Rex Stout: The Mountain Cat

At sight of Delia the young man broke off a laughing remark and stepped hastily forward.

“Del! Hello there!” He opened the gate. “I believe you have met Mrs. Cowles, haven’t you?”

Delia remained rigid. It would have made her furious if anyone had suggested that any detail of her form — the head slightly tilted to slant her gaze, the shoulders drawn in for shrinking, the lower lip faintly back — had been copied from the technique of movie stars, for she professed contempt for movie acting and it was not on a Hollywood set that she had expected to fulfill her destiny. Nevertheless, any observant movie fan would have spotted it.

She said, in a cool tone meant for offense, with her gaze slanted at the man, “I met her when she was Mrs. Durocher. Or, as she might prefer, the Mountain Cat.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mrs. Cowles, amused, coming forward and looking at her. That was one of the times when, close enough, it could be seen that her pupils tended toward slits. “Maybe you can tell me — but I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

“Delia Brand,” the man put in.

“I’m sorry — but it’s a waste of energy to remember women’s names, they change so often nowadays. Maybe you can tell me, Miss Brand, who it was who first called me that? I mean Mountain Cat. I’ve been trying to find out, because I’d like to send him a silver bridle or a bottle of wine or something. Would you believe that that name has followed me to New York and Palm Beach, and even to France? I like it. Do you know who invented it?”

“Yes.” Delia had shifted her gaze, but not her tone. “I did.”

“Really? How lucky. Do you ride? Could you use the bridle, or would you prefer the wine?”

“Neither.” Delia whirled, filled her voice with biting scorn to demand, “From you?” and then turned again and passed through the gate in the railing, continued to the inner hall, meeting one of the stenographers on the way, and entered the fourth door on the left, which was standing open. She closed it behind her, and was in a good-sized room with two windows, a case of law books, a desk, and chairs. She had been sitting in one of the chairs barely two minutes when the door opened to admit the young man. He stood in the middle of the room and looked at her for a moment, then passed around the desk and seated himself in the swivel chair.

He pressed his lips together, then suddenly released them to say with some force, “You ought to go to San Francisco. Or you ought to go to New York. You ought to go alone, and work or fight or something. You ought to do something. You always were stretched tight and now, naturally, you’re tighter than ever. Why the dickens did you tell Wynne Cowles that you invented that name Mountain Cat? You know darned well you didn’t.”

Delia’s eyes burned at him. “What does it matter?”

“It doesn’t. It wouldn’t matter either if I all of a sudden stood on my head and repeated the Gettysburg Address, but if I did so you’d be justified in asking me why. And why all the display of animosity and abhorrence to her? Was that just nerves? It only confirms—”

“I haven’t got nerves. Not what you mean... well, I have a certain intensity. You know I have. I came here to see you. I came to ask you...” Delia raised her hand and pressed it to her forehead, then let it fall to her lap again. It fell relaxed, with a loose wrist. “I came, and I found you gay and laughing with that thing. If I didn’t make an effort to stifle my emotions—”

“Piffle!” It was explosive. “What emotions? Personal? Jealousy? Or social? Moral revulsion? In either case—”

“I don’t mind if you call it jealousy. I am perfectly capable of jealousy.”

“You may be capable of it, but you’re not entitled to it.” He glared at her. “But let’s say you are and dispose of that. I mean let’s dispose of Wynne Cowles. Who am I? I’m Tyler Dillon, a Cody lawyer, in the best firm in town. Who is Wynne Cowles? A millionaire playgirl, known from Honolulu to Cairo. She came here two years ago to wait for a divorce settlement and now she’s back, ready to repeat the order. The first time, she left over fifty thousand dollars in this state, and she probably will again. It’s up to me to send her away a satisfied customer.”

“Satisfied?” Delia was scornful. “It’s notorious, what it is that satisfies her. You would be one? Would you?”

“I might.” He picked up a pencil from the desk and flung it down again. “Why the devil shouldn’t I? As far as that’s concerned, I might even marry her. Why not? She makes a generous financial settlement at the pay off—”

“Ty!”

“Well?”

“Tyler Dillon!”

He gazed at her. After a minute he got up, passed around the desk, and stood looking down at her with his hands thrust into his pockets.

Finally he said, in a new and quiet tone, “Look, Del. I’m not trying to make a fool of you, though God knows you made one of me. You, a kid. Just a high school kid. That’s all you were two years ago. That’s all you are now, really, even if you are twenty. But maybe that’s all Helen of Troy was at your age. Anyhow, your pretending to be jealous of Wynne Cowles is plain silly. You know what I think, I’ve told you once before. I don’t think you’re capable of any genuine emotion at all. I don’t think—”

She started to get up.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “Please,” he implored. “Please don’t do that. Don’t pull a haughty exit on me. Did you see me at your mother’s funeral?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I saw anybody.”

He took his hand from her shoulder. “I was aware you didn’t. I should note the exceptions. I know you’ve had enough trouble and grief to throw any ordinary girl off balance for good, and your feelings about that were genuine enough, I don’t doubt that for a minute. That day at the funeral I bit a hole in my own lip from watching you biting yours, holding yourself in.”

“I didn’t see you, Ty.”

“I know you didn’t. You didn’t see anyone. But aside from your feelings about your father and then your mother, which I’m willing to admit were as deep and genuine as feelings can be, I say you’re a pure unadulterated fake. Now you sit still. I’ve been chewing my cud a lot. I’ve been doing that because I can’t help it, because I can’t get you out of my system. And I—”

“Not even with Wynne Durocher to help you? I mean Wynne Cowles? I mean the Mountain Cat?”

“Rot. You’re faking now. And you were faking when you pretended you were fond of me but you wouldn’t marry me because it would gum up your career. You were no more fond of me than you were of one of your uncle’s stuffed jack rabbits. Do you remember how you would fasten your eyes on me and talk down in your throat about Duse and Bernhardt?”

He stopped, staring gloomily down at her, then shook his head and returned to his swivel chair and sat down.

“I should have been wise to you then,” he went on after a moment. “But I wasn’t, because I was over my head in love with you. I still am, but I’ve had a chance to stand off and take a look. I actually thought you were going to be a great actress just because you said so. I didn’t tumble that all you were doing with me was practice. I even went to that thing you were in at the high school and sent you a bunch of flowers and had a lump in my throat because I thought you were wonderful. Now I realize you weren’t wonderful at all. The fact is you were lousy.”

Instead of exploding with rage, which would have been one way to handle it, Delia merely smiled faintly. “I don’t deny it,” she said calmly. “It takes years of work and sacrifice to develop—”

“Bah! Excuse me, but I tell you I’ve been thinking about it. You have to have something to work on, to start with. You no more have the makings of a great actress than I have. You’ve merely got the same ailment as a million other girls your age, you’re stage-struck. That’s all right, it’s as normal and common as measles, but I just want to let you know that I know it and that you had no right to use me for a practice dummy! By God, you hadn’t! And I’ll say this, no matter how brutal it is; I’ll say that I thought there was a chance that this — I mean your mother — coming on top of what happened to your father — I thought maybe it would give you a jolt that would bring you out of it — but here you are, coming here and striking a pose and pretending to be jealous of Wynne Cowles when the fact is that you don’t care enough about me to feel jealous if you found me occupying a harem with literally thousands of wives and concubines and houris—” He broke off and breathed.