by Rex Stout
The Secretary of the National Guernsey League, having entered and shut the door behind him, approached. He looked like a man who has been interrupted, but nothing like as exasperated as he had been the preceding day. His greeting was affable but not frothy, and he sat down as if he didn't expect to stay long.
Wolfe said, "Thank you for coming. You're busy of course. Remarkable, how many ways there are of being busy. I be- lieve Mr. Osgood told you on the phone that I would ask a favor in his name. I'll be brief. First the relevant facts: the records of your league are on file in your office at Fem- borough, which is 110 miles from here, and the airplane belonging to Mr. Sturtevant, who takes passengers for hire at the airport at the other end of these grounds, could go there and return in 2 hours. Those are facts."
Bennett looked slightly bewildered. "I guess they are. I don't know about the airplane."
"I do, I've inquired. I've even engaged Mr. Sturtevant's services, tentatively. What I would like to have, sir, before 3 o'clock, are the color pattern sketches of Hickory Caesar Grindon, Willowdale Zodiac, Hawley's Orinoco, Mrs. Lin- vffle's bull whose name I don't know, and Hickory Buckingham Pell. Mr. Sturtevant is ready to leave at a moment's notice. You can accompany him, or Mr. Goodwin can, or you can merely give him a letter."
Bennett was frowning. "You mean the original sketches?" "I understand no others are available. Those on certificates are scattered among the owners."
Bennett shook his head. "They can't leave the files, it's a strict rule. They're irreplaceable and we can't take risks."
"I understand. I said you can go yourself. When they come you can sit me here at this table with them and they can be constantly under your eye. I need only half an hour with them, possibly less."
"But they mustn't leave the files. Anyhow, I can't get away."
"This is the favor requested by Mr. Osgood."
"I can't help it. It… it isn't reasonable."
Wolfe leaned back and surveyed him. "One test of in- telligence," he said patiently, "is the ability to welcome a singularity when the need arises, without excessive strain. Strict rules are universal. We all have a rule not to go on the street before clothing ourselves, but if the house is on fire we violate it. There is a conflagration here in Crowfield- metaphorically. People are being murdered. It should be ex- tinguished, and the incendiary should be caught. The con- nection between that and the sketches in your files may be hidden to you, but not to me; for that you will have to accept my word. It is vital, it is essential, that I see those sketches. If you won't produce them as a favor to Mr. Osgood, you will do so as obligation to the community. I must see them."
Bennett looked impressed. But he objected. "I didn't say you couldn't see them. You can, anybody can, at our office. Go there yourself."
"Preposterous. Look at me."
"I don't see anything wrong with you. The airplane will carry you all right."
"No." Wolfe shuddered. "It won't. That's another thing you must accept my word for, that to expect me to get into an airplane would be utterly fantastic. Confound it, you object to violating a minor routine rule and then have the effrontery to suggest-have you ever been up in an airplane?"
"No."
"Then for heaven's sake try it once. It will be an experi- ence for you. You'll enjoy it. I'm told that Mr. Sturtevant is competent and trustworthy and has a good machine. Get those sketches for me."
That was really what decided the question, 5 minutes later- the chance of a free airplane ride. Bennett gave in. He made a notation of the sketches Wolfe wanted, made a couple of phone calls, and was ready. I went with him to the landing field; we walked because he wanted to stop at the Guernsey cattle shed on the way. At the field we found Sturtevant, a good-looking kid with a clean face and greasy clothes, warm- ing up the engine of a neat little biplane painted yellow. He said he was set and Bennett climbed in. I backed out of harm's way and watched them taxi across the field, and turn, and come scooting across the grass and lift. I stood tihere until they were up some 400 feet and headed east, and then walked back to the exposition grounds proper, to meet Wolfe at the Methodist tent as arranged. One rift in a gray sky was that I was to get another crack at the fricassee, and after my C. C. P. U. breakfast I had a place for it.
But it wasn't a leisurely meal, for it appeared that we had a program-that is, Wolfe had it and I was to carry it out. After all his gab about violating rules, he kept his intact about the prohibition of business while eating, and since he was in a mood there wasn't much conversation. When the pie had been disposed of and the coffee arrived, he squirmed to a new position on the folding chair and began to lay it out. I was to take the car and proceed to Osgoods, and bathe and change my clothes. Since the house would be full of funeral guests, I was to make myself as unobtrusive as possible, and if Osgood himself failed to catch sight of me at all, so much the better, as I was still.under suspicion of having steered his daughter to a rendezvous with the loathsome Pratt brat. I was to pack our luggage and load it in the car, have the car filled with gas and oil and whatever else it had an appetite for, and report at the room where we had met Bennett not later than 3 o'clock.
"Luggage?" I sipped coffee. "Poised for flight, huh?" Wolfe sighed. "We'll be going home. Home."
"Any stops on the way?"
"Well stop at Mr. Pratt's place." He sipped. "By the way, I'm overlooking something. Two things. Have you a memo- randum book with you? Or a notebook?"
"I've got a pad. You know the kind I carry."
"May I have it? And your pencil. It would be well to use the kind of pencil that is carried, though I think it will never get to microscopes. Thank you." He frowned at the pad. "Larger sheets would be better, but this will serve, and it wouldn't do to buy one in Crowfield." He put the pad and pencil in his pocket "The second thing, I must have a good and reliable liar."
"Yes, sir." I tapped my chest.
"No, not you. Rather, in addition to you."
"Another liar besides me. Plain or fancy?"
"Plain. But we're limited. It must be one of the three persons who were there when I was standing on that rock in the pasture Monday afternoon."
"Well." I pursed my lips and considered. "Your friend Dave might do for a liar. He reads poetry."
"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 h
undred 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.
I said, "You're not so hot. Wolfe recognized your voice on the telephone last night."
"He didn't."
"He did."
"He agreed to meet me at the hotel at six in the morn- ing."
"Bah. You laid an egg, that's all. However, you got him out of bed at midnight, which was something. Thank you for doing me the favor. Now I want to offer to do you one, and I'm in a hurry. How would you like to take a lesson in detective work?"
"Who would give it to me?"
"I would."
"I'd love it."
"Fine. This may be the beginning of a worthwhile career for you. The lesson is simple but requires control of the voice and the facial muscles. You may not be needed, but on the other hand you may. You are to stay here, or close by. Sometime in the next hour or two I may come for you, or send Bert-"
"Come yourself."
"Okay. And escort you to the presence of Mr. Wolfe and a man. Wolfe will ask you a question and you will tell a lie. It won't be a complicated lie and there is no possibility of your getting tripped up. But it will help to pin a murder on a man, and therefore I want to assure you that it is not a frame- up. The man is guilty. If there were a chance in a million that he's innocent-"
"Don't bother." The corner of her mouth went up. "Do I have any company in the lie?"
"Yes. Me; also Wolfe. What we need is corroboration."
"Then as far as I'm concerned it isn't a lie at all. Truth is relative. I see you've washed your face. Kiss me."
"Pay in advance, huh?"
"Not in full. On account."
After about 30 or 32 seconds I straightened up again and cleared my throat and said, "Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well."
She was smiling and didn't say anything. 'This is it," I said. "Now quit smiling and listen." It didn't take long to explain it. Four minutes later I was on my way to the house.
Wolfe was on the terrace with Pratt and Jimmy and Monte McMillan. Jimmy looked sullen and preoccupied, and I judged from his eyes that he was having too many high- balls. McMillan sat to one side, silent, with his eyes fixed on Wolfe. Pratt was raving. He appeared to be not only sore because the general ruction had spoiled his barbecue plans and ruined the tail end of his country sojourn, but specifically and pointedly sore at Wolfe for vague but active reasons which had probably come to him on the bounce from Dis- trict Attorney Waddell. Even so his deeper instincts pre- vailed, for when I arrived he interrupted himself to toss me a nod and let out a yell for Bert.
But Wolfe, who, I noticed, had already disposed of a bottle of beer, shook his head at me and stood up. "No," he said. "Please, Mr. Pratt. I don't resent your belligerence, but I think before long you may acknowledge its misdirection. You may even thank me, but I don't ask for that either. I didn't want to disturb you. I needed to have a talk with Mr. McMillan in private. When I told him so on the phone this morning and we tried to settle on a meeting place that would ensure privacy, I took the liberty of suggesting your house. There was a special reason for it, that the presence of Miss Rowan might be desirable."
"Lily Rowan? What the hell has she got to do with it?"
"That will appear. Or maybe it won't. Anyhow, Mr. Mc- Millan agreed to meet me here. If my presence is really offensive to you we'll go elsewhere. I thought perhaps that room upstairs-"
"I don't give a damn. But if there's anything on my mind I'm in the habit of getting it off-"
"Later. Indulge me. It will keep. If youll permit us to use the room upstairs?…"
"Help yourself." Pratt waved a hand. "You'll need some- thing to drink. Bert! Hey, Bert!"
Jimmy shut his eyes and groaned.
We got ourselves separated. McMillan, who still hadn't opened his mouth, followed Wolfe, and I brought up the rear. As we started up the stairs, with the stockman's broad back towering above me, I got my pistol from the holster, to which it had been previously restored, and slipped it into my side coat pocket, hoping it could stay there.
There was one item on Wolfe's bill of fare that might prove to be ticklish.
The room was in apple-pie order, with the afternoon sun slanting in through the modem casement windows which Wolfe had admired. I moved the big upholstered chair around for him, and placed a couple more for McMillan and me. Bert appeared, as sloppy and efficient as ever, with beer and the makings of highballs. As soon as that had been arranged and Bert had disappeared, McMillan said:
"This is the second time I've gone out of my way to see you, as a favor to Fred Osgood. It's sort of getting monotonous. I've got 7 cows and a bull at Crowfield that I've just bought that I ought to be taking home."
He stopped. Wolfe said nothing. Wolfe sat leaning back in the big upholstered chair, motionless, his hands resting on the polished wooden arms, gazing at the stockman with half-shut eyes. There was no indication that he intended either to speak or to move.
McMillan finally demanded, "What the hell is this, a staring match?"
Wolfe shook his head. "I don't like it," he said. "Believe me, sir, I take no pleasure from it. I have no desire to drag it out, to prolong the taste of victory. There has already been too much delay, far too much." He put his hand in his breast pocket, withdrew the memo pad, and held it out. "Take that, please, and examine the first three sheets. Thoroughly.-I'll want it back intact, Archie."
With a shrug of his broad shoulders, McMillan took the pad and looked it over. His head was bent and I couldn't see his face. After inspecting the sheets twice over he looked up again.
"You've got me," he declared. "Is there a trick to it?"
"I wouldn't say a trick." Wolfe's tone took on an edge. "Do you identify those sketches?"