Nero Wolfe, the enormously gifted (and enormous, period) private detective, is traveling to an Upstate New York rural locale
to exhibit some of his prize orchids at a fair. Archie Goodwin, his sardonic, intrepid assistant, is his chauffeur, as well as the narrator of this tale, one of the most humorous and unusual cases in the Wolfe corpus.
Wolfe, who almost never leaves his brownstone home in Manhattan, is chagrined when his car blows a tire and careens off the road and into a tree. Looking for assistance, he and Archie begin crossing a
pasture toward the closest visible dwelling when they encounter a huge Guernsey bull. Due to the ill-advised shouting and warnings of a hired hand at the edge of the pasture, the two detectives are forced to extremes to avoid the bovine giant--Archie, by dashing toward the fence with the bull in pursuit, and Wolfe, by perching himself atop a large boulder in the middle of the pasture. Archie vaults the fence and sprawls on the grass, to the gleeful applause of two female onlookers. One of them is Lily Rowan, destined to become Archie's love interest in later novels.
The other woman is Carolyn Pratt, champion golfer and niece of the owner of the house across the pasture. She offers to drive her car into the field to rescue Wolfe from the boulder. When Wolfe and Archie reach the house, they receive the hospitality of the owner, a Mr. Thomas Pratt, wealthy restauranteur and owner of a famous chain called Pratterias.
Pratt is an audacious character who has recently purchased a prize-winning champion bull named Hickory Caesar Grindon from a local cattleman for a whopping $45,000. The purchase was made, not in order to further the huge bull's bloodline, but to enhance the publicity of Pratt's restaurants by publicly barbecuing it and serving it to a gathering of privileged guests. The planned barbecue is still several days off, and it has stirred up a hornets nest of controversy between Pratt and the Guernsey
breeders association, members of which show up unceremoniously during Wolfe’s visit it at Pratt’s place. One of the association’s officials has arranged for a famous and important member of the league to buy back “Caesar” from Pratt, but he refuses, insisting that he “paid a fair price” and can do as he likes, bovine genetics be hanged.
Other interruptions plague the gathering at Pratt’s, including a visit from Clyde Osgood, the only son of a rich neighbor of the Pratts (and one-time fiancé of Carolyn’s). Clyde’s father and Pratt once vied for the affections of the same girl, and Charles Osgood won out and married her. Pratt went on to become wealthy in a self-made vein and returned to live near the Osgoods, and Charles is convinced that he did so primarily to extend the former rivalry any way he could, though Pratt denies this.
Clyde Osgood brings with him a shady “friend” from NYC, a Mr. Bronson (to whom he secretly owes a gambling debt). After being chased away from the pasture where Caesar is grazing, Clyde joins the gathering and offers to bet Pratt ten thousand dollars that the planned barbecuing of Hickory Caesar Grindon will not take place as planned. Pratt agrees to this bet only after insisting that Clyde’s father agree to cover the wager, much to Clyde’s outrage. Clyde leaves in a huff, and Monty McMillan, the rancher who sold Caesar to Pratt, follows after him to calm him down, saying he has known Clyde since childhood.
To Archie’s dismay, Wolfe offers Archie’s services to assist with “pasture patrol” during the evening to guard the bull. Archie also receives a commission from the Pratt niece, who asks him to deflect the attentions of Lily Rowan from her brother Jimmy. According to Carolyn, Lily is a “vampire” who preys on male affections, leading men to emotional ruin.
That night, while on his sentry duty, Archie is startled when Lily tries to sneak up on him in the dark. They engage in some banter and he makes a date with her for lunch at the fair the next day. Then, hearing some noises in the pasture, they both investigate with a flashlight and find the bull toying with a dead body on the ground. It is Clyde Osgood. Archie fires shots into the air and others come running as the bull is frightened off. Everyone assumes that Clyde was gored to death by the bull while trying to win his bet with Pratt.
Charles Osgood doesn’t buy that explanation. “My son knew cattle,” he insists. Wolfe arrives on the scene and does a little investigating out of curiosity. The local police and the district attorney show up and support the goring hypothesis, but, after Osgood hires Wolfe to confirm or disprove it, the overweight sleuth reveals that the wounds on the body were really performed with one of the pickaxes being used to dig the barbecue pit. The bull was then framed for the murder.
After Archie and Lily Rowan get a long-term romance underway, and Clyde’s friend Bronson ends up murdered, Wolfe uses the Guernsey league’s color charts of Caesar and other bulls to fill in the blanks of this mystery and point the finger at the rightful culprit, as always. And, as expected, he also finds time to exhibit his orchids, beating the competition by a mile.