Rex Stout - Some Buried Caesar

"Indeed," Wolfe murmured. Osgood glared at me and said, "Ridiculous. Who the devil told you that?"

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?"

"I know that about a year ago my son became infatuated with the woman. He wanted to marry her. She's wealthy, or her father is. She's a sex maniac. She wouldn't marry him. If she had she would have ruined him, but she did that anyway, or she was doing it. She got tired of him, but her claws were in him so deep he couldn't get them out, and there was no way of persuading him to act like a man. He wouldn't come home; he stayed in New York because she was there. He wasted a lot of my money and I cut off his income entirely, but that didn't help. I don't know what he has been living on the past four months, but I suspect my daughter has been helping him, though I decreased her allowance and forbade it. I went to New York in May and went to see the Rowan woman, and humiliated myself, but it did no good. She's a damned strumpet."

"Not by definition. A strumpet takes money. However… I see, at this point, no incentive for Miss Rowan to murder him. Miss Pratt… it might be. She was jilted, and she is muscular. Mortification could simmer in a woman's breast a long time, though she doesn't look it. When did your son arrive here from New York?"

"Sunday evening. My daughter and his friend Bronson rode up with him."

"Had you expected him?"

"Yes. He phoned from New York Saturday night."

"Was Miss Rowan already at Mr. Pratt's place?"

"I don't know. I didn't know she was there until your man told me last night, when I went over there."

"Was she, Archie?" I shook my head. "No sale. I was working on another case at lunch."

"It doesn't matter. I'm only clearing away rubbish, and I doubt if it amounts to more than that." Back at Osgood: "Why did your son come after so long an absence? What did he say?"

"He came-" Osgood stopped. Then he went on, "They came to be here for the exposition."

"Why did he come, really?"

Osgood glared and said, "Damn it."

"I know, Mr. Osgood. We don't usually hang our linen on the line till it has been washed, but you've hired me to sort it out. Why did your son come to see you? To get money?"

"How did you know that?"

"I didn't. But men so often need money; and you had stopped your son's income. Was his need general or specific?"

"Specific as to the sum. He wanted $10,000."

"Oh." Wolfe's brows went up a trifle. "What for?"

"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?"

"No. There was another scene. Since you have… you might as well have all of it. When Clyde appeared I was furious, and I demanded… I was in a temper, and that roused his, and he started to walk out. I accused him of be- traying me. I accused him of arranging a fake bet with Pratt and getting Pratt to phone me, so that I would have to pay it, and then Pratt would hand him the money. Then he did walk out. As I said, I didn't find out until afterwards what the bet was about or how it was made. I left the house and got in a car and drove over the other side of Crowfield to the place of an old friend of mine. I didn't want to eat dinner at home. Clyde's friend, this Bronson, was here, and my daugh- ter and my wife… and my presence wouldn't make it a pleasant meal. It was already unpleasant enough. When I got back, after ten o'clock, there was no one around but my wife, and she was in her room crying. About half an hour later the phone call came from Pratt's-his nephew. I went. That was where I had to go to find my son dead."