The Mountain Cat

Chapter 1

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.

At sight of Delia the young man broke off a laughing remark and stepped hastily forward.

“Del! Hello there!” He opened the gate. “I believe you have met Mrs. Cowles, haven’t you?”

Delia remained rigid. It would have made her furious if anyone had suggested that any detail of her form — the head slightly tilted to slant her gaze, the shoulders drawn in for shrinking, the lower lip faintly back — had been copied from the technique of movie stars, for she professed contempt for movie acting and it was not on a Hollywood set that she had expected to fulfill her destiny. Nevertheless, any observant movie fan would have spotted it.

She said, in a cool tone meant for offense, with her gaze slanted at the man, “I met her when she was Mrs. Durocher. Or, as she might prefer, the Mountain Cat.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mrs. Cowles, amused, coming forward and looking at her. That was one of the times when, close enough, it could be seen that her pupils tended toward slits. “Maybe you can tell me — but I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

“Delia Brand,” the man put in.

“I’m sorry — but it’s a waste of energy to remember women’s names, they change so often nowadays. Maybe you can tell me, Miss Brand, who it was who first called me that? I mean Mountain Cat. I’ve been trying to find out, because I’d like to send him a silver bridle or a bottle of wine or something. Would you believe that that name has followed me to New York and Palm Beach, and even to France? I like it. Do you know who invented it?”

“Yes.” Delia had shifted her gaze, but not her tone. “I did.”

“Really? How lucky. Do you ride? Could you use the bridle, or would you prefer the wine?”

“Neither.” Delia whirled, filled her voice with biting scorn to demand, “From you?” and then turned again and passed through the gate in the railing, continued to the inner hall, meeting one of the stenographers on the way, and entered the fourth door on the left, which was standing open. She closed it behind her, and was in a good-sized room with two windows, a case of law books, a desk, and chairs. She had been sitting in one of the chairs barely two minutes when the door opened to admit the young man. He stood in the middle of the room and looked at her for a moment, then passed around the desk and seated himself in the swivel chair.

He pressed his lips together, then suddenly released them to say with some force, “You ought to go to San Francisco. Or you ought to go to New York. You ought to go alone, and work or fight or something. You ought to do something. You always were stretched tight and now, naturally, you’re tighter than ever. Why the dickens did you tell Wynne Cowles that you invented that name Mountain Cat? You know darned well you didn’t.”

Delia’s eyes burned at him. “What does it matter?”

“It doesn’t. It wouldn’t matter either if I all of a sudden stood on my head and repeated the Gettysburg Address, but if I did so you’d be justified in asking me why. And why all the display of animosity and abhorrence to her? Was that just nerves? It only confirms—”

“I haven’t got nerves. Not what you mean... well, I have a certain intensity. You know I have. I came here to see you. I came to ask you...” Delia raised her hand and pressed it to her forehead, then let it fall to her lap again. It fell relaxed, with a loose wrist. “I came, and I found you gay and laughing with that thing. If I didn’t make an effort to stifle my emotions—”

“Piffle!” It was explosive. “What emotions? Personal? Jealousy? Or social? Moral revulsion? In either case—”

“I don’t mind if you call it jealousy. I am perfectly capable of jealousy.”

“You may be capable of it, but you’re not entitled to it.” He glared at her. “But let’s say you are and dispose of that. I mean let’s dispose of Wynne Cowles. Who am I? I’m Tyler Dillon, a Cody lawyer, in the best firm in town. Who is Wynne Cowles? A millionaire playgirl, known from Honolulu to Cairo. She came here two years ago to wait for a divorce settlement and now she’s back, ready to repeat the order. The first time, she left over fifty thousand dollars in this state, and she probably will again. It’s up to me to send her away a satisfied customer.”

“Satisfied?” Delia was scornful. “It’s notorious, what it is that satisfies her. You would be one? Would you?”

“I might.” He picked up a pencil from the desk and flung it down again. “Why the devil shouldn’t I? As far as that’s concerned, I might even marry her. Why not? She makes a generous financial settlement at the pay off—”

“Ty!”

“Well?”

“Tyler Dillon!”

He gazed at her. After a minute he got up, passed around the desk, and stood looking down at her with his hands thrust into his pockets.

Finally he said, in a new and quiet tone, “Look, Del. I’m not trying to make a fool of you, though God knows you made one of me. You, a kid. Just a high school kid. That’s all you were two years ago. That’s all you are now, really, even if you are twenty. But maybe that’s all Helen of Troy was at your age. Anyhow, your pretending to be jealous of Wynne Cowles is plain silly. You know what I think, I’ve told you once before. I don’t think you’re capable of any genuine emotion at all. I don’t think—”

She started to get up.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “Please,” he implored. “Please don’t do that. Don’t pull a haughty exit on me. Did you see me at your mother’s funeral?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I saw anybody.”

He took his hand from her shoulder. “I was aware you didn’t. I should note the exceptions. I know you’ve had enough trouble and grief to throw any ordinary girl off balance for good, and your feelings about that were genuine enough, I don’t doubt that for a minute. That day at the funeral I bit a hole in my own lip from watching you biting yours, holding yourself in.”

“I didn’t see you, Ty.”

“I know you didn’t. You didn’t see anyone. But aside from your feelings about your father and then your mother, which I’m willing to admit were as deep and genuine as feelings can be, I say you’re a pure unadulterated fake. Now you sit still. I’ve been chewing my cud a lot. I’ve been doing that because I can’t help it, because I can’t get you out of my system. And I—”

“Not even with Wynne Durocher to help you? I mean Wynne Cowles? I mean the Mountain Cat?”

“Rot. You’re faking now. And you were faking when you pretended you were fond of me but you wouldn’t marry me because it would gum up your career. You were no more fond of me than you were of one of your uncle’s stuffed jack rabbits. Do you remember how you would fasten your eyes on me and talk down in your throat about Duse and Bernhardt?”

He stopped, staring gloomily down at her, then shook his head and returned to his swivel chair and sat down.

“I should have been wise to you then,” he went on after a moment. “But I wasn’t, because I was over my head in love with you. I still am, but I’ve had a chance to stand off and take a look. I actually thought you were going to be a great actress just because you said so. I didn’t tumble that all you were doing with me was practice. I even went to that thing you were in at the high school and sent you a bunch of flowers and had a lump in my throat because I thought you were wonderful. Now I realize you weren’t wonderful at all. The fact is you were lousy.”

Instead of exploding with rage, which would have been one way to handle it, Delia merely smiled faintly. “I don’t deny it,” she said calmly. “It takes years of work and sacrifice to develop—”

“Bah! Excuse me, but I tell you I’ve been thinking about it. You have to have something to work on, to start with. You no more have the makings of a great actress than I have. You’ve merely got the same ailment as a million other girls your age, you’re stage-struck. That’s all right, it’s as normal and common as measles, but I just want to let you know that I know it and that you had no right to use me for a practice dummy! By God, you hadn’t! And I’ll say this, no matter how brutal it is; I’ll say that I thought there was a chance that this — I mean your mother — coming on top of what happened to your father — I thought maybe it would give you a jolt that would bring you out of it — but here you are, coming here and striking a pose and pretending to be jealous of Wynne Cowles when the fact is that you don’t care enough about me to feel jealous if you found me occupying a harem with literally thousands of wives and concubines and houris—” He broke off and breathed.

Then he put a fist on the desk again and said fervently, “I wish to God you would go away! I wish you would go to the coast or New York and start the work and sacrifice! But you won’t, you never will! Deep down in your heart you’re as wise to yourself as I am!”

The same faint smile moved her lips again. “Perhaps I am,” she agreed. “Only in a different way. You are quite correct when you say I won’t go away to work and sacrifice. Whatever sacrifice I make— Anyhow, I have abandoned the idea of a career.”

He stared. He asked in a weak voice. “What? What’s that?”

“I shall have no career.”

A swift eagerness that had flashed into his eyes as swiftly disappeared. He demanded suspiciously, “What’s the idea? Why not?”

She shook her head. “You’d say I was faking,” she declared without resentment. “I hope, Ty, that it won’t make you miserable some day to remember what you’ve said to me this morning. I hope only that. And I hope if you do marry Wynne Cowles—” She stopped to swallow, and her hand fluttered. “Anyhow, I didn’t come here to exhibit jealousy, fake or otherwise. I came to consult you. To ask you a question because you’re a lawyer.”

“It is possible,” said Dillon, looking straight at her as if he hoped so, “that I am a damned fool.”

She shook her head. “It’s a legal question.”

“But you say you’ve abandoned— All right. Consult me first. What’s the question?”

“I must put it carefully.” She hesitated. “It’s what you call a hypothetical question. I’ve written it down.” She opened the leather handbag and rummaged among its contents, but the revolver was in the way, so she took it out and laid it across her knees. Then her fingers found the paper she wanted, and she took it out and unfolded it and read it in a monotone:

“ ‘Question for Tyler Dillon: If a person decides to commit murder, for reasons which she considers legitimate and justifiable, and if she does not intend to conceal the act but, on the contrary, intends to declare it and intends to plead the circumstances as a defense, would it help if she made an affidavit, or something like that, in advance and left it with a lawyer, telling about the circumstances, or would it be preferable for her to proceed with the act and tell her lawyer about the circumstances after the act was committed and she was arrested?’ ”

She folded the paper and returned it and the revolver to the bag, lifted her eyes to the lawyer, and said, “That’s it.”

He was staring at her. In a moment he said, “Give me that paper, Del.”

She shook her head. “I only want an answer.”

He continued to stare. “Where did you get the gun?”

“It was my father’s.”

“Is it loaded?”

“Not yet. I bought a box of cartridges this morning.”

“Let me see it.”

She shook her head.

“Who are you going to shoot?”

She shook her head.

Dillon got up, walked around the desk, and stood looking down at her. “I would give my right eye,” he said slowly, “to know whether things that have happened really have got you unbalanced, or whether you are just practicing again. I have good reason to know that whether you have any ability as an actress or not, you have unlimited talent for dressing up a scene. I would give my right arm, too.”

Delia had her head tilted back to look up at him. “You told me once,” she said, “that a way for a client to refer a problem to a lawyer without committing or compromising either of them was to put it in the form of a hypothetical question. So that’s what I’m doing.”

Dillon groaned.

“Well, didn’t you?”

He stretched out a hand. “Give me that paper. And the gun.”

“Don’t get dramatic, Ty.” She had all her fingers on the handbag and her tone sang. “I won’t take any spurs, you know very well I won’t.”

He gazed at her with his lips pressed together, breathing, in spite of her command, dramatically. After a minute he backed to the desk without turning, sat on its edge with his feet still on the floor, and said professionally, “Okay. I’m your lawyer and you’ve put a hypothetical question. In such a case my advice would be that all circumstances should be written down and submitted to a lawyer for him to put in the form of an affidavit. There should be nothing in it about an intention to commit murder, merely a recital of the circumstances. A lawyer is bound by his oath to reveal any knowledge that may come into his possession regarding an intention to commit a crime.”

Delia stood up. “Reveal?”

“Right. Pass it on.”

“To whom?”

“The proper authorities.”

“Then it’s a good thing I made it a hypothetical question. Thank you very much.” She started off.

He let her get within a yard of the door and then sprang after her and caught her arm. “Delia! Del! For God’s sake—”

She jerked free. Her tone was withering. “Didn’t I tell you not to get dramatic?” She went.

It appeared that Ty Dillon was going to make another grab for her, but he didn’t. Then it appeared that he was going to pursue her down the hall, but he didn’t do that either. Instead, he waited until the door leading to the anteroom had closed behind her, and then headed in the other direction, stopping at the last door at the end. He had his knuckles raised to rap on it when it suddenly opened away from him and he was confronted by a bulky man in his shirt sleeves, with red suspenders.

There was a grunt. “You want me, Ty?”

But the sight of Phil Escott’s shrewd and cynical old face made Ty realize that he had better try his own shrewdness first. So he said, “Nothing urgent. I just wanted to report that Mrs. Cowles seems to be all set. She was just in talking to me.”

“Good. Excuse me. I have to play a tune.” The senior partner tramped off.

The junior partner returned to his room and sat at his desk. He sat there motionless for a full quarter of an hour and then muttered half aloud, “She’s an actress. Or she’s a little stage-struck fool. Or she’s a hundred percent fake. Or she’s hyperpituitary or something like that. Or she’s the girl I love, unbalanced by grief and getting herself in a jam.”

He swung his chair, reached for the telephone book, flipped the pages and ran his eye down a column until it stopped at the entry: Cole’s Detective Agency 109 Vrgna St... 3656. He pursed his lips at it, considering, then finally tossed the book aside and shook his head for a decided negative.

“No good,” he muttered. “If it’s baloney I’d be a jackass, and if it’s real it would be dangerous.” He groaned. “But what the hell? I say what the hell!”

Five minutes later he reached for the phone book again, turned to a page, inspected it, scowled, muttered something and spoke into the phone. “Miss Vine, please ask Information for the number of Quinby Pellett over on Fresno Street. It doesn’t seem to be listed.”

He hung up, fiddled and fidgeted, and when the buzzer sounded got the receiver to his ear again. “What? He hasn’t got a phone? I’ll be darned. Much obliged.” He shoved the phone back, grabbed his hat, and departed.