Rex Stout - The Mountain Cat

“I’ll wait.”

“Okay, go wait outside. Or sit there and wait, I don’t give a damn.”

“She doesn’t need to wait.” A woman slipped past him, careless of brushing him, and was in the small room. It was Wynne Cowles, looking as surprisingly cool as her voice. “Oh, Miss Brand? How do you do? Have you changed your mind about the bridle?” She turned on Jackson. “That date I have tonight, I’m going to keep it. And I have never been run out of any place yet, except a hotel in Rome once, and that was done by setting the building on fire.”

She moved, halted to give Delia a pat on the shoulder and to say, “Nice kid. I like you,” pulled the door open and went.

Jackson stared at the door a second and then told it, “I’ll cut her up, by God, and feed her to the pelicans.”

“Not if I was a pelican, you wouldn’t,” Delia declared.

He transferred the stare to her. “She called you a nice kid. I guess you are. Come in and sit down.”

He backed through the door and she followed. His room was larger and furnished with foresight, containing, besides a desk and half a dozen chairs and a row of shelves and files, a huge and massive safe and three spittoons. After they were seated, she across the desk from him, Delia looked him in the eye and said, “You’re not going to fire Clara.”

He looked startled, then he grinned. “Hell, my child,” he protested, “I’ve already fired her.”

“I know you have. Then you’re going to hire her again and keep her hired.”

“Who says so?”

“I do.”

“Not enough. You’re not even old enough to vote.”

“I’ll see Mr. Sammis about it.”

He frowned. “I wouldn’t advise you to.”

“I will.”

“Go ahead. I’m running this office. Did Clara send you here?”

“No.” Delia took off her hat and held it dangling. “I came myself. I came because I’m going to do something... something vital and I want to do this first. Clara will have a job here as long as she wants it. She ought to have a good deal more than a job. You and Mr. Sammis have made thousands and thousands of dollars, I guess millions, out of grubstaking, and it was her father and my father who did it all. He was murdered doing it. Everybody says you’re no good at all compared to him, you have no judgment and no head for it, and you can’t hold the prospectors the way he could. The ones you do hold Clara does it for you. It was her father’s job and she likes it and she’s going to have it, even if she doesn’t get paid half of what she earns.”

“Well, by God!” Jackson’s voice matched the leer the scar gave him. “You are a nice kid! You certainly are. Who are some of the everybody that says I’m no good?”

Delia brushed it aside. “I only mentioned that. But as far as that’s concerned, you never were any good. I often heard my father tell my mother so when they didn’t know I was listening.”

“I don’t doubt it. But that’s not good testimony, you know. Not allowed. Your father’s dead.”

Delia’s color went, and she gripped the brim of her sun hat until it was crushed. In a moment she said calmly, “I know he is. And maybe you ought to know this. Maybe you ought to know that on every list that mother made up of the people who might have killed him, and on every list that the detectives she hired made up, and on every list that I made up, there was your name.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

She still gripped the hat. “Well?”

“Well what?” He grimaced. “See here, Delia. You may be a nice kid, but you’re a funny one and you always have been. As for your mother, your father’s death put a kink in her that never did get straightened out. No man in this state admired Charlie Brand more than I did. He didn’t like me much, but I admired him and I even liked him. I had no more reason or desire to kill him than you did. When he was alive he bossed the grubstaking part of this business and that suited everybody, including me. But now I’m bossing it, with all my faults, and that’s that. Clara does not handle the prospectors. If she tells you she does, she lies. She’s only a stenographer and bookkeeper, and she and I don’t get along very well. When your father was here he pulled his share out every year, and if he squandered nearly all of it that’s not my fault; with all his virtues he had that weakness. I don’t owe Clara anything nor you either, and anyway she’s a clever girl and she can do just as well or better somewhere else after she makes a start. She leaves here Saturday noon.”

Delia’s color was back. She demanded, “You mean you don’t even consider—”

“Clara leaves Saturday,” said Jackson doggedly.

“Then I must see Mr. Sammis. I have to get this done today.”

“Go ahead.” Jackson frowned at her, and added, “But I wish you wouldn’t see Sammis.”

“Of course you do. You’ll wish it still more when you hear from him. He’s my godfather and Clara’s, too.”

“Oh, I have no fear of the consequences.” Jackson was still frowning. “He may be your godfather, but he’s my father-in-law. I was thinking more of the possible effect on Clara than anything else. What she needs and what she’s really fitted for—” He broke off abruptly, cocking an ear. “What the devil was that?”

Delia heard it too, a noise from the hall as if a bag of potatoes had been rolled down the stairs.

Jackson arose. “Excuse me, nice kid, I think I’ll take a look.”

“I’m going anyway.” Delia got up too, put her hat on, and followed him, through the little room and the door to the hall. It was so dim there that they could see nothing for a moment. Jackson peered around, then went over to the head of the stair and stooped to pick up a small dark object from the floor. When Delia asked what it was he muttered, “Nothing. A piece of ore from that old bin. How the devil did it get there?”

Keeping it in his hand, he started down the stairs. Halfway down Delia, at his heels, heard his sudden ejaculation but couldn’t see the cause of it, since he was obstructing her view. He quickened his step, and by the time she reached the bottom he was bending over the form of a man stretched on the floor of the lower hall. One of the man’s legs was curled under him and the other extended with a foot resting on the lowest step of the stair. Delia, halted on the third step up, clutching the rail and setting her teeth on her lip, watched Jackson squat to find a heartbeat with his fingers. Then, as Jackson moved, muttering, “He’s all right,” and she caught a glimpse of the prostrate man’s face with blood trickling around an ear, she gasped, “Uncle Quin!” and leaped over the extended leg and knelt on the dirty floor.

Jackson repeated, “He’s all right. Get away and let me see.” He squatted beside her to examine the head and, in a moment, grunted, “Looks like he was hit with that piece of ore. Where the devil is it?” He looked around, saw where he had tossed it and reached for it.

“All that blood! He’s not dead?”

“Hell no. That’s only a couple of spoonfuls. He’s out, all right, but he’s far from dead. You wait here a minute, and don’t start shaking him in case he’s got a fracture.”

He opened the street door and disappeared. Delia, still kneeling, took a handkerchief from a pocket of her dress, hesitated a moment, and then started dabbing at the blood. It was matting the dusty gray hair back of the temple. There seemed to be several places where the jagged edges of the ore had broken the skin.

“Uncle Quin!” she said urgently. “Uncle! Uncle Quin!” Then she jerked her hand away as she saw his eyelids flutter. They closed again and then opened once more. He moved his head, moaned, moved his head again, and was staring at her.