Rex Stout - 1939 - The Mountain Cat Murders Page 9

  “Do the boys all know him by sight?”

  “Sure, he’s one of our most prominent citizens.”

  Phelan requested Tuttle’s phone, got it, called the station and asked for the lieutenant in charge. After a few concise but thorough instructions, he hung up and shoved the phone back and turned to Pellett.

  “All right, Quin, they’ll get him. Now spill it. What’s he done besides sock you?”

  “He stole my niece’s bag from her car yesterday afternoon.”

  Bill Tuttle jerked into a stare. Everybody stared. The cop said involuntarily, “Ouch!” Phelan demanded, “This bum—stole her bag? Delia Brand’s bag?”

  “Yes.”

  “The one with the gun and the cartridges in it?”

  “Yes.”

  The sheriff broke in, snapping, “How do you know he did?”

  “I saw him.”

  “You saw him take it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You saw him take it and you didn’t mention anything about it here this morning?”

  “Nobody here seemed to give a damn about anything I might say this morning. You were all so sure of what you had you didn’t want anything more from anybody. Besides, all I could do was describe him, I didn’t know who he was, and what good is a description?”

  “So instead of telling us you went and planted yourself—”

  “Wait a minute, Bill.” Phelan reached for the phone again, and called the station. In a moment he spoke: “Mac? Frank. That order I just gave you about a bum named Al Rowley. Make it hot. Put every man you can get on it. I want him and no mistake, and quick. And take him good. It may be murder.”

  As Phelan hung up, the sheriff barked at Pellett, “Is that the idea? That this bum stole the bag with the gun in it and murdered Jackson?”

  “No. He couldn’t have, because I took the bag away from him.”

  “You did what?”

  “I caught him stealing the bag from her car and I took it.”

  “What did you do with it?—Wait a minute.” The sheriff included the two detectives and the cop in a look. “You fellows go out front and wait there. The three of you. And keep your traps shut. Understand?”

  They said they did, with evident reluctance, and marched out. The sheriff leaned back and sighed heavily.

  Phelan said, “Maybe we ought to get this the way it happened. In order. This is quite a—quite a surprise.”

  “It’s all of that.” Tuttle fastened his eyes on Pellett and demanded, “What did you do with the bag?”

  Pellett shook his head. “I think Frank’s right. You ought to have it in the order it happened. In the first place, my niece came to see me yesterday afternoon—”

  “What for?”

  “It doesn’t matter what for. It had nothing to do with killing Dan Jackson, you can be damn sure of that. The fact is, she wanted me to go with her to persuade Jackson not to fire Clara—my other niece. I told her it would be better if we didn’t go together, and that I had an appointment to call on him that afternoon on another matter and would speak to him about it then. Not long after she left my place, I left, to keep my appointment with Jackson. He had phoned that he wanted to consult me about some information he had got hold of regarding the death of my brother-in-law two years ago. While I was looking for a parking space on Halley Street I saw Delia’s car there. I had to park up ahead, and as I walked back I saw a man closing the door of Delia’s car with her bag in his hand. He didn’t look like a man she might have sent for it, so I confronted him and asked him if it was his bag. He said, ‘It’s not yours, is it?’ and I said, ‘No, it belongs to my niece, and so does that car.’ He said, ‘Then do me a favor and take it to her,’ and shoved it into my hand and walked off. He was so damn cool about it I just stared at his back.”

  “You didn’t call a cop?”

  “With the bag in my hand, what was there to tell a cop?”

  “Did anybody see all that? Anyone stop to look at you?”

  “Not that I know of.” Pellett was frowning.

  “Okay. You’re standing there on the sidewalk holding the bag. Then what?”

  “I started for Jackson’s office. I had intended to wait there by my niece’s car until she came out, because I didn’t want to interrupt her talk with Jackson, and I went to the corner and had a glass of beer. That took five minutes, maybe a little more. When I went back her car was still there, and it occurred to me she might have got through with Jackson and gone somewhere else nearby, so I went to the entrance there alongside The Haven, and went in and climbed the stairs. When I got nearly up, about two or three steps from the top, something hit me on the side of the head. I must have rolled all the way down. When I came to I was there at the bottom landing, and my niece and Jackson were standing there—”

  “Company halt!” said Tuttle savagely. “I’ll stop you if I’ve heard it! And the bag was gone? Sure the bag was gone? Sure the bag was gone! And the ones who found you there unconscious were your niece, who is in a cell, and Jackson, who is dead!”

  “That’s right.” Pellett raised his hand and rubbed the left side of his jaw, slowly and tenderly. “Look, Sheriff. Don’t figure on getting me sore. I knew what your attitude would be, and that’s why I went there and laid for that man in case he might show up. But while it was my niece and Jackson that found me, because they were in his office and heard me rolling downstairs, Jackson went to The Haven right away, to telephone, and someone from there came back with him. I think he’s the manager or the bouncer, because it was him that came out and spoke to me today. And before they helped me upstairs to Jackson’s office a police sergeant came, Gil Moffett, and a doctor. They decided I had been hit with a piece of ore out of that old bin up there; Jackson found it on the floor near the head of the stairs. I suppose Gil Moffett reported it; anyway, you can ask him. I had a little natural curiosity about who had tried to crack my skull open, and I phoned Gil at his house last night and he said they hadn’t found any tracks.”

  Tuttle asked with a scowl, “Was it your theory that someone trailed you up and beaned you when you got to the top?”

  “I didn’t have any theory. But he couldn’t have trailed me up and then got a piece of ore from that bin. He must have been already up there.”

  “Yeah, I was expecting that. It was somebody already up there and so it was Jackson. Huh?”

  “It couldn’t have been. My niece was in his office with him at the time I was hit.”

  “That’s too bad. And the minute you came to, you looked around for the bag and it was gone.”

  “No, I didn’t. I was groggy. After they got me up to Jackson’s office Gil Moffett helped me go through my pockets to see if anything was gone, but all I had that amounted to anything was my wallet with about sixty dollars in it and my driver’s license, and that was there, so I told Gil nothing had been taken. I was still dazed. Then a little later, when I was talking with Jackson, I remembered about the bag, and Jackson and I went to look for it, and it wasn’t there. We looked upstairs and down. It was gone.”

  “Had Moffett and the doctor left before you missed the bag?”

  “Yes, and my niece too. We were alone.”

  “Did you see anybody or hear anything before you got hit?”

  “Not a damn thing. It’s dark up there in that hall.”

  The sheriff leaned back and gazed at him a while. Then he turned to the chief of police, still scowling. “How do you like it, Frank? Got any suggestions?”

  Phelan slowly and reflectively shook his head. “I don’t know, Bill. We might go into details a little more.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Phelan did so. He wasn’t aggressively skeptical, as the sheriff had been, but he wanted to know; that was his tone as he questioned Quinby Pellett. He was painstaking; he covered, thoroughly, everything that happened up to the time that Pellett and Jackson had searched for the bag, but he found no discrepancy, and the only new fact he got was that Pellett thought it possible that the mu
rder of Jackson was connected with the murder two years previously of Charlie Brand. Pellett could support that surmise only by saying that Jackson had summoned him to the office for the purpose of discussing a new angle on the Charlie Brand murder, and had shown him a piece of paper alleged to have been found in the cabin in the Silverside Hills where Brand had been killed; and since Jackson had been killed a few hours later, it seemed likely that there might be a connection. Asked what was on the piece of paper, Pellett couldn’t say; his head had been so befuddled from the blow he had got that they had postponed the rest of the discussion until the next day and, after the futile search for the bag, he had gone home. It was while they were on that that the phone rang, and Tuttle, after answering it, handed it across to Phelan.

  The chief took it. “Yes, Mac? No! Good work! Where? Remind me to buy you a drink. No, let that go. Send them on over here with him and step on it.”

  He hung up, looking pleased with himself. “Pretty good gang I’ve got, Bill. They’ve picked up Al Rowley.”

  “Ha, they’ve got him!”

  “They have, you know, Quin. Over on Bucket Street. They ought to be here in five minutes.”

  “I’ll handle him,” Tuttle announced.

  “You will like hell. My boys got him.”

  “This is my office, Frank.”

  “And a damn smelly office it is, Bill. This is my meat.”

  “I’ll handle him. I’ll take him first.”

  “Not if my voice holds out you won’t. And if you start trying, I’ll march him right back out and over to the station. It was me Pellett came to in the first place, wasn’t it? Didn’t he come here only because I was here?”

  That argument, with ramifications, was still in progress when the arrival of the disputed booty was announced and Tuttle ordered that it be ushered in, including escort.

  Quinby Pellett stood up and Phelan told him roughly, “Sit down, Quin. Your knees are shaky. And behave yourself.”

  The escort, entering, proved to be two plain-clothes men and two in uniform. The booty, flanked on both sides, was, unmistakably, the friend Pellett had been looking for. He looked surly, somewhat scared, and a little bellicose.

  “Sit him down,” Phelan ordered, and he was instructed into a chair. “Is that the man, Quin?”

  “That’s him,” Pellett declared, without removing his eyes from the booty.

  The sheriff barked, “Is your name Al Rowley?”

  The chief of police jumped up and started for the door, calling, “Bring him along, boys, back to the station!”

  The escort looked bewildered. The sheriff yelled, “Hey, you damn fool! All right, all right!”

  Phelan turned on his heel, went and stood in front of the booty, glared down at him and stated a series of facts. “Your name is Al Rowley, you’re a vagrant and a bum. I can lock you up or toss you out on your ear or whatever I damn please, and about an hour ago Mr. Pellett here stopped you on the sidewalk in front of The Haven and you socked him in the jaw. Right?”

  “I’m not a vag—”

  “Oh, shut up! Did you hit Mr. Pellett?”

  “Maybe, but I didn’t—”

  “I said shut up! What did you hit him for?”

  “He had no right stopping me like that—”

  “How did he stop you?”

  “He just got in front of me and stopped me.”

  “Did he do you any violence?”

  “No, he said something, I don’t know what, and when I stepped back he made a grab at me, and just on the impulse I lammed him.”

  “And ran like hell. What were you scared of?”

  “I wasn’t scared, it was just an impulse—”

  “Some day you’ll get impulsed once too often. Take a look at Mr. Pellett. I said look at him! When you saw him today he was wearing a mustache, but the time before that he wasn’t. Did you recognize him today in spite of the mustache?”

  “I didn’t recognize him at all. I never saw him before.”

  “What about yesterday?”

  “Yesterday? Whereabouts yesterday? Not that I remember.”

  Phelan looked disgusted. “Oh, come off it, Rowley. We’ve got you. Three different people saw you take that bag from that car and then hand it to Pellett when he stopped you.”

  “That’s a lie, chief. A damn lie. They’re all dirty liars.”

  A low growl came from Quinby Pellett, and Phelan shook his head at him and then resumed, “Do you deny they saw you on that street?”

  “I don’t know if they saw me, but nobody saw me take any bag from any car. If I was on the street and they saw me then they saw me. What street was it?”

  “Shut up. Where were you yesterday?”

  “Well, yesterday.” Rowley considered. “Let’s see. In the morning I managed to earn four bits—”

  “How’d you earn it?”

  “Oh, just working around—”

  “Skip it. Where were you in the afternoon?”

  “Well, in the afternoon I was tired and I took a little rest, and then I went for a walk and stopped in at The Haven and dropped the four bits, and then I came out and walked around some more and went back to my boarding house—”

  “When you came out of The Haven what did you do first?”

  “I walked.”

  “Yeah. You walked to a car and saw a handbag there and lifted it, and Pellett stopped you and you handed it over—”

  “Listen, Chief.” Rowley leaned forward and waggled a finger for emphasis. “I may be a vagrant and a bum, if that’s the terms you want to use. But I’m not a sneak thief. No, sir. Anybody that says they saw the kind of thing you described is a pure liar. I don’t include Mr. Pellett in that. He don’t look like a liar and I’ll apologize that I hit him. I’m willing to call it a mistake in identity. If he made a mistake—”

  “Shut up! The people that saw you aren’t liars.”

  “They are if they say they saw me take anything out of a car yesterday afternoon. In full daylight like that, right on the street? I will never in God’s world say anything except to say that they’re liars.”

  That proved to be, in substance, all that could be coaxed or threatened out of him. After another twenty minutes of it Phelan offered him to the sheriff, but Tuttle said he was satisfied as it was. Quinby Pellett was permitted to do some questioning, but got nowhere.

  Phelan had another try, but finally threw up his hands in disgust and told the escort, “Take him and throw him in the river!”

  “My God,” Pellett protested, “you’re not going to turn him loose!”

  “What can I hold him for? If we book him as a vag we just have to feed him.”

  “He knocked me down, didn’t he? Didn’t he assault me? For God’s sake, don’t let him go!”

  “Do you want to charge him with assault?”

  “I do.”

  Phelan nodded to the escort. “All right, boys. Take him over and assign him. Give him dried lizard for supper. Tell Mac, Pellett will sign a charge.”

  They trooped out, much less eager than when they had entered. The chief of police sat down, looking weary and fed up. The sheriff rubbed his nose.

  Pellett looked from one to the other, got tired of waiting and demanded, “Well? What about my niece? How could she have killed Jackson if her bag was stolen?”

  “She couldn’t,” Phelan said, and seemed to be through.

  “Well then?”

  Phelan aimed a thumb at the sheriff. Tuttle heaved a sigh. “I’ll tell you, Pellett. That’s a good story you’ve got. Now what about it? Officially I’ll say this: we’re much obliged and we’ll investigate it thoroughly, all aspects of it, and form the best opinion we can. Unofficially, naturally you want to do everything you can to help your niece, and it’s too bad you haven’t got any corroboration at all for any of it that’s connected with the bag, since even the man that helped you look for it on the stairs is the one that was murdered, and I imagine the jury will feel about the same way.”

  Pel
lett stood up, his teeth clenched. “You think I’m lying? You think I made it up?”

  “I do,” said Tuttle. “Unofficially.”

  “I don’t know, Quin,” said Phelan peevishly. “How the hell do I know?”

  Pellett, his teeth still clenched, turned and left the room.

  It was only a short walk to the new Sammis Building on Mountain Street and he went on foot. Arrived there, he took the elevator to the fourth floor, entered a door halfway down the corridor and told a young woman seated at a desk, “My name is Quinby Pellett. I’m Delia Brand’s uncle. I want to see Mr. Anson.”

  She asked him to wait, and disappeared through another door. After a moment she came back and nodded to him. “Come this way, please.”

  The following morning the citizens of Cody found on the front page of the Times-Star a display box which read:

  ADVERTISEMENT

  ANYONE WHO HAS RESPECT FOR JUSTICE

  AND SYMPATHY WITH UNDESERVED

  MISFORTUNE, AND WHO HAS HAPPENED TO SEE

  ON HALLEY STREET AROUND FOUR O’CLOCK

  TUESDAY AFTERNOON, A MAN WHO STOOD

  NEAR A PARKED CAR HANDING SOMETHING TO

  ANOTHER MAN, WILL PLEASE, FOR

  COMPASSION’S SAKE, COMMUNICATE WITH THE

  CODY CHIEF OF POLICE AT ONCE.

  THE PICTURE REPRODUCED BELOW IS OF

  THE MAN TO WHOM THE OBJECT WAS HANDED.

  DELIA BRAND.

  It was a good likeness of Quinby Pellett.

  Chapter 8

  Tyler Dillon slept fitfully that night. He had not seen Delia. He had accomplished nothing. Phil Escott had listened to his recital and plea, and had said he would think it over but it looked like a bad one. So Dillon didn’t sleep well. At six o’clock he got up and dressed because he couldn’t lie still any longer. When the morning paper was delivered he read the display box on the front page three times, then, without waiting for breakfast, got his car and drove to Quinby Pellett’s place, finding him in the living quarters above the taxidermy shop. He was there half an hour, and came away with a new hope and a new despair which approximately balanced each other. After getting some fruit and coffee at a lunchroom on Mountain Street, he went to his office. He wouldn’t be able to see Escott, who would be in court all morning, but Wynne Cowles was expected at ten o’clock to sign some papers connected with her divorce suit. When she came he found occasion to remark that he hadn’t known she was in a partnership with Clara Brand, but all he got in reply was a mind-your-business glance from her, with her pupils gone slightly elliptical.