The Mountain Cat

Chapter 18

She stood and stared at the bill for twenty heartbeats, then the hand holding it dropped to her side and she stood and stared at nothing. Her nerves and muscles and brain, no longer flabby from fatigue, were galvanized with horror.

She went to the window and thrust aside the curtain and looked at the bill in the direct sunlight. Nothing could be made of the inscription but R.T. It was R.T. and nothing else. And that was the only twenty in the envelope; the others were all tens and fives. Or were they? She flew to the drawer, standing open, and got the envelope and removed the contents, and fingered the bills one by one. Yes. All tens and fives. Then that was the only twenty, and she knew definitely, irrevocably, where it had come from. She had known anyway, since she had taken it from the top, the last one she had put there, six weeks ago, when she had received it as a birthday present. She returned the twenty to the envelope and took out a ten, replaced the envelope in the box and closed the drawer and locked it, put the key back on the closet shelf, and sat down in a chair.

This was grotesque and not to be believed.

She could go and say, “The twenty-dollar bill you gave me on my birthday is one of those taken from Dad when he was murdered. Where did you get it?” As Ty had gone to Wynne Cowles to ask about the paper. With no result. What if she got the same? No.

She could phone Ty and ask him to come, and show it to him and tell him. Then he would... No. Two days ago she had herself been thought guilty of murder by people who loved her. No. She must first, somehow, find out herself. She could think. She must think.

Her father two years ago. Two hours to drive to Sugarbowl. Two hours across the hills to the Ghost Canyon cabin, if you hurried, if you had a desperate purpose. Four hours to return. Possible? She forced her brain to recall everything from that day. Yes, possible.

Dan Jackson Tuesday night. Possible? So far as she knew, quite possible. And besides, there was the fact, what she herself had seen... good God. Rufus Toale’s God, whose errand he had brought to her. She gulped. More than possible. She stiffened her jaw again.

Rufus Toale last night. No fact there which she herself had seen, but no disproof, no veto. Then it was all possible. She could say, she could ask... No, she couldn’t do that either. There must be no bungling about this, and no one could be confided in, and no one could be trusted to help figure out a way. But there must be a way. There had to be. She had to find out, and she had to find out quick. There could be no eating or sleeping or facing anyone until she did find out. But she mustn’t make a mistake. She mustn’t make a wild stab and be left where she was now, as they had done with Wynne Cowles—

Wynne Cowles! She considered it, her face twisted in an agony of concentration.

Yes, she decided. She could try that, because if it didn’t work she would have given nothing away and she could try something else. But it would work. She would make it work. On her way there she would decide how to do it, and it would work. She looked at her watch: twenty to six. She sprang to her feet. Clara might come any minute...

She ran downstairs and scribbled a note: Clara, I’m off on an errand, will be back around eight or nine. This is for Ty too if he brings you home or phones. Del. She left the note under a cup on the kitchen range, ran out to the garage for the car and made the gravel fly as it scooted down the drive for the street.

During that forty-minute drive there were two distinct areas of activity in her brain, one managing the driving and the other considering plans of attack on Wynne Cowles.

She had never turned in at Broken Circle Ranch before, though she had often passed it. There was no one around as she left the car at the edge of a graveled space adjoining the tennis court and made for the house, toward the veranda with its bright-green awning. She started off briskly, but after ten paces her steps lagged, for she had not actually made up her mind what she was going to say; and her gaze wandered to take in the ensemble of the picturesque retreat this rich cosmopolite had fashioned here in the Wyoming hills, as if from that she might get a hint. Not that she had any conscious expectation of finding one; so that when she did find one in fact, astonishment stopped her in her tracks. She stood with her head tilted back, staring up to where, on the forked limb of the tree near the veranda, a cougar, startlingly lifelike, crouched in readiness to leap.

A voice said, “Excuse me please. You want something?”

She jerked around and saw the Chinese who had emerged from the house. “Yes. I want to see Mrs. Cowles.”

“Name please, lady?”

“Delia Brand.”

His face twitched. “I tell her. You come in the house?”

“No, thanks. I’ll wait here.”

Her knees were trembling. She pulled a wicker chair away from the table under the tree and sat down. She wanted to look up again, to see how it looked from directly beneath, but resisted the impulse. Then she wanted to move, not to have it just above her, but she resisted that impulse, too. She was sure now, miserably sure. She might get up and go away and not see Wynne Cowles at all — but no. She would have that satisfaction and that confirmation before she left. Left for where? What could she possibly—

“Hello, hello!” Footsteps clicking on the tile, approaching. “John wasn’t sure about the name and I thought maybe it was Clara. How is she? Where is she?” Wynne Cowles stood smiling down at her.

“She’s all right.”

“Is she home?”

“Not yet. She will be at seven o’clock.”

Wynne Cowles made a noise of depreciation. “You poor kids. It’s hellish. Won’t you come inside or on the veranda?”

“This is all right. I want to ask you something.”

“Sure you do.” She kicked a chair around and sat. “I’ll bet I know, that bottle of wine. I told your cavalier to take it to you, but he went off mad.”

“You can’t blame him much, can you? Since you told him a damn lie?”

“Oh, now.” Wynne Cowles looked reproachful. “Tut tut, my dear. When you say that, smile.”

“I don’t feel like smiling.” Delia met, steadily, the intentness of those strange eyes. “I haven’t smiled any too much for two years. I suppose that’s what I’m fighting for now, a chance to smile again some time. You would understand that, you’re a clever woman. I don’t like you and I wouldn’t be like you if I could, but I know you’re clever. I’ve been a melodramatic little fool. I thought about you while I was in jail, while I was thinking about everybody and everything, and I saw that there are good things about you as well as bad. Of course I didn’t know then that I would soon have to make you do something you didn’t want to do, but it was what I thought then, what I found out by thinking, that made me capable of doing it.”

“Good for you!” Wynne Cowles smiled. “Intelligence always wins. What are you going to make me do?”

“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.