Rex Stout - 1939 - The Mountain Cat Murders Read online

  Rex Stout

  REX STOUT, the creator of Nero Wolfe, was born in Noblesville, Indiana, in 1886, the sixth of nine children of John and Lucetta Todhunter Stout, both Quakers. Shortly after his birth the family moved to Wakarusa, Kansas. He was educated in a country school, but by the age of nine he was recognized throughout the state as a prodigy in arithmetic. Mr. Stout briefly attended the University of Kansas, but he left to enlist in the Navy and spent the next two years as a warrant officer on board President Theodore Roosevelt’s yacht. When he left the Navy in 1908, Rex Stout began to write freelance articles and worked as a sightseeing guide and an itinerant bookkeeper. Later he devised and implemented a school banking system which was installed in four hundred cities and towns throughout the country. In 1927 Mr. Stout retired from the world of finance and, with the proceeds of his banking scheme, left for Paris to write serious fiction. He wrote three novels that received favorable reviews before turning to detective fiction. His first Nero Wolfe novel, Fer-de-Lance, appeared in 1934. It was followed by many others, among them, Too Many Cooks, The Silent Speaker, If Death Ever Slept, The Doorbell Rang, and Please Pass the Guilt, which established Nero Wolfe as a leading character on a par with Erle Stanley Gardner’s famous protagonist, Perry Mason. During World War II Rex Stout waged a personal campaign against Nazism as chairman of the War Writers’ Board, master of ceremonies of the radio program “Speaking of Liberty,” and member of several national committees. After the war he turned his attention to mobilizing public opinion against the wartime use of thermonuclear devices, was an active leader in the Authors’ Guild, and resumed writing his Nero Wolfe novels. Rex Stout died in 1975 at the age of eighty-eight. A month before his death he published his seventy-second Nero Wolfe mystery, A Family Affair. Ten years later, a seventy-third Nero Wolfe mystery was discovered and published in Death Times Three.

  The Rex Stout Library

  Fer-de-Lance If Death Ever Slept

  The League of Frightened Men Three for the Chair

  The Rubber Band Champagne for One

  The Red Box And Four to Go

  Too Many Cooks Plot It Yourself

  Some Buried Caesar Too Many Clients

  Over My Dead Body Three at Wolfe’s Door

  Where There’s a Will The Final Deduction

  Black Orchids Gambit

  Not Quite Dead Enough Homicide Trinity

  The Silent Speaker The Mother Hunt

  Too Many Women A Right to Die

  And Be a Villain Trio for Blunt Instruments

  The Second Confession The Doorbell Rang

  Trouble in Triplicate Death of a Doxy

  In the Best Families The Father Hunt

  Three Doors to Death Death of a Dude

  Murder by the Book Please Pass the Guilt

  Curtains for Three A Family Affair

  Prisoner’s Base Death Times Three

  Triple Jeopardy The Hand in the Glove

  The Golden Spiders Double for Death

  The Black Mountain Bad for Business

  Three Men Out The Broken Vase

  Before Midnight The Sound of Murder

  Might As Well Be Dead Red Threads

  Three Witnesses The Mountain Cat Murders

  This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended between any character herein and any person, living or dead; any such resemblance is purely coincidental.

  THE MOUNTAIN CAT MURDERS

  A Bantam Crime Line Book / published by arrangement

  with the estate of the author

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam edition / July 1982

  Bantam reissue edition / December 1993

  CRIME LINE and the portrayal of a boxed “cl” are trademarks

  of Bantam Books, a division of

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1939 by Rex Stout.

  Introduction copyright © 1993 by Karen Kijewski.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76821-6

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  v3.1

  Introduction

  Rex Stout is as American as Cheerios, Wonder Woman, and Norman Rockwell. It is possible to grow up and not notice, not read Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. But not read, not notice Rex Stout, not love Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin? Not possible. That’s like not noticing that Elvis brought a new dimension to kinetic pelvic motion.

  To reflect on Rex Stout is to think of Nero Wolfe, and rightly so. Like others before him—Sherlock Holmes and his Watson, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Sam Spade—he is instantly recognizable, lovable in a curmudgeonly fashion, and unforgettable.

  He is also an old-fashioned good guy. Forget bad guys made to look good: mafiosi eulogized for their strong family values and loyalty and never mind all those busted knuckles, blown-out knees, machine guns in violin cases, and widows and orphans. Forget vigilante justice and the private investigator who anoints himself judge, jury, and executioner. Forget rogue cops hollering, “Make my day, scumball!” and blasting away with a .345 Magnum in each hand and hitting and killing the bad guys, who just happen to outnumber the good guys by 37 to 1.

  No, Nero Wolfe is a different kind of good guy, a man of intelligence, finesse, method, and high moral standards. A man who wears yellow silk pajamas and expensive tailored suits, with matching elegance galore, and who weighs in at a seventh of a ton. A man with a hothouse of orchids that would dazzle and daze a bevy of debutantes, a gourmet palate, and an ear for the finer points of English language and literature. A man who works within the system and with the police and the district attorney’s office, albeit often grudgingly and always in his own way and time. Not a knight in shining armor, not that old-fashioned, but, well, close.

  And Archie Goodwin? He is equally unforgettable, equally delightful. Quick-witted, quick on his feet, ever-handy with notepad and typewriter, he is business partner, personal companion, perfect secretary. Add a dash of wit, a splash of irreverence and cockiness, a slight unpredictability and his winning way with the ladies, and who could resist?

  Nero Wolfe and Archie, as indispensable, appealing, and delectable as toast (homemade bread from Fritz’s oven) and jam (imported marmalade, no doubt).

  Stout gives us these familiar and delightful characters in an equally familiar setting. There is a charm and comfort to this, as easy and relaxed as a summer afternoon, swimming, volleyball, and cold beer. But that’s California, that’s what I know, and to think of Nero Wolfe is to think of New York, of Manhattan, and that I don’t know. I go there quite a bit, but I don’t know it. I don’t see, feel, understand the real New York. I know this because New Yorkers tell me so with a sad, sometimes patronizing, look in their eyes. But Nero Wolfe’s New York? That I do know and understand. I need only open a book and there it is. The brownstone on West Thirty-fifth, the cabs, the restaurants and nightclubs, the particularly and peculiarly New York establishments and ways and weather.

  The wonderful thing about mystery in general and Rex Stout in particular is the satisfaction of a good, well-crafted, well-plotted story. Once this was common, once we could
take it for granted, even be blasé about it; but not now, not so. I am reminded of this often as I browse through current titles at the bookstore. Good stories, gripping plots that actually make sense, a book with a beginning, middle, and end: Is this passé? Is this too much to ask? No. And it is there in Stout. The final satisfaction, the element as familiar, comfortable, and comforting as the characters and setting, as the story? The ending. The good guys figure it out, they (and we) win; the bad guys get nabbed; good triumphs over evil. Consider, in Dickensian fashion, Archie’s name: Goodwin. I rest my case.

  To pick up a Rex Stout novel is to find standards, codes, an eminently civilized man living in an eminently civilized manner. Stout comes down squarely on the side of civilization, of justice and decency and the proprieties, large and small, of life. He shares all this with us, and in the process we, too, are a bit refined and improved. To pick up a Rex Stout novel is to enjoy the comfort of an old, dear, honest, and exacting friend.

  The strength of Stout’s work is not in any one book but in the body of work and, most particularly, in the Nero Wolfe novels. The Mountain Cat Murders breaks with several of the things we, or I at least, too readily assumed. It is not a Nero Wolfe novel, nor does it take place in New York. The central characters are young, even naive, winsome and fresh rather than seasoned, experienced, mildly eccentric. And it is a love story. What a contrast this is to the opinionated Nero Wolfe, who abjures the company of women in his personal life, whose colleague-secretary, cook-housekeeper, and outside investigators are all male, and who does not disagree when Archie comments that he, Wolfe, is allergic to women.

  But The Mountain Cat Murders is the exception, not the rule, a novel written in a period when Stout was particularly prolific: five novels in a single year. I have found no other references to Delia Brand and Ty (move over Matt) Dillon, the main characters here, nor am I aware of any other work with a western setting. Romantic themes, too, are an anomaly.

  The book takes place in Cody, Wyoming, and though I am a native of California and not Wyoming, it is a state I know and love. It is evident that Stout’s knowledge was more limited. His characters strike me as Easterners gone west but not western, not native; transplants, not local stock. Corruption hinted at is decidedly big city stuff, not small western town; there is confusion about the roles of sheriff and police chief and a policeman walking a beat, virtually unheard of in a small western town. There are brick buildings one is unlikely to see in Cody, or indeed in most parts of the West, and equally questionable clothes. References to corrals, bridles, broncos, pronghorns, and such are liberally used, often misused. Colorful but unlikely expressions—“Tickle my horse and watch him laugh!”—are introduced. All the cowboys I’ve ever known are more likely to eat their horse than talk like that. A boy refers to a gun as a gat. In Cody? Oh sure.

  Still, these are small things, ones that merely point to Stout’s strength in eastern rather than western settings, to his deeper understanding of the eastern rather than the western character. In context, this book becomes a fascinating piece of the whole, giving a sense of the dimension and breadth of Rex Stout’s work.

  Cheerios, Wonder Woman, apple pie, Norman Rockwell, the Fourth of July, Rex Stout: great American traditions all!

  —Karen Kijewski

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  The World of Rex Stout

  Chapter 1

  There were no customers at that moment on that Tuesday morning in June, and the clerk behind the counter at MacGregor’s Sporting Goods Store stood with his back propped against shelves of fishing tackle, his eyes half closed, half dreaming. It was an old and hackneyed dream and could have done with some new twists, but he wasn’t bothering to invent any on so hot a day. It had to do with the entry of a customer, up to then never seen, young, female, blonde and beautiful. Having asked to look at tennis rackets and purchased one, she would observe with a shy smile that she guessed she would have to play with a jack rabbit, since she was a complete stranger to Cody and had met no one but her lawyer; and he would tell her his name, which was Marvin Hopple, and declare humorously that now she had met him and he was no jack rabbit … and then swift developments … and the separation settlement by her wealthy husband, whom he would never see or want to see, would be a lump sum, avoiding the recurrent annoyance of alimony payments.…

  He killed a yawn and straightened up with a jerk. The customer was actually entering—young, female, apparently beautiful though not especially blonde, and with a swinging grace in her walk. He arranged his face for the all-important first impression it would make; and then, as she approached the counter, relaxed in disappointment.

  Nuts. This was no eastern princess. Delia Brand had been in the class below his at high school, right there in Cody. Still he looked at her and greeted her with some interest, since he had not happened to see her, to speak to, since the recent tragedy in her family, made more remarkable and conspicuous by the one which had preceded it some two years before. He was a little shocked, seeing her face close; it looked dead, all but her brown eyes, and what burned in them made him uncomfortable and turned his greeting into an unfinished stammer.

  She nodded and said hello, put her leather handbag on the counter and opened it, extracted a revolver, took it by the barrel and poked the butt at him, and asked, “Have you got cartridges for that?”

  “Sure.” He released the catch and swung the cylinder out and in again, and squinted into the muzzle. “What do you want, hard or soft?”

  “I don’t know. Which is best?”

  “Depends. What do you want to use it for?”

  “I’m going to shoot a man with it.”

  He looked at her eyes again. He felt embarrassed and even a little irritated, because although jokes about shooting people were sometimes mildly funny, it seemed to him in bad taste, next door to indecent, for Delia Brand to crack one in view of the happenings in her family. He had a strong sense of propriety and didn’t enjoy having it outraged. He turned without a word, went to the case and selected a box of cartridges, wrapped it and put a rubber band around it, and handed it to her.

  As she put the cartridges and revolver in her bag and closed it, he told her sarcastically:

  “Don’t try for his head unless you’re a good shot. Give it to him around here.” He circled his abdomen with his finger. “Anywhere around the middle.”

  “Thank you very much,” she said as she turned to go.

  He watched her go through the door into the blazing sunlight of the sidewalk, with a frown, then sighed and went to the rear of the store where his employer was marking prices on some newly arrived boxes.

  “Delia Brand was just in and got a box of .38 cartridges.”

  Mr. MacGregor didn’t look up. He finished a cryptic inscription with his pencil and inquired, “Which one’s that? I always get the names of those two sisters mixed.”

  “The young one.”

  “Well, I suppose they’ll still pay their bills. They’ve both got jobs.”

  “She didn’t charge it. She paid. She had the cannon with her, an old .38 Hecker. What I thought I ought to mention, I asked her what she wanted to use it for and she said she’s going to shoot a man.”

  MacGregor cackled. “You asked for it and you got it. What did you want to ask her for? Wyoming may be more west than wild nowadays
, but there’s still a lot of folks around that like to pip at gophers and jack rabbits and tin cans, and as far as I’m concerned the more the merrier. We sell ammunition, son.”

  “I know we do. I sold it. But you should have heard her say it. You wouldn’t think she’d be cracking jokes about shooting people.”

  “You asked for it, didn’t you?”

  Marvin Hopple insisted. “You should have seen her eyes when she said it. And before she said it and after she said it.”

  MacGregor let out a growl. “I’m busy. Get out of here and quit bothering me.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt just to phone the police and tell them, would it?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” MacGregor flung out a hand. “Beat it! Tickle my horse and watch him laugh! I hear a customer out there. If he wants golf balls, be sure to ask him what for.”

  Marvin Hopple marched to the front, and sure enough it was old Judge Merriam for golf balls.

  In the coruscation of the dazzling sunshine, Delia Brand walked a hundred yards before she reached the spot where she had parked the old open car which had been a part of the miscellany left behind by her father at the time of his death two years previously. Arrived there, she stretched a hand toward the door of the car, then withdrew it, stood for a moment considering, and turned and walked on in the direction she had been going. Cody residents, even in that hot sun, frequently preferred a ten-minute walk to a search for another parking space in the midtown section; but evidently there was a supplementary reason for her change of mind, for a block down the street she left the sidewalk to enter a drugstore. As she passed toward the far end of the long fountain bar, she halted momentarily to glance at a large and ferocious beast with glistening bared teeth and bright hungry eyes, which was about to leap upon her from the table where it was perched. Propped against its right foreleg was a card with the legend neatly printed: Mounted by Quinby Pellett—For Sale.

  She exchanged a nod with the young man behind the bar, climbed onto a stool, and demanded, “A Park Special with two cherries.”