Rex Stout - The Mountain Cat

There were no customers at that moment on that Tuesday morning in June, and the clerk behind the counter at MacGregor’s Sporting Goods Store stood with his back propped against shelves of fishing tackle, his eyes half closed, half dreaming. It was an old and hackneyed dream and could have done with some new twists, but he wasn’t bothering to invent any on so hot a day. It had to do with the entry of a customer, up to then never seen, young, female, blonde and beautiful. Having asked to look at tennis rackets and purchased one, she would observe with a shy smile that she guessed she would have to play with a jack rabbit, since she was a complete stranger to Cody and had met no one but her lawyer; and he would tell her his name, which was Marvin Hopple, and declare humorously that now she had met him and he was no jack rabbit... and then swift developments... and the separation settlement by her wealthy husband, whom he would never see or want to see, would be a lump sum, avoiding the recurrent annoyance of alimony payments...

He killed a yawn and straightened up with a jerk. The customer was actually entering — young, female, apparently beautiful though not especially blonde, and with a swinging grace in her walk. He arranged his face for the all-important first impression it would make; and then, as she approached the counter, relaxed in disappointment.

Nuts. This was no eastern princess. Delia Brand had been in the class below his at high school, right there in Cody. Still he looked at her and greeted her with some interest, since he had not happened to see her, to speak to, since the recent tragedy in her family, made more remarkable and conspicuous by the one which had preceded it some two years before. He was a little shocked, seeing her face close; it looked dead, all but her brown eyes, and what burned in them made him uncomfortable and turned his greeting into an unfinished stammer.

She nodded and said hello, put her leather handbag on the counter and opened it, extracted a revolver, took it by the barrel and poked the butt at him, and asked, “Have you got cartridges for that?”

“Sure.” He released the catch and swung the cylinder out and in again, and squinted into the muzzle. “What do you want, hard or soft?”

“I don’t know. Which is best?”

“Depends. What do you want to use it for?”

“I’m going to shoot a man with it.”

He looked at her eyes again. He felt embarrassed and even a little irritated, because although jokes about shooting people were sometimes mildly funny, it seemed to him in bad taste, next door to indecent, for Delia Brand to crack one in view of the happenings in her family. He had a strong sense of propriety and didn’t enjoy having it outraged. He turned without a word, went to the case and selected a box of cartridges, wrapped it and put a rubber band around it, and handed it to her.

As she put the cartridges and revolver in her bag and closed it, he told her sarcastically:

“Don’t try for his head unless you’re a good shot. Give it to him around here.” He circled his abdomen with his finger. “Anywhere around the middle.”

“Thank you very much,” she said as she turned to go.

He watched her go through the door into the blazing sunlight of the sidewalk, with a frown, then sighed and went to the rear of the store where his employer was marking prices on some newly arrived boxes.

“Delia Brand was just in and got a box of .38 cartridges.”

Mr. MacGregor didn’t look up. He finished a cryptic inscription with his pencil and inquired, “Which one’s that? I always get the names of those two sisters mixed.”

“The young one.”

“Well, I suppose they’ll still pay their bills. They’ve both got jobs.”

“She didn’t charge it. She paid. She had the cannon with her, an old .38 Hecker. What I thought I ought to mention, I asked her what she wanted to use it for and she said she’s going to shoot a man.”

MacGregor cackled. “You asked for it and you got it. What did you want to ask her for? Wyoming may be more west than wild nowadays, but there’s still a lot of folks around that like to pip at gophers and jack rabbits and tin cans, and as far as I’m concerned the more the merrier. We sell ammunition, son.”

“I know we do. I sold it. But you should have heard her say it. You wouldn’t think she’d be cracking jokes about shooting people.”

“You asked for it, didn’t you?”

Marvin Hopple insisted. “You should have seen her eyes when she said it. And before she said it and after she said it.”

MacGregor let out a growl. “I’m busy. Get out of here and quit bothering me.”

“It wouldn’t hurt just to phone the police and tell them, would it?”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” MacGregor flung out a hand. “Beat it! Tickle my horse and watch him laugh! I hear a customer out there. If he wants golf balls, be sure to ask him what for.”

Marvin Hopple marched to the front, and sure enough it was old Judge Merriam for golf balls.

In the coruscation of the dazzling sunshine, Delia Brand walked a hundred yards before she reached the spot where she had parked the old open car which had been a part of the miscellany left behind by her father at the time of his death two years previously. Arrived there, she stretched a hand toward the door of the car, then withdrew it, stood for a moment considering, and turned and walked on in the direction she had been going. Cody residents, even in that hot sun, frequently preferred a ten-minute walk to a search for another parking space in the midtown section; but evidently there was a supplementary reason for her change of mind, for a block down the street she left the sidewalk to enter a drugstore. As she passed toward the far end of the long fountain bar, she halted momentarily to glance at a large and ferocious beast with glistening bared teeth and bright hungry eyes, which was about to leap upon her from the table where it was perched. Propped against its right foreleg was a card with the legend neatly printed: Mounted by Quinby Pellett — For Sale .

She exchanged a nod with the young man behind the bar, climbed onto a stool, and demanded, “A Park Special with two cherries.”

The soda jerker took a large container and filled it to the brim by spooning into it from two vats, spouting from two spigots, and dipping from three jars. As he set it before her and picked up her money he remarked, “You’d better tell your uncle to drop in and take a look at that coyote. The hair’s starting to slip on the right shoulder.”

She nodded absently. “I noticed it.” Her eyes went through him, and he got a cloth and began wiping the bar.

Back on the sidewalk, she went to the next corner, turned right, continued nearly to the end of the third block and stopped in front of the newest and largest structure in the city, the Sammis Building, on Mountain Street. Inside she took an elevator, left it at the fifth floor and halfway down the corridor turned the knob of a door, on the glass panel of which was lettered: Escott, Brody and Dillon — Counselors-at-Law — Entrance .

There was no one in the anteroom, either in the space to which callers were restricted by the railing or behind that, where a switchboard and two stenographers’ desks were situated. Delia started for the gate in the railing, then stopped and stood irresolute; and then suddenly she became rigid. The voices she heard were followed in an instant by the appearance, through an inner door which stood open, of two people, side by side. The man was young, short of thirty, not chunky enough for a halfback but of good height and wiry, with the wide mouth of an orator and quick gray eyes. The woman, about the same age, was remarkable. She seemed to fill the room as soon as she entered, but that must have been an effect of electronic dispersion, for she was actually of medium size and height and quite compact. She seemed to be beautiful, but people who had never seen her, on looking at a picture of her in the Sunday Illustrated Section, would mutter that it was a good thing she had lots of money since she had no looks. Her skin was smooth and glowing, with no make-up. The startling effect she produced was partially accounted for when you got close enough to see that her irises were a dusky chrome orange and her contracted pupils lost their roundness and became slightly elliptical. That had been found either fascinating or fantastic by numberless persons in many different places.