Some Buried Caesar

I disregarded him and told Wolfe, "Guaranteed. They were engaged for quite a while, only apparently Clyde didn't want his father to know that he had been hooked by a female Pratt who was also an athlete. Then Clyde saw something else and made a dive for it, and the Osgood-Pratt axis got multiple fracture. The something else was the young lady who was outdoors with me last night, named Lily Rowan. Later… we're up to last spring now… she skidded again and Clyde fell off. Since then he has been hanging around New York trying to get back on. One guess is that he came up here be- cause he knew she would be here, but that's not in the guar- antee. I haven't had a chance-"

Osgood was boiling. "This is insufferable! Preposterous gossipl If this is your idea-"

I growled at Wolfe, "Ask him why he wants to wring Lily Rowan's neck."

"Mr. Osgood, please." Wolfe keyed it up. "I warned you that a murder investigation is of necessity intrusive and im- pertinent. Either bear it or abandon it. If you resent the vul- garity of Mr. Goodwin's jargon I don't blame you, but noth- ing can be done about it. If you resent his disclosure of facts, nothing can be done about that either except to drop the inquiry. We have to know things. What about your son's en- gagement to marry Miss Pratt?"

"I never heard of it. He never mentioned it. Neither did my daughter, and she would have known of it; she and Clyde were very close to each other. I don't believe it."

"You may, I think, now. My assistant is careful about facts. What about the entanglement with Miss Rowan?"

"That… yes." As badly as Osgood's head needed a rest, it was a struggle for him to remove the ducal coronet. "You understand this is absolutely confidential."

"I doubt it. I suspect that at least a hundred people in New York know more about it than you do. But what do you know?"