by Rex Stout
It was another fine day and the crowd was kicking up quite.a dust. Banners, balloons, booby booths and bingo games were all doing a rushing business, not to mention hot dogs, orange drinks, popcorn, snake charmers, lucky wheels, shoot- ing galleries, take a slam and win a ham, two-bit fountain pens and Madam Shasta who reads the future and will let you in on it for one thin dime. I passed a platform whereon stood a girl wearing a grin and a pure gold brassiere and a Fuller brush skirt eleven inches long, and beside her a hoarse guy in a black derby yelling that the mystic secret Dingaroola Dance would start inside the tent in eight minutes. Fifty people stood gazing up at her and listening to him, the men looking as if they might be willing to take one more crack at the mystic, and the women looking cool and contemptuous. I moseyed along. The crowd got thicker, that being the main avenue leading to the grandstand entrance. I got tripped up by a kid diving between my legs in an effort to resume contact with mamma, was glared at by a hefty milkmaid, not bad-looking, who got her toe caught under my shoe, wriggled away from the tip of a toy parasol which a sweet little girl kept digging into my ribs with, and finally left the worst of the happy throng behind and made it to the Methodist grub- tent, having passed by the Baptists with the snooty feeling of a man-about-town who is in the know.
Believe it or not, she was there, at a table against the can- vas wall toward the rear. I pranced across the sawdust, concealing my amazement. Dressed in a light tan jersey thing,. with a blue scarf and a little blue hat, among those hearty country folk she looked like an antelope in a herd of Guern- seys. I sat down across the table from her and told her so. She yawned and said that what she had seen of antelopes' legs made it seem necessary to return the compliment for re- pairs, and before I could arrange a comeback we were inter- rupted by a Methodist lady in white apron who wanted to know what we would have.
Lily Rowan said, "Two chicken fricassee with dumplings."
"Wait a minute," I protested. "It says there they have beef pot roast and veal-" "No." Lily was firm. "The fricassee with dumplings is made by a Mrs. Miller whose husband has left her four times on account of her disposition and returned four times on account of her cooking and is still there. So I was told yes- terday by Jimmy Pratt."
The Methodist bustled off. Lily looked at me with a comer of her mouth curled up and remarked as if it didn't matter much, "The chief reason I came was to see how surprised you would look when you found me here, and you don't look surprised at all and you begin by telling me I have legs like an antelope."
I shrugged. "Go ahead and nag. I admit I'm glad you came, because if you hadn't I wouldn't have known about the fricassee. Your harping on legs is childish. Your legs are unusually good and you know it and so do I. Legs are made to be walked with or looked at, not talked about, especially not in a Methodist stronghold. Are you a Catholic? What's the difference between a Catholic and a river that runs up- hill?"
She didn't know and I told her, and we babbled on. The fricassee came, and the first bite, together with dumpling and gravy, made me marvel at the hellishness of Mrs. Miller's disposition, to drive a man away from that. It gave me an idea, and a few minutes later, when I saw Wolfe and Charles E. Shanks enter the tent and get settled at a table on the other side, I excused myself and went over and told him about the fricassee, and he nodded gravely.
I was corralling the last of my rice when Lily asked me when I was going back to New York. I told her it depended on what time the orchids were judged on Wednesday; we would leave either Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morn- ing.
"Of course," she said, "we'll see each other in New York."
"Yeah?" I swallowed the rice. "What for?"
"Nothing in particular. Only I'm sure we'll see each other, because if you weren't curious about me you wouldn't be so rude, and I was curious about you before I ever saw your face, when I saw you walking across that pasture. You have a distinctive way of walking. You move very… I don't know…"
"Distinctive will do. Maybe you noticed I have a dis- tinctive way of getting over a fence too, in case of a bull. Speaking of bulls, I understand the barbecue is off."
"Yes." She shivered a little. "Naturally. I'm thinking of leaving this afternoon. When I came away at noon there was a string of people gawking along the fence, there where your car had been..,. where we were last night. They would have crossed the pasture and swarmed all over the place if there hadn't been a state trooper there."
"With the bull in it?"
"The bull was at the far end. That what's-his-name-Mc- Millan-took him there and tied him up again." She shivered. "I never saw anything like last night… I had to sit on the ground to keep from fainting. What were they asking questions for? Why did they ask if I was with you all the time? What did that have to do with him getting killed by the bull?"
"Oh, they always do that in cases of accidental death. Eye-witnesses. By the way, you won't be leaving for New York today if they hold an inquest, only I don't suppose they will. Did they ask if you had seen Clyde Osgood around there after dinner, before you went for your walk and ran onto me?"
"Yes. Of course I hadn't. Why did they ask?"
"Search me." I put sugar in my coffee and stirred. "Maybe they thought you had deprived him of all hope or something and he climbed into the pasture to commit suicide. All kinds of romantic ideas, those birds get. Did they ask if Clyde had come to Pratt's place to see you?"
"Yes." Her eyes lifted up at me and then dropped back to her coffee cup. "I didn't understand that either. Why should they think he had come to see me?"
"Oh, possibly Clyde's father sicked them on. I know when I mentioned your name to him last night and said you were there, he nearly popped open. I got the impression he had seen you once in a nightmare. Not that I think you belong in a nightmare, with your complexion and so on, but that was the impression I got."
"He's just a pain." She shrugged indifferently. "He has no right to be talking about me. Anyway, not to you." Her eyes moved up me and over me, up from my chest over my face to the top of my head, and then slowly traveled down again. "Not to you, Escamillo," she said. I wanted to slap her, because her tone, and the look in her eyes going over me, made me feel like a potato she was peeling. She asked, "What did he say?"
"Not much." I controlled myself. "Only his expression was suggestive. He spoke of wringing your neck. I gathered that you and his son Clyde had once been friends. I suppose he told the police and sheriff that, or maybe they knew it already, and that's why they asked if Clyde came to see you last night."
"Well, he didn't. He would have been more apt to come to see Caroline than me."
That was turning a new page for me, but I covered my surprise and inquired idly, "You mean Miss Pratt? Why, did they have dealings?"
"They used to have." She opened the mirror of her compact to study nature with an eye to improvement. "I guess they were engaged, or about to be. Of course you don't know about the Osgood-Pratt situation. The Osgoods have been rich for generations, they go back to a revolutionary general I think it was-their relatives in New York think the Social Register is vulgar. To me that's all a bore… my mother was a waitress and my father was an immigrant and made his money building sewers."
"Yet look at you. I heard Pratt say yesterday that he was bom in an old shack on the spot where his new house stands."
"Yes. His father worked as a stablehand for Osgood's father. Clyde told me about it. A farmer had a beautiful daughter named Marcia and young Pratt got himself engaged to her and Frederick Osgood came back from college and saw her and married her. So she became Clyde Osgood's mother, and Nancy's. Pratt went to New York and soon began to make money; He didn't marry, and as soon as he had time to spare he started to find ways to annoy Osgood. When he bought land up here and started to build, it looked as if the annoyance might become really serious."
"And Clyde read up on family feuds and found that the best way to cure it would be for him to marry Pratt's niece. A daughter is better in such cases, but a niece will
do."
"No, it wasn't Clyde's idea, it was his sister's. Nancy's." Lily closed her compact. "She was staying in New York for the winter, studying rhythm at the best night clubs, and met Jimmy and Caroline, and thought it might be helpful for the four of them to know each other, and when Clyde came down for a visit she arranged it. It made a sort of a situation, and she and Jimmy got really friendly, and so did Clyde and Caro- line. Then Clyde happened to get interested in me, and I guess that reacted on Nancy and Jimmy.''
"Did you and Clyde -get engaged?"
"No." She looked at me, and the comer of her mouth turned up, and I saw her breasts gently putting the weave of the jersey to more strain as she breathed a deep one. "No, Escamillo." She peeled her potato again, "I don't suppose I'll marry. Because marriage is really nothing but an economic arrangement, and I'm lucky because I don't have to let the economic part enter into it. The man would be lucky too-I mean if a man attracted me and I attracted him."
"He sure would." I was wondering which would be more satisfactory, to slap her and then kiss her, or to kiss her and then slap her. "Did Clyde attract you much?"
"He did for a while." She shivered delicately. "You know how tiresome it is when someone you found exciting gets to be nothing but a nuisance? He wanted me to marry him, too. You mustn't think I'm heartless, because I'm not. Caroline would have been a swell wife for him, and I told him so. I rather thought they would make it up, and I hoped they would, and that's why I said he would have been more apt to come to see Caroline than me last night." "Maybe he did. Have you asked her?" "Good lord no. Me ask Caroline anything about Clyde? I wouldn't dare mention his name to her. She hates me." "She invited you up for the barbecue, didn't she?" "Yes, but that was because she was being clever. Her brother Jimmy and I were beginning to be friendly, and she thought if he saw me out here in the country, a lot of me, he would realize how superficial and unhealthy I am." "Oh. So you're unhealthy?"
"Terribly." The comer of her mouth went up another sixteenth of an inch. "Because I'm frank and simple. Because I never offer anything I don't give, and I never give any- thing and then expect to get paid for it. I'm frightfully un- healthy. But I guess I was wrong to say superficial. I doubt if Caroline thinks I'm superficial."
"Excuse me a minute," I said, and stood up. Even in the midst of being ruined I had had Wolfe's table across the tent in the corner of my eye, partly to note his reaction to the fricassee, which had appeared to be satis- factory since he had ordered a second portion, and my in- terrupting my despoiler was on account of a sign from him. A man was standing by Wolfe's chair talking to him, and Wolfe had glanced in my direction with a lift to his brow which I considered significant. So I excused myself to Lily and got up and ambled over. As I arrived the man turned his head and I saw it was Lew Bennett, the secretary of the National Guernsey League.
"Archie, I must thank you." Wolfe put his napkin down. "For suggesting the fricassee. It is superb. Only female Americans can make good dumplings, and not many of them."
"Yes, sir."
"You have met Mr. Bennett."
"Yes, sir."
"Can you conveniently extricate yourself from that…" He turned a thumb in the direction I had come from.
"You mean right now?"
"As soon as may be. Now if you are not too involved. Mr. Bennett has been looking for me at the request of Mr. Osgood, who is waiting in the exposition office and wishes to see me. Mr. Shanks and I shall have finished our lunch in ten minutes."
"Okay. I'm badly involved but I'll manage it."
I went back to my table and told Lily we must part, and summoned the Methodist to give me a check. The damage proved to be $1.60, and, having relinquished a pair of dimes for the missionaries, I reflected with pride that the firm had cleaned up 20 cents net on the deal.
Lily said in a tone of real disappointment without any petulance that I could detect, "I had supposed we would spend the afternoon together, watching the races and riding on the merry-go-round and throwing balls at things…"
"Not ever," I said firmly. "Not the afternoon. Whatever the future may have in store for us, whatever may betide, I work afternoons. Understand once and for all that I am a workingman and I only play with toys at odd moments. I am working when you would least expect it. Throughout this delightful lunch with you, I have been working and earning money."
"I suppose while you were paying me all those charming compliments one part of your brain, the most important part, was busy on some difficult problem."
"That's the idea."
"Dear Escamillo. Darling Escamillo. But the afternoon comes to an end, doesn't it? What will you be doing this evening?"
"God knows. I work for Nero Wolfe."
7
THE BOOM in die exposition offices, to which Bennett led us, on a kind of mezzanine in the' Administration Building, was large and lofty, with two dusty windows in the board wall and plain board partitions for the other three sides. The only furniture were three big rough tables and a dozen wooden chairs. On one table were a pile of faded bunting and a bushel basket half-full of apples; the other two were bare. Three of the chairs were occupied. Sidney Darth, Chairman of the North Atlantic Exposition Board, was on the edge of one but jumped up as we entered;
Frederick Osgood, the upstate duke, had sagging shoulders and a tired and bitter but determined expression; and Nancy Osgood sat with her spine curved and looked miserable all over.
Bennett did the introductions. Darth mumbled something about people waiting for him and loped off. Wolfe's eyes traveled over the furniture with a hopeless look, ending at me, meaning couldn't I for God's sake rustle a chair some- where that would hold all of him, but I shook my head in- flexibly, knowing how useless it was. He compressed his lips, heaved a sigh, and sat down.
Bennett said,. "I can stay if you want… if I can be of any help..," Wolfe looked at Osgood and Osgood shook his head: "No thanks. Lew. You run along." Bennett hesitated a second, looking as if he wouldn't mind staying a bit, and then beat it. After the door had closed behind him I re- quisitioned a chair for myself and sat down.
Osgood surveyed Wolfe with an aristocratic scowl. "So you're Nero Wolfe. I understand you came to Crowfield to exhibit orchids."
Wolfe snapped at him, "Who told you so?" The scowl got half startled away, but came right back again. "Does it matter who told me?"
"No. Nor does it matter why I came to Crowfield. Mr. Bennett said you wished to consult me, but surely not about orchids."
I restrained a grin, knowing that Wolfe was not only establishing control, which was practical and desirable, but was also relieving his resentment at having been sent for and having come, even if it was on his way anyhow.
"I don't give a damn about the orchids." Osgood preserved the scowl. "The purpose of your presence here is relevant because I need to know if you are a friend of Tom Pratt's, or are being employed by him, or have been. You were at his house last night."
"Relevant to what, sir?" Wolfe sounded patient with dis- tress. "Either you want to consult me or you don't. If you do, and I find that I am in any way committed to a conflicting interest, I shall tell you so. You have started badly and offensively. Why the devil should I account to you for my presence here in Crowfield or anywhere else? If you need me, here I am. What can I do for you?"
"Are you a friend of Tom Pratt's?"
Wolfe grunted with exasperation, got himself raised," and took a step. "Come, Archie."
Osgood raised his voice: "Where you going? Damn it, haven't I got a right to ask-"
"No, sir." Wolfe glared down at him. "You have no right to ask me anything whatever. I am a professional detective in good standing. If I accept a commission I perform it. If for any reason I can't undertake it in good faith, I refuse it, Come, Archie."
I arose with reluctance. Not only did I hate to walk out on what might develop into a nice piece of business, but also my curiosity had been aroused by the expression on Nancy Osgood's face. When Wolfe had got up and st
arted to go she had looked relieved, and when after Osgood's pro- test he had started off again her relief had been even more evident. Little contrary things like that disturbed my peace of mind, so it suited me fine when Osgood surrendered.
"All right," he growled. "I apologize. Come back and sit down. Of course I've heard about you and your damned in- dependence. I'll have to swallow it because I need you and I can't help it. These damn fools here… in the first place they have no brains and in the second place they're a pack of cowards. I want you to investigate the death of my son Clyde."
Sure enough, as Wolfe accepted the apology by returning to sit down. Nancy quit looking relieved and her hands on her lap, having relaxed a little, were clasped tight again. Wolfe asked, "What aspect of your son's death do you want investigated?"
Osgood said savagely, "I want to know how he was killed."
"By a bull. Wasn't he? Isn't that the verdict of the legal and medical authorities?"
"Verdict hell. I don't believe it. My son knew cattle. What was he in the pasture at night for? Pratt's idea that he went there to get the bull is ridiculous. And he certainly wasn't ass enough to let himself be gored like that in the pitch- dark."
