Starting at the southern boundary of stretch one, I fished back down to the lodge in forty minutes. I prefer to report that forty minutes in bare statistics. Number of flies tried, three. Slips and near-falls, three. Slip and fall, getting wet above the waders, one. Snags of hooks on twigs of overhang, four. Caught, one big enough to keep and five put back. When I reached the lodge it was just twelve-thirty, lunch time, and I detoured around it to hit stretch three a hundred yards down — the stretch Ferris had fished that morning. There my luck picked up, and in twenty minutes I got three fat ones — one over twelve inches and the other two not much under that. Soon after that I came to a stake with a “4” on it, the start of Assistant Secretary Leeson’s stretch. It was a nice spot, with a little patch of grass going right to the edge of the rippling water, and I took off my wet jacket, spread it on a rock in the sun, sat down on another rock, and got out my sandwiches and chocolate.
But I had told Wolfe I would be back by two o’clock, and there was still more than a mile of water to try, so I crammed the grub in, took a couple of swallows of water from the river, which was a creek, put my jacket on, and the creel, and resumed. For the next couple of hundred yards the growth on the banks made it all wading, and the water wasn’t the kind trout like to loaf in, but then came a double bend with a long eddy hugging one shore, and I took a stance in the middle, got forty feet of line out, dropped the fly — a Black Gnat — at the top of the eddy, and let it float down. It hadn’t gone two feet when Grandpa hit, and I jerked, and I had him on, and here he came upstream, straight for me, which is of course one of the disadvantages of working downstream. I managed to keep line on him, and when he was damn near close enough to bite me he suddenly made a U turn and off he went, back into the eddy, right on through it, and around the second bend. Not having a mile of line, I went splashing after him without stopping to test footholds, up to my knees and then to my thighs and then to my knees again, until I could see around the bend. It was a straight piece of rough water, thirty feet wide, dotted with boulders, and I was heading for one to use as a brace in the current when I saw something that halted me. A boulder near the bank was already being used as a brace if my eyes were any good, and they were. Keeping a bent rod on Grandpa, I worked over to the boulder near the bank. It was Assistant Secretary Leeson. His feet and shanks were on the bank; his knees were at the edge of the water; and the rest of him was in the water, lodged against the upstream side of the boulder. The force of the current was gently bobbing him up and down, so that one moment his face was visible and the next moment it wasn’t.
Even one brief glimpse of the face was enough to answer the main question, but there is always the chance in a million, so I straightened up to reel my line in, and at that instant the fish broke water for the first time. He came clear out and on up to do a flip, and I couldn’t believe it. There was a smaller one than him on a plank displayed in the lodge. Instinctively, of course, I gave him line when I saw him take the air, and when he was back under I took it in and had him bending the rod again.
“Damn it,” I said aloud, “it’s a dilemma.”
I transferred the rod to my left hand with the line pinched between the tips of the thumb and index finger of that hand, made sure of good footing, stooped and gripped the collar of Leeson’s jacket with my right hand, lifted his head clear of the water, and took a look. That was enough. Even if he wasn’t drowned he wasn’t alive. I backed up slowly out onto the bank, taking him along, and as I let him down and his shoulders touched the ground the trout broke water again.
Ordinarily such a fish would rate fifteen or twenty minutes of careful handling, but under the circumstances I was naturally a little impatient, and it wasn’t more than half of that before I worked him in to where I could get him in the net. He was seven inches longer than the width of the creel, and I hated to bend him but had to. I took another look at Leeson’s head, and, when I moved him a little further from the water, I put my handkerchief under it so it wouldn’t be in contact with the ground. I covered the upper third of him with my jacket, took my rod apart, and looked at my watch. Twenty past one. That was all right; the trout Montbarry would be gone by the time I got there. Wolfe would be sore enough as it was, but I would never have heard the last of it if I had arrived in the middle of that particular meal to announce a corpse. I hit the trail, with the rod in one hand and the creel in the other.
It was a lot quicker to the lodge by the trail than it had been wading down. As I emerged from the trees into the clearing I saw that lunch was over, for they were all out on the veranda having coffee — the four men and two women. Mounting the steps and heading for the door, I thought I was going to be snubbed again, but O. V. Bragan called to me. “Goodwin! Did you see Secretary Leeson anywhere?”
“No.” I kept going.
“Didn’t you fish his stretch?”
“Only part of it.” I halted long enough to add, “I got wet and need a change,” and then went on. Inside I made for the kitchen. The cook and two waiters were seated at a table, eating. I asked where Wolfe was, and they said in his room, so I backtracked, took the hall to the other wing, found Wolfe’s door standing open, and entered. He was putting something in his suitcase, which was open on the bed.
“You’re early,” he grunted. “Satisfactory.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got four trout and one supertrout to take back to Fritz, as promised. How was the lunch?”
“Passable. I cooked twenty trout and they were all eaten. I’m nearly packed, and we can go. Now.”
“Yes, sir. First I have a report. About three-quarters of a mile downstream I found Secretary Leeson against a boulder near the bank, his feet out of the water and the rest of him in. He had been there some time; his armpits were good and cold.”
“Good heavens.” Wolfe was scowling at me. “You would. Drowned?”
“I don’t know. I—”
“You have told Mr. Bragan.”
“No, sir. I’m reporting to you. I removed it from the water to the bank. His skull was smashed in, back of the right ear and above it, by a blow or blows, I would say with a rock or a heavy club. Not from a fall, not a chance, unless he climbed to the top of a high tree to fall from, and there’s none there high enough. Somebody clobbered him. So I thought you should be present when I announce it, preferably with your eyes open.”
“Pfui. You think he was murdered.”
“Twenty to one, at least.”
His lips tightened and the scowl deepened. “Very well. They’ll find him soon. They thought he was being stubborn about filling his creel and decided to go and look for him after lunch. Since he was mostly under water you didn’t have to see him — no, confound it, you took him out. Even so, get those things off and dress. We are leaving. I don’t intend—”
“No, sir.” I was firm. “As you say, I took him out. They know I fished that stretch. We probably wouldn’t even get home. We’d get stopped somewhere around Albany and brought back, and then where would we spend the night? One guess.”
He took in air, a sigh that filled him clear down to his waistline. When it was out again he blurted savagely, “Why the devil did you have to go fishing?” He sighed again. “Go and tell Mr. Bragan.”
“Yes, sir. You’re coming along?”
“No! Why should I? I am not concerned. Go!”
I was sweating under the waders, so I peeled them off and slipped my shoes on before I went. When I got to the veranda three of the men — Bragan, Ferris, and Papps — had left it and were crossing the clearing to the trail, and I sung out, “Bragan! You three come back here please?”