Next morning I got up late on account of the big fee I had earned the night before. I drank an extra cup of coffee, smoked an extra cigarette, ate an extra slice of Canadian bacon, and for the three hundredth time I swore I would never again use an electric razor. That made the day normal. I hit the office about ten, picked up some odds and ends of mail, slit the envelopes and let the stuff lie on the desk. I opened the windows wide to let out the smell of dust and dinginess that collected in the night and hung in the still air, in the corners of the room, in the slats of the venetian blinds. A dead moth was spreadeagled on a corner of the desk. On the window sill a bee with tattered wings was crawling along the woodwork, buzzing in a tired remote sort of way, as if she knew it wasn't any use, she was finished, she had flown too many missions and would never get back to the hive again. I knew it was going to be one of those crazy days. Everyone has them. Days when nobody rolls in, but the loose wheels, the dingoes who park their brains with their gum, the squirrels who can't find their nuts, the mechanics who always have a gear wheel left over. The first was a big blond roughneck named Kuissenen or something Finnish like that. He jammed his massive bottom in the customer's chair and planted two wide horny hands on my desk and said he was a power-shovel operator, that he lived in Culver City, and the goddarn woman who lived next door to him was trying to poison his dog. Every morning before he let the dog out for a run in the back yard he had to search the place from fence to fence for meatballs thrown over the potato vine from next door. He'd found nine of them so far and they were loaded with a greenish powder he knew was an arsenic weed killer. "How much to watch out and catch her at it?" He stared at me as unblinkingly as a fish in a tank. "Why not do it yourself?" "I got to work for a living, mister. I'm losing four twentyfive an hour just coming up here to ask." "Try the police?" "I try the police. They might get around to it some time next year. Right now they're busy sucking up to MGM." "S.P.C.A.? The Tailwaggers?" "What's them?" I told him about the Tailwaggers. He was far from interested. He knew about the S.P.C.A. The S.P.C.A. could take a running jump. They couldn't see nothing smaller than a horse. "It says on the door you're an investigator," he said truculently. "Okay, go the hell out and investigate. Fifty bucks if you catch her." "Sorry," I said. "I'm tied up. Spending a couple of weeks hiding in a gopher hole in your back yard would be out of my line anyway—even for fifty bucks." He stood up glowering. "Big shot," he said. "Don't need the dough, huh? Can't be bothered saving the life of a itty-bitty dog. Nuts to you, big shot." "I've got troubles too, Mr. Kuissenen." "I'll twist her goddam neck if I catch her," he said, and I didn't doubt he could have done it. He could have twisted the hind leg off of an elephant. "That's what makes it I want somebody else. Just because the little tike barks when a car goes by the house. Sour-faced old bitch." He started for the door. "Are you sure it's the dog she's trying to poison?" I asked his back. "Sure I'm sure." He was halfway to the door before the nickel dropped. He swung around fast then. "Say that again, buster." I just shook my head. I didn't want to fight him. He might hit me on the head with my desk. He snorted and went out, almost taking the door with him. The next cookie in the dish was a woman, not old, not young, not clean, not too dirty, obviously poor, shabby, querulous and stupid. The girl she roomed with—in her set any woman who works out is a girl—was taking money out of her purse. A dollar here, four bits there, but it added up. She figured she was out close to twenty dollars in all. She couldn't afford it. She couldn't afford to move either. She couldn't afford a detective. She thought I ought to be willing to throw a scare into the roommate just on the telephone like, not mentioning any names It took her twenty minutes or more to tell me this. She kneaded her bag incessantly while telling it. "Anybody you know could do that," I said. "Yeah, but you bein' a dick and all." "I don't have a license to threaten people I know nothing about." "I'm goin' to tell her I been in to see you. I don't have to say it's her. Just that you're workin' on it." "I wouldn't if I were you. If you mention my name she may call me up. If she does that, I'll tell her the facts." She stood up and slammed her shabby bag against her stomach. "You're no gentleman," she said shrilly. "Where does it say I have to be?" She went out mumbling. After lunch I had Mr. Simpson W. Edelweiss. He had a card to prove it. He was manager of a sewing machine agency. He was a small tired-looking man about forty-eight to fifty, small hands and feet, wearing a brown suit with sleeves too long, and a stiff white collaf behind a purple tie with black diamonds on it. He sat on the edge of the chair without fidgeting and looked at me out of sad black eyes. His hair was black too and thick and rough without a sign of gray in it that I could see. He had a clipped mustache with a reddish tone. He could have passed for thirty-five if you didn't look at the backs of his hands. "Call me Simp," he said. "Everybody else does. I got it coming! I'm a Jewish man married to a Gentile woman, twenty-four years of age, beautiful. She run away a couple of times before," He got out a photo of her and showed it to me. She might have been beautiful to him. To me she was a big sloppy-looking cow of a woman with a weak mouth. "What's your trouble, Mr. Edelweiss? I don't do divorce business." I tried to give him back the photo. He waved it away. "The client is always mister to me," I added. "Until he has told me a few dozen lies anyway." He smiled. "Lies I got no use for. It's not a divorce matter. I just want Mabel back again. But she don't come back until I find her. Maybe it's a kind of game with her." He told me about her, patiently, without rancor. She drank, she played around, she wasn't a very good wife by his standards, but he could have been brought up too strict. She had a heart as big as a house, he said, and he loved her. He didn't kid himself he was any dreamboat, just a steady worker bringing home the pay check. They had a joint bank account. She had drawn it all out, but he was prepared for that. He had a pretty good idea who she had lit out with, and if he was right the man would clean her out and leave her stranded. "Name of Kerrigan," he said, "Monroe Kerrigan. I don't aim to knock the Catholics. There is plenty of bad Jews too. This Kerrigan is a barber when he works. I ain't knocking barbers either. But a lot of them are drifters and horse players. Not real steady." "Won't you hear from her when she is cleaned out?" "She gets awful ashamed. She might hurt herself." "It's a Missing Persons job, Mr. Edelweiss. You should go down and make a report." "No. I'm not knocking the police, but I don't want it that way. Mabel would be humiliated." The world seemed to be full of people Mr. Edelweiss was not knocking. He put some money on the desk. "Two hundred dollars," he said. "Down payment. I'd rather do it my way." "It will happen again," I said. "Sure." He shrugged and spread his hands gently. "But twenty-four years old and me almost fifty. How could it be different? She'll settle down after a while. Trouble is, no kids. She can't have kids. A Jew likes 'to have a family. So Mabel knows that. She's humiliated." "You're a very forgiving man, Mr. Edelweiss." "Well I ain't a Christian," he said. "And I'm not knocking Christians, you understand. But with me it's real. I don't just say it. I do it. Oh, I almost forgot the most important." He got out a picture postcard and pushed it across the desk after the money, "From Honolulu she sends it. Money goes fast in Honolulu. One of my uncles had a jewelry business there. Retired now. Lives in Seattle." I picked the photd up again. "I'll have to farm this one out," I told him. "And I'll have to have this copied." "I could hear you saying that, Mr. Marlowe, before I got here. So I come prepared." He took out an envelope and it contained five more prints. "I got Kerrigan too, but only a snapshot." He went into another pocket and gave me another envelope. I looked at Kerrigan. He had a smooth dishonest face that did not surprise me. Three copies of Kerrigan. Mr. Simpson W. Edelweiss gave me another card which had on it his name, his residence, his telephone number. He said he hoped it would not cost too much but that he would respond at once to any demand for further funds and he hoped to hear from me. "Two hundred ought to pretty near do it if she's still in Honolulu," I said. "What I need now is a detailed physical description of both parties that I can put into a telegram. Height, weight, age, coloring, any noticeable scars or other identifying marks, what clothes she was wearing and had with her, and how much money was in the account she cleaned out. If you've been through this before, Mr. Edelweiss, you will know what I want." "I got a peculiar feeling about this Kerrigan. Uneasy." I spent another half hour milking him and writing things down. Then he stood up quietly, shook hands quietly, bowed and left the office quietly. "Tell Mabel everything is fine," he said as he went out. It turned out to be routine, I sent a wire to an agency in Honolulu and followed it with an airmail containing the photos and whatever information I had left out of the wire. They found her working as a chambermaid's helper in a luxury hotel, scrubbing bathtubs and bathroom floors and so on. Kerrigan had done just what Mr. Edelweiss expected, cleaned her out while she was asleep and skipped, leaving her stuck with the hotel bill. She pawned a ring which Kerrigan couldn't have taken without violence, and got enough out-of it to pay the hotel but not enough to buy her way home. So Edelweiss hopped a plane and went after her. He was too good for her. I sent him a bill for twenty dollars and the cost of a long telegram. The Honolulu agency grabbed the two hundred. With a portrait of Madison in my office safe I could afford to be underpriced. So passed a day in the life of a P.I. Not exactly a typical day but not totally untypical either. What makes a man stay with it nobody knows. You don't get rich, you don't often have much fun. Sometimes you get beaten up or shot at or tossed into the jailhouse. Once in a long while you get dead. Every other month you decide to give it up and find some sensible occupation while you can still walk without shaking your head. Then the door buzzer rings and you open the inner door to the waiting room and there stands a new face with a new problem, a new load of grief, and a small piece of money. "Come in, Mr. Thingummy. What can I do for you?" There must be a reason. Three days later in the shank of the afternoon Eileen Wade called me up, and asked me to come around to the house for a drink the next evening. They were having a few friends in for cocktails. Roger would like to see me and thank me adequately. And would I please send in a bill? "You don't owe me anything, Mrs. Wade. What little I did I got paid for." "I must have looked very silly acting Victorian about it," she said. "A kiss doesn't seem to mean much nowadays. You will come, won't you?" "I guess so. Against my better judgment." "Roger is quite well again. He's working." "Good." "You sound very solemn today. I guess you take life pretty seriously." "Now and then. Why?" She laughed very gently and said goodbye and hung up. I sat there for a while taking life seriously. Then I tried to think of something funny so that I could have a great big laugh. Neither way worked, so I got Terry Lennox's letter of farewell out of the safe and reread it. It reminded me that I had never gone to Victor's for that gimlet he asked me to drink for him. It was just about the right time of day for the bar to be quiet, the way he would have liked it himself, if he had been around to go with me. I thought of him with a vague sadness and with a puckering bitterness too. When I got to Victor's I almost kept going. Almost, but not quite. I had too much of his money. He had made a fool of me but he had paid well for the privilege.
It was so quiet in Victor's that you almost heard the temperature drop as you came in at the door, On a bar stool a woman in a black tailormade, which couldn't at that time of year have been anything but some synthetic fabric like orlon, was sitting alone with a pale greenishcolored drink in front of her and smoking a cigarette in a long jade holder. She had that fine-drawn intense look that is sometimes neurotic, sometimes sex-hungry, and sometimes just the result of drastic dieting. I sat down two stools away and the barkeep nodded to me, but didn't smile. "A gimlet," I said. "No bitters." He put the little napkin in front of me and kept looking at me. "You know something," he said in a pleased voice. "I heard you and your friend talking one night and I got me in a bottle of that Rose's Lime Juice. Then you didn't come back any more and I only opened it tonight." "My friend left town," I said, "A double if it's all right with you. And thanks for taking the trouble." He went away. The woman in black gave me a quick glance, then looked down into her glass. "So few people drink them around here," she said so quietly that I didn't realize at first that she was speaking to me. Then she looked my way again. She had very large dark eyes. She had the reddest fingernails I had ever seen. But she didn't look like a pickup and there was no trace of come-on in her voice. "Gimlets I mean." "A fellow taught me to like them," I said. "He must be English." "Why?" "The lime juice. It's as English as boiled fish with that awful anchovy sauce that looks as if the cook had bled into it. That's how they got called limeys. The English—not the fish." "I thought it was more a tropical drink, hot weather stuff. Malaya or some place like that." "You may be right." She turned away again. The bartender set the drink in front of me. With the lime juice it has a sort of pale greenish yellowish misty look. I tasted it. It was both sweet and sharp at the same time. The woman in black watched me, Then she lifted her own glass towards me. We both drank. Then I knew hers was the same drink. The next move was routine, so I didn't make it. I just sat there. "He wasn't English," I said after a moment. "I guess maybe he had been there during the war. We used to come in here once in a while, early like now. Before the mob started boiling." "It's a pleasant hour," she said. "In a bar almost the only pleasant hour." She emptied her glass. "Perhaps I knew your friend," she said. "What was his name?" I didn't answer her right away. I lit a cigarette and watched her tap the stub of hers out of the jade holder and fit another in its place. I reached across with a lighter. "Lennox," I said. She thanked me for the light and gave me a brief searching glance. Then she nodded. "Yea, I knew him very well. Perhaps a little too well." The barkeep drifted over and glanced at my glass. "A couple more of the same," I said. "In a booth." I got down off the stool and stood waiting. She might or might not blow me down. I didn't particularly care. Once in a while in this much too sex-conscious country a man and a woman can meet and talk without dragging bedrooms into it. This could be it, or she could just think I was on the make. If so, the hell with her. She hesitated, but not for long. She gathered up a pair of black gloves and a black suede bag with a gold frame and clasp and walked across into a corner booth and sat down without a word. I sat down across the small table. "My name is Marlowe." "Mine is Linda Loring," she said calmly. "A bit of a sentimentalist, aren't you, Mr. Marlowe?" "Because I came in here to drink a gimlet? How about yourself?" "I might have a taste for them." "So might I. But it would be a little too much coincidence." She smiled at me vaguely. She had emerald earrings and an emerald lapel pin. They looked like real stones because of the way they were cut —flat with beveled edges. And even in the dim light of a bar they had an inner glow. "So you're the man," she said. The bar waiter brought the drinks over and set them down. When he went away I said: "I'm a fellow who knew Terry Lennox, liked him, and had an occasional drink with him. It was kind of a side deal, an accidental friendship. I never went to his home or knew his wife. I saw her once in a parking lot." "There was a little more to it than that, wasn't there?" She reached for her glass. She had an emerald ring set in a nest of diamonds. Beside it a thin platinum band said she was married. I put her in the second half of the thirties, early in the second half. "Maybe," I said, "The guy bothered me. He still does. How about you?" She leaned on an elbow and looked up at me without any particular expression. "I said I knew him rather too well. Too well to think it mattered much what happened to him. He had a rich wife who gave him all the luxuries. All she asked in return was to be let alone." "Seems reasonable," I said. "Don't be sarcastic, Mr. Marlowe. Some women are like that. They can't help it. It wasn't as if he didn't know in the beginning. If he had to get proud, the door was open. He didn't have to kill her." "I agree with you." She straightened up and looked hard at me. Her lip curled. "So he ran away and, if what I hear is true, you helped him. I suppose you feel proud about that." "Not me," I said. "I just did it for the money." "That is not amusing, Mr. Marlowe. Frankly I don't know why I sit here drinking with you." "That's easily changed, Mrs. Loring." I reached for my glass and dropped the contents down the hatch. "I thought perhaps you could tell me something about Terry that I didn't know. I'm not interested in speculating why Terry Lennox beat his wife's face to a bloody sponge." "That's a pretty brutal way to put it," she said angrily. "You don't like the words? Neither do I. And I wouldn't be here drinking a gimlet if I believed he did anything of the sort." She stared. After a moment she said slowly: "He killed himself and left a full confession. What more do you want?" "He had a gun," I said. "In Mexico that might be enough excuse for some jittery cop to pour lead into him. Plenty of American police have done their killings the same way — some of them through doors that didn't open fast enough to suit them. As for the confession, I haven't seen it." "No doubt the Mexican police faked it," she said tartly. "They wouldn't know how, not in a little place like Otatoclán. No, the confession is probably real enough, but it doesn't prove he killed his wife. Not to me anyway. All it proves to me is that he didn't see any way out. In a spot like that a certain sort of man — you can call him weak or soft or sentimental if it amuses you — might decide to save some other people from a lot of very painful publicity." "That's fantastic," she said. "A man doesn't kill himself or deliberately get himself killed to save a little scandal. Sylvia was already dead. As for her sister and her father—they could take care of themselves very efficiently. People with enough money, Mr. Marlowe, can always protect themselves." "Okay, I'm wrong about the motive. Maybe I'm wrong all down the line. A minute ago you were mad at me. You want me to leave now—so you can drink your gimlet?" Suddenly she smiled. "I'm sorry. I'm beginning to think you are sincere. What I thought then was that you were trying to justify yourself, far more than Terry. I don't think you are, somehow." "I'm not. I did something foolish and I got the works for it. Up to a point anyway. I don't deny that his confession saved me a lot worse. If they had brought him back and tried him, I guess they would have hung one on me too. The least it would have cost me would have been far more money than I could afford." "Not to mention your license," she said dryly. "Maybe. There was a time when any cop with a hangover could get me busted. It's a little different now. You get a hearing before a commission of the state licensing authority. Those people are not too crazy about the city police." She tasted her drink and said slowly: "All things considered, don't you think it was best the way it was? No trial, no sensational headlines, no mud-slinging just to sell newspapers without the slightest regard for truth or fairplay or for the feelings of innocent people." "Didn't I just say so? And you said it was fantastic." She leaned back and put her head against the upper curve of the padding on the back of the booth. "Fantastic that Terry Lennox should have killed himself just to achieve that. Not fantastic that it was better for all parties that there should be no trial." "I need another drink," I said, and waved at the waiter. "I feel an icy breath on the back of my neck. Could you by any chance be related to the Potter family, Mrs. Loring?" "Sylvia Lennox was my sister," she said simply. "I thought you would know." The waiter drifted over and I gave him an urgent message. Mrs. Loring shook her head and said she didn't want anything more, When the waiter took off I said: "With the hush old man Potter—excuse me, Mr. Harlan Potter—put on this affair, I would be lucky to know for sure that Terry's wife even had a sister." "Surely you exaggerate. My father is hardly that powerful, Mr. Marlowe —and certainly not that ruthless. I'll admit he does have very old-fashioned ideas about his personal privacy. He never gives interviews even to his own newspapers. He is never photographed, he never makes speeches, he travels mostly by car or in his own plane with his own crew. But he is quite human for all that. He liked Terry. He said Terry was a gentleman twenty-four hours a day instead of for the fifteen minutes between the time the guests arrive and the time they feel their first cocktail." "He slipped a little at the end. Terry did." The waiter trotted up with my third gimlet. I tried it for flavor and then sat there with a finger on the edge of the round base of the glass. "Terry's death was quite a blow to him, Mr. Marlowe. And you're getting sarcastic again. Please don't. Father knew it would all look far too neat to some people. He would much rather Terry had just disappeared. If Terry had asked him for help, I think he would have given it." "Oh no, Mrs. Loring. His own daughter had been murdered." She made an irritable motion and eyed me coldly. "This is going to sound pretty blunt, I'm afraid. Father had written my sister off long ago. When they met he barely spoke to her. If he expressed himself, which he hasn't and won't, I feel sure he would be just as doubtful about Terry as you are. But once Terry was dead, what did it matter? They could have been killed in a plane crash or a fire or a highway accident. If she had to die, it was the best possible time for her to die. In another ten years she would have been a sex-ridden hag like some of these frightful women you see at Hollywood parties, or used to a few years back. The dregs of the international set." All of a sudden I got mad, for no good reason. I stood up and looked over the booth. The next one was still empty. In the one beyond a guy was reading a paper all by himself, quietly. I sat down with a bump, pushed my glass out of the way, and leaned across the table. I had sense enough to keep my voice down. "For hell's sake, Mrs. Loring, what are you trying to sell me? That Harlan Potter is such a sweet lovely character he wouldn't dream of using his influence on a political D.A. to drop the blanket on a murder investigation so that the murder was never really investigated at all? That he had doubts about Terry's guilt but didn't let anyone lift a finger to find out who was really the killer? That he didn't use the political power of his newspapers and his bank account and the nine hundred guys who would trip over their chins trying to guess what he wanted done before he knew himself? That he didn't arrange it so that a tame lawyer and nobody else, nobody from the D.A.'s office or the city cops, went down to Mexico to make sure Terry actually had put a slug in his head instead of being knocked off by some Indian with a hot gun just for kicks? Your old man is worth a hundred million bucks, Mrs. Loring. I wouldn't know just -how he got it, but I know damn well he didn't get it without building himself a pretty far-reaching organization. He's no softie. He's a bard tough man, You've got to be in these days to make that kind of money. And you do business with some funny people. You may not meet them or shake hands with them, but they are there on the fringe doing business with you." "You're a fool," she said angrily. "I've had enough of you." "Oh sure. I don't make the kind of music you like to hear. Let me tell you something. Terry talked to your old man the night Sylvia died. What about? What did your old man say to him? 'Just run on down to Mexico and shoot yourself, old boy. Let's keep this in the family. I know my daughter is a tramp and that any one of a dozen drunken bastards might have blown his top and pushed her pretty face down her throat for her, But that's incidental, old boy. The guy will be sorry when he sobers up. You've had it soft and now is the time you pay back. What we want is to keep the fair Potter name as sweet as mountain lilac. She married you because she needed a front, She needs it worse than ever now she's dead. And you're it. If you can get lost and stay lost, fine. But if you get found, you check out. See you in the morgue.'" "Do you really think," the woman in black asked with dry ice in her voice, "that my father talks like that?" I leaned back and laughed unpleasantly. "We could polish up the dialogue a little if that helps." She gathered her stuff together and slid along the seat. "I'd like to give you a word of warning," she said slowly and very carefully, "a very simple word of warning. If you think my father is that kind of man and if you go around broadcasting the kind of thoughts you have just expressed to me, your career in this city in your business or In any business is apt to be extremely short and terminated very suddenly." "Perfect, Mrs. Loring, Perfect. I get it from the law, I get it from the hoodlum element, I get it from the carriage trade. The words change, but the meaning is the same. Lay off. I came in here to drink a gimlet because a man asked me to. Now look at me. I'm practically in the boneyard." She stood up and nodded briefly. "Three gimlets. Doubles. Perhaps you're drunk." I dropped too much money on the table and stood up beside her. "You had one and a half, Mrs. Loring. Why even that much? Did a man ask you too, or was it all your own idea? Your own tongue got a little loose." "Who knows, Mr. Marlowe? Who knows? Who really knows anything? There's a man over there at the bar watching us. Would it be anyone you know?" I looked around, surprised that she had noticed. A lean dark character sat on the end stool nearest the door. "His name is Chick Agostino," I said. "He's a gun toter for a gambling boy named Menendez. Let's knock him down and jump on him." "You certainly are drunk," she said quickly and started to walk. I went after her. The man on the stool swung around and looked to his front. When I came abreast I stepped up behind him and reached in under both his arms quickly. Maybe I was a little drunk. He swung around angrily and slid off the stool. "Watch it, kiddo," he snarled. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that she had stopped just inside the door to glance back "No guns, Mr. Agostino? How reckless of you. It's almost dark. What if you should run into a tough midget?" "Scram!" he said savagely. "Aw, you stole that line from the New Yorker." His mouth worked but he didn't move. I left him and followed Mrs. Loring out through the door into the space under the awning. A gray-haired colored chauffeur stood there talking to the kid from the parking lot. He touched his cap and went off and came back with a flossy Cadillac limousine. He opened the door and Mrs. Loring got in. He shut the door as though he was putting down the lid of a jewel box. He went around the car to the driver's seat. She ran the window down and looked out at me, half smiling. "Goodnight, Mr. Marlowe. It's been nice—or has it?" "We had quite a fight." "You mean you had—and mostly with yourself." "It usually is. Goodnight, Mrs. Loring. You don't live around here, do you?" "Not exactly. I live in Idle Valley. At the far end of the lake. My husband is a doctor." "Would you happen to know any people named Wade?" She frowned. "Yes, I know the Wades. Why?" "Why do I ask? They're the only people in Idle Valley that I know." "I see. Well, goodnight again, Mr. Marlowe." She leaned back in the seat and the Cadillac purred politely and slid away into the traffic along the Strip. Turning I almost bumped into Chick Agostino. "Who's the doll?" he sneered. "And next time you crack wise, be missing." "Nobody that would want to know you," I said. "Okay, bright boy. I got the license number. Mendy likes to know little things like that." The door of a car banged open and a man about seven feet high and four feet wide jumped out of it, took one look at Agostino, then one long stride, and grabbed him by the throat with one hand. "How many times I gotta tell you cheap hoods not to hang around where I eat?" he roared. He shook Agostino and hurled him across the sidewalk against the wall. Chick crumpled up coughing. "Next time," the enormous man yelled, "I sure as hell put the blast on you, and believe me, boy, you'll be holding a gun when they pick you up." Chick shook his head and said nothing. The big man gave me a raking glance and grinned. "Nice night," he said, and strolled into Victor's. I watched Chick straighten himself out and regain some of his composure. "Who's your buddy?" I asked him. "Big Willie Magoon," he said thickly. "A vice squad bimbo: He thinks he's tough." "You mean he isn't sure?" I asked him politely. He looked at me emptily and walked away. I got my car out of the lot and drove home. In Hollywood anything can happen, anything at all.
A low-swung Jaguar swept around the hill in front of me and slowed down so as not to bathe me in the granite dust from the half mile of neglected paving at the entrance to Idle Valley, It seemed they wanted it left that way to discourage the Sunday drivers spoiled by drifting along on superhighways. I caught a glimpse of a bright scarf and a pair of sun goggles. A hand waved at me casually, neighbor to neighbor. Then the dust slid across the road and added itself to the white film already well spread over the scrub and the sunbaked grass. Then I was around the outcrop and the paving started up in proper shape and everything was smooth and cared for. Live oaks clustered towards the road, as if they were curious to see who went by, and sparrows with rosy heads hopped about pecking at things only a sparrow would think worth pecking at. Then there were a few cottonwoods but no eucalyptus. Then a thick growth of Carolina poplars screening a white house. Then a girl walking a horse along the shoulder of the road. She had levis on and a loud shirt and she was chewing on a twig. The horse looked hot but not lathered and the girl was crooning to him gently. Beyond a fieldstone wall a gardener was guiding a power lawnmower over a huge undulating lawn that ended far back in the portico of a Williamsburg Colonial mansion, the large de luxe size. Somewhere someone was playing left-handed exercises on a grand piano. Then all this wheeled away and the glisten of the lake showed hot and bright and I began to watch numbers on gateposts. I had seen the Wades' house only once and in the dark. It wasn't as big as it had looked by night. The driveway was full of cars, so I parked on the side of the road and walked in. A Mexican butler in a white coat opened the door for me. He was a slender neat goodlooking Mexican and his coat fitted him elegantly and he looked like a Mexican who was getting fifty a week and not killing himself with hard work. He said: 'Buenas tardes, se.or," and grinned as if he had put one over. "Su nombre de Usted, por favor?" "Marlowe," I said, "and who are you trying to upstage, Candy? We talked on the phone, remember?" He grinned and I went in. It was the same old cocktail party, everybody talking too loud, nobody listening, everybody hanging on for dear life to a mug of the juice, eyes very bright, cheeks flushed or pale and sweaty according to the amount of alcohol consumed and the capacity of the individual to handle it. Then Eileen Wade materialized beside me in a pale blue something which did her no harm. She had a glass in her hand but it didn't look as if it was more than a prop. "I'm so glad you could come," she said gravely. "Roger wants to see you in his study. He hates cocktail parties. He's working." "With this racket going on?" "It never seems to bother him, Candy will get you a drink—or if you'd rather go to the bar—" "I'll do that," I said. "Sorry about the other night." She smiled. "I think you apologized already. It was nothing." "The hell it was nothing." She kept the smile long enough to nod and turn and walk away. I spotted the bar over in the corner by some very large french windows. It was one of those things you push around. I was halfway across the room, trying not to bump anybody, when a voice said: "Oh, Mr. Marlowe." I turned and saw Mrs. Loring on a couch beside a prissy-looking man in rimless cheaters with a smear on his chin that might have been a goatee. She had a drink in her hand and looked bored. He sat still with his arms folded and scowled. I went over there. She smiled at me and gave me her hand. "This is my husband, Dr. Loring. Mr. Philip Marlowe, Edward." The guy with the goatee gave me a brief look and a still briefer nod. He didn't move otherwise. He seemed to be saving his energy for better things. "Edward is very tired," Linda Loring said. "Edward is always very tired." "Doctors often are," I said. "Can I get you a drink, Mrs. Loring? Or you, Doctor?" "She's had enough," the man said without looking at either of us. "I don't drink. The more I see of people who do, the more glad I am that I don't." "Come back, little Sheba," Mrs. Loring said dreamily. ETc swung around and did a take. I got away from there and made it to the bar. In the company of her husband Linda Loring seemed like a different person. There was an edge to her voice and a'sneer in her expression which she hadn't used on me even when she was angry. Candy was behind the bar. He asked me what I would drink. "Nothing right now, thanks. Mr. Wade wants to see me," "Es muy occupado, se.or. Very busy." I didn't think I was going to like Candy. When I just looked at him he added: "But I go see. De pronto, se.or." He threaded his way delicately through the mob and was back in no time at all. "Okay, chum, let's go," he said cheerfully. I followed him across the room the long way of the house. He opened a door, I went through, he shut it behind me, and a lot of the noise was dimmed. It was a corner room, big and cool and quiet, with french windows and roses outside and an airconditioner set in a window to one side. I could see the lake, and I could see Wade lying flat out on a long blond leather couch. A big bleached wood desk had a typewriter on it and there was a pile of yellow paper beside the typewriter. "Good of you to come, Marlowe," he said lazily. "Park yourself. Did you have a drink or two?" "Not yet." I sat down and looked at him. He still looked a bit pale and pinched. "How's the work going?" "Fine, except that I get tired too quick. Pity a four-day drunk is so painful to get over. I often do my best work after one. In my racket it's so easy to tighten up and get all stiff and wooden. Then the stuff is no good. When it's good it comes easy. Anything you have read or heard to the contrary is a lot of mishmash?' "Depends who the writer is, maybe," I said. "It didn't come easy to Flaubert, and his stuff is good." "Okay," Wade said, sitting up. "So you have read Flaubert, so that makes you an intellectual, a critic, a savant of the literary world." He rubbed his forehead. "I'm on the wagon and I hate it. I hate everybody with a drink in his hand. I've got to go out there and smile at those creeps, Every damn one of them knows I'm an alcoholic. So they wonder what I'm running away from. Some Freudian bastard has made that a commonplace. Every ten-year-old kid knows it by now. If I had a ten-year-old kid, which God forbid, the brat would be asking me, 'What are you running away from when you get drunk, Daddy?" "The way I got it, all this was rather recent," I said. "It's got worse, but I was always a hard man with a bottle. When you're young and in hard condition you can absorb a lot of punishment. When you are pushing forty you don't snap back the same way." I leaned back and lit a cigarette. "What did you want to see me about?" 'What do you think I'm running away from, Marlowe?" "No idea. I don't have enough information, Besides, everybody is running away from something." "Not everybody gets drunk. What are you running away from? Your youth or a guilty conscience or the knowledge that you're a small time operator in a small time business?" "I get it," I said. "You need somebody to insult. Fire away, chum. When it begins to hurt I'll let you know." He grinned and rumpled his thick curly hair. He speared his chest with a forefinger. "You're looking right at a small time operator in a small time business, Marlowe. All writers are punks and I am one of the punkest. I've written twelve best sellers, and if I ever finish that stack of magoozium on the desk there I may possibly have written thirteen. And not a damn one of them worth the powder to blow it to hell. I have a lovely home in a highly restricted residential neighborhood that belongs to a highly restricted multimillionaire. I have a lovely wife who loves me and a lovely publisher who loves me and I love me the best of all. I'm an egotistical son of a bitch, a literary prostitute or pimp — choose your own word—and an all-round heel. So what can you do for me?" "Well, what?" "Why don't you get sore?" "Nothing to get sore about. I'm just listening to you hate yourself. It's boring but it doesn't hurt my feelings." He laughed roughly. "I like you," he said, "Let's have a drink." "Not in here, chum. Not you and me alone. I don't care to watch you take the first one. Nobody can stop you and I don't guess anyone would try. But I don't have to help." He stood up. "We don't have to drink in here. Let's go outside and glance at a choice selection of the sort of people you get to know when you make enough lousy money to live where they live," "Look," I said. "Shove it. Knock it off. They're no different from anybody else." "Yeah," he said tightly, "but they ought to be. If they're not, what use are they? They're the dass of the county and they're no better than a bunch of truckdrivers full of cheap whiskey. Not as good." "Knock it off," I said again. "You want to get boiled, get boiled. But don't take it out on a crowd that can get boiled without having to lie up with Dr. Verringer or get loose in the head and throw their wives down the stairs." "Yeah," he said, and he was suddenly calm and thoughtful. "You pass the test, chum. How about coming to live here for a while? You could do me a lot of good just being here." "I don't see how." "But I do. Just by being here. Would a thousand a month interest you? I'm dangerous when I'm drunk. I don't want to be dangerous and I don't want to be drunk " "I couldn't stop you." "Try it for three months. I'd finish the damn book and then go far off for a while. Lie up some place in the Swiss mountains and get clean." "The book, huh? Do you have to have the money?" "No. I just have to finish something I started. If I don't I'm through. I'm asking you as a friend. You did more than that for Lennox." I stood up and walked over close to him and gave him a hard stare. "I got Lennox killed, mister. I got him killed." "Phooey. Don't go soft on me, Marlowe." He put the edge of his hand against his throat. "I'm up to here in the soft babies." "Soft?" I asked. "Or just kind?" He stepped back and stumbled against the edge of the couch, but didn't lose his balance. "The hell with you," he said smoothly. "No deal. I don't blame you, of course. There's something I want to know, that I have to know. You don't know what it is and I'm not sure I know myself. All I'm positive of is that there is something, and I have to know it." "About who? Your wife?" He moved his lips one over the other. "I think it's about me," he said. "Let's go get that drink." He walked to the door and threw it open and we went out. If he had been trying to make me uncomfortable, he had done a first dass job.
When he opened the door the buzz from the living room exploded into our faces. It seemed louder than before, if possible. About two drinks louder. Wade said hello here and there and people seemed glad to see him. But by that time they would have been glad to see Pittsburgh Phil with his custom-built icepick. Life was just one great big vaudeville show. On the way to the bar we came face to face with Dr. Loring and his wife. The doctor stood up and stepped forward to face Wade. He had a look on his face that was almost sick with hatred. "Nice to see you, Doctor," Wade said amiably. "Hi, Linda. Where have you been keeping yourself lately? No, I guess that was a stupid question. I—" "Mr. Wade," Loring said in a voice that had a tremor to it, "I have something to say to you. Something very simple, and I hope very conclusive. Stay away from my wife." Wade looked at him curiously. "Doctor, you're tired. And you don't have a drink. Let me get you one." "I don't drink, Mr. Wade. As you very well know. I am here for one purpose and I have expressed that purpose." "Well, I guess I get your point," Wade said, still amiable. "And since you are a guest in my house, I have nothing to say except that I think you are a little off the beam." There had been a drop in the talk near by. The boys and girls were all ears. Big production. Dr. Loring took a pair of gloves out of his pocket, straightened them, took hold of one by the finger end, and swung it hard against Wade's face. Wade didn't bat an eye. "Pistols and coffee at dawn?" he asked quietly. I looked at Linda Loring. She was flushed with anger. She stood up slowly and faced the doctor. "Dear God, what a ham you are, darling. Stop acting like a damn fool, will you, darling? Or would you rather stick around until somebody slaps your face?" Loring swung around to her and raised the gloves. Wade stepped in front of him. "Take it easy, Doc. Around here we only hit our wives in private." "If you are speaking for yourself, I am well aware of it," Loring sneered, "And I don't need lessons in manners from you." "I only take promising pupils," Wade said. "Sorry you have to leave so soon." He raised his voice. "Candy! Que el Doctor Loring salga de aqui en el acto!" He swung back to Loring. "In case you don't know Spanish, Doctor, that means the door is over there." He pointed. Loring stared at him without moving. "I have warned you, Mr. Wade," he said idly. "And a number of people have heard me, I shall not warn you again." "Don't," Wade said curtly. "But if you do, make it on neutral territory. Gives me a little more freedom of action. Sorry, Linda. But you married him." He rubbed his cheek gently where the heavy end of the glove had hit him. Linda Loring was smiling bitterly. She shrugged. "We are leaving," Loring said. "Come, Linda." She sat down again and reached for her glass. She gave her husband a glance of quiet contempt. "You are," she said, "You have a number of calls to make, remember." "You are leaving with me," he said furiously. She turned her back on him. He reached suddenly and took hold of her arm. Wade took him by the shoulder and spun him around. "Take it easy, Doc. You can't win them all." "Take your hand off me!" "Sure, just relax," Wade said. "I have a good idea, Doctor. Why don't you see a good doctor?" Somebody laughed loudly. Loring tensed like an animal all set to spring. Wade sensed it and neatly turned his back and moved away. Which left Dr. Loring holding the bag. If he went after Wade, he would look sillier than he looked now. There was nothing for him to do but leave, and he did it. He marched quickly across the room staring straight in front of him to where Candy was holding the door open. He went out, Candy shut the door, wooden-faced, and went back to the bar. I went over there and asked for some Scotch. I didn't see where Wade went, He just disappeared. I didn't see Eileen either. I turned my back on the room and let them sizzle while I drank my Scotch. A small girl with mud-colored hair and a band around her forehead popped up beside me and put a glass on the bar and bleated, Candy nodded and made her another drink. The small girl turned to me. "Are you interested in Communism?" she asked me. She was glassy-eyed and she was running a small red tongue along her lips as if looking for a crumb of chocolate. "I think everyone ought to be," she went on. "But when you ask any of the men here they just want to paw you." I nodded and looked over my glass at her snub nose and sun-coarsened skin. "Not that I mind too much if it's done nicely," she told me, reaching for the fresh drink. She showed me her molars while she inhaled half of it. "Don't rely on me," I said. "What's your name?" "Marlowe." "With an 'e' or not?" "With." "Ah, Marlowe," she intoned. "Such a sad beautiful name." She put her glass down damn nearly empty and closed her eyes and threw her head back and her arms out, almost hitting me in the eye. Her voice throbbed with emotion, saying: "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss." She opened her eyes, grabbed her glass, and winked at me. "You were pretty good in there, chum. Been writing any poetry lately?" "Not very much." "You can kiss me if you like," she said coyly. A guy in a shantung jacket and an open neck shirt came up behind her and grinned at me over the top of her head. He had short red hair and a face like a collapsed lung. He was as ugly a guy as I ever saw. He patted the top of the little girl's head. "Come on kitten. Time to go home." She rounded on him furiously. "You mean you got to water those goddamned tuberous begonias again?" she yelled. "Aw listen, kitten—" "Take your hands off me, you goddamned rapist," she screamed, and threw the rest of her drink in his face. The rest wasn't more than a teaspoonful and two lumps of ice. "For Chrissake, baby, I'm your husband," he yelled back, grabbing for a handkerchief and mopping his face. "Get it? Your husband." She sobbed violently and threw herself into his arms. I stepped around them and got out of there. Every cocktail party is the same, even the dialogue. The house was leaking guests out into the evening air now. Voices were fading, cars were starting, goodbyes were bouncing around like rubber balls. I went to the french windows and out onto a flagged terrace. The ground sloped towards the lake which was as motionless as a sleeping cat. There was a short wooden pier down there with a rowboat tied to it by a white painter. Towards the far shore, which wasn't very far, a black waterhen was doing lazy curves, like a skater. They didn't seem to cause as much as a shallow ripple. I stretched out on a padded aluminum chaise and lit a pipe and smoked peacefully and wondered what the hell I was doing there, Roger Wade seemed to have enough control to handle himself if he really wanted to. He had done all right with Loring. I wouldn't have been too surprised if he had hung one on Loring's sharp little chin. He would have been out of line by the rules, but Loring was much farther out of line. If the rules mean anything at all any more, they mean that you don't pick a roomful of people as the spot to threaten a man and hit him across the face with a glove when your wife is standing right beside you and you are practically accusing her of a little double time. For a man still shaky from a hard bout with the hard stuff Wade had done all right. He had done more than all right. Of course I hadn't seen him drunk. I didn't know what he would be like drunk. I didn't even know that he was an alcoholic, There's a big difference. A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before. Light steps sounded behind me and Eileen Wade came across the terrace and sat down beside me on the edge of a chaise. "Well, what did you think?" she asked quietly. "About the gentleman with the loose gloves?" "Oh no." She frowned. Then she laughed. "I hate people who make stagy scenes like that. Not that he isn't a fine doctor. He has played that scene with half the men in the valley. Linda Loring is no tramp. She doesn't look like one, talk like one, or behave like one. I don't know what makes Dr. Loring behave as if she was." "Maybe he's a reformed drunk," I said. "A lot of them grow pretty puritanical." "It's possible," she said, and looked towards the lake. "This is a very peaceful place. One would think a writer would be happy here — if a writer is ever happy anywhere." She turned to look at me. "So you won't be persuaded to do what Roger asked." "There's no point in it, Mrs. Wade. Nothing I could do. I've said all this before. I couldn't be sure of being around at the right time. I'd have to be around all the time. That's impossible, even if I had nothing else to do. If he went wild, for example, it would happen in a flash. And I haven't seen any indications that he does get wild. He seems pretty solid to me." She looked down at her hands. "If he could finish his book, I think things would be much better." "I can't help him do that." She looked up and put her hands on the edge of the chaise beside her. She leaned forward a little. "You can if he thinks you can. That's the whole point. Is it that you would find it distasteful to be a guest in our house and be paid for it?" "He needs a psychiatrist, Mrs. Wade. If you know one that isn't a quack," She looked startled "A psychiatrist? Why?" I knocked the ashes out of my pipe and sat holding it, waiting for the bowl to get cooler before I put it away, "You want an amateur opinion, here it is. He thinks he has a secret buried in his mind and he can't get at it. It may be a guilty secret about himself, it may be about someone else. He thinks that's what makes him drink, because be can't get at this thing. He probably thinks that whatever happened, happened while he was drunk and he ought to find it wherever people go when they're drunk—really bad drunk, the way he gets. That's a job for a psychiatrist. So far, so good. If that is wrong, then be gets drunk because he wants to or can't help it, and the idea about the secret is just his excuse. He can't write his book, or anyway can't finish it. Because he gets drunk. That is, the assumption seems to be that he can't finish his book because he knocks himself out by thinking, It could be the other way around." "Oh no," she said. "No. Roger has a great deal of talent. I feel quite sure that his best work is still to come." "I told you it was an amateur opinion. You said the other morning that he might have fallen out of love with his wife. That's something else that could go the other way around." She looked towards the house, then turned so that she had her back to it. I looked the same way. Wade was standing inside the doors, looking out at us. As I watched be moved behind the bar and reached for a bottle. "There's no use interfering," she said quickly. "I never do. Never. I suppose you're right, Mr. Marlowe. There just isn't anything to do but let him work it out of his system." The pipe was cool now and I put it away. "Since we're groping around in the back of the drawer, how about that other way around?" "I love my husband," she said simply. "Not as a young girl loves, perhaps. But I love him. A woman is only a young girl once. The man I loved then is dead. He died in the war. His name, strangely enough, had the same initials as yours. It doesn't matter now — except that sometimes I can't quite believe that he is dead. His body was never found. But that happened to many men." She gave me a long searching look. "Sometimes — not often, of course—when I go into a quiet cocktail lounge or the lobby of a good hotel at a dead hour, or along the deck of a liner early in the morning or very late at night, I think I may see him waiting for me in some shadowy corner." She paused and dropped her eyes. "It's very silly. I'm ashamed of it. We were very much in love—the wild, mysterious, improbable kind of love that never comes but once." She stopped talking and sat there half in a trance looking out over the lake. I looked back at the house again. Wade was standing just inside the open french windows with a glass in his hand. I looked back at Eileen. For her I wasn't there any more. I got up and went into the house. Wade stood there with the drink and the drink looked pretty heavy. And his eyes looked wrong. "How you making out with my wife, Marlowe?" It was said with a twist of the mouth. "No passes, if you mean it that way." "That's exactly the way I mean it. You got to kiss her the other night. Probably fancy yourself as a fast worker, but you're wasting your time, bud. Even if you had the right kind of polish." I tried to move around him but he blocked me with a solid shoulder. "Don't hurry away, old man, We like you around. We get so few private dicks in our house." "I'm the one too many," I said. He hoisted the glass and drank from it. When he lowered it he leered at me. "You ought to give yourself a little more time to build resistance," I told him. "Empty words, huh?" "Okay, coach. Some little character builder, aren't you? You ought to have more sense than to try educating a drunk. Drunks don't educate, my friend. They disintegrate. And part of the process is a lot of fun." He drank from the glass again, leaving it nearly empty. "And part of it is damned awful. But if I may quote the scintillating words of the good Dr. Loring, a bastardly bastard with a little black bag, stay away from my wife, Marlowe. Sure you go for her. They all do, You'd like to sleep with her. They all would. You'd like to share her dreams and sniff the rose of her memories, Maybe I would too. But there is nothing to share, chum—nothing, nothing, nothing. You're all alone in the dark." He finished his drink and turned the glass upside down. "Empty like that, Marlowe. Nothing there at all. I'm the guy that knows." He put the glass on the edge of the bar and walked stiffly to the foot of the stairs. He made about a dozen steps up, holding on to the rail, and stopped and leaned against it. He looked down at me with a sour grin. "Forgive the corny sarcasm, Marlowe. You're a nice guy. I wouldn't want anything to happen to you." "Anything like what?" "Perhaps she didn't get around yet to that haunting magic of her first love, the guy that went missing in Norway. You wouldn't want to be missing, would you, chum? You're my own special private eye. You find me when I'm lost in the savage splendor of Sepulveda Can yon." He moved the palm of his hand in a circular motion on the polished wood banister. "It would hurt me to the quick if you got lost yourself. Like that character who hitched up with the limeys. -He got so lost a man sometimes wonders if he ever existed. You figure she could have maybe just invented him to have a toy to play with?" "How would I know?" He looked down at me. There were deep lines between his eyes now and his mouth was twisted with bitterness. "How would anybody know? Maybe she don't know herself, Baby's tired. Baby been playing too long with broken toys. Baby wants to go bye-bye." He went on up the stairs. I stood there until Candy came in and started tidying up around the bar, putting glasses on a tray, examining bottles to see what was left, paying no attention to me. Or so I thought. Then be said: "Se.or. One good drink left. Pity to waste him." He held up a bottle. "You drink it." "Gracias, se.or, no me gusta. Un vaso de Cerveza, no más. A glass of beer is my limit." "Wise man." "One lush in the house is enough," he said, staring at me. 'I speak good English, not?" "Sure, fine." "But I think Spanish. Sometimes I think with a knife. The boss is my guy. He don't need any help, hombre. I take care of him, see." "A great job you're doing, punk." "Hijo de la flauta," he said between his white teeth. He picked up a loaded tray and swung it up on the edge of his shoulder and the flat of his hand, bus boy style. I walked to the door and let myself out, wondering how an expression meaning 'son of a flute' had come to be an insult in Spanish. I didn't wonder very long. I had too many other things to wonder about. Something more than alcohol was the matter with the Wade family. Alcohol was no more than a disguised reaction. Later that night, between nine-thirty and ten, I called the Wades' number. After eight rings I hung up, but I had only just taken my hand off the instrument when it started to ring me. It was Eileen Wade, "Someone just rang here," she said. "I had a sort of hunch it might be you. I was just getting ready to take a shower." "It was me, but it wasn't important, Mrs. Wade. He seemed a little woolly-headed when I left — Roger did. I guess maybe I feel a little responsibility for him by now." "He's quite all right," she said. "Fast asleep in bed. I think Dr. Loring upset him more than he showed. No doubt he talked a lot of nonsense to you," "He said he was tired and wanted to go to bed. Pretty sensible, I thought." "If that is all he said, yes. Well, goodnight and thank you for calling, Mr. Marlowe." "I didn't say it was all he said. I said he said it." There was a pause, then: "Everyone gets fantastic ideas once in a while. Don't take Roger too seriously, Mr. Marlowe. After all, his imagination is rather highly developed, Naturally it would be. He shouldn't have had anything to drink so soon after the last time. Please try to forget all about it. I suppose he was rude to you among other things." "He wasn't rude to me. He made quite a lot of sense, Your husband is a guy who can take a long hard look at himself and see what is there. It's not a very common gift. Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had. Goodnight, Mrs. Wade." She hung up and I set out the chess board. I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament game between Gortchakoff and Meninkin, seventytwo moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armor, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.
Nothing happened for a week except that I went about my business which just then didn't happen to be very much business. One morning George Peters of The Carne Organization called me up and told me he had happened to be down Sepulveda Canyon way and had looked in on Dr. Verringer's place just out of curiosity. But Dr. Verringer was no longer there. Half a dozen teams of surveyors were mapping the tract for a subdivision. Those he spoke to had never even heard of Dr. Verringer. "The poor sucker got closed out on a trust deed," Peters said. "I checked. They gave him a grand for a quit claim just to save time and expense, and now somebody is going to make a million bucks clear, out of cutting the place up for residential property. That's the difference between crime and business. For business you gotta have capitaL Sometimes I think it's the only difference." "A properly cynical remark," I said, "but big time crime takes capital too." "And where does it come from, chum? Not from guys that hold up liquor stores. So long. See you soon." It was ten minutes to eleven on a Thursday night when Wade called me up. His voice was thick, almost gurgling, but I recognized it somehow. And I could hear short hard rapid breathing over the telephone. "I'm in bad shape, Marlowe. Very bad. I'm slipping my anchor. Could you make it out here in a hurry?" "Sure—but let me talk to Mrs. Wade a minute." He didn't answer. There was a crashing sound, then a dead silence, then in a short while a kind of banging around. I yelled something into the phone without getting any answer. Time passed. Finally the light click of the receiver being replaced and the buzz of an open line. In five minutes I was on the way. I made it in slightly over half an hour and I still don't know how. I went over the pass on wings and hit Ventura Boulevard with the light against me and made a left turn anyhow and dodged between trucks and generally made a damn fool of myself. I went through Encino at close to sixty with a spotlight on the outer edge of the parked cars so that it would freeze anyone with a notion to step out suddenly. I had the kind of luck you only get when you don't care. No cops, no sirens, no red flashers. Just visions of what might be happening in the Wade residence and not very pleasant visions, She was alone in the house with a drunken maniac, she was lying at the bottom of the stairs with her neck broken, she was behind a locked door and somebody was howling outside and trying to break it in, she was running down a moonlit road barefoot and a big buck Negro with a meat cleaver was chasing her. It wasn't like that at all. When I swung the Olds into their driveway lights were on all over the house and she was standing in the open doorway with a cigarette in her mouth. I got out and walked over the flagstones to her. She had slacks on and a shirt with an open collar. She looked at me calmly. If there was any excitement around there I had brought it with me. The first thing I said was as loony as the rest of my behavior. "I thought you didn't smoke." "What? No, I don't usually." She took the cigarette out and looked at it and dropped it and stepped on it. "Once in a long while. He called Dr. Verringer." It was a remote placid voice, a voice heard at night over water. Completely relaxed. "He couldn't," I said. "Dr. Verringer doesn't live there any more. He called me." "Oh really? I just heard him telephoning and asking someone to come in a hurry. I thought it must be Dr. Verringer." "Where is he now?" "He fell down," she said. "He must have tipped the chair too far back. He's done it before. He cut his head on something. There's a little blood, not much." "Well, that's fine," I said. "We wouldn't want a whole lot of blood. Where is he now, I asked you." She looked at me solemnly. Then she pointed, "Out there somewhere. By the edge of the road or in the bushes along the fence." I leaned forward and peered at her. "Chrissake, didn't you look?" I decided by this time that she was in shock. Then I looked back across the lawn. I didn't see anything but there was heavy shadow near the fence. "No, I didn't look," she said quite calmly. "You find him. I've had all of it I can take. I've had more than I can take. You find him." She turned and walked back into the house, leaving the door open. She didn't walk very far. About a yard inside the door she just crumpled to the floor and lay there. I scooped her up and spread her out on one of the two big davenports that faced each other across a long blond cocktail table. I felt her pulse. It didn't seem very weak or unsteady. Her eyes were closed and the lids were blue. I left her there and went back out. He was there all right, just as she had said. He was lying on his side in the shadow of the hibiscus. He had a fast thumping pulse and his breathing was unnaturaL Something on the back of his head was sticky. I spoke to him and shook him a little. I slapped his face a couple of times, He mumbled but didn't come to. I dragged him up into a sitting position and dragged one of his arms over my shoulder and heaved him up with my back turned to him and grabbed for a leg. I lost. He was as heavy as a block of cement. We both sat down on the grass and I took a short breather and tried again, Finally I got him hoisted into a fireman's lift position and plowed across the lawn in the direction of the open front door. It seemed about the same distance as a round trip to Siam. The two steps of the porch were ten feet high. I staggered over to the couch and went down on my knees and rolled him off. When I straightened up again my spine felt as if ft had cracked in at least three places. Eileen Wade wasn't there any more. I had the room to myself. I was too bushed at the moment to care where anybody was. I sat down and looked at him and waited for some breath. Then I looked at his head. It was smeared with blood. His hair was sticky with it. It didn't look very bad but you never know with a head wound. Then Eileen Wade was standing beside me, quietly looking down at him with that same remote expression. "I'm sorry I fainted," she said. "I don't know why." "I guess we'd better call a doctor." "I telephoned Dr. Loring. He is my doctor, you know. He didn't want to come." "Try somebody else then." "Oh he's coming," she said. "He didn't want to. But he's coming as soon as he can manage." "Where's Candy?" "This is his day off. Thursday. The cook and Candy have Thursdays off. It's the usual thing around here. Can you get him up to bed?" "Not without help. Better get a rug or blanket. It's a warm night, but cases like this get pneumonia very easily." She said she would get a rug. I thought it was damn nice of her. But I wasn't thinking very intelligently. I was too bushed from carrying him. We spread a steamer rug over him and in fifteen minutes Dr. Loring came, complete with starched collar and rimless cheaters and the expression of a man who has been asked to clean up after the dog got sick. He examined Wade's head. "A superficial cut and bruise," he said. "No chance of concussion. I should say his breath would indicate his condition rather obviously." He reached for his hat. He picked up his bag. "Keep him warm," he said. "You might bathe his head gently and get rid of the blood. He'll sleep it off." "I can't get him upstairs alone, Doctor," I said. "Then leave him where he is," He looked at me without interest. "Goodnight, Mrs. Wade. As you know I don't treat alcoholics. Even if I did, your husband would not be one of my patients. I'm sure you understand that." "Nobody's asking you to treat him," I said. "I'm asking for some help to get him into his bedroom so that I can undress him." "And just who are you?" Dr. Loring asked me freezingly. "My name's Marlowe. I was here a week ago. Your wife introduced me." "Interesting," he said. "In what connection do you know my wife?" "What the hell does that matter? All I want is—" "I'm not interested in what you want," he cut in on me. He turned to Eileen, nodded briefly, and started out. I got between him and the door and put my back to it. "Just a minute, Doc. Must be a long time since you glanced at that little piece of prose called the Hippocratic Oath. This man called me on the phone and I live some way off. He sounded bad and I broke every traffic law in the state getting over here. I found him lying on the ground and I carried him in here and believe me he isn't any bunch of feathers. The houseboy is away and there's nobody here to help me upstairs with Wade. How does it look to you?" "Get out of my way," he said between his teeth. "Or I shall call the sheriff's substation and have them send over a deputy. As a professional man—" "As a professional man you're a handful of flea dirt," I said, and moved out of his way. He turned red—slowly but distinctly. He choked on his own bile. Then he opened the door and went out. He shut it carefully. As he pulled it shut he looked in at me. It was as nasty a look as I ever got and on as nasty a face as I ever saw. When I turned. away from the door Eileen was smiling. "What's funny?" I snarled. "You. You don't care what you say to people, do you? Don't you know who Dr. Loring is?" "Yeah—and I know what he is." She glanced at her wrist watch. "Candy ought to be home by now," she said. "I'll go see. He has a room behind the garage." She went out through an archway and I sat down and looked at Wade, The great big writer man went on snoring. His face was sweaty but I left the rug over him. In a minute or two Eileen came back and she had Candy with her.
The Mex had a black and white checked sport shirt, heavily pleated black slacks without a belt, two-tone black and white buckskin shoes, spotlessly clean. His thick black hair was brushed straight back and shining with some kind of hair oil or cream. "Se.or," he said, and sketched a brief sarcastic bow. "Help Mr. Marlowe carry my husband upstairs, Candy. He fell and hurt himself a little. I'm sorry to trouble you." "De nada, se.ora," Candy said smiling. "I think I'll say goodnight," she said to me. "I'm tired out. Candy will get you anything you want." She went slowly up the stairs. Candy and I watched her. "Some doll," he said confidentially. "You stay the night?" "Hardly." "Es lástima. She is very lonely, that one." "Get that gleam out of your eyes, kid. Let's put this to bed." He looked sadly at Wade snoring on the couch. "Pobrecito," he murmured as if he meant it. "Borracho como una cuba." "He may be drunk as a sow but he sure ain't little," I said. "You take the feet." We carried him and even for two he was as heavy as a lead coffin. At the top of the stairs we went along an open balcony past a closed door. Candy pointed to it with his chin. "La se.ora," he whispered. "You knock very light maybe she let you in." I didn't say anything because I needed him. We went on with the carcass and turned in at another door and dumped him on the bed. Then I took hold of Candy's arm high up near the shoulder where dug-in fingers can hurt. I made mine hurt him. He winced a little and then his face set hard. "What's your name, cholo?" "Take your hand off me," he snapped. "And don't call me a cholo. I'm no wetback. My name is Juan Garcia de Soto-mayor. I am Chileno." "Okay, Don Juan. Just don't get out of line around here. Keep your nose and mouth clean when you talk about the people you work for." He jerked loose and stepped back, his black eyes hot with anger. His hand slipped inside his shirt and came out with a long thin knife. He balanced it by the point on the heel of his hand, hardly even glancing at it, Then he dropped the hand and caught the -handle of the knife while it hung in the air. It was done very fast and without any apparent effort. His hand went up to shoulder height, then snapped forward and the knife sailed through the air and hung quivering in the wood of the window frame. "Cuidado, se.or!" he said with a sharp sneer, "And keep your paws to yourself. Nobody fools with me." He walked lithely across the room and plucked the knife out of the wood, tossed it in the air, spun on his toes and caught it behind him. With a snap it disappeared under his shirt. "Neat," I said, "but just a little on the gaudy side." He strolled up to me smiling derisively. "And it might get you a broken elbow," I said. "Like this." I took hold of his right wrist, jerked him off balance, swung to one side and a little behind him, and brought my bent forearm up under the back of his elbow joint. I bore down on it, using my forearm as a fulcrum. "One hard jerk," I said, "and your elbow joint cracks. A crack is enough. You'd be out of commission as a knife thrower for several months. Make the jerk a little harder and you'd be through permanently. Take Mr. Wade's shoes off." I let go of him and he grinned at me. "Good trick," he said. "I will remember." He turned to Wade and reached for one of his shoes, then stopped. There was a smear of blood on the pillow. "Who cut the boss?" "Not me, chum. He fell and cut his head on something. It's only a shallow cut. The doctor has been here." Candy let his breath out slowly, "You see him fall?" "Before I got here. You like this guy, don't you?" He didn't answer me. He took the shoes off. We got Wade undressed little by little and Candy dug out a pair of green and silver pajamas. We got Wade into those and got him inside the bed and well covered up. He was still sweaty and still snoring. Candy looked down at him sadly, shaking his sleek head from side to side, slowly. "Somebody's got to take care of him," he said. "I go change my clothes." "Get some sleep. I'll take care of him. I can call you if I need you." He faced me. "You better take care of him good," he said in a quiet voice. "Very good." He went out of the room. I went into the bathroom and got a wet washcloth and a heavy towel. I turned Wade over a little and spread the towel on the pillow and washed the blood off his head gently so as not to start the bleeding again. Then I could see a sharp shallow cut about two inches long. It was nothing. Dr. Loring had been right that much. It wouldn't have hurt to stitch it but it probably was not really necessary. I found a pair of scissors and cut the hair away enough so that I could put on a strip of adhesive. Then I turned him on his back and washed his face. I guess that was a mistake. He opened his eyes. They were vague and unfocused at first, then they cleared and he saw me standing beside the bed. His hand moved and went up to his head and felt the adhesive. His lips mumbled something, then his voice cleared up also. "Who hit me? You?" His hand felt for the adhesive. "Nobody hit you. You took a fall." "Took a fall? When? Where?" "Wherever you telephoned from. You called me. I heard you fall. Over the wire." "I called you?" He grinned slowly. "Always available, aren't you, fella? What time is it?" "After one A.M." "Where's Eileen?" "Gone to bed. She had it rough." He thought that over silently. His eyes were full of pain. "Did I—" He stopped and winced. "You didn't touch her as far as I know. If that's what you mean. You just wandered outdoors and passed out near the fence, Quit talking. Go to sleep." "Sleep," he said quietly and slowly, like a child reciting its lesson. "What would that be?" "Maybe a pill would help. Got any?" "In the drawer. Night table." I opened it and found a plastic bottle with red capsules in it. Seconal, 1.5 grains. Prescription by Dr. Loring. That nice Dr. Loring. Mrs. Roger Wade's prescription. I shook two of them loose and put the bottle back and poured a glass of water from a thermos jug on the night table. He said one capsule would be enough. He took it and drank some water and lay back and stared at the ceiling again. Time passed. I sat in a chair and watched him. He didn't seem to get sleepy, Then he said slowly: "I remember something. Do me a favor, Marlowe. I wrote some crazy stuff I don't want Eileen to see. It's on top of the typewriter under the cover. Tear it up, for me, "Sure. That all you remember?" "Eileen is all right? Positive about that?" "Yes. She's just tired. Let it ride, Wade. Stop thinking. I shouldn't have asked you." "Stop thinking, the man says." His voice was a little drowsy now. He was talking as if to himself. "Stop thinking, stop dreaming, stop loving, stop hating. Goodnight, sweet prince. I'll take that other pill." I gave it to him with some more water. He lay back again, this time with his head turned so that he could see me. "Look, Marlowe, I wrote some stuff I don't want Eileen—" "You told me already. I'll attend to it when you go to sleep." "Oh. Thanks. Nice to have you around. Very nice." Another longish pause. His eyelids were getting heavy. "Ever kill a man, Marlowe?" "Yes." "Nasty feeling, isn't it?" "Some people like it." His eyes went shut all the way. Then they opened again, but they looked vague. "How could they?" I didn't answer. The eyelids came down again, very gradually, like a slow curtain in the theater. He began to snore. I waited a little longer. Then I dimmed the light in the room and went out.
I stopped outside Eileen's door and listened. I didn't hear any sound of movement inside, so I didn't knock. If she wanted to know how he was, it was up to her. Downstairs the living room looked bright and empty. I put out some of the lights. From over near the front door I looked up at the balcony. The middle part of the living room rose to the full height of the house walls and was crossed by open beams that also supported the balcony. The balcony was wide and edged on two sides by a solid railing which looked to be about three and a half feet high. The top and the uprights were cut square to match the cross beams. The dining room was through a square arch closed off by double louvered doors. Above it I guessed there were servants' quarters. This part of the second floor was walled off so there would be another stairway reaching it from the kitchen part of the house. Wade's room was in the corner over his study. I could see the light from his open door reflected against the high ceiling and I could see the top foot of his doorway. I cut all the lights except in one standing lamp and crossed to the study. The door was shut but two lamps were lit, a standing lamp at the end of the leather couch and a cowled desk lamp. The-typewriter was on a heavy stand under this and beside it on the desk there was a disorderly mess of yellow paper. I sat in a padded chair and studied the layout. What I wanted to know was how he had cut his head. I sat in his desk chair with the phone at my left hand. The spring was set very weak. If I tilted back and went over, my head might have caught the corner of the desk. I moistened my handkerchief and rubbed the wood. No blood, nothing there. There was a lot of stuff on the desk, including a row of books between bronze elephants, and an old-fashioned square glass inkwell. I tried that without result. Not much point to it anyway, because if someone else had slugged him, the weapon didn't have to be in the room. And there wasn't anyone else to do it. I stood up and switched on the cornice lights. They reached into the shadowy corners and of course the answer was simple enough after all. A square metal wastebasket was lying on its side over against the wall, with paper spilled. It couldn't have walked there, so it had been thrown or kicked. I tried its sharp corners with my moistened handkerchief. I got the red-brown smear of blood this time. No mystery at all. Wade had fallen over and struck his head on the sharp corner of the wastebasket—a glancing blow most likely—picked himself up and booted the damn thing across the room. Easy. Then he would have another quick drink. The drinking liquor was on the cocktail table in front of the couch. An empty bottle, another three quarters full, a thermos jug of water and a silver bowl containing water which had been ice cubes. There was only one glass and it was the large economy size. Having taken his drink he felt a little better. He noticed the phone off the hook in a bleary sort of way and very likely didn't remember any more what he had been doing with it. So he just walked across and put it back in its cradle. The time had been just about right. There is something compulsive about a telephone. The gadgetridden man of our age loves it, loathes it, and is afraid of it. But he always treats it with respect, even when he is drunk. The telephone is a fetish. Any normal man would have said hello into the mouthpiece before hanging up, just to be sure. But not necessarily a man who was bleary with drink and had just taken a fall. It didn't matter anyhow. His wife might have done it, she might have heard the fall and the bang as the wastebasket bounced against the wall and come into the study. About that time the last drink would kick him in the face and he would stagger out of the house and across the front lawn and pass out where I had found him. Somebody was coming for him. By this time he didn't know who it was. Maybe the good Dr. Verringer. So far, so good. So what would his wife do? She couldn't handle him or reason with him and she might well be afraid to try. So she would call somebody to come and help. The servants were out, so it would have to be by the telephone. Well, she had called somebody. She had called that nice Dr. Loring. I'd just assumed she called him after I got there. She hadn't said so. From here on it didn't quite add up. You'd expect her to look for him and find him and make sure he wasn't hurt. It wouldn't hurt him to lie out on the ground on a warm summer night for a while. She couldn't move him. It had taken all I had to do that. But you wouldn't quite expect to find her standing in the open doorway smoking a cigarette, not knowing except very vaguely where he was. Or would you? I didn't know what she had been through with him, how dangerous he was in that condition, how much afraid she might be to go near him. "I've had all of it I can take," she had said to me when I arrived. "You find him." Then she had gone inside and pulled a faint. It still bothered me, but I had to leave it at that. I had to assume that when she had been up against the situation often enough to know there was nothing she could do about it except to let it ride, then that would be what she would do. Just that. Let it ride. Let him lie out there on the ground until somebody came around with the physical equipment to handle him. It still bothered me. It bothered me also that she had checked out and gone into her own room while Candy and I got him upstairs to bed. She said she loved the guy. He was her husband, they had been married for five years, he was a very nice guy indeed when sober — those were her own words. Drunk, he was something else, something to stay away from because he was dangerous. All right, forget it. But somehow it still bothered me. If she was really scared, she wouldn't have been standing there in the open door smoking a cigarette. If she was just bitter and withdrawn and disgusted, she wouldn't have fainted. There was something else. Another woman, perhaps. Then she had only just found out. Linda Loring? Maybe. Dr. Loring thought so and said so in a very public manner. I stopped thinking about it and took the cover off the typewriter. The stuff was there, several loose sheets of typed yellow paper that I was supposed to destroy so Eileen wouldn't see them. I took them over to the couch and decided I deserved a drink to go with the reading matter. There was a half bath off the study. I rinsed the tall glass out and poured a libation and sat down with it to read. And what I read was really wild. Like this:
The moon's four days off the full and there's a square patch of moonlight on the wall and it's looking at me like a big blind milky eye, a wall eye. Joke. Goddam silly simile. Writers. Everything has to be like something else. My head is as fluffy as whipped cream but not as sweet. More similes. I could vomit just thinking about the lousy racket. I could vomit anyway. I probably will. Don't push me. Give me time. The wbrms in my solar plexus crawl and crawl and crawl. I would be better off in bed but there would be a dark animal underneath the bed and the dark animal would crawl around rustling and hump himself and bump the underside of the bed, then I would let out a yell that wouldn't make any sound except to me. A dream yell, a yell in a nightmare. There is nothing to be afraid of and I am not afraid because there is nothing to be afraid of, but just the same I was lying like that once in bed and the dark animal was doing it to me, bumping himself against the underside of the bed, and I had an orgasm. That disgusted me more than any other of the nasty things I have done. I'm dirty. I need a shave. My hands are shaking. I'm sweating. I smell foul to myself. The shirt under my arms is wet and on the chest and back. The sleeves are wet in the folds of the elbows. The glass on the table is empty. It would take both hands to pour the stuff now. I could get one out of the bottle maybe to brace me. The taste of the stuff is sickening. And it wouldn't get me anywhere. In the end I won't be able to sleep even and the whole world will moan in the horror of tortured nerves. Good stuff, huh, Wade? More. It's all right for the first two or three days and then it is negative. You suffer and you take a drink and for a little while it is better, but the price keeps getting higher and higher and what you get for it is less and less and then there is always the point where you get nothing but nausea. Then you call Veriinger. All right, Verringer, here I come. There isn't any Verringer any more. He's gone to Cuba or he is dead. The queen has killed him. Poor old Verringer, what a fate, to die in bed with a queen—that kind of queen. Come on, Wade, let's get up and go places. Places where we haven't ever been and aren't ever going back to when we have been. Does this sentence make sense? No. Okay, I'm not asking any money for it. A short pause here for a long commercial. Well, I did it. I got up. What a man. I went over to the couch and here I am kneeling beside the couch with my hands down on it and my face in my hands, crying. Then I prayed and despised myself for praying. Grade Three drunk despising himself. What the hell are you praying to, you fool? If a well man prays, that's faith. A sick man prays and he is just scared. Nuts to prayer. This is the world you made and you make it all by yourself and what little outside help you got—well you made that too. Stop praying, you jerk. Get up on your feet and take that drink. It's too late for anything else now. Well, I took it. Both hands. Poured it in the glass too. Hardly spilled a drop. Now if I can hold it without vomiting. Better add some water. Now lift it slow. Easy, not too much at a time. It gets warm. It gets hot. If I could stop sweating. The glass is empty. It's down on the table again. There's a haze over the moonlight but I set that glass down in spite of it, carefully, carefully, like a spray of roses in a tall vase. The roses nod their heads with dew. Maybe I'm a rose. Brother, have I got dew. Now to get upstairs. Maybe a short one straight for the journey. No? Okay, whatever you say. Take it upstairs when I get there. If I get there, something to look forward to. If I make it upstairs I am entitled to compensation. A token of regard from me to me. I have such a beautiful love for myself—and the sweet part of it—no rivals. Double space. Been up and came down. Didn't like it upstairs. The altitude makes my heart flutter. But I keep hitting these typewriter keys. What a magician is the subconscious. If only 'it would work regular hours. There was moonlight upstairs too. Probably the same moon. No variety about the moon. It comes and goes like the milkman and the moon's milk is always the same. The milk's moon is always — hold it, chum. You've got your feet crossed. This is no time to get involved in the case history of the moon. You got enough case history to take care of the whole damn valley. She was sleeping on her side without sound. Her knees drawn up. Too still I thought. You always make some sound when you sleep. Maybe not asleep, maybe just trying to sleep. If I went closer I would know. Might fall down too. One of her eyes opened — or did it? She looked at me or did she? No. Would have sat up and said, Are you sick, darling? Yes, I am sick, darling. But don't give it a thought, darling, because this sick is my sick and not your sick, and let you sleep still and lovely and never remember and no slime from me to you and nothing come near you that is grim and gray and ugly. You're a louse, Wade. Three adjectives, you lousy writer. Can't you even stream-of-consciousness you louse without getting it in three adjectives for Chris-sake? I came downstairs again holding on to the raiL My guts lurched with the steps and I held them together with a promise. I made the main floor and I made the study and I made the couch and I waited for my heart to slow down. The bottle is handy. One thing you can say about Wade's arrangements the bottle is always handy. Nobody hides it, nobody locks it up. Nobody says, Don't you think you've had enough, darling? You'll make yourself sick, darling. Nobody says that. Just sleep on side softly like roses. I gave Candy too much money. Mistake. Should have started him with a bag of peanuts and worked up to a banana. Then a little real change, slow and easy, always keep him eager. You give him a big slug of the stuff to begin with and pretty soon he has a stake. He can live in Mexico for a month, live high wide and nasty, on what it costs here for a day. So when he gets that stake, what does he do? Well, does a man ever have enough money, if he thinks he can get more? Maybe it's all right. Maybe I ought to kill the shiny-eyed bastard. A good man died for me once, why not a cockroach in a white jacket? Forget Candy. There's always a way to blunt a needle. The other I shall never forget. It's carved on my liver in green fire. Better telephone. Losing control. Feel them jumping, jumping, jumping. Better call someone quick before the pink things crawl on my face. Better call, call, call. Call Sioux City Sue. Hello, Operator, giv( me Long Distance. Hello, Long Distance, get me Sioux City Sue. What's her number? No have number, just name, Operator. You'll find her walking along Tenth Street, on the shady side, under the tall corn trees with their spreading ears. . . . All right, Operator, all right. Just cancel the whole program and let me tell you something, I mean, ask you something. Who's going to pay for all those snazzy parties Gifford is throwing in London, if you cancel my long distance call? Yeah, you think your job is solid. You think. Here, I better talk to Gifford direct. Get him on the line. His valet just brought in his tea. If he can't talk we'll send over somebody that can. Now what did I write that for? What was I trying not to think about? Telephone. Better telephone now. Getting very bad, very, very . . . That was all. I folded the sheets up small and pushed them down into my inside breast pocket behind the note case. I went over to the french windows and opened them wide and stepped out onto the terrace. The moonlight was a little spoiled. But it was summer in Idle Valley and summer is never quite spoiled. I stood there looking at the motionless colorless lake and thought and wondered. Then I heard a shot.
On the balcony two lighted doors were open now—Eileen's and his. Her room was empty. There was a sound of struggling from his and I came through the door in a jump to find her bending over the bed wrestling with him. The black gleam of a gun shot up into the air, two hands, a large male hand and a woman's small hand were both holding it, neither by the butt. Roger was sitting up in bed and leaning forward pushing. She was in a pale blue house coat, one of those quilted things, her hair was all over her face. and now she had both hands on the gun and with a quick jerk she got it away from him I was surprised that she had the strength, even dopey as he was. He fell back glaring and panting and she stepped away and bumped into me. She stood there leaning against me, holding the gun with both hands pressed hard against her body. She was racked with panting sobs. I reached around her body and put my hand on the gun. She spun around as if it took that to make her realize I was there. Her eyes widened and her body sagged against me. She let go of the gun. It was a heavy clumsy weapon, a Webley double-action hammerless. The barrel was warm. I held her with one arm, dropped the gun in my pocket, and looked past her head at him. Nobody said anything. Then he opened his eyes and that weary smile played on his lips. "Nobody hurt," he muttered. "Just a wild shot into the ceiling." I felt her go stiff. Then she pulled away. Her eyes were focused and clear. I let her go. "Roger," she said in a voice not much more than a sick whisper, "did it have to be that?" He stared owlishly, licked his lip and said nothing. She went and leaned against the dressing table. Her hand moved mechanically and threw the hair back from her face. She shuddered once from head to foot, shaking her head from side to side. "Roger," she whispered again. "Poor Roger. Poor miserable Roger." He was staring straight up at the ceiling now. "I had a nightmare," he said slowly. "Somebody with a knife was leaning over the bed. I don't know who. Looked a little like Candy. Couldn't of been Candy." "Of course not, darling," she said softly. She left the dressing table and sat down on the side of the bed. She put her hand out and began to stroke his forehead. "Candy has gone to bed long ago. And why would Candy have a knife?" "He's a Mex. They all have knives," Roger said in the same remote impersonal voice. "They like knives. And he doesn't like me." "Nobody likes you," I said brutally. She turned her head swiftly. "Please—please don't talk like that. He didn't know. He had a dream—" "Where was the gun?" I growled, watching her, not paying any attention to him. "Night table. In the drawer." He turned his head and met my stare. There hadn't been any gun in the drawer, and he knew I knew it. The pills had been in there and some odds and ends, but no gun. "Or under the pillow," he added. "I'm vague about it. I shot once—" he lifted a heavy hand and pointed—"up there." I looked up. There seemed to be a hole in the ceiling plaster all right. I went where I could look up at it. Yes. The kind of hole a bullet might make. From that gun it would go on through, into the attic. I went back close to the bed and stood looking down at him, giving him the hard eye. "Nuts. You meant to kill yourself. You didn't have any nightmare. You were swimming in a sea of self-pity. You didn't have any gun in the drawer or under your pillow either. You got up and got the gun and got back into bed and there you were all ready to wipe out the whole messy business. But I don't think you had the nerve. You fired a shot not meant to hit anything. And your wife came running—that's what you wanted. Just pity and sympathy, pal. Nothing else. Even the struggle was mostly fake. She couldn't take a gun away from you if you didn't want her to." "I'm sick," he said. "But you could be right. Does it matter?" "It matters like this. They'd put you in the psycho ward, and believe me, the people who run that place are about as sympathetic as Georgia chain-gang guards." Eileen stood up suddenly. "That's enough," she said sharply. "He is sick, and you know it." "He wants to be sick. I'm just reminding him of what it would cost him." "This is not the time to tell him." "Go on back to your room." Her blue eyes flashed. "How dare you—" "Go on back to your room. Unless you want me to call the police. These things are supposed to be reported." He almost grinned. "Yeah, call the police," he said, "like you did on Terry Lennox." I didn't pay any attention to that. I was still watching her. She looked exhausted now, and frail, and very beautiful. The moment of flashing anger was gone. I put a hand out and touched her arm. "It's all right," I said. "He won't do it again. Go back to bed." She gave him a long look and went out of the room. When the open door was empty of her I sat down on the side of the bed where she had been sitting. "More pills?" "No thanks. It doesn't matter whether I sleep. I feel a lot better." "Did I hit right about that shot? It was just a crazy bit of acting?" "More or less." He turned his head away. "I guess I was lightheaded." "Nobody can stop you from killing yourself, if you really want to. I realize that. So do you." "Yes." He was still looking away. "Did you do what I asked you—that stuff in the typewriter?" "Uh huh. I'm surprised you remember. It's pretty crazy writing. Funny thing, it's clearly typed." "I can always do that—drunk or sober—up to a point anyway." "Don't worry about Candy," I said. "You're wrong about his not liking you. And I was wrong to say nobody did. I was trying to jar Eileen, make her mad." "Why?" "She pulled one faint already tonight." He shook his head slightly. "Eileen never faints." "Then it was a phony." He didn't like that either. "What did you mean—a good man died for you?" I asked. He frowned, thinking about it. "Just rubbish. I told you I had a dream—" "I'm talking about that gaff you typed out." He looked at me now, turning his head on the pillow as if it had enormous weight. "Another dream." "I'll try again. What's Candy got on you?" "Shove it, Jack," he said, and closed his eyes. I got up and closed the door. "You can't run forever, Wade. Candy could be a blackmailer, sure. Easy. He could even be nice about it—like you and lift your dough at the same time. What is it—a woman?" "You believe that fool, Loring," he said with his eyes closed. "Not exactly. What about the sister—the one that's dead?" It was a wild pitch in a sense but it happened to split the plate. His eyes snapped wide open. A bubble of saliva showed on his lips. "Is that — why you're here?" he asked slowly, and in a whispering voice. "You know better. I was invited. You invited me." His head rolled back and forth on the pillow. In spite of the seconal he was eaten up by his nerves. His face was covered with sweat. "I'm not the first loving husband who has been an adulterer. Leave me alone, damn you. Leave me alone." I went into the bathroom and got a face towel and wiped his face off. I grinned at him sneeringly. I was the heel to end all heels. Wait until the man is down, then kick him and kick him again. He's weak. He can't resist or kick back. "One of these days we'll get together on it," I said. "I'm not crazy," he said. "You just hope you're not crazy." "I've been living in hell." "Oh sure. That's obvious. The interesting point is why. Here — take this." I had another seconal out of the night table and another glass of water. He got up on one elbow and grabbed for the glass and missed it by a good four inches. I put it in his hand. He managed to drink and swallow his pill. Then he lay back flat and deflated, his face drained of emotion. His nose had that pinched look. He could almost have been a dead man. He wasn't throwing anybody down any stairs tonight. Most likely not any night. When his eyelids got heavy I went out of the room. The weight of the Webley was against my hip, dragging at my pocket. I started back downstairs again. Eileen's door was open. Her room was dark but there was enough light from the moon to frame her standing just inside the door. She called out something that sounded like a name, but it wasn't mine. I stepped close to her. "Keep your voice down," I said. "He's gone back to sleep." "I always knew you would come back," she said softly. "Even after ten years." I peered at her. One of us was goofy. "Shut the door," she said in the same caressing voice. "All these years I have kept myself for you." I turned and shut the door. It seemed like a good idea at the moment. When I faced her she was already falling towards me. So I caught her. I damn well had to. She pressed herself hard against me and her hair brushed my face. Her mouth came up to be kissed. She was trembling. Her lips opened and her teeth opened and her tongue darted. Then her hands dropped and jerked at something and the robe she was wearing came open and underneath it she was as naked as September Morn but a darn sight less coy. "Put me on the bed," she breathed. I did that. Putting my arms around her I touched bare skin, soft skin, soft yielding flesh. I lifted her and carried her the few steps to the bed and lowered her. She kept her arms around my neck. She was making some kind of a whistling noise in her throat. Then she thrashed about and moaned. This was murder. I was as erotic as a stallion. I was losing control. You don't get that sort of invitation from that sort of woman very often anywhere. Candy saved me. There was a thin squeak and I swung around to see the doorknob moving. I jerked loose and jumped for the door. I got it open and barged out through it and the Mex was tearing along the hall and down the stairs. Halfway down he stopped and turned and leered at me. Then he was gone I went back to the door and shut it — from the outside this time. Some kind of weird noises were coming from the woman on the bed, but that's all they were now. Weird noises. The spell was broken. I went down the stairs fast and crossed into the study and grabbed the bottle of Scotch and tilted it; When I couldn't swallow any more I leaned against the wall and panted and let the stuff burn in me until the fumes reached my brain. It was a long time since dinner. It was a long time since anything that was normal. The whiskey hit me hard and fast and I kept guzzling it until the room started to get hazy and the furniture was all in the wrong places and the lamplight was like widlfire or summer lightning. Then I was flat out on the leather couch, trying to balance the bottle on my chest. It seemed to be empty. It rolled away and thumped on the floor. That was the last incident of which I took any precise notice.
A shaft of sunlight tickled one of my ankles. I opened my eyes and saw the crown of a tree moving gently against a hazed blue sky. I rolled over and leather touched mycheek. An axe split my head. I sat up. There was a rug over me. I threw that off and got my feet on the floor. I scowled at a clock. The clock said a minute short of six-thirty. I got up on my feet and it took character. It took will power. It took a lot out of me, and there wasn't as much to spare as there once had been. The hard heavy years had worked me over. I plowed across to the half bath and stripped off my tie and shirt and sloshed cold water in my face with both hands and sloshed it on my head. When I was dripping wet I toweled myself off savagely. I put my shirt and tie back on and reached for my jacket and the gun in the pocket banged against the wall. I took it out and swung the cylinder away from the frame and tipped the cartridges into my hand, five full, one just a blackened shell. Then I thought, what's the use, there are always more of them. So I put them back where they had been before and carried the gun into the study and put it away in one of the drawers of the desk. When I looked up Candy was standing in the doorway, spick and span in his white coat, his hair brushed back and shining black, his eyes bitter. "You want some coffee?" "Thanks." "I put the lamps out. The boss is okay. Asleep. I shut his door. Why you get drunk?" "I had to." He sneered at me. "Didn't make her, huh? Got tossed out on your can, shamus." "Have it your own way." "You ain't tough this morning, shamus. You ain't tough at all." "Get the goddain coffee," I yelled at him. "Hijo de puta!" In one jump I had him by the arm. He didn't move. He just looked at me contemptuously. I laughed and let go of his arm. "You're right, Candy. I'm not tough at all." He turned and went out. In no time at all he was back with a silver tray and a imall silver pot of coffee on it and sugar and cream and a neat triangular napkin. He set it down on the cocktail table and removed the empty bottle and the rest of the drinking materials. He picked another bottle off the floor. "Fresh. Just made," he said, and went out. I drank two cups black. Then I tried a cigarette. It was all right. I still belonged to the human race. Then Candy was back in the room again. "You want breakfast?" he asked morosely. "No, thanks." "Okay, scram out of here. We don't want you around." "Who's we?" He lifted the lid of a box and helped himself to a cigarette. He lit it and blew smoke at me insolently. "I take care of the boss," he said. "You making it pay?" He frowned, then nodded. "Oh yes. Good money." "How much on the side—for not spilling what you know?" He went back to Spanish. "No entendido." "You understand all right. How much you shake him for? I bet it's not more than a couple of yards." "What's that? Couple of yards." "Two hundred bucks." He grinned. "You give me couple of yards, shamus. So I don't tell the boss you come out of her room last night." "That would buy a whole busload of wetbacks like you." He shrugged that off. "The boss gets pretty rough when he blows his top. Better pay up, shamus." "Pachuco stuff," I said contemptuously. "All you're touching is the small money. Lots of men play around when they're lit. Anyhow she knows all about it. You don't have anything to sell." There was a gleam in his eye. "Just don't come round any more, tough boy." "I'm leaving." I stood up and walked around the table. He moved enough to keep facing towards me. I watched his hand but he evidently wasn't wearing a knife this morning. When I was close enough I slapped a hand across his face. "I don't get called a son of a whore by the help, greaseball. I've got business here and I come around whenever I feel like it. Watch your lip from now on. You might get pistol-whipped. That pretty face of yours would never look the same again." He didn't react at all, not even to the slap. That and being called a greaseball must have been deadly insults to him. But this time he just stood there wooden-faced, motionless. Then without a word he picked up the coffee tray and carried it out. "Thanks for the coffee," I said to his back. He kept going. When he was gone I felt the bristles on my chin, shook myself, and decided to be on my way. I had had a skinful of the Wade family. As I crossed the living room Eileen was coming down the stairs in white slacks and open-toed sandals and a pale blue shirt. She looked at me with complete surprise. "I didn't know you were here, Mr. Marlowe," she said, as though she hadn't seen me for a week and at that time I had just dropped in for tea. "I put his gun in the desk," I said. "Gun?" Then it seemed to dawn on her. "Oh, last night was a little hectic, wasn't it? But I thought you had gone home." I walked over closer to her. She had a thin gold chain around her neck and some kind of fancy pendant in gold and blue on white enamel. The blue enameled part looked like a pair of wings, but not spread out. Against these there was a broad white enamel and gold dagger that pierced a scroll. I couldn't read the words. It was some kind of military insigne. "I got drunk," I said. "Deliberately and not elegantly. I was a little lonely." "You didn't have to be," she said, and her eyes were as clear as water. There wasn't a trace of guile in them. "A matter of opinion," I said. "I'm leaving now and I'm not sure I'll be back. You heard what I said about the gun?" "You put it in his desk. It might be a good idea to put it somewhere else. But he didn't really mean to shoot himself, did he?" "I can't answer that. But next time he might." She shook her head. "I don't think so. I really don't. You were a wonderful help last night, Mr. Marlowe. I don't know how to thank you." "You made a pretty good try." She got pink. Then she laughed. "I had a very curious dream in the night," she said slowly, looking off over my shoulder. "Someone I used to know was here in the house. Someone who has been dead for ten years." Her fingers went up and touched the gold and enamel pendant. "That's why I am wearing this today. He gave it to me." "I had a curious dream myself," I said. "But I'm not telling mine. Let me know how Roger gets on and if there is anything I can do." She lowered her eyes and looked into mine. "You said you were not coming back." "I said I wasn't sure. I may have to come back. I hope I won't. There is something very wrong in this house. And only part of it came out of a bottle." She stared at me, frowning. "What does that mean?" "I think you know what I'm talking about." She thought it over carefully. Her fingers were still touching the pendant gently. She let out a slow patient sigh. "There's always another woman," she said quietly. "At some time or other. It's not necessarily fatal. We're talking at cross purposes, aren't we? We are not even talking about the same thing, perhaps." "Could be," I said. She was still standing on the steps, the third step from the bottom. She still had her fingers on the pendant. She still looked like a golden dream. "Especially if you have in mind that the other woman is Linda Loring." She dropped her hand from the pendant and came down one more step of the stairs. "Dr. Loring seems to agree with me," she said indifferently. "He must have some source of information." "You said he had played that scene with half the males in the valley." "Did I? Well — it was the conventional sort of thing to say at the time." She came down another step. "I haven't shaved," I said. That startled her. Then she laughed. "Oh, I wasn't expecting you to make love to me." "Just what did you expect of me, Mrs. Wade—in the beginning, when you first persuaded me to go hunting? Why me — what have I got to offer?" "You kept faith," she said quietly. "When it couldn't have been very easy." "I'm touched. But I don't think that was the reason." She came down the last step and then she was looking up at me. "Then what was the reason?" "Or if it was — it was a damn poor reason. Just about the worst reason in the world." She frowned a tiny frown. "Why?" "Because what I did — this keeping faith — is something even a fool doesn't do twice." "You know," she said lightly, "this is getting to be a very enigmatic conversation." "You're a very enigmatic person, Mrs. Wade. So long and good luck and if you really care anything about Roger, you'd better find him the right kind of doctor—and quick." She laughed again. "Oh, that was a mild attack last night. You ought to see him in a bad one. He'll be up and working by this afternoon." "Like hell he will." "But believe me he will. I know him so well." I gave her the last shot right in the teeth and it sounded pretty nasty. "You don't really want to save him, do you? You just want to look as if you are trying to save him." "That," she said deliberately, "was a very beastly thing to say to me." She stepped past me and walked through the dining room doors and then the big room was empty and I crossed to the front door and let myself out. It was a perfect summer morning in that bright secluded valley. It was too far from the city to get any smog and cut off by the low mountains from the dampness of the ocean. It was going to be hot later, but in a nice refined exclusive sort of way, nothing brutal like the heat of the desert, not sticky and rank like the heat of the city. Idle Valley was a perfect place to live. Perfect. Nice people with nice homes, nice cars, nice horses, nice dogs, possibly even nice children. But all a man named Marlowe wanted from it was out. And fast.