Some Buried Caesar

Chapter 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 morning.”

“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 highballs. 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 District Attorney Waddell. Even so his deeper instincts prevailed, 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. McMillan 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 you’ll permit us to use the room upstairs?…”

“Help yourself.” Pratt waved a hand. “You’ll need something 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 modern 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?”

“I never saw them before.”

“Of course not. It was a bad question. Do you identify the original they were drawn from?”

“No I don’t. Should I? They’re not very good.”

“That’s true. Still I would have expected you to identify them. He was your bull. Today I compared them with some sketches, the originals on the applications for registration, which Mr. Bennett let me look at, and it was obvious that the model for them was Hickory Buckingham Pell. Your bull that died of anthrax a month ago.”

“Is that so?” McMillan looked the sheets over again, in no haste, and returned his eyes to Wolfe. “It’s possible. That’s interesting. Where did you get these drawings?”

“That’s just the point.” Wolfe laced his fingers across his belly. “I made them myself. You’ve heard of that homely episode Monday afternoon, before your arrival. Mr. Goodwin and I started to cross the pasture and were interrupted by the bull. Mr. Goodwin escaped by agility, but I mounted that boulder in the center of the pasture. I was there some 15 minutes before I was rescued by Miss Pratt. I am vain of my dignity, and I felt undignified. The bull was parading not far off, back and forth, and I took my memorandum pad from my pocket and made those sketches of him. The gesture may have been childish, but I got satisfaction from it. It was… well, a justification of my point of vantage on the boulder. May I have the pad back, please?”

McMillan didn’t move. I arose and took the pad from him without his seeming to notice it, and put it in my pocket.

McMillan said, “You must have a screw loose. The bull in the pasture was Caesar. Hickory Caesar Grindon.”

“No, sir. I must contradict you, for again that’s just the point. The bull in the pasture was Hickory Buckingham Pell. The sketches I made Monday afternoon prove it, but I was aware of it long before I saw Mr. Bennett’s official records. I suspected it Monday afternoon. I knew it Monday night. I didn’t know it was Buckingham, for I had never heard of him, but I know it wasn’t Caesar.”

“You’re a goddam liar. Whoever told you -”

“No one told me.” Wolfe grimaced. He unlaced his fingers to wiggle one. “Let me make a suggestion, sir. We’re engaged in a serious business, deadly serious, and we’ll gain nothing by cluttering it up with frivolous rhetoric. You know very well what I’m doing, I’m undertaking to demonstrate that Clyde Osgood and Howard Bronson died by your hand. You can’t refute my points until I’ve made them, and you can’t keep me from making them by calling me names. Let’s show mutual respect. I can’t expose your guilt by shouting ‘murderer’ at you, and you can’t disprove it by shouting ‘liar’ at me. Nor by pretending surprise. You must have known why I asked you to meet me here.”

McMillan’s gaze was steady. So was his voice: “You’re going to undertake to prove something.”

“I am. I have already shown proof that Caesar, the champion, was never in that pasture.”

“Bah. Those drawings? Anybody would see through that trick. Do you suppose anyone is going to believe that when the bull chased you on that rock you stood there and made pictures of him?”

“I think so.” Wolfe’s eyes moved. “Archie, get Miss Rowan.”

I wouldn’t have left him like that if he had had the sketches on him, but they were in my pocket. I hotfooted it downstairs and across the lawn and under the trees to the hammock, which she got out of as she saw me coming. She linked her arm through mine, and I had to tolerate it for business reasons, but I made her trot. She offered no objections, but by the time we got upstairs to our destination she was a little out of breath. I had to admit she was a pretty good pupil when I saw her matter-of-fact nods, first to Wolfe and then to McMillan. Neither of them got up.

Wolfe said, “Miss Rowan. I believe Mr. Goodwin has informed you that we would ask you for an exercise of memory. I suppose you do remember that on Monday afternoon the activity of the bull marooned me on a rock in the pasture?”

She smiled at him. “I do.”

“How long was I on the rock?”

“Oh… I would say 15 minutes. Between 10 and 20.”

“During that time, what was Miss Pratt doing?”

“Running to get her car and driving to the pasture and arguing with Dave about opening the gate, and then driving to get you.”

“What was Dave doing?”

“Waving the gun and arguing with Esca… Mr. Goodwin and arguing with Caroline and jumping around.”

“What were you doing?”

“Taking it in. Mostly I was watching you, because you made quite a picture - you and the bull.”

“What was I doing?”

“Well, you climbed to the top of the rock and stood there 2 or 3 minutes with your arms folded and your walking stick hanging from your wrist, and then you took a notebook or something from your pocket and it looked as if you were writing in it or drawing in it. You kept looking at the bull and back at the book or whatever it was. I decided you were making a sketch of the bull. That hardly seemed possible under the circumstances, but it certainly looked like it.”

Wolfe nodded. “I doubt if there will ever be any reason for you to repeat all that to a judge and jury in a courtroom, but if such an occasion should arise would you do it?”

“Certainly. Why not?”

“Under oath?”

“Of course. Not that I would enjoy it much.”

“But you would do it?”

“Yes.”

Wolfe turned to the stockman. “Would you care to ask her about it?”

McMillan only looked at him, and gave no sign. I went to open the door and told Lily, “That will do, Miss Rowan, thank you.” She crossed and stopped at my elbow and said, “Take me back to the hammock.” I muttered at her, “Go sit on your thumb. School’s out.” She made a face at me and glided over the threshold, and I shut the door and returned to my chair.

McMillan said, “I still say it’s a trick. And a damn dirty trick. What else?”

“That’s all.” Wolfe sighed. “That’s all, sir. I ask you to consider whether it isn’t enough. Let us suppose that you are on trial for the murder of Clyde Osgood. Mr. Goodwin testifies that while I was on the rock he saw me looking at the bull and sketching on my pad. Miss Rowan testified as you have just heard. I testify that at that time, of that bull, I made those sketches, and the jury is permitted to compare them with the official sketches of Caesar and Buckingham. Wouldn’t that satisfactorily demonstrate that Buckingham was in the pasture, and Caesar wasn’t and never had been?”

McMillan merely gazed at him.

Wolfe went on, “I’ll answer your charge that it’s a trick. What if it is? Are you in a position to condemn tricks? As a matter of fact, I do know, from the evidence of my own eyes, that the bull was Buckingham. I had the opportunity to observe him minutely. Remember that I have studied the official sketches. Buckingham had a white patch high on his left shoulder; Caesar had not. The bull in the pasture had it. The white shield on Buckingham’s face extended well below the level of the eyes; on Caesar it was smaller and came to a point higher up. Not only did I see the face of the bull in the pasture on Monday afternoon, but that night I examined it at close range with a flashlight. He was Buckingham. You know it; I know it; and if I can help a jury to know it by performing a trick with sketches I shall certainly do so. With Mr. Goodwin and Miss Rowan to swear that they saw me making them, I think we may regard that point as established.”

“What else?”

“That’s all. That’s enough.”

McMillan abruptly stood up. I was on my feet as soon as he was, with my gun in sight. He saw it and grinned at me without any humor, with his gums showing. “Go ahead and stop me, son,” he said, and started, not fast but not slow, for the door. “Make it good though.”

I dived past him and got to the door and stood with my back against it. He halted three paces off.

Wolfe’s voice came, sharp, “Gentlemen! Please! If you start a commotion, Mr. McMillan, the thing is out of my hands. You must realize that. A wrestling match would bring people here. If you get shot you’ll only be disabled; Mr. Goodwin doesn’t like to kill people. Come back here and face it. I want to talk to you.”

McMillan wheeled and demanded, “What the hell do you think I’ve been doing for the past month except face it?”

“I know. But you were still struggling. Now the struggle’s over. You can’t go out of that door; Mr. Goodwin won’t let you. Come and sit down.”

McMillan stood for a minute and looked at him. Then slowly he moved, back across the room to his chair, sat, put his elbows on his knees, and covered his face with his hands.

Wolfe said, “I don’t know how you feel about it. You asked me what else. If you mean what other proof confronts you, I repeat that no more is needed. If you mean can I offer salve to your vanity, I think I can. You did extremely well. If I had not been here you would almost certainly have escaped even the stigma of suspicion.”

Wolfe got his fingers laced again. I returned the gun to my pocket and sat down. Wolfe resumed: “As I said, I suspected Monday afternoon that the bull in the pasture was not the champion Caesar. When Clyde offered to bet Pratt that he would not barbecue Hickory Caesar Grindon, he opened up an amusing field for conjecture. I diverted myself with it while listening to Pratt’s jabber. How did Clyde propose to win his bet? By removing the bull and hiding him? Fantastic; the bull was guarded, and where could he be hid against a search? Replace the bull with one less valuable? Little less fantastic; again, the bull was guarded, and while a substitute might be found who would deceive others, surely none would deceive you, and you were there. I considered other alternatives. There was one which was simple and plausible and presented no obstacles at all: that the bull in the pasture was not Hickory Caesar Grindon and Clyde had detected it. He had just come from the pasture, and he had binoculars, and he knew cattle. I regarded the little puzzle as solved and dismissed it from my mind, since it was none of my business.

“When the shots fired by Mr. Goodwin took us all to the pasture Monday night, and we found that Clyde had been killed, it was still none of my business, but the puzzle gained in interest and deserved a little effort as an intellectual challenge. I examined the bull, looked for the weapon and found it, and came to this room and sat in this chair and satisfied myself as to the probabilities. Of course I was merely satisfying myself as a mental exercise, not the legal requirements for evidence. First, if the bull wasn’t Caesar you certainly knew it, and therefore you had swindled Pratt. How and why? Why, to get $45,000. How, by selling him Caesar and then delivering another bull, much less valuable, who resembled him. Then where was Caesar? Wouldn’t it be highly dangerous for you to have him in your possession, since he had been legally sold, and cooked and eaten? You couldn’t call him Caesar, you wouldn’t dare to let anyone see him. Then you didn’t have him in your possession. No one did. Caesar was dead.”

Wolfe paused, and demanded, “Wasn’t Caesar dead when you took the $45,000 from Pratt?”

McMillan, his face still covered with his hands, was motionless 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 destroyed. 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 Buckingham, 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 evening. 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 compromise: 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 proceeded 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 talking 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 abandoned, 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 evening 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 Bronson 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, become 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, because 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 reluctant 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 the 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 extension 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. Goodwin 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 remember 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. Alone.”

Wolfe muttered, “You wouldn’t come back.”

“Yes, I would. My word was good for over 50 years. Now it’s good again. I’ll be back within 5 minutes, on my feet.”

“Do I owe you a favor?”

“No. I’ll do you one in return. I’ll write something and sign it. Anything you say. You’ve got it pretty straight. I’ll do it when I come back, not before. And you asked me how I killed Buckingham. I’ll show you what I did it with.”

Wolfe spoke to me without moving his head or his eyes. “Open the door for him, Archie.”

I didn’t stir. I knew he was indulging himself in one of his romantic impulses, and I thought a moment’s reflection might show him its drawbacks; but after only half a moment he snapped at me, “Well?”

I got up and opened the door and McMillan, with a heavy tread but no sign of the blind staggers, passed out. I stood and watched his back until the top of his head disappeared on his way downstairs. Then I turned to Wolfe and said sarcastically, “Fortune-telling and character-reading. It would be nice to have to explain -”

“Shut up.”

I kicked the door further open and stood there, listening for the sound of a gunshot or a racing engine or whatever I might hear. But the first pertinent sound, within the 5 minutes he had mentioned, was his returning footsteps on the stairs. He came down the hall, as he had promised, on his feet, entered without glancing at me, walked to Wolfe and handed him something, and went to his chair and sat down.

“That’s what I said I’d show you.” He seemed more out of breath than the exertion of his trip warranted, but otherwise under control. “That’s what I killed Buckingham with.” He turned his eye to me. “I haven’t got any pencil or paper. If you’ll let me have that pad…”

Wolfe held the thing daintily with thumb and forefinger, regarding it - a large hypodermic syringe. He lifted his gaze. “You had anthrax in this?”

“Yes. Five cubic centimeters. A culture I made myself from the tissues of Caesar’s heart the morning I found him dead. They gave me hell for cutting him open, but -” He shrugged. “I did that before I got the idea of saying the carcass was Buckingham instead of Caesar. I only about half knew what I was doing that morning, but it was in my mind to use it on myself - the poison from Caesar’s heart. Watch out how you handle that. It’s empty now, but there might be a drop left on the needle, though I just wiped it off.”

“Will anthrax kill a man?”

“Yes. How sudden depends on how he gets it. In my case collapse will come in maybe twenty minutes, because I shot more than two cubic centimeters of that concentrate in this vein.” He tapped his left forearm with a finger. “Right in the vein. I only used half of it on Buckingham.”

“Before you left for Crowfield Tuesday afternoon.”

“Yes.” McMillan looked at me again. “You’d better give me that pad and let me get started.”

I got out the pad and tore off the three top sheets which contained the sketches, and handed it to him, with my fountain pen. He took it and scratched with the pen to try it, and asked Wolfe, “Do you want to dictate it?”

“No. Better in your own words. Just - it can be brief. Are you perfectly certain about the anthrax?”

“Yes. A good stockman is a jack of all trades.”

Wolfe sighed, and shut his eyes.

I sat and watched the pen in McMillan’s hand moving along the top sheet of the pad. Apparently he was a slow writer. The faint scratch of its movement was the only sound for several minutes. Then he asked without looking up:

“How do you spell ‘unconscious’? I’ve always been a bad speller.”

Wolfe spelled it for him, slowly and distinctly.

I watched the pen starting to move again. My gun, in my pocket, was weighting my coat down, and I transferred it back to the holster, still looking at the pen. Wolfe, his eyes closed, was looking at nothing.