Some Buried Caesar

Osgood shrugged. "It's no secret. This whole end of the state knows it, I don't hate him, I only feel contempt for him. As I told you, his father was one of my father's stablehands. As a boy Tom was wild, and aggressive, but he had ambition, iЈ you want to call it that. He courted a young woman in the neighborhood and persuaded her to agree to marry him. I came home from college, and she and I were mutually at- tracted, and I married her. Tom went to New York and never made an appearance around here. Apparently he was nursing a grievance all the time, for about eight years ago he began to make a nuisance of himself. He had made a lot of money, and he used some of it and all his ingenuity con- cocting schemes to pester and injure me. Then two years ago he bought that land next to mine, and built on it, and that made it worse."

"Have you tried retaliation?"

"If I ever tried retaliation it would be with a horsewhip. I ignore him."

"Not a democratic weapon, the whip. Yesterday afternoon your son accused him of projecting the barbecue as an offense to you. The idea seemed to be that it would humiliate you and make you ridiculous if a bull better than your best bull was cooked and eaten. It struck me as farfetched. Mr. Pratt maintained that the barbecue was to advertise his busi- ness."

"I don't care a damn. What's the difference?"

"None, I suppose. But the fact remains that the bull is a central character in our problem, and it would be a mis- take to lose sight of him. So is Mr. Pratt, of course. You reject the possibility that his festering grievance might have impelled him to murder."

"Yes. That's fantastic. He's not insane… at least I don't think he is."

"Well." Wolfe sighed. "Will you send for your daughter?"

Osgood scowled. "She's with her mother. Do you insist on speaking to her? I know you're supposed to be competent, but it seems to me the people to ask questions of are at Pratt's, not here."

"It's my competence you're hiring, sir. Your daughter comes next. Mr. Waddell is at Pratt's, where he belongs, since he has authority." Wolfe wiggled a finger. "If you please."

Osgood got up and went to a table to push a button, and then came back and downed his highball, which must have been as warm as Wolfe's beer by that time, in three gulps. The pug-nosed lassie appeared and was instructed to ask Miss Osgood to join us. Osgood sat down again and said:

"I don't see what you're accomplishing, Wolfe. If you think by questioning me you've eliminated everybody at Pratt's-"