Rex Stout - The Mountain Cat

He looked straight at her eyes and said, “I don’t believe it.” She shrugged. He said, “What you mean is that you did write it, but the paper can’t be produced as evidence, so you propose to avoid inconvenience and notoriety by denying it. If you mean that, why don’t you say so and I’ll know where I stand? We’re here alone.”

She shrugged again. “I’ll say that if you’d like it better. Delia has been released from jail, hasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Is there any danger of her being arrested again?”

“No. I think not.”

“And you told me Clara isn’t going to be arrested. They are already having their inconvenience and notoriety, but that can’t be helped. So I’ll say this: if I had written such a paper, and if I thought it would convict a murderer for me to admit it and get summoned to a courtroom and testify on the stand about it, I wouldn’t do it. Does that let you know where you stand?”

“It does,” said Ty bitterly. “It lets me know where you stand, too.”

“I know.” She grimaced, and picked up her drink. “I’m a cockatrice, a mugger, a harpy — hell, I’m a mountain cat. I don’t mind. I don’t like murderers, but I’m not crazy about hangmen either. Maybe I’m an anarchist. You have not touched your drink.”

“I don’t want it. Listen, Mrs. Cowles. Tell me in confidence and I swear you can trust me—”

“You’re in love. I’d be a fool to trust you. No.”

“Damn it, you offered to help Clara—”

“I’ll help her. How much?”

He kept it up ten minutes longer, but it was futile. All he got was a few scratches from the mountain cat’s claws. He lost his temper, and he left without it.

He drove back to Cody in thirty-five minutes, narrowly missing a collision with a flock of sheep in Engel’s Gulch. It was a quarter to five when he turned into the Brand driveway on Vulcan Street. Delia opened the door for him. His face answered her question before she asked it, and she proved her right to some rarer appellation than “nice kid” by not asking it.

“Did you lie down?” Ty demanded.

She shook her head. “I just fooled around. Wishing I had gone with you.”

“It’s just as well you didn’t. Mountain cat? She’s a hyena. Come and sit down and I’ll tell you about it.”

When he had finished, leaving nothing out, he sat and stared at her miserably, glum, licked. Her lips were moving, nervously jerking, and she put her teeth on the lower one to stop it.

“I did it wrong,” he said. “I’m a fish. I’m a goddamn worm. Two words from her was all I needed, and I muffed the chance. If I’d had an ounce of brains I’d have figured it out better. Like this: either she had a hand in the murder of your father or she didn’t. If she did, she already knew about that paper and it didn’t matter what kind of an approach I made, nothing would drag an admission from her. But if she had nothing to do with the murder, which we had agreed to suppose, then the approach made all the difference, because she couldn’t have known why I was asking about that paper. I could have cooked up a plausible tale that wouldn’t have alarmed her, and she would have told me. Now she’s on guard, and there’s not a chance. It was our one measly lead and I’ve thrown it away.”

“You did your best, Ty.”

“If that’s my best, my worst would be a world’s record.”

“You think she does remember writing it and what she did with it?”

“I know she does. A million to one.”

“Do you still think she had nothing — that she didn’t—?”

“The murder? I don’t know. But ten to one she had nothing to do with it. Why would she? Can you conceive of any reason?”

“No.” Delia slowly shook her head. “No. We should have been smarter. We weren’t clever enough.”

“I know. You can’t possibly feel as much contempt for me as I feel for myself.”

“I don’t feel contempt for you, Ty.”

“You should.” They sat and said nothing.

Finally he heaved a deep sigh that shook his frame. “Well,” he said grimly, “now for the next mistake. I’d like to make this a grand one. What good would it do to take it to the county attorney? Even if he’s on the level and wanted to put the screws on Wynne Cowles, how could he? There’s no evidence except Squint Hurley’s word that there ever was such a paper, and even less that she wrote it. Do you believe Hurley told the truth?”

“Yes.”

“So do I.” Ty abruptly got up. “I’m sunk. I’m grabbing for straws and there aren’t any. The only gleam of hope I see is to go and put it up to Phil Escott. I wish to God I had done that instead of beating it to Broken Circle Ranch with my chin stuck out. Have you heard anything from Clara?”

“I phoned about an hour ago. They wouldn’t let me talk to her, but they said she would be home for dinner at seven o’clock.”

“She has no car there. Shall I go after her?”

“They said they’d bring her.”

“I’ll put that up to Escott, too. They can’t keep on hounding her. Will you let a high-grade moron kiss you?”

She put up her face. He kissed her, not as one who deserved it, pulled away and strode to the door, where he turned. “God, Del. I’m sorry.”

“It’s as much my fault as yours, Ty. Phone me after you’ve talked to Escott.”

After she heard the front door close behind him she buried her face in her hands, her elbows on her knees, and stayed that way a long time. She wasn’t crying; she didn’t feel like crying. There was no energy or purpose left in her; her nerves and brain and muscles all were flabby with fatigue. There was no coherence in anything; nothing in the world, within or without, had any significance. She was, in fact, about to surrender to a state of unconsciousness which could only by euphemism have been called by so sweet a name as sleep, when suddenly something happened in her brain which made her lift her head. There was, after all, something significant, something which she told herself she must remember to do that very day. What could it be? She frowned. What was it? Oh, yes, of course. Butter. There was no butter in the house, and she had neglected to order it with the other things on the phone.

Her brain struggled desperately with the question of butter, and finally solved it with the heroic decision to go to the Vulcan Market two blocks away and get some. She got to her feet and her knees held her up. Good. She went to the drawer in the dining room where she usually put her handbag, but it wasn’t there. It wasn’t in the kitchen. Upstairs then. No. The county attorney had it. That recollection threatened to floor her mind again with a thousand urgencies more pressing than butter, but she had decided to get some butter. They carried no account at the Vulcan Market, and she needed cash. She needed cash anyway, and there was no telling when she would get her handbag back.

She trudged to the stairs and ascended, helping herself with her hand on the rail, and went to her bedroom. She closed the door behind her because that was her habit whenever she entered there with the intention of opening that drawer. From the dark corner of a shelf in the closet, between the folds of a scarf, she got the key, and with it unlocked the top drawer of the bureau which stood between the windows.

Butter nearly got abandoned again, for that drawer was all she had of treasure. The silver spurs her father had given her, the clippings from the Times-Star praising her performances in high school plays, the soda fountain straw through which she and Ty Dillon had both sipped root beer one day a year ago (Ty would have given something, any time those twelve months, to have known it was there), many letters, and especially the letters her mother had written her on various occasions...