my own eyes, and I had seen the exten- sion of the white shield on his face. I made the sketches to support that knowledge. They will be used in the manner I described, with the testimony of Miss Rowan and Mr. Good- win to augment my own. As I say, they will certainly convict you of fraud, if not of murder.'
Wolfe sighed. 'You killed Clyde Osgood to prevent the exposure of your fraud. Even less, to avoid the compulsion of having to share its proceeds. Now it threatens you again. That's the minimum of the threat.'
McMillan tossed his head, as if he were trying to shake something off. The gesture looked familiar, but I didn't re- member having seen him do it before. Then he did it again, and I saw what it was: it was the way the bull had tossed his head in the pasture Monday afternoon.
He looked at Wolfe and said, 'Do me a favor. I want to go out to my car a minute.
