The Mountain Cat

Chapter 15

The average daily circulation of the Times-Star for the year was 9,400. Wednesday and Thursday the pressrun had been 12,000 and 14,200, respectively. Friday it was 17,600, an all-time high.

Rarely did the Fowler Hotel have newspaper reporters, much less photographers, registered as its guests. Even when a public figure was within the county, the world learned of their daily doings only through the services of local journalists. But by Friday noon the register could boast eleven such entries, from Spokane, Denver, the coast, and points between.

Governor Matthews of Wyoming was a democratic man. Ordinarily no qualification was necessary in order to achieve entrance into his office at the capitol at Cheyenne except two legs to walk in with. But on Friday he didn’t even go there himself. He was in a room with a locked door at the Pyramid Club in Cody and the only people who knew it were there with him.

The church of which the Reverend Rufus Toale was pastor had always been open on weekdays, for those who might wish to enter to pray, but seldom might more than one or two suppliants have been discovered there. Friday they straggled in and out all day, pointing out to each other inside, with whispers, the place where Clara Brand had sat the evening before, just prior to murdering the pastor. At the same time other people were slowing up their cars as they drove past 139 Vulcan Street, pointing out the windows of the front room in which Delia Brand had shot and killed Rufus Toale, forty-eight hours almost to the minute since she had shot and killed Dan Jackson, which was surely a record. The contradiction was merely one aspect of the raging controversy which had divided Park County into two hostile camps.

In his office on the top floor of the new Sammis Building on Mountain Street, Lem Sammis, with his jaw permanently sidewise, sat gazing across his desk at a man, ten years his junior, whose dark intent eyes displayed neither friendliness nor good humor but yet were not antagonistic. The man was saying:

“No, Lem, I’m not selling any soft soap. You may cut my throat some day or I may cut yours. But we’re together against these rats. Baker turns it off before this day’s over or he’s done, and we’ll get Carlson. The mining business made this state, and by God, the mining business will run it. Maybe your daughter killed Jackson or maybe you did it yourself. I don’t give a damn. I hope to put the screws on you some day, but not like this, and not with that bunch helping me. Matthews has crawled into a hole, but I’ll find him and I’ll deal with him.”

Lem Sammis said coldly, “I’m asking no favors, Ollie.”

“Favors hell. You know and I know how it stands. We can deal with each other after we’ve dealt with this. I’ll get hold of Matthews.”

“When you find him tell him from me—”

“I’m not telling anybody anything from you. I’m telling ’em myself.”

“Go to hell.”

“After you, Lem.”

Ollie Nevins departed. Sammis sat awhile without moving, then reached for his phone and spoke into it. In a moment the door opened and Chief of Police Frank Phelan entered, glanced apprehensively at the old face with the rigid sidewise jaw, crossed to a chair, and sat.

“Well, Frank? They froze you out?”

Phelan nodded gloomily. “They did. They wanted to use my men on a warrant to search Dan’s house and I balked.”

“Who gave ’em the warrant — Merriam?”

“Yes.”

“They going to use it?”

“Yes. A pair of them goddam county tramps.”

Sammis’s jaw went another quarter of an inch sidewise. “Searching Amy’s house. Lem Sammis’s daughter. Huh? Tell me what happened before you left.”

Phelan cleared his throat and started. That was around noon.

It was still happening, at the courthouse. In the county attorney’s office Baker was at his desk, a stenographer with a notebook was across from him, Sheriff Tuttle stood by a window with his hands in his pockets, and Clara Brand was seated in a chair which directly faced Baker’s. She looked resolute and tense, but played out, with her eyes swollen and bloodshot, and her hands, in her lap, kept clasping and unclasping. She was saying:

“I don’t care what you’ve found out or haven’t found out. I told you everything last night and I told you the truth.”

Baker himself looked the worse for wear. His eyes were bloodshot, too, and he had the general appearance of a man indulging in a hangover. He gazed at her and demanded, “Then you stick to your story as you told it last night?”

“I do.”

“And you expect me to believe it? Do you remember what you said? You said that when the housekeeper told you she didn’t know where Toale was or when he would be back, you told her you would wait and you would like to wait in the church, and she got the key and let you in at the rear. So far all right, Mrs. Bonner says the same thing. You told her that no matter what time Toale returned you would be in the church and she was to ask him to join you there. You groped your way down the aisle to the pew your mother always occupied, and you sat there an hour without moving. Then suddenly you decided to leave, to go home, and you went and told Mrs. Bonner and then got in your car and drove home. That was your story.”

“It still is.”

“But it’s not as plausible as it sounded last night. As I’ve told you, you are not charged with the murder of Rufus Toale. You are not at present charged with anything. But at least one detail of your story is next to incredible. Last night we had no notion of where Toale had been when he was shot. This morning we learned that it must have been there alongside the church, between the drive and the rear entrance. We found where he had fallen into the edge of a flower bed. His hat was there and there was blood on the grass. Undoubtedly, returning, he had either taken his car to his garage or left it there on the drive and, before entering the parsonage, had gone toward the church for the nightly visit which was his invariable custom. That’s where he was shot. The rear door of the church was standing open. You were seated in that pew, in silence and darkness. Will you tell me again that you heard no shot fired?”

“Certainly I will. I’ve told you why. If the shot was fired there.”

“It was. You said you were buried in your thoughts. You were oblivious. Frankly, I don’t believe it. So oblivious you didn’t hear a shot fired as near as that? It must have been from a point between the flower bed and the church, if Toale was headed for the church, as he must have been, for the bullet entered the middle of his chest, pierced the lung and lodged in the spine. No matter how deep you were in thought—”

“I tell you I didn’t hear it.” Clara clasped her hands again. “Or maybe I heard it but I didn’t know it. I’ve told you I had just learned what people were saying about my mother. I’ve told you that’s what I went there to ask him about. I didn’t hear any shot, and that’s all I’ll ever say about it. It’s all I can say.”

“You heard no shot, no call for help? Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“And you were in that pew continuously from the time Mrs. Bonner let you in until you went and told her you were going home?”

“I was.”

“And — we’ll put this on the record again today — you didn’t shoot Toale yourself?”

“I did not.”

“You didn’t hear his car on the drive and conceal yourself in the shrubbery and, as he approached with the lights of the car behind him, shoot him?”

“I did not.”

“It was Lem Sammis who told you what people were saying about your mother, wasn’t it?”

No answer.

“Wasn’t it Lem Sammis who told you that?”

“That’s none of your business. I’ve already told you that I won’t say who told me.”

“Didn’t Lem Sammis, with his wife, call at your home last evening?”

“That’s none of your business either.”

“Well, he did, and it was soon after he left that you went to see Toale.” Baker leaned forward and narrowed his eyes at her. “Look here, Clara. Will you listen to what I say?”

“I’ll listen.”

“All right. I want you to believe, because it’s the truth, that I’m not trying to build up anything against you. Things like your telling me Wednesday morning that you had gone to see Atterson Brothers Tuesday afternoon, and my learning that you hadn’t been there, and your saying now that you went to the Fowler Hotel and waited there for Mrs. Cowles — I’m not holding that against you. I don’t even hold it against you that you refuse to tell me any of the things that happened, that must have happened, in Jackson’s office the past year or two. I don’t hold it against you because I understand it. You’re being loyal to Lem Sammis, the old friend and partner of your father. How would you feel if you knew that Sammis had tried to frame both you and your sister on charges of murder?”

Clara stared.

“I ask you, how would you feel?”

“It’s a silly question,” she said shortly.

“Maybe and maybe not.” Baker was earnest, urgent. “I’m not accusing him of it, because I’m not ready to. But here are some facts. It’s a cinch that someone framed your sister for Jackson’s murder — her gun, her handbag there on the desk. But whoever did it must have known that Delia would be going there that evening. Who did know it? Even you didn’t; you’ve said so. There was only one person who knew it, and that was Sammis; he himself had written the note for her to take to Jackson. What do you think of that?”

“I don’t think—” Clara stopped. In a moment, “It’s absurd,” she snapped.

“You don’t mean absurd, you mean it’s hard for you to believe. Lots of things are hard to believe, and Lem Sammis has done a few of them. You know as well as I do how much tenderness he has for anyone he has decided to crush. Those are the facts about Delia. Now you. It must have been Sammis who told you what people were saying about your mother. Wasn’t it?”

No answer.

Baker spread his palms. “It must have been. Why did he decide to tell you that, and the part that scandal gives Toale in your mother’s suicide? Did you go at once to see Toale? You did. Was he murdered? He was. Under circumstances that threw suspicion on you? Yes.”

Clara shook her head. “It’s simply fantastic.”

“It’s not fantastic at all. There’s a logical connection right straight through. Sammis thinks that I suspect he or his daughter shot Jackson because of his affairs with other women. I don’t. At least I’m inclined not to since last night. I more strongly suspect that Jackson was killed because he had recently got hold of evidence that might lead to the solution of the murder of your father two years ago.”

“My father—”

“Yes. That comes from Quinby Pellett, your uncle, and a man named Squint Hurley. And now Toale. You know what he told your sister while he was dying. With a hole in his lung and that bullet in his spine, he got himself back to his car and drove to your house and walked in there to tell it — and then all he told was about the marked bill and its being taken from him after he was shot. If he had it on him it was taken, all right. That marked bill, again, was evidence that might solve the murder of your father. So Toale was killed for the same reason that Jackson was. And he was killed by someone who either murdered your father or had a hand in it. And that someone was Lem Sammis. Well?”

“I don’t believe it. It’s crazy.”

“It’s far from crazy.” Baker leaned at her again. “You’re thinking, of course, that Sammis was your father’s partner and best friend. But you must have heard some of the talk around that time about your father and Amy Jackson — or maybe you didn’t, since you’re Brand’s daughter. Anyway there was talk and certainly Sammis heard it, and you know what he thinks of his daughter. It’s the one spot in him that’s probably tender clear to the bottom. So it’s far from crazy.”

Clara shook her head.

“You don’t believe it?”

“No.”

“You don’t even think it’s possible?”

“No.”

“All right, you don’t. You’re shocked. You’re incredulous. You’re probably wondering, or you will, why I’ve told you all this, since it’s ten to one that you’ll pass it on to Sammis as soon as you get a chance. I’ve risked that and told you about it because I’ve got to get a lot of information from someone who has been close to Jackson and Sammis and I’m expecting it from you. I want you to think about it. I’m going to put you in the next room, alone, and I ask you to think it over for an hour, two hours, as long as you want to. Remember the facts I’ve told you. Remember all the little things, and big ones too, you’ve heard and seen back over the years. Consider it all. I don’t think you want to be loyal to Lem Sammis or help him cover up if there’s any amount of possibility that he killed your father or was responsible for it, and Tuesday night and last night he was willing to direct suspicion at you and your sister in order to divert it from himself. Will you go in that room and think it over?”

Clara was gazing at him with fresh trouble in her bloodshot eyes. But she said firmly, “I don’t think I need to.”

“I’m going to put you in there. Will you think it over? Then I want to have another talk with you.”

“Do I have to? Stay in there?”

“For a while, yes.”

“Well... I would know better what to think if I could have a talk with Mr. Sammis first.”

“No doubt,” said Baker drily. “I’m sorry. Nothing doing.”

“Then if I could telephone my sister. Or Mr. Dillon.”

“You can do that afterward.” Baker abruptly stood up. “It’s comfortable in there. Come on. It’s far more comfortable than the quarters you’d have if you had been charged with murder, as it was intended you should be.”