Some Buried Caesar

"He wouldn't tell me. He said he would be in trouble if he didn't get it." Osgood looked as if it hurt where the coronet had been. "I may as well… he had used up a lot of money during his affair with that woman. I found out in May that he had taken to gambling, and that was one reason I cut him off. When he asked for $10,000 I suspected it was for a gam- bling debt, but he denied it and said it was something more urgent. He wouldn't tell me what."

"Did you let him have it?"

"No. I absolutely refused."

"He was insistent?"

"Very. We… there was a scene. Not violent, but damned unpleasant. Now…" Osgood set his jaw, and looked at space. He muttered with his teeth clamped, "Now he's dead. Good God, if I thought that $10,000 had anything to do-"

"Please, sir. Please. Let's work. I call your attention to a coincidence which you have probably already noticed: the bet your son made yesterday afternoon with Mr. Pratt was for $10,000. That raises a question. Mr. Pratt declined to make a so-called gentleman's wager with your son unless it was un- derwritten by you. I understand that he telephoned you to explain the difficulty, and you guaranteed payment by your son if he lost. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

"Well." Wolfe frowned at his two empty bottles. "It seems a little inconsistent… first you refuse to advance $10,000 needed urgently by your son to keep him out of trouble, and then you casually agree on the telephone to underwrite a bet he makes for that precise sum."

"There was nothing casual about it."

"Did you have any particular reason to assume that your son would win the bet?"

"How the hell could I? I didn't know what he was betting on."

"You didn't know that he had wagered that Mr. Pratt would not barbecue Hickory Caesar Grindon this week?"

"No. Not then. Not until my daughter told me afterwards… after Clyde was dead."

"Didn't Mr. Pratt tell you on the phone?"

"I didn't give him a chance. When I learned that Clyde had been to Tom Pratt's place and made a bet with him, and that Pratt had the insolence to ask me to stand good for my son-what do you think? Was I going to ask the dog for de- tails? I told him that any debt my son might ever owe him, for a bet or anything else, or for $10,000 or ten times that, would be instantly paid, and I hung up."

"Didn't your son tell you what the bet was about when he got home a little later?"