Some Buried Caesar

Chapter 15

I nodded. “Yeah. You also told him you were beginning to suspect that he was engaged in an enterprise which might prove to be a big blunder. Madam Shasta, in a booth down the line, calls it reading the future and charges a dime for it.” I fished for a pair of nickels and shoved them across at him. “I’ll bite. How did you know it?”

He ignored my offer. “Confound it,” he muttered. “Too late again. I should have phoned Saul or Fred last evening to take a night train. Bronson should have been followed this morning. Once compelled to talk, he would have been all the evidence we needed. I am not myself, Archie. How the devil can I be, dashing around in all this furor… I have that scoundrel Shanks to thank for it. Well.” He sighed again. “You say no one knows it?”

“Correct. Except the guy that did it. I was waiting around for Bennett and saw Nancy enter a cowshed and followed her in. She joined Jimmy Pratt in a stall which also contained a pile of straw. I made it three and we conversed. A cow nurse came and removed part of the straw, exposing a shoe and a trouser cuff. No one saw it but me and I kicked straw over it. A pitchfork was thrust into the pile, upright, with straw covering it part way up the handle, and I took a sounding with my hand and discovered what its pincushion was. Right through his chest. His pump was gone. I accused Romeo and Juliet of indiscretion and hustled them out in separate directions, and came here.”

“Then the discovery awaits removal of more straw.”

“Yes. Which may have already happened, or may not occur until tomorrow.”

“But probably sooner. You came away to escape clamor?”

“To notify you. And to tell you about Bennett. And to save Nancy from being annoyed, by her father for the company she keeps, and by the cops for practically sitting on a corpse.”

“You were all seen by the man who removed the straw.”

“Sure, and by various others. Shall I go back now and discover him?”

Wolfe shook his head. “That wouldn’t help. Nor, probably, will there be a trail for the official pack, so there’s no hurry. I wouldn’t have guessed Bronson would be idiot enough to give him such a chance, but of course he had to meet him somewhere. But it is now all the more imperative - ah, thank goodness! Good afternoon, sir.”

Lew Bennett, still in his shirt sleeves, out of breath, stood beside him and curtly acknowledged the greeting. “You want to see me? Worst time you could have picked. The very worst.”

“So Mr. Goodwin has told me. I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. Be seated, sir. Have some coffee?”

“I’ll just stand. If I once sat down… what do you want?”

“Have you had lunch?”

“No.”

“Preposterous.” Wolfe shook his head at him. “In the midst of the most difficult and chaotic problems, I never missed a meal. A stomach too long empty thins the blood and disconcerts the brain. - Archie, order a portion of the fricassee. - For God’s sake, sir, sit down.”

I doubt if Wolfe influenced him much, it was the smell of food. I saw his nostrils quivering. He hesitated, and when I flagged a Methodist and told her to bring it with an extra dime’s worth of dumplings, which was an idea Wolfe had invented, he succumbed and dropped into a chair.

Wolfe said, “That’s better. Now. I’ve been hired by Mr. Osgood to solve a murder, and I need to know some things. You may think of my questions irrelevant or even asinine; if so you’ll be wrong. My only serious fault is lethargy, and I tolerate Mr. Goodwin, and even pay him, to help me circumvent it. 48 hours ago, Monday afternoon on Mr. Pratt’s terrace, you told him that there were a dozen members of your league waiting for you to get back, and that when they heard what you had to say there would be some action taken. You shouted that at him with conviction. What sort of action did you have in mind?”

Bennett was staring at him. “Not murder,” he said shortly. “What has that got -”

“Please.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “I’ve told you I’m not an ass. I asked you a simple straightforward question. Can’t you simply answer it? I know you were shouting at Mr. Pratt in a rage. But what sort of action did you have in mind?”

“No sort.”

“Nothing whatever?”

“Nothing specific. I was furious. We all were. What he intended to do was the most damnable outrage and insult -”

“I know. Granting your viewpoint, I agree. But hadn’t ways and means of preventing it been discussed? For example, had anyone suggested the possibility of removing Hickory Caesar Grindon secretly and putting another bull in his place?”

Bennett started to speak, and stopped. His eyes looked wary. “No,” he said curtly.

Wolfe sighed. “All right. I wish you would understand that I’m investigating a murder, not a conspiracy to defraud. You should eat those dumplings hot. It might be better to let this wait until you’re through -”

“Go ahead. When I’m through I’m going.”

“Very well. I didn’t ask if some of you had substituted another bull or tried, I asked merely if it had been suggested in the heat of indignation. What I really want to know is, would such a plan have been feasible?”

“Feasible?” Bennett swallowed chicken. “It would have been a crime. Legally.”

“Of course. But - please give this consideration as a serious question - might it have worked?”

He considered, chewing bread and butter. “No. Monte McMillan was there.”

“If Mr. McMillan hadn’t been there, or had been a party to the scheme, might it have worked?”

“It might have.”

“It would have been possible to replace Caesar with another bull sufficiently resembling him so that the substitution would be undetected by anyone not thoroughly familiar with his appearance, without a close inspection?”

“It might have.”

“Yet Caesar was a national grand champion.” Wolfe shifted, grimacing, on the folding chair. “Didn’t he approach the unique?”

“Hell no. There’s plenty of good bulls, and quite a few great ones. The grand champion stuff is all right, and it’s valid, but sometimes the margin is mighty slim. Last year at Indianapolis, Caesar scored 96 and Portchester Compton 95. Another thing of course is their get. The records of their daughters and sons. Caesar had 51 A R daughters -”

“And 9 A R sons. I know. And that of course would not be visible to the eye. But still I am not satisfied. If another bull was to be substituted for Caesar by… well, let us say Clyde Osgood… it couldn’t be a near-champion, for the bull was destined to be butchered, and near-champions are valuable too. Would it be possible for an average bull, of comparatively low value, to have a fairly strong resemblance to a champion?”

“Might. At a distance of say a hundred yards. It would depend on who was looking.”

“How does a bull score points?”

Bennett swallowed dumplings. “The scale of points we judge on has 22 headings, with a total of 100 points for perfection, which of course no bull ever got. Style and symmetry is 10 points. Head 6, horns 1, neck 3, withers 3, shoulders 2, chest 4, back 8, loin 3, hips 2, rump 6, thurls 2, barrel 10, and so on. The biggest number of points for any heading is 20 points for Secretions Indicating Color of Product. That’s judged by the pigment secretions of the skin, which should be a deep yellow inclining toward orange in color, especially discernible in the ear, at the end of the tailbone, around the eyes and nose, on the scrotum, and at the base of horns. Hoofs and horns should be yellow. There is a very close relationship between the color of the skin, the color of the internal fat, and the milk and butter. Now that heading alone is 20 points out of the 100, and you can only judge it by a close-up inspection. As far as value is concerned, a bull’s A R record is much more important than his show record. In the 1935 auctions, for instance, the price brought by A R bulls averaged over $2000. Bulls not yet A R but with A R dams averaged $533. Bulls not A R and without A R dams averaged $157. That same year Langwater Reveller sold for $10,000.”

Wolfe nodded. “I see. The subtleties rule, as usual. That seems to cover the questions of value and superficial appearance. The next point… I was astonished by what you told me on the telephone yesterday when I called you from Mr. Osgood’s house. I would have supposed that every purebred calf would receive an indelible mark at birth. But you said that the only ones that are marked - with a tattoo on the ear - are those of solid color, with no white.”

“That’s right.”

“So that if Caesar had been replaced by another bull it couldn’t have been detected by the absence of any identifying mark.”

“No. Only by comparing his color pattern with your knowledge of Caesar’s color pattern or with the sketch on his Certificate of Registration.”

“Just so. You spoke of sketches or photographs. How are they procured?”

“They are made by the breeder, at birth, or at least before the calf is six months old. On the reverse of the Application for Registration are printed outlines of a cow, both sides and face. On them the breeder sketches in ink the color pattern of the calf, showing white, light fawn, dark fawn, red fawn, brown and brindle. The sketches, filed in our office at Fernborough, are the permanent record for identification throughout life. Copies of them appear on the certificate of registration. If you buy a bull and want to be sure you are getting the right one, you compare his color and markings with the sketches.”

“Then I did understand you on the telephone. It sounded a little haphazard.”

“It’s the universal method,” declared Bennett stiffly. “There has never been any difficulty.”

“No offense. If it works it works.” Wolfe sighed. “One more thing while you have your pie and coffee. This may require some reflection. Putting it as a hypothesis that Clyde Osgood actually undertook to replace Caesar with a substitute, how many bulls are there within, say, 50 miles of here, which might have been likely candidates? With a fair resemblance to Caesar, the closer the better, in general appearance and color pattern? Remember it mustn’t be another champion, worth thousands.”

Bennett objected, “But I’ve told you, it couldn’t have worked. No matter how close the resemblance was, Monte McMillan would have known. He would have known Hickory Caesar Grindon from any bull on earth.”

“I said as a hypothesis. Humor me and we’ll soon be through. How many such bulls within 50 miles?”

“That’s quite an order.” Bennett slowly munched a bite of pie, stirring his coffee, and considered. “Of course there’s one right here, up at the shed. A Willowdale bull, 3-year-old. He’ll never be in Caesar’s class, but superficially he’s a lot like him, color pattern and carriage and so on.”

“Are you sure the one in the shed is the Willowdale bull?”

Bennett looked startled for an instant, then relieved. “Yes, it’s Willowdale Zodiac all right. He was judged a while ago, and he’s way down in pigment.” He sipped some coffee. “There’s a bull over at Hawley’s, Orinoco, that might fill the bill, except his loin’s narrow, but you might or might not notice that from any distance, depending on how he was standing. Mrs. Linville has one, over the other side of Crowfield, 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 Buckingham 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 promising 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, approached 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 crisscross 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 exhibiting 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 them 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 confronted 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 bottom of one of the crates, went for a can of water, and got the mixture ready in the sprayer. He did a thorough job of it, with Plehn assisting, put the sprayer down on the bench, and started talking shop again. I sat on a box and yawned and permitted my mind to flit around searching for honey in an idea that had occurred to me on account of one of the questions Wolfe had asked Bennett. But I hoped to heaven that wasn’t the answer, for if it was we were certainly out on a limb, and as far as any hope of earning a fee from Osgood was concerned we might as well pack up and go home.

I glanced at my wrist and saw it was 10 minutes to 5, which reminded me that Lily Rowan was coming for orchids at 5 o’clock and gave me something to do, namely, devise a remark that would shatter her into bits. She had the appearance of never having been shattered to speak of, and it seemed to me that she was asking for it. To call a guy Escamillo in a spirit of fun is okay, but if you do so immediately after he has half-killed himself hurdling a fence on account of a bull chasing him, you have a right to expect whatever he may be capable of in return.

I never got the remark devised. The first interruption was the departure of Raymond Plehn, who was as urbane with his farewells as with other activities. The second interruption was more removed, when first noted, and much more irritating: I saw a person pointing at me. Down the aisle maybe ten paces he stood pointing, and he was unquestionably the lanky straw-handler in overalls whom I had last seen in the Holstein shed three hours previously. At his right hand stood Captain Barrow of the state police, and at his left District Attorney Waddell. As I gazed at them with my brow wrinkled in displeasure, they moved forward.

I told Wolfe out of the corner of my mouth. “Looky. Company’s coming.”

Apparently they had figured that the cow nurse would no longer be needed, for he lumbered off in the other direction, while the other two headed straight for their victim, meaning me. They looked moderately sour and nodded curtly when Wolfe and I greeted them.

Wolfe said, “I understand you have another dead man on your hands, and this time no demonstration from me is required.”

Waddell mumbled something, but Barrow disregarded both of them and looked at me and said, “You’re the one I want a demonstration from. Get your hat and come on.”

I grinned. “Where to, please?”

“Sheriff’s office. I’ll be glad to show you the way. Wait a minute.”

He extended a paw at me. I folded my arms and stepped back a pace. “Let’s all wait a minute. I have a gun and a license. The gun is legally in my possession. We don’t want a lot of silly complications. Do we?”