Rex Stout - The Mountain Cat

“I’m going to make you tell the truth about that paper you lied to Ty about.”

“Fine! That’ll be fun. Go ahead.”

“I am.” Delia’s gaze was unwavering. “Just to show you... you probably thought we supposed the ‘mountain cat’ on that paper meant you. Of course it didn’t.”

“No? What did it refer to?”

“Look up into the tree.” Delia’s tone sharpened. “No, straight up! That’s it. Mountain cat ready for prey. It is called cougar or puma or catamount or mountain lion or mountain cat. You like mountain cat, so that’s what you called it on that paper. Didn’t you?”

Wynne Cowles shrugged. “My dear girl, use your intelligence. I’m willing to grant you have some. What’s the use of discussing a paper that no longer exists, if it ever did?”

“I came here to discuss it. We’re going to discuss it. I have to know. On the way out here I thought of ways to make you tell about it. One way I thought of, since you lied to Ty just to save yourself notoriety, I thought I could easily tell a lie myself that would give you notoriety anyway that you couldn’t prevent. I could tell the police that Tuesday afternoon, when Jackson and I heard a noise in the hall and went to investigate I saw you there hiding behind that bin. Jackson saw you too, and you begged us to let you go and we did. Now my conscience makes me tell about it.”

“My dear!” Wynne Cowles’s eyes had widened. “Didn’t I admit you’re intelligent? But they wouldn’t believe you.”

“Oh, yes. I assure you they would. They’d believe me enough to make it very unpleasant.”

“Amazing. Do you mean you’re threatening to do that?”

“I mean you’re not going to stick to your lie about that paper. I’ll do anything I have to do to get the truth from you. I have got to know who you gave it to and I’m going to know.”

Wynne Cowles, with movements uncommonly deliberate for her, leaned forward to reach the carved bishido box on the table, got a cigarette and lit it, sat back and sent a puff of smoke ascending toward the cougar in the tree.

“You already know, don’t you?” she murmured.

Delia gulped. “You admit you wrote that on that paper?”

“I admit it here to you, yes.”

“You gave it to — you gave it to my—” Delia gulped again.

“Yes. As you have guessed, it was an order for that. A sort of a memorandum. Apparently I didn’t put a dollar sign in front of the 450. Carelessness.” Wynne Cowles leaned at her and said brusquely, “Look here. Haven’t you had enough? What the devil good is it? What good is any talk about that paper? The paper has certainly been destroyed. He killed Jackson Tuesday night and took the paper and destroyed it. Even if he were arrested and tried, what kind of evidence would it be? That prospector would say he found it and I would say I wrote it and tell what I did with it. What would that amount to? The fact that a man was given a piece of paper is no proof that he killed a man who was found lying on top of it, especially when you can’t even produce the paper. I tell you it’s no good. I think you are intelligent. If you are you ought to realize — now wait — now — don’t — Delia!”

So rarely had he heard his employer’s voice pitched high and loud in urgency that the Chinese came trotting onto the veranda in a flurry of concern, all the more since the lady caller was one who shot people; but at the edge of the tile he halted, seeing that no assistance was required. The lady caller was moving swiftly across the graveled space beyond the lawn, headed for her car; and the lady employer, quite unhurt, was standing under a tree watching and no longer raising her voice. John, ashamed of his intrusive agitation, shuffled to the table and arranged magazines, pretending that his sally had been in the interest of neatness, but out of the corner of his eye he observed that the lady caller had hurried to her car not to produce a weapon but merely to climb into it and drive away.

Wynne Cowles stood and looked around as if she might see something she could hit somebody with. “Damn,” she said, in a civilized tone, but not without feeling, and entered the house. “The damned incredible outrageous idiocy of the general manager of the universe,” she said, and went to a corner of the living room where stood an inlaid cabinet and stand, and got out the telephone directory. Having found the number, she got the phone and dialed.

No answer. She waited. Still no answer.

Then possibly he was still at the office. She looked up another number and tried that, but with the same result. No one answered. In exasperation she fluttered the pages of the directory and found still a third number. From that one, at least, she got a voice which told her, yes, that was Mr. Escott’s residence. She asked to speak to Mr. Escott, and he was put on. No, he said, with the decent courtesy due a $5,000 client, he didn’t know where Mr. Dillon could be found at the moment. Mr. Dillon had been there speaking with him, but had left only a few minutes ago. It was possible that Mrs. Cowles might find him, then or a little later, at the Brand home on Vulcan Street, if she cared to try...

So she looked that number up and tried it too, but again there was no answer. She gave it up in disgust. Anyway, it would be another thirty minutes before Delia would get to Cody, and she could try again later.

The idea of the mountain cat popped into Delia’s head as she sat in the car, stopped at the roadside a mile or so beyond Frenchy’s Corners. She had stopped there because she didn’t want to enter Cody until she had resolved what to do. At the moment the idea came she had about decided that the only possible thing was to run away. She could go home and get the money from the drawer, all but that twenty-dollar bill, facing through it somehow with Clara if she was there, and leave at the first opportunity. She would go in the car, heading for California, perhaps taking a train from Ashton for the coast... at least, somehow, somewhere, losing herself.

The vengeance of man. God’s errand. She could be the instrument of neither. Not now. What others might or might not do about it, that was either God’s business or man’s, but not hers.

What kept her from instant execution of her plan of flight was the germ of doubt that still existed. If she had possessed certainty it would have been at once incommunicable and unbearable, and to flee with the unsharable secret would have been the only recourse of desperation; but she was not certain. She was horribly sure, but she was not sure.

It was there at the roadside near Frenchy’s Corners, where she had stopped for a decision, that she thought of the mountain cat and remembered the scene three days earlier when her coyote’s howl had interrupted the inspection of a furry belly on which no hair was slipping.

That would prove everything. She might, if she had that proof, even be able to tell Clara and Ty, and share the secret and not have to carry it all alone...

She started the engine, swung into the road, and in five minutes was in Cody. It was exactly half past seven. He wouldn’t be there. The usual dinner hour in Cody was around six o’clock, but it was his custom to work at his bench until seven and then go to the Pay Streak lunchroom three blocks away. Even if by mischance he were there he would be upstairs, and she needed only three minutes. And as a sudden impulse to repeat a childish trick had been responsible for the scene three days earlier, so now the memory of another childish trick from the days of Del the tomboy was the inspiration of her strategy.

She parked the car around the corner and walked to the two-storied frame building, with the plate-glass window, elevated above the sidewalk level, displaying the brown bear licking a cub. Without making undue noise, she climbed the four steps and tried the door. It was locked. She nodded to herself, and stood there a moment, aware that her heart was beating too fast and that her hand had been far from steady as she had turned the doorknob. But coolness was not especially required; the chief thing was speed, to get it done. She descended the steps, went to the corner of the building and passed along its side to the rear.