Rex Stout - The Mountain Cat

“I wish, Miss Brand, you would convey to your sister the sympathy and good wishes of myself and my staff at the Pendleton School. Tell her that even Miss Crocker joins us in that expression. Your sister and Miss Crocker don’t get on very well. But though I am glad of this opportunity to send your sister that message, that isn’t what I came for.”

She opened her bag, a large hand-embroidered one, and took out something and handed it to Clara. Clara stared at it but took it. Dillon, leaning forward and perceiving what it was, looked startled and fastened his eyes on the principal, but kept his mouth shut.

“That,” said Miss Henckel, in a tone that defied contradiction, “is a cartridge box and in it are thirty-five cartridges for a .38 revolver. This morning one of the patrons of my school, Mr. James Archer, came to my office with his son, James Junior, who is in the fourth grade, and told me that when he returned home from work yesterday he found that a structure had been erected in a corner of a shed adjoining his garage. The structure consisted of berry boxes held together with paper clips, tacks and rubber bands, and at intervals holes had been punched through the boxes with an ice pick or gimlet, and protruding from the holes on the outside were cartridges. He questioned his son and was told that the structure was a fort on the Yellow River in China. Then he dealt further with his son and learned that the cartridges had been stolen the day before, Tuesday afternoon, in the cloak vestibule of Room Nine in the Pendleton School, from Delia Brand’s handbag.”

Without stopping for a by-your-leave, Dillon snatched the box from Clara’s fingers and pulled the lid off. He gazed at the contents in bitter disappointment. The box was no more than three-fourths full.

“To be sure.” Miss Henckel lifted her brows at him and there was an edge of scornful condescension to her tone. “I said thirty-five cartridges, didn’t I? I realized that it might possibly be of vital significance if the box was full. Mr. Archer states that he doesn’t care to have loaded cartridges lying around his shed, and he searched with great thoroughness and is absolutely certain that he got every one. His son states that that is all there were. But I have been dealing with boys for nearly thirty years. I led him into details and, among them, he told of removing the wrapping paper from the box after he had taken it from the bag. The fact that there was still wrapping paper on it permits the assumption that the box had not been opened. I told the boy that, nearly an hour ago, but he sticks to his statement. It is a remarkable case of stubbornness, really remarkable. At that point I decided you should be notified, Miss Brand, so that you could take whatever—”

“Where’s the boy now?” Dillon demanded.

“In my office with his father.”

“I’ll handle him! Come on—”

“I came here with information for Miss Brand. It is in her hands. If she thinks the police or Mr. Anson—”

“Clara, damn it all! Let me go! If we find the rest of those cartridges— Listen, you come too! We’ll both go! All right, Miss Henckel?”

“Whatever Miss Brand decides. Though I can tell you, you’re not going to choke it out of him. It will take finer handling than that.”

“All right, Clara? Come on!”

Clara got up and started for the door.

Jimmie Archer said for the hundredth time, with tears in his eyes, “I tell you I’m not a squealer, doggone it! I tell you I’m not a rat! I tell you I won’t squeal!”

They were beginning to believe him. Instead of showing signs of weakening in the last half hour, since they had tricked him into the admission that he had had a confederate in the robbery, the obduracy in his eyes, in spite of the tears, had grown more and more intense, and his jaw had stopped quivering entirely. He had confessed that there had been a division of the spoils and that he had kept thirty-five cartridges for himself, but there seemed to be no conceivable technique that would compel or entice him into the pronouncement of a name.

His father said, “No use licking him. I’ve tried that before. It tightens him up like a rusty nut. I used to pull his ears, I guess that’s one reason they stick out, but I quit. It’s no use.”

Miss Henckel said, “We could check up on all the boys who were supposed to go to Miss Brand’s class that day, but that would be an endless job. There was no roll call.”

They were in Miss Henckel’s outside office for a council of war, having left Dillon and Clara in the inner room with Jimmie. As the principal had said, it was a remarkable case of stubbornness, intensified to fanaticism when the issue had got down to the name of the accomplice. Clara’s entreaties, Miss Henckel’s appeal to reason, the father’s threats, warnings and bribes, and Dillon’s cross-examination, were all repulsed.

Dillon emerged from the inner room, closing the door behind him, and joined the council. “Look here,” he said, “we’re wasting our breath. He gets worse instead of better. There’s not a chance in the world of our getting that name out of him. Are you sure his mother couldn’t do it? It seems as though his mother—”

“Nothing doing.” Mr. Archer was positive. “Usually him and the missis hit it off fine — the way she does it, she never goes against the grain. When he once gets that look in his eyes — of course, if she had two or three days for it—”

“She hasn’t got two or three days! If you don’t think she can do it, I’ve got an idea. It’s complicated, but it will only take an hour or maybe less, and it may work. First I’ll go in and tell him—”

Five minutes later Dillon left them there and returned alone to the inner room, where Clara sat gazing in hopeless exasperation at the criminal’s obstinate tear-stained face.

“Look here, Jimmie,” Dillon said sternly, “I’ll give you one more chance to tell me the name of your pal who has the rest of those cartridges. This is your last chance.”

The boy shook his head, sullenly and inflexibly.

“Tell me.” Dillon waited five seconds. “You won’t? All right, then it’s up to the law. We’ll see if you can beat the law. You’re in for it, Jimmie, I’m telling you straight. You can’t fight the law by sitting there shaking your head. You will have to get a lawyer, and a mighty good one, and you’d better get him quick. Have you got a good lawyer?”

“I don’t—” The boy’s lip quivered. “I never really had a lawyer.”

“Well, you’d better get one in a hurry. I’ve told your father what I’m going to do, and he’s pretty scared about it, and I suppose he’ll recommend a good lawyer to you if you care to consult him about it. That’s all I have to say. It’s up to the law now. I’ll send your father in. Come on, Clara.”

“But, Ty, we can’t—”

“Come on!”

They left him there alone. In the outer room Dillon said to Mr. Archer, “All right. Let it soak into him for five minutes and then go in and try it. For heaven’s sake be careful and do it right if you can. Don’t take him over there until you hear from me.”

He departed with Clara and drove as fast as the traffic would permit to Mountain Street, and in the new Sammis Building ascended to the offices of Escott, Brody & Dillon. There he had a stroke of luck. He had expected to have to haul his senior partner away from his lunch somewhere, but at the adjournment of court Escott had stopped in at his office and was there when the conspirators arrived. Dillon first telephoned the Pendleton School and then went to Escott’s room and opened up on him. The veteran lawyer was at first annoyed because it bordered on interference in another firm’s case; then he was amused and interested; and finally he agreed.