Rex Stout - Some Buried Caesar

Bennett looked impressed. But he objected. "I didn't say you couldn't see them. You can, anybody can, at our office. Go there yourself."

"Preposterous. Look at me."

"I don't see anything wrong with you. The airplane will carry you all right."

"No." Wolfe shuddered. "It won't. That's another thing you must accept my word for, that to expect me to get into an airplane would be utterly fantastic. Confound it, you object to violating a minor routine rule and then have the effrontery to suggest-have you ever been up in an airplane?"

"No."

"Then for heaven's sake try it once. It will be an experi- ence for you. You'll enjoy it. I'm told that Mr. Sturtevant is competent and trustworthy and has a good machine. Get those sketches for me."

That was really what decided the question, 5 minutes later- the chance of a free airplane ride. Bennett gave in. He made a notation of the sketches Wolfe wanted, made a couple of phone calls, and was ready. I went with him to the landing field; we walked because he wanted to stop at the Guernsey cattle shed on the way. At the field we found Sturtevant, a good-looking kid with a clean face and greasy clothes, warm- ing up the engine of a neat little biplane painted yellow. He said he was set and Bennett climbed in. I backed out of harm's way and watched them taxi across the field, and turn, and come scooting across the grass and lift. I stood tihere until they were up some 400 feet and headed east, and then walked back to the exposition grounds proper, to meet Wolfe at the Methodist tent as arranged. One rift in a gray sky was that I was to get another crack at the fricassee, and after my C. C. P. U. breakfast I had a place for it.

But it wasn't a leisurely meal, for it appeared that we had a program-that is, Wolfe had it and I was to carry it out. After all his gab about violating rules, he kept his intact about the prohibition of business while eating, and since he was in a mood there wasn't much conversation. When the pie had been disposed of and the coffee arrived, he squirmed to a new position on the folding chair and began to lay it out. I was to take the car and proceed to Osgoods, and bathe and change my clothes. Since the house would be full of funeral guests, I was to make myself as unobtrusive as possible, and if Osgood himself failed to catch sight of me at all, so much the better, as I was still.under suspicion of having steered his daughter to a rendezvous with the loathsome Pratt brat. I was to pack our luggage and load it in the car, have the car filled with gas and oil and whatever else it had an appetite for, and report at the room where we had met Bennett not later than 3 o'clock.

"Luggage?" I sipped coffee. "Poised for flight, huh?" Wolfe sighed. "We'll be going home. Home."

"Any stops on the way?"

"Well stop at Mr. Pratt's place." He sipped. "By the way, I'm overlooking something. Two things. Have you a memo- randum book with you? Or a notebook?"

"I've got a pad. You know the kind I carry."

"May I have it? And your pencil. It would be well to use the kind of pencil that is carried, though I think it will never get to microscopes. Thank you." He frowned at the pad. "Larger sheets would be better, but this will serve, and it wouldn't do to buy one in Crowfield." He put the pad and pencil in his pocket "The second thing, I must have a good and reliable liar."

"Yes, sir." I tapped my chest.

"No, not you. Rather, in addition to you."

"Another liar besides me. Plain or fancy?"

"Plain. But we're limited. It must be one of the three persons who were there when I was standing on that rock in the pasture Monday afternoon."

"Well." I pursed my lips and considered. "Your friend Dave might do for a liar. He reads poetry."

"No. Out of the question. Not Dave." Wolfe opened his eyes at me. "What about Miss Rowan? She seems inclined to friendship. Emphatically, since she visited you in Jail."

"How the devil did you know that?"

"Not knowledge. Surmise. Your mother's voice on the tele- phone was hers. We'll discuss that episode after we get home. You must have suggested that performance to her, therefore you must have been in communication with her. People in jail aren't called to the telephone, so she couldn't have phoned you. She must have gone to see you. Surely, if she is as friendly as that, she would be pliant."

"I don't like to use my spiritual appeal for business pur- poses."

"Proscriptions carried too far lead to nullity,"

"After I analyze that I'll get in touch with you. My first im- pulse is to return it unopened."

"Will she lie?"

"Good lord, yes. Why not?"

"It's important. Can we count on it?"

"Yes."

"Then another detail is for you to telephone, find her, and make sure she will be at Mr. Pratt's place from 3 o'clock on. Tell her you will want to speak to her as soon as we arrive there." He caught the eye of a Methodist, and when she came to his beckoning requested more coffee. Then he told me, "It's after 1 o'clock. Mr. Bennett is over halfway to Fern- borough. You haven't much time." I emptied my cup and left him.

The program went without a hitch, but it kept me on the go. I phoned Pratt's first thing, for Lily Rowan, and she was there, so I checked that off. I warmed up the concrete out to Osgood's, and by going in the rear entrance and up the back stairs avoided contact with the enraged father. I prob- ably wouldn't have been noticed anyway, for the place was nearly as crowded as the exposition. There must have been a hundred cars, which was why I had to park long before I got to the end of the drive, and of course I had to carry the luggage. Upstairs I caught a glimpse of Nancy, and exchanged words with the housekeeper in the back hall downstairs, but didn't see Osgood. The service began at 2 o'clock, and when I left the only sound in the big old house, coming from the part I stayed away from, was the rise and fall of the preacher's voice pronouncing the last farewell for Clyde Os- good, who had won a bet and lost one simultaneously.

At 5 minutes to 3, with clean clothes and a clean body, not to mention the mind, with the car, filled with luggage and the other requisites, parked conveniently near, and without any satisfactory notion of the kind of goods Wolfe's factory was turning out in the line of evidence, though I had a strong inkling of who the consignee was to be, I sought Room 9 in the exposition offices. Sturtevant had apparently made good on his schedule, for the factory was in operation. Wolfe was there alone, seated at a table, with half a dozen sketches of bulls, on small sheets of white paper about 6 by 9 inches, arranged neatly in a row. One of them, separate, was directly under his eye, and he kept glancing back and forth from it to the sheet of my memo pad on which he was working with my pencil. He looked as concentrated as an artist hell bent for a masterpiece. I stood and observed operations over his shoulder for a few minutes, noting that the separate sheet from which he seemed to be drawing his inspiration was marked "Hickory Buckinham Pell," and then gave it up and sat down.

"What about Bennett keeping his sketches under his eye?" I demanded. "Did you worm yourself into his confidence, or bribe him?"

"He went to eat. I'm not hurting his sketches. Keep quiet and don't disturb me and don't scratch."