Rex Stout - The Mountain Cat

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Here is another topnotch mystery by the author of TOO MANY COOKS and SOME BURIED CAESAR. In this story of Wyoming, silver mining, politics and murder, Rex Stout has brought to vigorous life a group of new characters. Not all of them are nice, but all of them are memorable.
When Delia Brand planned to murder Preacher Rufus Toale, she thought she would be meting out justice for the murder of her father and the suicide of her mother. But when she went to Dan Jackson’s office at ten o’clock that night she only wanted to keep Jackson from firing her sister. She found Jackson dead and she found her gun on the table beside him.
Delia couldn’t murder Rufus Toale because she was arrested for a murder she didn’t commit. That was the beginning of a series of events that had great repercussions. It was almost too late when Wynne Cowles, divorcee, told Delia what Mountain Cat really meant.

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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.”

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