Rex Stout - The Mountain Cat

“Search me.”

“Well. I’m just saying that maybe you’d like to go on living.”

Hurley grunted again. “I’ve been pretty successful at it for close on seventy years.”

“I think you ought to stay here. Inside this house. There’s a spare bed upstairs.”

“Me?” Hurley’s squint widened. “In this kind of an outfit?” He pushed his chair back and stood up. “No, I guess I’ll do better if I mosey along to my room.”

“My car’s outside. I’ll drive you.”

“Nope.” He was positive. “Rather walk.”

“Suit yourself. Burro is right.” Ty turned to Delia. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. It takes forty minutes to get out there, if I don’t find her in town. I’ll come straight here.”

“Do.” She touched his arm. “Ty? Please...”

“I know, Del. I’ll do my very best.”

He kissed her. A blush of embarrassment showed on Squint Hurley’s cheek, faint but perceptible on his weathered old skin, as he hastily turned his face away.

Lem Sammis opened the door of the two-storied frame building and entered. Five paces inside he stopped and stood peering around at the confusing array of animals and birds — deer, grouse, eagles, chipmunks, jack rabbits, the elk, the bear, the cougar. But nothing alive was there, so he tramped to the rear behind the partition and found what he was looking for. “I sent for you three times,” he growled.

Quinby Pellett, seated at the workbench, looked up. His graying hair looked dustier than ever, and the hump of his stooped shoulders was almost a semicircle. “I don’t give a damn,” he declared calmly, “if you sent a thousand.”

Sammis approached him, glaring. “Look here, Quin. You’ve always been independent. That’s all right. But if we’re working the same claim, and in this case we are, there’s no help in this kind of an attitude. Baker’s got your niece shut up in the courthouse right now. He won’t hang any murder on me or mine or you or yours, but it looks like he can raise a big stink before I can stop him. He’s digging into your sister’s life and maybe her death, too. And my daughter. And Charlie and Dan. He’s got Clara there now. He had you for two hours this morning. I want to know what you told him.”

“I told him nothing.”

“You were there two hours.”

“I told him nothing.”

“Frank Phelan was there part of the time. I’ve had a talk with Frank.”

Pellett put down his scraping knife. “If Frank said I told Baker anything about your family or my family that neither you nor I would want him to know, or want anyone else to know, he lied. The reason I didn’t come to see you was because I don’t want to talk about it even to you. There’s too much talk already.”

“There’s too much shooting, too, Quin.”

“I know damn well there is.”

“You’re not telling Baker about Amy and Dan or anything?”

“No.”

“You’re not going to?”

“No.”

“That’s straight?”

“That’s straight.” Sammis stood gazing at him for ten seconds, then turned and went.

Chief of Police Frank Phelan hissed in rage, leaving his desk to advance threateningly on the trio of city detectives in plain clothes. “Suffering snakes! Is it a button in a boulder I asked you to find? No! I want you to find the Governor of the State of Wyoming! Goddamn it, shall I draw a picture of him for you? I don’t care where he’s hid or who hid him! Find him! Lem Sammis wants him and Ollie Nevins wants him! Shall I print it out for you, you half-witted apes? Get out of here before I boil you down for boot grease!” They clattered out.

County Attorney Ed Baker blurted truculently, “What do you want?”

Ken Chambers, Sheriff of Silverside County, stood his ground in front of Baker’s desk. He drawled, “I came to tell you something about Squint Hurley.”

“What about him?”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on him. He’s just been making a call at the Brand house on Vulcan Street.”

“What if he has?”

“I thought you ought to know. He was there over an hour. He only got back to his room a little while ago.”

“What makes you think I ought to know?”

“Jesus.” Chambers lifted his shoulders and drooped them again. “What did they elect you for, to keep you out of mischief? If you’ve got no curiosity about what Squint might be after at the Brands—”

“Who did he see there?”

“I didn’t go in with him.”

Baker made a noise of exasperation, got his phone and spoke in it. The door opened to admit a husky but tired-looking young man. Baker asked him if he knew where Squint Hurley was rooming and he said he didn’t.

“I’ll show him,” Chambers offered.

“Much obliged. Go with Chambers, Jack, and get Squint Hurley and bring him here.”

“Is there a warrant?”

“Good gracious.” Baker was wearily sarcastic. “I forgot. Stop at the printers and get an engraved invitation.”

“Okay. Excuse me for breathing.”

When they had disappeared into the anteroom, Baker went to another door, on the opposite side, and passed through into a smaller room. It had a skylight and a ventilator was whirring, but there were no outside windows. Limp in a chair, with her eyes closed, was Clara Brand. At Baker’s entrance she opened her eyes and blinked.

He stood in front of her. “Come to any decision yet?”

“I want to go home, Mr. Baker.”

“I said you could go at dinnertime. That’s no great hardship. You want these murders solved, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. They have to be.”

“You realize that can’t be without someone getting hurt.”

“I suppose not.”

“You know not. Do you want to shield a murderer?”

“No.”

“Then help me, Clara. Get it over with.”

She shook her head. “You won’t?”

“I don’t know, I... I believe I went to sleep. I’ll stay awake now.”

“Do you want a sandwich or something?”

“No, thanks.”

Under an awning on the tiled veranda at Broken Circle Ranch, Wynne Cowles, in yellow silk lounging pajamas, reclined on a portable chaise longue with chromium frame and pneumatic tires. Handy was a little table with cigarettes, matches, books, accessories. At the sound of approaching footsteps she let her magazine drop and pivoted her head, her pupils contracting as she faced the blazing sunlight beyond the awning’s edge.

“Hail, traveler!” she cried. “At the very minimum, an excuse for a highball, which is exactly what I needed.” She frowned as she extended a hand in greeting. “But what a face! You’re absolutely haggard! I’ve promised to be at Saratoga in August. You sounded on the phone as if it was something important, but you look like a cataclysm. Turn that chair around. Scotch or rye, and charged or plain?” She rang a bell.

“Rye with bubbles.” Ty Dillon sat down. “I must be an awful exaggerator if I look like a cataclysm.”

“Then it isn’t one?”

“Lord, no. Just something I want to ask you. A little information to help a struggling young lawyer.”

“I’m flattered.” A Chinese appeared and she instructed him about the drinks and sent him off. “But if you don’t mind, I’d like some information myself first. What about Clara Brand? Did she shoot that person?”

“No.”

“Is she going to be arrested?”

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s good.” Wynne Cowles removed the magazine from her breasts and put it on the table. “Darn her anyway. She’s as independent as a hog on ice. I phoned her three times this morning, and twice she refused to come to the phone, and the third time she said she didn’t-need-any-help-of-any-kind-thank-you.”