Rex Stout - The Mountain Cat

At a quarter to eleven Baker went to the anteroom and scowled around. “Miss Brand not here yet?”

“Not a hide or hair of her.”

“It’s been over an hour since she left home.” The county attorney heaved a weary sigh. “Phone the house again and let me talk to whoever’s there.”

The Brand girls, their Uncle Quin, and Tyler Dillon ate ham and cheese sandwiches, raspberries and cookies, and coffee, at the breakfast nook in the Brand kitchen. The recital to Delia of the details of the discovery of the cartridges, by Clara and Ty, and of the saga of the stolen bag, by Pellett, was punctuated by frequent interruptions. Reporters were repulsed at the threshold by Ty Dillon. Friends and acquaintances calling with congratulations on their tongues and hungry curiosity in their eyes were told by one or the other of the men, also at the threshold, that Clara and Delia were exhausted and required seclusion and rest. Inquiries on the telephone got the same polite answer, except the call from the county attorney’s office requesting the presence of Pellett at eight o’clock and Clara at ten. There was some discussion as to whether Clara should decline the invitation, but she insisted that she would prefer to go and get it over with.

A little before eight Pellett departed. The trio had another round of coffee, and when the cups were empty Clara dragged herself up and began to collect the dishes.

Ty arose, took them from her, and declared, “You girls are both dead on your feet. Del, you go up and go to bed, and Clara, you go in front and lie down for an hour. I’ll clean this up and I’ll call you in time to go down to the courthouse if you’re still set on it.”

He got opposition from both of them. The upshot was that Clara capitulated and was sent off to the couch in the front room, and Delia and Ty together tackled the dishes. For some minutes the only sounds in the kitchen were the clatter of cups and saucers and plates in the sink, the faucet being turned on and off, the opening and closing of cupboard doors. Delia, her shoulders sagging almost as much as her uncle’s, washed the things mechanically, anything but con brio ; Ty moved briskly about, bringing them, wiping them, putting them away. Suddenly he burst forth: “Wiper, a wiper, a dandy dish wiper, I’ll mowa da lawn and washa da diper!”

Delia glanced at him and made a feeble effort to produce a smile. He abandoned rhyme and offered further information in prose: “A lawn is clipped greensward surrounding a happy and prosperous home. Diper is a poetic term for diaper, the last word in chic for babies. Babies are what make a home happy and keep it from being prosperous. A home is the abode of a man and woman who are, let us hope, married to each other. What makes this testimony relevant, competent and material is the fact that you and I are going to marry each other.”

“My lord, Ty. Please don’t. Not now.”

He picked up a plate and started the towel around it. “I won’t, Del,” he assured her. “I mean I won’t press it to a conclusion now. As soon as we get the dishes done I’m going to leave you to the seclusion that I’ve told a hundred people is what you need. But there’s one statement that I’ve got to get off my chest before I leave.”

He put the plate away and got another. “You told Harvey Anson today that you wouldn’t have him for a lawyer because he had thought you shot Jackson, and not only that, he thought you shot him for intimate personal reasons. You should know, and you have a right to know, that you’re going to have for a husband a man who thought the same things — now wait a minute. I’m going on wiping dishes because I want to keep this casual and even flippant. I’m not going to submit a brief on it. I’ll only say that under the circumstances as given any man alive who wasn’t a brainless boob would have thought the same thing. You know the circumstances as well as I do. I thought you had shot Jackson, and since I couldn’t suppose you were flighty enough to kill a man because he had fired your sister from her job, and there was no other apparent motive, the rest was inevitable. What I thought has no importance or significance, not any more. What is important, to me anyhow, is how it made me feel.”

“Please, Ty. You don’t have to submit a brief. I suppose under the circumstances—”

“Excuse me. It’ll soon be over. The dishes, too. I was damn close to a maniac. I wanted to go and pull the jail down with my hands to get you out. I would have done anything, absolutely anything, to get you out. I was in a state that I wouldn’t have thought possible. Driving here yesterday morning, coming to see Clara, I asked myself why? In view of Jackson, you know? Chastity and purity? I only realized then what the situation was and must have been before, though I hadn’t known it. I had told you I loved you and wanted you to marry me, but that was milk and water stuff. To go on living meant to have you — hell, I don’t know how to say it, and anyway, I said I would stay casual. Only I’m yours. For keeps. Statement of relevant fact.” He picked up the last plate. “Of course that’s only the introduction, but I had to get it off my chest after what you said to Anson today. When the time comes I’ll go on from there. Shall I hang this towel back on the rack or what?”

She nodded. “Put it there to dry.” She was cleaning the sink.

He propped himself against the table and watched her. As she was wringing out the dishrag he asked, “I don’t suppose you’ve come to any conclusion about me? The last two days? Did you think about me at all?”

She didn’t reply till after she had washed her hands and dried them. Then she looked up at him and said, “I thought about everything in the world. About the past and present and future, and my father and mother, and death and life and the things people have done, and things people have said, what they have said to me and where the truth was, and how hard it is to tell whether you’re doing what you really want to do. I thought of being locked up forever, and of losing my life, of being executed for murder, and of being set free and what I would do. It wasn’t all profound and it wasn’t all even thinking. I dramatized that, the being set free. You were in it. You put your arms around me and kissed me and I cried. I mean when I dramatized I cried — I didn’t actually cry once. Then when the sheriff took me into that room and they were letting me go I told you to kiss me on the cheek and you didn’t do it.”

He growled, “The room was full of people.”

“It isn’t now.”

“What—” He gulped. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Nothing. Only you’ve accused me of faking scenes so often, you might help me act one of them out.”

“If I kiss you, you’ll know it.”

“Remember you put your arms around me, too.”

He did so. Whether in quality the kiss she got was up to the one she had imagined in her cell she alone could tell, but in duration there was surely no question about it. It lasted long enough to wipe a dozen plates if there had been more to wipe. Finally she stirred and he released her.

“Now you go home,” she said.

He took a breath, and another. “I’m not going home.”

“Yes, you are—”

“I mean I’m going somewhere else. I’m going to see old man Escott.” He made a movement. “Could I—?”

“No, Ty. Please. One was all I dramatized.”

“I’ll phone you in the morning and ask if I can come to see you. Remember you’ve fired your lawyer.”

“I don’t need a lawyer any more.”

“You need this lawyer. Good night, Del.”

“Good night, Ty.”

They went on tiptoe through the hall because a glance into the front room had shown them Clara on the couch with her eyes closed and breathing deeply. After he had gone Delia went in there quietly and turned out one of the lamps, the one close to the couch. Then she sat on the edge of a chair and gazed at her sleeping sister. It looked wonderful, that deep peaceful sleep. When she herself had slept again like that, and her head was clear and her nerves calmed a little, was she going to be angry at Ty for having thought that of her? She considered it unlikely and that was queer. The things he had said — they were a jumble in her head now — would she be able to remember all of them tomorrow and the way he had looked? What he had said about chastity and purity, now, she would never have believed—