Rex Stout - The Mountain Cat

She resolutely fought the memories back and reached to a box at the rear of the drawer for a brown paper envelope, opened the flap and inserted her fingers, and extracted a twenty-dollar bill. The mere sight of it was enough, momentarily, to cause one memory to crowd out all the others — the story Rufus Toale had told her as he died, only the night before. Involuntarily she looked at the bill in her hand, and even turned it over and looked at the other side. Then she gaped. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes bulged in an idiot stare. In the upper right hand corner of the bill, small and faint but unmistakably there, were two letters in fine script: R.T. It was God’s money.

She stood and stared at the bill for twenty heartbeats, then the hand holding it dropped to her side and she stood and stared at nothing. Her nerves and muscles and brain, no longer flabby from fatigue, were galvanized with horror.

She went to the window and thrust aside the curtain and looked at the bill in the direct sunlight. Nothing could be made of the inscription but R.T. It was R.T. and nothing else. And that was the only twenty in the envelope; the others were all tens and fives. Or were they? She flew to the drawer, standing open, and got the envelope and removed the contents, and fingered the bills one by one. Yes. All tens and fives. Then that was the only twenty, and she knew definitely, irrevocably, where it had come from. She had known anyway, since she had taken it from the top, the last one she had put there, six weeks ago, when she had received it as a birthday present. She returned the twenty to the envelope and took out a ten, replaced the envelope in the box and closed the drawer and locked it, put the key back on the closet shelf, and sat down in a chair.

This was grotesque and not to be believed.

She could go and say, “The twenty-dollar bill you gave me on my birthday is one of those taken from Dad when he was murdered. Where did you get it?” As Ty had gone to Wynne Cowles to ask about the paper. With no result. What if she got the same? No.

She could phone Ty and ask him to come, and show it to him and tell him. Then he would... No. Two days ago she had herself been thought guilty of murder by people who loved her. No. She must first, somehow, find out herself. She could think. She must think.

Her father two years ago. Two hours to drive to Sugarbowl. Two hours across the hills to the Ghost Canyon cabin, if you hurried, if you had a desperate purpose. Four hours to return. Possible? She forced her brain to recall everything from that day. Yes, possible.

Dan Jackson Tuesday night. Possible? So far as she knew, quite possible. And besides, there was the fact, what she herself had seen... good God. Rufus Toale’s God, whose errand he had brought to her. She gulped. More than possible. She stiffened her jaw again.

Rufus Toale last night. No fact there which she herself had seen, but no disproof, no veto. Then it was all possible. She could say, she could ask... No, she couldn’t do that either. There must be no bungling about this, and no one could be confided in, and no one could be trusted to help figure out a way. But there must be a way. There had to be. She had to find out, and she had to find out quick. There could be no eating or sleeping or facing anyone until she did find out. But she mustn’t make a mistake. She mustn’t make a wild stab and be left where she was now, as they had done with Wynne Cowles—

Wynne Cowles! She considered it, her face twisted in an agony of concentration.

Yes, she decided. She could try that, because if it didn’t work she would have given nothing away and she could try something else. But it would work. She would make it work. On her way there she would decide how to do it, and it would work. She looked at her watch: twenty to six. She sprang to her feet. Clara might come any minute...

She ran downstairs and scribbled a note: Clara, I’m off on an errand, will be back around eight or nine. This is for Ty too if he brings you home or phones. Del . She left the note under a cup on the kitchen range, ran out to the garage for the car and made the gravel fly as it scooted down the drive for the street.

During that forty-minute drive there were two distinct areas of activity in her brain, one managing the driving and the other considering plans of attack on Wynne Cowles.

She had never turned in at Broken Circle Ranch before, though she had often passed it. There was no one around as she left the car at the edge of a graveled space adjoining the tennis court and made for the house, toward the veranda with its bright-green awning. She started off briskly, but after ten paces her steps lagged, for she had not actually made up her mind what she was going to say; and her gaze wandered to take in the ensemble of the picturesque retreat this rich cosmopolite had fashioned here in the Wyoming hills, as if from that she might get a hint. Not that she had any conscious expectation of finding one; so that when she did find one in fact, astonishment stopped her in her tracks. She stood with her head tilted back, staring up to where, on the forked limb of the tree near the veranda, a cougar, startlingly lifelike, crouched in readiness to leap.

A voice said, “Excuse me please. You want something?”

She jerked around and saw the Chinese who had emerged from the house. “Yes. I want to see Mrs. Cowles.”

“Name please, lady?”

“Delia Brand.”

His face twitched. “I tell her. You come in the house?”

“No, thanks. I’ll wait here.”

Her knees were trembling. She pulled a wicker chair away from the table under the tree and sat down. She wanted to look up again, to see how it looked from directly beneath, but resisted the impulse. Then she wanted to move, not to have it just above her, but she resisted that impulse, too. She was sure now, miserably sure. She might get up and go away and not see Wynne Cowles at all — but no. She would have that satisfaction and that confirmation before she left. Left for where? What could she possibly—

“Hello, hello!” Footsteps clicking on the tile, approaching. “John wasn’t sure about the name and I thought maybe it was Clara. How is she? Where is she?” Wynne Cowles stood smiling down at her.

“She’s all right.”

“Is she home?”

“Not yet. She will be at seven o’clock.”

Wynne Cowles made a noise of depreciation. “You poor kids. It’s hellish. Won’t you come inside or on the veranda?”

“This is all right. I want to ask you something.”

“Sure you do.” She kicked a chair around and sat. “I’ll bet I know, that bottle of wine. I told your cavalier to take it to you, but he went off mad.”

“You can’t blame him much, can you? Since you told him a damn lie?”

“Oh, now.” Wynne Cowles looked reproachful. “Tut tut, my dear. When you say that, smile.”

“I don’t feel like smiling.” Delia met, steadily, the intentness of those strange eyes. “I haven’t smiled any too much for two years. I suppose that’s what I’m fighting for now, a chance to smile again some time. You would understand that, you’re a clever woman. I don’t like you and I wouldn’t be like you if I could, but I know you’re clever. I’ve been a melodramatic little fool. I thought about you while I was in jail, while I was thinking about everybody and everything, and I saw that there are good things about you as well as bad. Of course I didn’t know then that I would soon have to make you do something you didn’t want to do, but it was what I thought then, what I found out by thinking, that made me capable of doing it.”

“Good for you!” Wynne Cowles smiled. “Intelligence always wins. What are you going to make me do?”