Rex Stout Read Online Free PDF

red-haired boy took it and aimed it at the window, and his whisper was deadly and sinister: “Ping! Ping! Ping!”
    “Quit that!” the other commanded. “It may be loaded. You’d better wipe off your fingerprints. Hey! Lookit this! Do you know what’s in that?”
    “No. Neither do you.”
    “Oh, I don’t, don’t I? Feel the weight. It’s catriches!”
    The red-haired boy, grabbing for it but missing, said, “Take off the paper and see.”
    “I don’t have to. Of course it’s catriches. What good’s a gat without catriches?”
    “Is they any money?”
    “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. There’s places to take money and places not to take money.”
    “Aw, just a dime or maybe a quarter?”
    “No, sir. Hey, lay off! But lissen. These catriches. We can use ’em. Put that in your pocket and give it to me after school.”
    “What can we use ’em for?”
    “I’ll show you when I get ready. Take it.”
    “Why don’t you take it?”
    “Because your pockets are better for the weight.”
    “If we can take catriches why can’t we take money?”
    “Because we can’t. One is negotiable and one isn’t. I’m telling you to take it!”
    The red-haired boy, frowning, took the package and stuffed it into his hip pocket. The other nodded and said, “Now we’ve got to wipe everything. Here, we canuse this. And put the bag back just where it was. And lissen. You keep your hands off that doorknob. I’ll open it myself. It’s got to be timed right.”
    The red-haired boy, feeling of his hip pocket, nodded morosely.
    Four days of the week Delia had three schools to cover each afternoon, but on Tuesdays Pendleton was the only one. When she had finished there she got in the car again and headed for Main Street. Turning left, she continued until she had crossed the railroad tracks. After a right turn onto Fresno Street and another block, she pulled up in front of a two-storied frame building which could have used a coat of paint and various other attentions as well, though it was not precisely dilapidated. The ground floor front sported a large plate-glass window, elevated above the sidewalk, and the entire length of the window, inside, was occupied by an enormous brown bear who was licking a cub. Delia had not even the tribute of a glance for it as she mounted four steps and pushed open the wooden door and entered, clutching the handbag under her arm.
    The room was about half as large as the one in the school which had been consecrated to Rhythmic Movement and was equally devoid of furniture, but it was by no means empty. On two wide wooden shelves which ran the length of one wall were more than a score of jack rabbits, representing practically every posture in the repertory of those leaping, long-eared crop destroyers. On similar shelves on two other walls were owls, grouse, wild geese, gophers, golden chipmunks, eagles, beaver, and other contemporaries. In one corner, with head up and haughty nostrils dilated, stood a black-tailed deer, a seven-point buck, and across from him was a yearling elk. Suspended fromthe ceiling by wires was a forked tree limb, and on it crouched a full-grown lynx with its teeth showing. There were black bear, pelicans, coyotes. On a raised platform in the center of the room stood a cougar, fully five feet long, its tail curled against its flank, the sides of its jaws flecked with blood or a simulation of it, and its left forepaw resting on the carcass of a fawn.
    Delia, after glancing around, stood beside the cougar and called, “Hello!”
    There was no reply. Stepping through a door to a smaller room behind, which had a large workbench and displayed a miscellany of tools, bales and boxes, and work in progress, and finding it uninhabited, she returned to the front and crossed to a stairway which led to living quarters overhead. Her foot was lifted to the first step when she heard a noise at the door, the knob turning. Quick as a flash she made a dive and concealed herself