Some Buried Caesar

I sat down and nodded and restrained my voice. "I have to make a brief but tiresome report. Item 1, Mr. Bennett will be here in 10 minutes or so. He said. Item 2, I found Nancy Osgood and Jimmy Pratt in a cowshed, discussing means of getting the paper which I have in my pocket. Item 3, in the same shed I found Mr. Bronson lying under a pile of straw, dead, with a pitchfork stuck through his heart. No one knows of the last item but me… or didn't when I left."

Wolfe's eyes went shut, then came half-open again. He heaved a deep sigh. "The fool. I told that man he was a fool."

15

I NODDED. "Yeah. You also told him you were be- ginning to suspect that he was engaged in an en- terprise 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 direc- tions, 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."