Rex Stout - 1939 - The Mountain Cat Murders Read online

  There was no gun in it.

  She looked around, not at the man in the chair, but searching; and almost at once she saw it. It lay on the seat of a chair near the door. Three quick steps took her there, and she grabbed it up. Yes, it was the gun, her father’s gun; there was the notch which she herself had playfully scratched in it one day with her father’s knife when he had spattered a gopher. In the first instant when she had turned on the light and seen the man in the chair the blood had left her head, blanching her; but now it was rushing back as she began to realize, vaguely but overwhelmingly, the significance of the properties she was collecting on this sinister stage. With her teeth clenched and the gun in her hand, she started around the desk toward the chair on the other side, but halfway there was stopped in her tracks by a voice behind her.

  “Better lay it down, ma’am.”

  She had heard no steps; apparently her ears hadn’t been working. She wheeled. A man with a weathered face and nearly white hair stood towering a pace from the doorway, with his eyes no more than slits. Delia stared at him without moving or speaking. She knew him; it was Squint Hurley, the prospector who had been put on trial for murdering her father and had been acquitted. She stood and stared.

  He came forward with a hand outstretched. “Give it to me. The gun.”

  She said idiotically, “It’s my father’s gun.”

  “Give it to me anyway. I’ll keep it for him. Who’s your father?” He peered down at her. “By all hell! It’s Charlie Brand’s girl. I don’t want to twist that thing away from you, ma’am. Just hand it over.”

  She shook her head. His extended hand shot downward and he had her wrist. She made no struggle or protest as, with his other hand, he eased the gun from her fingers and rammed it into his pocket without looking at it. Then he strode to the chair on the other side of the desk and stooped to get a look at the face of the man who was still whimsically hanging there.

  In a moment he straightened up, observing, “It appears that Dan Jackson won’t do any more grubstaking.” He faced Delia and demanded in a grieved tone, “What’s the idea, anyway?”

  Chapter 5

  So the Brand family troubles made the front page again, in spite of Quinby Pellett’s assertion that they had been there enough. This time the prominence and space given it, not only in Cody, but in distant cities, was considerably greater than on the two previous occasions, for the dish was a more highly seasoned one than a killing in a remote prospector’s cabin or the suicide of a desolated wife. A girl had been found with a gun in her hand, in an office at night, approaching the body of a man with a bullet through his heart who had liked the ladies; and the girl was variously described as strikingly beautiful, glamorous, seductive, enigmatic, captivating, and on up and down.

  Of all the people involved and active in the affair one way or another—relatives, friends, associates, officials, photographers, politicians, reporters—the only one who was in a state of indifference at ten o’clock Wednesday morning was the girl herself. She was sound asleep on a cot in a cell of the county jail, lying on a clean white sheet, with no cover, clad in soft, clean, yellow pajamas which her sister Clara had brought to the jail, along with other accessories, shortly after dawn. Seated on a chair in the corridor outside the cell door was Daisy Welch, wife of the deputy warden, slowly fanning herself with a palm leaf and from time to time sighing heavily. It was a self-imposed vigil. One day a few months ago, when little Annie Welch had tumbled downstairs at school and had bitten a hole in her tongue, Delia had driven her home in her car.

  At that moment, in the principal’s office of the Pendleton School, the large woman with sweat on her brow who had glanced in at the door during the assembly for Rhythmic Movement the preceding day, was seated at her desk regarding with grim disapproval a young man who stood before her with a notebook and pencil in his hand. She was saying:

  “… and you might as well get out of the building and stay out. It won’t do you any good to snoop around anyhow, because I’m sending a memo around to the teachers that they are not to speak with you. I’ve told you that Delia Brand’s work and character and personality have been completely satisfactory and that’s all I have to say.”

  “But Miss Henckel, I tell you we want to give her a break! Comments by you and all the teachers, quoting them by name, would help to sway public opinion—”

  “Of course you do,” said the principal sarcastically. “You mean you want to break her. I read the Times-Star this morning, didn’t I? I ask you once more to leave this building.”

  He soon accepted defeat and departed, hoping for better luck at one of the six other schools, since Delia had had a class in each of them. It was his own idea.

  At the Brand home on Vulcan Street, Clara sat on the bench in the breakfast nook in the kitchen, her elbows on the table and her forehead resting on her palms with a plate of three greasy-looking fried eggs, untouched, in front of her. The floor began to shake from a ponderous tread and the form of Mrs. Lemuel Sammis came through the swinging door.

  “That was someone like Vatter or Vitter on the phone,” Evelina Sammis announced.

  Clara said without looking up, “Mag Vawter.”

  “Mebbe. I told her I was here and you don’t want any company. Also I called the ranch and told Pete to drive in and bring a turkey. We’ve always got a roast turkey or two. There’s no use cooking anything because you won’t eat it while it’s hot, like those eggs, and with a turkey around, any time you’re ready to swallow there it is. Pete can stay here today at least and answer the door and the phone. I’m not built for a canter any more.”

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Sammis, but I’m perfectly able—”

  “Forget it, girlie.” She sat down. “I’m taking my shoes off.” She did so and wiggled her toes. “On the ranch I can keep my shoes on all day, but these town shoes start turning on me. Now listen. Lem’ll have her out of there before night, don’t you worry. What’s the use of his owning the state nearly, if he can’t get a girl out of jail? As for her shooting Dan Jackson, that was only a question—”

  “I tell you she didn’t do it!”

  “All right.” Evelina looked annoyed. “Don’t start an argument. Her shooting Dan Jackson was nothing more nor less than a blessing. I’m surprised Lem didn’t do it himself years ago. My Amy is in a state fit to be tied, but she’ll get over it. As soon as Pete gets here I’ll put my shoes back on and go back over to Amy’s and see if she’s eating yet. She’s going to be a different woman. After all, she’s half Sammis and half Freyvogel—There’s that damn bell again.” She got up with a grunt.

  “I don’t want to see anyone, please,” said Clara as Evelina made off in her stocking feet.

  But it became evident in less than a minute that Evelina had met her match at the front door. Her raised voice was heard, and other footsteps approaching down the hall, and when Clara lifted her head a young man was standing there.

  “Oh.” She nodded.

  As the man opened his mouth to speak Evelina appeared. “He shoved past,” she declared indignantly. “I grabbed for him, but he tore loose—”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Sammis,” said Clara. “This is Mr. Dillon. Tyler Dillon.”

  “Oh, Phil Escott’s fellow from the coast?” She put out a hand and they shook. “Looks like a smart colt. If he’s staying I guess I’ll be getting back over to Amy’s. Would you mind handing me those shoes?”

  Dillon stooped for them, gallantly offered to put them on and did so, using the handle of a teaspoon. She thanked him, stamped with each foot, grimacing, told Clara not to worry and that she would phone in case she heard anything from Lem, and departed. Dillon went to open the front door for her. When he returned he moved the kitchen chair around and sat on it and said, “That was Mrs. Lemuel Sammis?”

  Clara nodded.

  “I hear she’s clever.”

  “I guess she is.”

  “What did she want?”

  “She’s my godmother. Delia
’s too. She wanted to cheer me up and make me eat.”

  Dillon frowned. He looked as if he needed fully as much cheering up as Clara did. “I tried to get you on the phone three or four times.”

  “I haven’t been going to the phone. Mr. Sammis told me not to.”

  “When did you see him?”

  “Down at the sheriffs office about seven o’clock. They had me there asking me questions, and when he came he made them stop.” Clara shifted on the bench to look straight at him. “He advised me not to see anyone, too. I don’t mind seeing you, but I suppose I shouldn’t be answering questions. Have you seen her?”

  “No. Sammis has frozen me out. Harvey Anson has been retained as her lawyer. They won’t let me see her. I didn’t learn about it until breakfast time, when I looked at the paper. It damn near laid me out, after—” He stopped.

  “After what?”

  “Nothing. I’ve been trying to get to her for over two hours. Welch, the deputy warden, told me a little while ago she was asleep and his wife was with her. Have you seen her?”

  “Yes.” Clara swallowed. “They let me be with her nearly half an hour, after Mr. Sammis came.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said—she told me where she went and what she did last evening, and of course she said she didn’t shoot Jackson, but any fool would know that.”

  Dillon stared. “Do you mean to say you think she didn’t do it?”

  Clara stared back and said with quiet bitterness, “My God.”

  “My God what?”

  “Do you think Delia would murder a man?”

  “No. I didn’t think so. But maybe I know things about it you don’t know. Have you seen your uncle? Quinby Pellett?”

  “Yes, I saw him at the jail. What about him?”

  “Didn’t he tell you anything?”

  “He told me he knew Delia didn’t shoot Jackson. Naturally, since he has a decent share of brains. What else could he tell me?”

  “Nothing if he didn’t want to. Do you know where Delia’s handbag is? Did she have it with her and did they take it?”

  Clara’s mouth opened and then closed again. She regarded him with narrowed eyes. “What do you know about her handbag?”

  “I know there was a paper in it that would help to convict her, with my name on it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “In my office yesterday morning she took it from the handbag and read it to me and put it back again.”

  “A paper that would help … to convict her?”

  “Yes.”

  Clara shoved the untouched plate away, so suddenly that one of the eggs skidded onto the table. Throughout her childhood and girlhood it had been a truism in the Brand family that Clara had no nerves, but she too had tragically lost a father and a mother … and now this … Disregarding the egg, she slid off the end of the bench, stood up, and said quietly, “I think you had better go. If you’re a big enough fool to think she did it, or a big enough something—I don’t know what. Go and look for that paper you want that will help to convict her.”

  Dillon stayed on the chair and said with equal quietness, “I’m not a fool. I love her.”

  “You certainly sound like it. You’d better go.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t go. I’ve got to do something and I can’t do it without you. You know I love her and you know she turned me down, and I love her so much I think I always am going to love her, and I think by God I’m going to marry her some day. If that makes me a fool, okay. She came to my office yesterday and said she was going to shoot a man. Kill him. She wanted legal advice. She said she had just bought a box of cartridges. She had a gun in her handbag, she took it out and I saw it. She said it was her father’s gun. I accused her of being dramatic. You know? And she walked out on me with her shoulders up. You know how she can walk with her shoulders up?”

  “But she couldn’t … she couldn’t …” Clara sank onto the end of the bench. “She couldn’t possibly have meant it.”

  “That’s what I thought. Though I did go to your uncle and put it to him. I should have followed her or taken her to you or done something! How do you think I felt when I saw that headline in the paper?”

  “I don’t believe it. She never did it. And anyway, if she had intended—if she had hated anyone that much, it wouldn’t have been Jackson.”

  “Why not? Who would it have been?”

  “I don’t—I don’t know. But it couldn’t have been—”

  “You do know. You know something. Who?”

  She slowly shook her head.

  He exploded. “Damn it, Clara, I tell you I love her and I tell you she’s in terrible danger! I tell you I’ve got to do something! If it’s her secret, or yours, I’ll keep it. You’ve left her to Sammis just because he’s your godfather. How do you know you can trust him? Jackson was his partner, and he’s as ruthless as a mountain cat when he wants to be. I’ve got to know all there is to know. If Delia wanted to kill somebody and it wasn’t Jackson, who was it?”

  “She never told me she wanted to kill him.”

  “She told me. Who was it?”

  “Rufus Toale.”

  He gaped in astonishment. “Toale?” He stared. “The preacher?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good lord, why?”

  “Because she thought he drove my mother to suicide. So did I.”

  “Drove her how?”

  “By talking to her.” Clara pressed her teeth to her lip and was silent. In a little she continued in a controlled voice, “I don’t want—you have no idea—how excessively painful it is to talk about it.”

  “Oh, yes. I have. I’ve learned a few things about pain myself. What did he talk to her about?”

  “I don’t know. Mother had always been a member of his church, but with no special—nothing special. She just went there to church and had him to dinner once or twice a year. Then about three months ago, when mother had begun to get more—well, healthier—about father’s death, Toale began coming to see her. They had long confidential talks, day after day. From the time it started she began to look like—I don’t know how to say it—there was doom and death in her eyes. She wouldn’t tell Delia and me about it, not a word. We tried to eavesdrop, to sneak where we could hear, but they were too careful. We never found out.”

  “What did you think it was?”

  “Delia thought it was some kind of hold he had got on mother, she couldn’t guess what, and he was deliberately torturing her. I thought he was torturing her too, I could see he was, but on account of her long effort, all the time and energy and money she spent, trying to find out who had killed father. He preached a sermon on the wickedness of revenge soon after he started coming to see mother. He’s a fanatic, you know. It got worse and worse with mother, it got so she would hardly talk to us about anything or hardly eat. Then one morning Delia went in her room and found her. Of course Delia’s reaction was different from mine, because we are different, but I think another reason was that it was Delia who took a cup of coffee to her room and found her dead.”

  “So you think—when she told me she intended to shoot a man—she meant Toale.”

  “I’m sure she did.” Clara locked her fingers together. “Another thing, I’m afraid I made it worse, just recently. One evening two weeks ago he came here to see me. Delia didn’t want me to let him in, but I did, and I let him talk to me then and two or three times since, because I thought maybe he would let it out about mother. I asked him pointblank what he had talked so often with mother about and he said her secrets rested with her in the grave. He said he wanted to labor with me to return me to God. I hadn’t been going to church since he had started coming to see mother. I couldn’t stand it to sit and look at him and listen to him.”

  “How did that make it worse?”

  “Because … I got a notion that Delia thought Rufus Toale was beginning to do to me what he had done to mother. I told her I was sort of stringing him along, or trying to
, but I should have realized, the condition she was in about Rufus Toale, that that wouldn’t reassure her. Mother had evaded our questions about him for two months.”

  Dillon gazed at her, frowning deeply, considering.

  “But,” he offered finally, “while she may have hated Toale enough to want to kill him, what if she hated Jackson that much too?”

  “Why should she?”

  “Well, what if … what if she …?” He couldn’t get it out. He demanded savagely, “Did you read the paper? Did you get all the hints? Do you know what the whole damned town is saying? About Jackson and women?”

  “What has that got to do with Delia?”

  Dillon blurted, “Is she a woman?”

  “Oh, you mean … Oh.” Clara compressed her lips, then opened them to say, “You’re a swell lover, you are. You’re a hot one. First you accuse her of murder and now you accuse her of being one of Dan Jackson’s women—”

  “I don’t accuse her of anything!” The misery in his eyes was in fact anything but accusatory. “But good God, what am I going to think? What am I going to believe? What do you suppose I came here for? What in the name of heaven was she doing in Jackson’s office at night with a gun in her hand?”

  “The gun was there on a chair and she picked it up.”

  “What was she doing there?”

  “She went to give Jackson a note, signed by Mr. Sammis, instructing him to keep me employed there. Jackson had fired me.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “She did and Mr. Sammis did.”

  “Did you see the note?”

  “No, I think the sheriff has it. But anybody who thinks Delia had anything to do with Jackson—that’s utter nonsense. Or me either. I got those dirty hints in the paper, but I thought they were aimed at me. Neither Delia or I would have let Dan Jackson touch us with a ten-foot pole—what’s the idea?”

  He had jumped to his feet and pounced at her. “Shake!” He seized her hand and crunched the bones. “Put it there! What the hell! Dear sweet darling beautiful Clara! I’m going to set that—”