I went home and showered and shaved and changed clothes and began to feel clean again. I cooked some breakfast, ate it, washed up, swept the kitchen and the service porch, filled a pipe and called the phone answering service. I shot a blank. Why go to the office? There would be nothing there but another dead moth and another layer of dust. In the safe would be my portrait of Madison. I could go down and play with that, and with the five crisp hundred dollar bills that still smelled of coffee. I could do that, but I didn't want to. Something inside me had gone sour. None of it really belonged to me. What was it supposed to buy? How much loyalty can a dead man use? Phooey: I was looking at life through the mists of a hangover. It was the kind of morning that seems to go on forever. I was flat and tired and dull and the passing minutes seemed to fall into a void, with a soft whirring sound, like spent rockets. Birds chirped in the shrubbery outside and the cars went up and down Laurel Canyon Boulevard endlessly. Usually I wouldn't even hear them. But I was brooding and irritable and mean and oversensitive. I decided to kill the hangover. Ordinarily I was not a morning drinker. The Southern California climate is too soft for it. You don't metabolize fast enough. But I mixed a tall cold one this time and sat in an easy chair with my shirt open and pecked at a magazine, reading a crazy story about a guy that had two lives and two psychiatrists, one was human and one was some kind of insect in a hive. The guy kept going from one to the other and the whole thing was as crazy as a crumpet, but funny in an off-beat sort of way. I was handling the drink carefully, a sip at a time, watching myself. It was about noon when the telephone rang and the voice said: "This is Linda Loring. I called your office and your phone service told me to try your home. I'd like to see you.' "Why?" "I'd rather explain that in person. You go to your office from time to time, I suppose." "Yeah. From time to time. Is there any money in it?" "I hadn't thought of it that way. But I have no objection, if you want to be paid. I could be at your office in about an hour." "Goody." "What's the matter with you?" she asked sharply. "Hangover. But I'm not paralyzed. I'll be there. Unless you'd rather come here." "Your office would suit me better." "I've got a nice quiet place here. Dead-end street, no near neighbors." "The implication does not attract me—if I understand you." "Nobody understands me, Mrs. Loring. I'm enigmatic. Okay, I'll struggle down to the coop." "Thank you so much." She hung up. I was slow getting down there because I stopped on the way for a sandwich. I aired out the office and switched on the buzzer and poked my head through the communicating door and she was there already, sitting in the same chair where Mendy Menendez had sat and looking through what could have been the same magazine. She had a tan gabardine suit on today and she looked pretty elegant. She put the magazine aside, gave me a serious look and said: "Your Boston fern needs watering. I think it needs repotting too. Too many air roots." I held the door open for her. The hell with the Boston fern. When she was inside and I had let the door swing shut I held the customer's chair for her and she gave the office the usual once-over. I got around to my side of the desk. "You're establishment isn't exactly palatial," she said. "Don't you even have a secretary?" "It's a sordid life, but I'm used to it." "Mid I shouldn't think very lucrative," she said. "Oh I don't know. Depends. Want to see a portrait of Madison?" "A what?" "A five-thousand-dollar bill. Retainer. I've got it in the safe." I got up and started over there. I spun the knob and opened it and unlocked a drawer inside, opened an envelope, and dropped it in front of her. She stared at it in something like amazement. "Don't let the office fool you," I said. "I worked for an old boy one time that would cash in at about twenty millions. Even your old man would say hello to him. His office was no better than mine, except he was a bit deaf and had that soundproofing stuff on the ceiling. On the floor brown linoleum, no carpet." She picked the portrait of Madison up and pulled it between her fingers and turned it over. She put it down again. "You got this from Terry, didn't you?" "Gosh, you know everything, don't you Mrs. Loring?" She pushed the bill away from her, frowning. "He had one. He carried it on him ever since he and Sylvia were married the second time. He called it his mad money. It was not found on his body." "There could be other reasons for that." "I know. But how many people carry a five-thousand-dollar bill around with them? How many who could afford to give you that much money would give it to you in this form?" It wasn't worth answering. I just nodded. She went on brusquely. "And what were you supposed to do for it, Mr. Marlowe?' Or would you tell me? On that last ride down to Tijuana he had plenty of time to talk. You made it very clear the other evening that you didn't believe his confession. Did he give you a list of his wife's lovers so that you might find a murderer among them?" I didn't answer that either, but for different reasons. "And would the name of Roger Wade appear on that list by any chance?" she asked harshly. "If Terry didn't kill his wife, the murderer would have to be some violent and irresponsible man, a lunatic or a savage drunk. Only that sort of man could, to use your own repulsive phrase, beat her face into a bloody sponge. Is that why you are making yourself so very useful to the Wades—a regular-mother's helper who comes on call to nurse him when he is drunk, to find him when he is lost, to bring him home when he is helpless?" "Let me set you right on a couple of points, Mrs. Loring, Terry may or may not have given me that beautiful piece of engraving. But he gave me no list and mentioned no names. There was nothing he asked me to do except what you seem to feel sure I did do, drive him to Tijuana. My getting involved with the Wades was the work of a New York publisher who is desperate to have Roger Wade finish his book, which involves keeping him fairly sober, which'in turn involves finding out if there is any special trouble that makes him get drunk. If there is and it an be found out, then the next step would be an effort to remove it. I say effort, because the chances are you couldn't do it. But you could try." "I could tell you in one simple sentence why he gets drunk," she said contemptuously. "That anemic blond show piece he's married to." "Oh I don't know," I said. "I wouldn't call her anemic." "Really? How interesting." Her eyes glittered. I picked up my portrait of Madison. "Don't chew too long on that one, Mrs. Loring. I am not sleeping with the lady. Sorry to disappoint you." I went over to the safe and put my money away in the locked compartment. I shut the safe and spun the dial. "On second thought," she said to my back, "I doubt very much that anyone is sleeping with her." I went back and sat on the corner of the desk. "You're getting bitchy, Mrs. Loring. Why? Are you carrying a torch for our alcoholic friend?" "I hate remarks like that," she said bitingly. "I hate them. I suppose that idiotic scene my husband made makes you think you have the right to insult me. No, I am not carrying a torch for Roger Wade. I never did—even when he was a sober man who behaved himself. Still less now that he is what he is." I flopped into my chair, reached for a matchbox, and stared at her. She looked at her watch. "You people with a lot of money are really something," I said. "You think anything you choose to say, however nasty, is perfectly all right. You can make sneering remarks about Wade and his wife to a man you hardly know, but if I hand you back a little change, that's an insult. Okay, let's play it low down. Any drunk will eventually turn up with a loose woman. Wade is a drunk, but you're not a loose woman. That's just a casual suggestion your high-bred husband drops to brighten up a cocktail party. He doesn't mean it, he's just saying it for laughs. So we rule you out, and look for a loose woman elsewhere. How far do we have to look, Mrs. Loring—to find one that would involve you enough to bring you down here trading sneers with me? It has to be somebody rather special, doesn't it—otherwise why should you care?" She sat perfectly silent, just looking. A long half minute went by. The corners of her mouth were white and her hands were rigid on her gabardine bag that matched her suit. "You haven't exactly wasted your time, have you?" she said at last. "How convenient that this publisher should have thought of employing you! So Terry named no names to you! Not a name. But it really didn't matter, did it, Mr. Marlowe? Your instinct was unerring. May I ask what you propose to do next?" "Nothing." "Why, what a waste of talent! How can you reconcile it with your obligation to your portrait of Madison? Surely there must be something you can do." "Just between the two of us," I said, "you're getting pretty corny. So Wade knew your sister. Thanks for telling me, however indirectly. I already guessed it. So what? He's just one of what was most likely a fairly rich collection. Let's leave it there. And let's get around to why you wanted to see me. That kind of got lost in the shuffle didn't it?" She stood up. She glanced at her watch once more. "I have a car downstairs. Could I prevail upon you to drive home with me and drink a cup of tea?" "Go on," I said. "Let's have it." "Do I sound so suspicious? I have a guest who would like to make your acquaintance." "The old man?" "I don't call him that," she said evenly. I stood up and leaned across the desk. "Honey, you're awful cute sometimes. You really are. Is it all right if I carry a gun?" "Surely you're not afraid of an old man." She wrinkled her lip at me. "Why not? I'll bet you are—plenty." She sighed. "Yes, I'm afraid I am. I always have been. He can be rather terrifying." "Maybe I'd better take two guns," I said, then wished I hadn't.
It was the damndest-looking house I ever saw. It was a square gray box three stories high, with a mansard roof, steeply sloped and broken by twenty or thirty double dormer windows with a lot of wedding cake decoration around them and between them. The entrance had double stone pillars on each side but the cream of the joint was an outside spiral staircase with a stone railing, topped by a tower room from which there must have been a view the whole length of the lake. The motor yard was paved with stone. What the place really seemed to need was a half mile of poplar-lined driveway and a deer park and a wild garden and a terrace on three levels and a few hundred roses outside the library window and a long green vista from every window ending in forest and silence and quiet emptiness. What it had was a wall of fieldstone around a comfortable ten or fifteen acres, which is a fair hunk of real estate in our crowded little country. The driveway was lined with a cypress hedge trimthed round. There were all sorts of ornamental trees in dumps here and there and they didn't look like California trees. Imported stuff. Whoever built that place was trying to drag the Atlantic seaboard over the Rockies. He was trying hard, but he hadn't made it. A.ios, the middle-aged colored chauffeur, stopped the Caddy gently in front of the pillared entrance, hopped out, and came around to hold the open door for Mrs. Loring. I got out first and helped him hold it. I helped her get out. She had hardly spoken to me since we got into the car in front of my building. She looked tired and nervous. Maybe this idiotic hunk of architecture depressed her. It would have depressed a laughing jackass and made it coo like a mourning dove. "Who built this placer' I asked her. "And who was he mad at?" She finally smiled. "Hadn't you seen it before?" "Never been this far into the valley." She walked me over to the other side of the driveway and pointed up. "The-man who built it jumped out of that tower room and landed about where you are standing. He was a French count named La Tourelle and unlike most French counts he had a lot of money. His wife was Ramona Desborough, who was not exactly threadbare herself. In the silent-picture days she made thirty thousand a week. La Tourelle built this place for their home. It's supposed to be a miniature of the Chateau de Blois You know that, of course." "Like the back of my hand," I said. "I remember now. It was one of those Sunday paper stories once. She left him and he killed himself. There was some kind of queer will too, wasn't there?" She nodded. "He left his ex-wife a few millions for carfare and tied the rest up in a trust. The estate was to be kept on just as it was. Nothing was to be changed, the dining table was to be laid in style every night, and nobody was to be allowed inside the grounds except the servants and the lawyers. The will was broken, of course. Eventually the estate was carved up to some extent and when married Dr. Loring my father gave it to me for a wedding present. It must have cost him a fortune merely to make it fit to live in again. I loathe it. I always have." "You don't have to stay here, do you?" She shrugged in a tired sort of way. "Part of the time, at least. One of his daughters has to show him some sign of stability. Dr. Loring likes it here." "He would. Any guy who could make the kind of scene he made at Wade's house ought to wear spats with his pajamas." She arched her eyebrows. "Why, thank you for taking such an interest, Mr. Marlowe. But I think enough has been said on that subject. Shall we go in? My father doesn't like to be kept waiting." We crossed the driveway again and went up the stone steps and half of the big double doors swung open noiselessly and an expensive and very snooty looking character stood aside for us to enter. The hallway was bigger than all the floor space in the house I was living in. It had a tesselated floor and there seemed to be stained-glass windows at the back and if there had been any light coming through them I might have been able to see what else was there. From the hallway we went through some more double carved doors into a dim room that couldn't have been less than seventy feet long. A man was sitting there waiting, silent. He stared at us coldly. "Am I late, Father?" Mrs. Loring asked hurriedly. "This is Mr. Philip Marlowe. Mr. Harlan Potter." The man just looked at me and moved his chin down about half an inch. "Ring for tea," he said. "Sit down, Mr. Marlowe." I sat down and looked at him. He looked at me like an entomologist looking at a beetle. Nobody said anything. There was complete silence until the tea came. It was put down on a huge silver tray on a Chinese table. Linda sat at a table and poured. "Two cups," Harlan Potter said. "You can have your tea in another room, Linda." "Yes, Father. How do you like your tea, Mr. Marlowe?" "Any way at all," I said. My voice seemed to echo off into the distance and get small and lonely. She gave the old man a cup and then gave me a cup. Then she stood up silently and went out of the room. I watched her go. I took a sip of tea and got a cigarette out. "Don't smoke, please. I am subject to asthma." I put the cigarette back in the pack. I stared at him. I don't know how it feels to be worth a hundred million or so, but he didn't look as if he was having any fun. He was an enormous man, all of six feet five and built to scale. He wore a gray tweed suit with no padding. His shoulders didn't need any. He wore a white shirt and a dark tie and no display handkerchief. A spectade case showed in the outside breast pocket. It was black, like his shoes. His hair was black too, no gray at all. It 'was brushed sideways across his skull in a MacArthur sweep. And I had a hunch there was nothing under it but bare skull. His eyebrows were thick and black. His voice seemed to come from a long way off. He drank his tea as if he hated it. "It will save time, Mr. Marlowe, if I put my position before you. I believe you are interfering in my affairs. If I am correct, I propose to stop it." "I don't know enough about your affairs to interfere in them, Mr. Potter." "I disagree." He drank some more tea and put the cup aside. He leaned back in the big chair he was sitting in and took me to pieces with his hard gray eyes. "I know who you are, naturally. And how you make your living—if you make one — and how you became involved with Terry Lennox. It has been reported to me that you helped Terry get out of the country, that you have doubts about his guilt, and that you have since made contact with a man who was known to my dead daughter. For what purpose has not been explained to me. Explain it. ' "If the man has a name," I said, "name it." He smiled very slightly but not as if he was falling for me. "Wade. Roger Wade. Some sort of writer, I believe. A writer, they tell me, of rather prurient books which I should not be interested to read. I further understand that this man is a dangerous alcoholic. That may have given you a strange notion." "Maybe you had better let me have my own notions, Mr. Potter. They are not important, naturally, but they're all I have. First, I do not believe Terry killed his wife, because of the way it was done and because I don't think he was that kind of man. Second, I didn't make contact with Wade. I was asked to live in his house and do what I could to keep him sober while he finished a job of writing. Third, if he is a dangerous alcoholic, I haven't seen any sign of it. Fourth, my first contact was at the request of his New York publisher and I didn't at that time have any idea that Roger Wade even knew your daughter. Fifth, I refused this offer of employment and then Mrs. Wade asked me to find her husband who was away somewhere taking a cure. I found him and took him home." "Very methodical," he said dryly. "I'm not finished being methodical, Mr. Potter. Sixth — you or someone on your instructions sent a lawyer named Sewell Endicott to get me out of jail. He didn't say who sent him, but there wasn't anyone else in the picture. Seventh, when I got Out of jail a hoodlum named Mendy Menendez pushed me around and warned me to keep my nose clean and gave me a song and dance about how Terry had saved his life and the life of a gambler at Las Vegas named Randy Starr. The story could be true for all I know. Menendez pretended to be sore that Terry hadn't asked him for help getting to Mexico and had asked a punk like me instead. He, Menendez, could have done it two ways from the jack by lifting one finger, and done it much better." "Surely," Harlan Potter said with a bleak smile, "you are not under the impression that I number Mr. Menendez and Mr. Starr among my acquaintances." "I wouldn't know, Mr. Potter. A man doesn't make your kind of money in any way I can understand. The next person to warn me off the courthouse lawn was your daughter, Mrs. Loring. We met by accident at a bar and we spoke because we were both drinking gimlets, Terry's favorite drink, but an uncommon one around here. I didn't know who she was until she told me. I told her a little of how I felt about Terry and she gave me the idea that I would have a short unhappy career if I got you mad. Are you mad, Mr. Potter?" "When I am," he said coldly, "you will not have to ask me. You will be in no uncertainty about it." "What I thought. I've been kind of expecting the goon squad to drop around, but they haven't shown so far. I haven't been bothered by the cops either. I could have been. I could have been given a rough time. I think all you wanted, Mr. Potter, was quiet. Just what have I done to disturb you?" He grinned. It was a sour kind of grin, but it was a grin. He put his long yellow fingers together and crossed a leg over his knee and leaned back comfortably. "A pretty good pitch, Mr. Marlowe, and I have let you make it. Now listen to me. You are exactly right in thinking all I want is quiet. It's quite possible that your connection with the Wades may be incidental, accidental, and coincidental. Let it remain so. I am a family man in an age when it means almost nothing. One of my daughters married a Bostonian prig and the other made a number of foolish marriages, the last being with a complaisant pauper who allowed her to live a worthless and immoral life until he suddenly and for, no good reason lost his self-control and murdered her. You think that impossible to accept because of the brutality with which it was done. You are Wrong. He shot her with a Mauser automatic, the very gun he took with him to Mexico. And after he shot her he did what he did in order to cover the bullet wound. I admit the brutality of this, but remember the man had been in a war, had been badly wounded, had suffered a great deal and seen others suffer. He may not have intended to kill her. There may have been some sort of scuffle, since the gun belonged to my daughter. It was a small but powerful gun, 7.65 mm caliber, a model called P.P.K. The bullet went completely through her head and lodged in the wall behind a chintz curtain. It was not found immediately and the fact was not published at all. Now let us consider the situation." He broke off and stared at me. "Are you very badly in need of a cigarette?" "Sorry, Mr. Potter. I took it out without thinking. Force of habit." I put the cigarette back for the second time. "Terry had just killed his wife. He had ample motive from the rather limited police point of view. But he also had an excellent defense—that it was her gun in her possession and that he tried to take it away from her and failed and she shot herself with it. A good trial lawyer could have done a lot with that. He would probably have been acquitted. If he had called me up then, I would have helped hirn. But by making the murder a brutal affair to cover the traces of the bullet, he made it impossible. He had to run away and even that he did clumsily." "He certainly did, Mr. Potter. But he called you up in Pasadena first, didn't he? He told me he did." The big man nodded. "I told him to disappear and I would still see what I could do. I didn't want to know where he was. That was imperative. I could not hide a criminal." "Sounds good, Mr. Potter." "Do I detect a note of sarcasm? No matter, When I learned the details there was nothing to be done. I could not permit the sort of trial that kind of killing would result in. To be frank, I was very glad when I learned that he had shot himself in Mexico and left a confession." "I can understand that, Mr. Potter." He beetled his eyebrows at me. "Be careful, young man. I don't like irony. Can you understand now that I cannot tolerate any further investigation of any sort by any person? And why I have used all my influence to make what investigation there was as brief as possible and as little publicized as possible?" "Sure—if you're convinced he killed her." "Of course he killed her. With what intent is another matter. it is no longer important. I am not a public character and I do not intend to be. I have always gone to a great deal of trouble to avoid any kind of publicity. I have influence but I don't abuse it. The District Attorney of Los Angeles County is an ambitious man who has too much good sense to wreck his career for the notoriety of the moment. I see a glint in your eye, Marlowe. Get rid of it. We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect, but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody has to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union or what have you, expects some consideration in return. What I and people of my kind expect is to be allowed to live our lives in decent privacy. I own newspapers, but I don't like them. I regard them as a constant menace to whatever privacy we have left. Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo, and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on its circulation and you know what the circulation depends on." I got up and walked around my chair. He eyed me with cold attention. I sat down again. I needed a little luck. Hell, I needed it in carload lots. "Okay, Mr. Potter, what goes from here?" He wasn't listening. He was frowning at his own thoughts. "There's a peculiar thing about money," he went on. "In large quantities it tends to have a life of its own, even a conscience of its own. The power of money becomes very difficult to control. Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of wars, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation—all these things make him more and more venaL The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can't afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can't expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can't have quality with mass production. You don't want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn't sell its goods next year unless it made what it sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the aveitage American housewife can't produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr. Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk." He took out a large white handkerchief and touched his temples with it. I was sitting there with my mouth open, wondering what made the guy tick. He hated everything. "It's a little too warm for me in these parts," he said. "I'm used to a cooler climate. I'm beginning to sound like an editorial that has forgotten the point it wanted to make." "I got your point all right, Mr. Potter. You don't like the way the world is going so you use what power you have to close off a private corner to live in as near as possible to the way you remember people lived fifty years ago before the age of mass production. You've got a hundred million dollars and all it has bought you is a pain in the neck." He pulled the handkerchief taut by two opposite corners, then crumpled it into a ball and stuffed it in a pocket. "And then?" he asked shortly. "That's all there is, there isn't any more. You don't care who murdered your daughter, Mr. Potter. You wrote her off as a bad job long ago. Even if Terry Lennox didn't kill her, and the real murderer is still walking around free, you don't care. You wouldn't want him caught, because that would revive the scandal and there would have to be a trial and his defense would blow your privacy as high as the Empire State Building. Unless, of course, he was obliging enough to commit suicide, before there was any trial. Preferably in Tahiti or Guatemala or the middle of the Sahara Desert. Anywhere where the County would hate the expense of sending a man to verify what had happened." He smiled suddenly, a big rugged smile with a reasonable amount of friendliness in it. "What do you want from me, Marlowe?" "If you mean how much money, nothing. I didn't ask myself here. I was brought. I told the truth about how I met Roger Wade. But he did know your daughter and he does have a record of violence, although I haven't seen any of it. Last night the guy tried to shoot himself. He's a haunted man. He has a massive guilt complex. If I happened to be looking for a good suspect, he might do. I realize he's only one of many, but he happens to be the only one I've met." He stood up and standing up he was really big. Tough too. He came over and stood in front of me. "A telephone call, Mr. Marlowe, would deprive you of your license. Don't fence with me. I won't put up with it." "Two telephone calls and I'd wake up kissing the gutter — with the back of my head missing." He laughed harshly. "I don't operate that way. I suppose in your quaint line of business it is natural for you to think so. I've given you too much of my time. I'll ring for the butler to show you out." "Not necessary," I said, and stood up myself. "I came here and got told. Thanks for the time." He held his hand out. "Thank you for coming. I think you're a pretty honest sort of fellow. Don't be a hero, young man. There's no percentage in it." I shook hands with him. He had a grip like a pipe wrench. He smiled at me benignantly now. He was Mr. Big, the winner, everything under control. "One of these days I might be able to throw some business your way," he said. "And don't go away thinking that I buy politicians or law enforcement officers. I don't have to. Goodbye, Mr. Marlowe. And thank you again for coming." He stood there and watched me out of the room. I had my hand on the front door when Linda Loring popped out of a shadow somewhere. "Well?" she asked me quietly. "How did you get on with Father?" "Fine. He explained civilization to me. I mean how it looks to him. He's going to let it go on for a little while longer. But it better be careful and not interfere with his private life. If it does, he's apt to make a phone call to God and cancel the order." "You're hopeless," she said. "Me? I'm hopeless? Lady, take a look at your old man. Compared with him I'm a blue-eyed baby with a brand new rattle." I went on out and Amos had the Caddy there waiting. He4drove me back to Hollywood. I offered him a buck but he wouldn't take it. I offered to buy him the poems of T. S. Eliot. He said he already had them.
A week went by and I heard nothing from the Wades. The weather was hot and sticky and the acid sting of the smog had crept as far west as Beverly Hills. From the top of Mulholland Drive you could see it leveled out all over the city like a ground mist. When you were in it you could taste it and smell it and it made your eyes smart. Everybody was griping about it. In Pasadena, where the stuffy millionaires holed up after Beverly Hills was spoiled for them by the movie crowd, the city fathers screamed with rage. Everything was the fault of the smog. If the canary wouldn't sing, if the milkman was late, if the Pekinese had fleas, if an old coot in a starched collar had a heart' attack on the way to church, that was the smog. Where I lived it was usually clear in the early morning and nearly always at night. Once in a while a whole day would be clear, nobody quite knew why. It was on a day like that—it happened to be a Thursday—that Roger Wade called me up. "How are you? This is Wade." He sounded fine. "Fine, and you?" "Sober, I'm afraid. Scratching a hard buck. We ought to have a talk. And I think I owe you some dough." "Nope." "Well, how about lunch today? Could you make it here somewhere around one?" "I guess so. How's Candy?" "Candy?" He sounded puzzled. He must have blacked out plenty that night. "Oh, he helped you put me to bed that night." "Yeah. He's a helpful little guy—in spots. And Mrs. Wade?" "She's fine too. She's in town shopping today." We hung up and I sat and rocked in my swivel chair. I ought to have asked him how the book was going. Maybe you always ought to ask a writer how the book is going. And then again maybe he gets damned tired of that question. I had another call in a little while, a strange voice. "This is Roy Ashterfelt. George Peters told me to call you up, Marlowe." "Oh yes, thanks. You're the fellow that knew Terry Lennox in New York. Called himself Marston then." "That's right. He was sure on the sauce. But it's the same guy all right. You couldn't very well mistake him. Out here I saw him in Chasen's one night with his wife. I was with a client. The client knew them. Can't tell you the client's name, I'm afraid." "I understand. It's not very important now, I guess. What was his first name?" "Wait a minute while I bite my thumb. Oh yeah, Paul. Paul Marston. And there was one thing more, if it interests you. He was wearing a British Army service badge. Their version of the ruptured duck." "I see. What happened to him?" "I don't know. I came west. Next time I saw him he was here too— married to Harlan Potter's somewhat wild daughter. But you know all that." "They're both dead now. But thanks for telling me." "Not at all. Glad to help. Does it mean anything to you?" "Not a thing," I said, and I was a liar. "I never asked him about himself. He told me once he had been brought up in an orphanage. Isn't it just possible you made a mistake?" "With that white hair and that scarred face, brother? Not a chance. I won't say I never forget a face, but not that one." "Did he see you?" "If he did, he didn't let on. Hardly expect him to in the circumstances. Anyhow he might not have remembered me. Like I said, he was always pretty well lit back in New York." I thanked him some more and he said it was a pleasure and we hung up. I thought about it for a while. The noise of the traffic outside the building on the boulevard made an unmusical obbligato to my thinking. It was too loud. In summer in hot weather everything is too loud. I got up and shut the lower part of the window and called Detective-Sergeant Green at Homicide. He was obliging enough to be in. "Look," I said, after the preliminaries, "I heard something about Terry Lennox that puzzles me. A fellow I know used to know him in New York under another name. You check his war record?" "You guys never learn," Green said harshly. "You just never learn to stay on your own side of the street. That matter is closed, locked up, weighted with lead and dropped in the ocean. Get it?" "I spent part of an afternoon with Harlan Potter last week at his daughter's house in Idle Valley. Want to check?" "Doing what?" he asked sourly. "Supposing I believe you." "Talking things over. I was invited. He likes me. Incidentally; he told me the girl was shot with a Mauser P.P.K. 7.65 mm. That news to you?" "Go on." "Her own gun, chum. Makes a little difference, maybe. But don't get me wrong. I'm not looking into any dark corners. This is a personal matter. Where did he get that wound?" Green was silent. I heard a door close in the background. Then he said quietly, "Probably in a knife fight south of the border." "Aw hell, Green, you had his prints. You sent them to Washington like always. You got a report back — like always. All I asked was something about his service record." "Who said he had one," "Well, Mendy Menendez for one. Seems Lennox saved his life one time and that's how he got the wound. He was captured by the Germans and they gave him the face he had." "Menendez, huh? You believe that son of a bitch? You got a hole in your own head. Lennox didn't have any war record. Didn't have any record of any kind under any name. You satisfied?" "If you say so," I said. "But I don't see why Menendez would bother to come up here and tell me a yarn and warn me to keep my nose clean on account of Lennox was a pal of him and Randy Starr in Vegas and they didn't want anybody fooling around. After all Lennox was already dead." "Who knows what a hoodlum figures?" Green asked bitterly. "Or why? Maybe Lennox was in a racket with them before he married all that money, and got respectable. He was a floor manager at Starr's place in Vegas for a while. That's where he met the girL A' smile and a bow and a dinner jacket Xeep the customers happy and keep an eye on the house players. I guess he had class for the job." "He had charm," I said. "They don't use it in police business. Much obliged, Sergeant. How is Captain Gregorius these days?" "Retirement leave. Don't you read the papers?" "Not the crime news, Sergeant. Too sordid." I started to say goodbye but he chopped me off. "What did Mr. Money want with you?" "We just had a cup of tea together. A social call. He said he might put some business my way. He also hinted—just hinted, not in so many words —that any cop that looked cross-eyed at me would be facing a grimy future." "He don't run the police department," Green said. "He admits it. Doesn't even buy commissioners or D.A.'s, he said. They just kind of curl up in his lap when he's having a doze." "Go to hell," Green said, and hung up in my ear. A difficult thing, being a cop. You never know whose stomach it's safe to jump up and down on.
The stretch of broken-paved road from the highway to the curve of the hill was dancing in the noon heat and the scrub that dotted the parched land on both sides of it was flour-white with granite dust by this time. The weedy smell was almost nauseating. A thin hot acrid breeze was blowing. I had my coat off and my sleeves rolled up, but the door was too hot to rest an arm on. A tethered horse dozed wearily under a dump of live oaks. A brown Mexican sat on the ground and ate something out of a newspaper. A tumbleweed rolled lazily across the road and came to rest against a piece of granite outcrop, and a lizard that had been there an instant before disappeared without seeming to move at all. Then I was around the hill on the blacktop and in another country. In five minutes I turned into the driveway of the Wades' house, parked and walked across the flagstones and rang the bell. Wade answered the door himself, in a brown and white checked shirt with short sleeves, pale blue denim slacks, and house slippers. He looked tanned and he looked good. There was an i.kstain on his hand and a smear of cigarette ash on one side of his nose. He led the way into his study and parked himself behind his desk. On it there was a thick pile of yellow typescript. I put my coat on a chair and sat on the couch. "Thanks for coming, Marlowe. Drink?" I got that look on my face you get when a drunk asks you to have a drink. I could feel it. He grinned. "I'll have a coke," he said. "You pick up fast," I said. "I don't think I want a drink right now. I'll take a coke with you." He pressed something with his foot and after a while Candy came. He looked surly. He had a blue shirt on and an orange scarf and no white coat. Two-tone black and white shoes, elegant high-wasted gabardine pants. Wade ordered the cokes. Candy gave me a hard stare and went away. "Book?" I said, pointing to the stack of paper. "Yeah. Stinks." "I don't believe it. How far along?" "About two thirds of the way — for what it's worth. Which is damn little. You know how a writer can tell when he's washed up?" "Don't know anything about writers." I filled my pipe, "When he starts reading his old stuff for inspiration. That's absolute. I've got five hundred pages of typescript here, well over a hundred thousand words. My books run long. The public likes long books. The damn fool public thinks if there's a lot of pages there must be a lot of gold. I don't dare read it over. And I can't remember half of what's in it. I'm just plain scared to look at my own work." "You look good yourself," I said. "From the other night I wouldn't have believed it. You've got more guts than you think you have." "What I need right now is more than guts. Something you don't get by wishing for it. A belief in yourself. I'm a spoiled writer who doesn't believe any more. I have a beautiful home, a beautiful wife, and a beautiful sales record. But all I really want is to get drunk and forget." He leaned his chin in his cupped hands and stared across the desk. "Eileen said I tried to shoot myself. Was it that bad?" "You don't remember?" He shook his head. "Not a damn thing except that I fell down and cut my head. And after a while I was in bed., And you were there. Did Eileen call you?" "Yeah. Didn't she say?" "She hasn't been talking to me very much this last week. I guess she's had it. Up to here." He put the edge of one hand against his neck just under his chin. "That show Loring put on here didn't help any." "Mrs. Wade said it meant nothing." "Well, she would, wouldn't she? It happened to be the truth, but I don't suppose she believed it when she said it. The guy is just abnormally jealous. You have a drink or two with his wife in the corner and laugh a little and kiss her goodbye and right off he assumes you are sleeping with her. One reason being that he isn't." "What I like about Idle Valley," I said, "is that everybody is living just a comfortable normal life." He frowned and then the door opened and Candy came in with two cokes and glasses and poured the cokes. He set one in front of me without looking at me. "Lunch in half an hour," Wade said, "and where's the white coat?" "This my day off," Candy said, deadpan. "I ain't the cook, boss." "Cold cuts or sandwiches and beer will do," Wade said. "The cook's off today, Candy. I've got a friend to lunch." "You think he is your friend?" Candy sneered. "Better ask your wife." Wade leaned back in his chair and smiled at hint. "Watch your lip, little man. You've got it soft here. I don't often ask a favor of you, do I?" Candy looked down at the floor. After a moment he looked up and grinned., "Okay, boss. I put the white coat on. I get the lunch, I guess." He turned softly and went out. Wade watched the door close. Then he shrugged and looked at me. "We used to call them servants. Now we call them domestic help. I wonder how long it will be before we have to give them breakfast in bed. I'm paying the guy too much money. He's spoiled." "Wages—or something on the side?" "Such as what?" he asked sharply. I got up and handed him some folded yellow sheets. "you'd better read it. Evidently you don't remember asking me to tear it up. It was in your typewriter, under the cover." He unfolded the yellow pages and leaned back to read them. The glass of coke fizzed unnoticed on the desk in front of him. He read slowly, frowning. When he came to the end he refolded the sheets and ran a finger along the edge. "Did Eileen see this?" he asked carefully. "I wouldn't know. She might have." "Pretty wild, isn't it?" "I liked it. Especially the part about a good man dying for you." He opened the paper again and tore it into long strips viciously and dumped the strips into his wastebasket. "I suppose a drunk will write or say or do anything," he said slowly. "It's meaningless to me. Candy's not blackmailing me. He likes me." "Maybe you'd better get drunk again. You might remember what you meant. You might remember a lot of things. We've been through this before — that night when the gun went off. I suppose the seconal blanked you out too. You sounded sober enough. But now you pretend not to remember writing that stuff I just gave you. No wonder you can't write your book, Wade. It's a wonder you can stay alive." He reached sideways and opened a drawer of his desk. His hand fumbled in it and came up with a three-decker check book. He opened it and reached for a pen. "I owe you a thousand dollars," he said quietly. He wrote in the book. Then on the counterfoil. He tore the check out, came around the desk with it, and dropped it in front of me. "Is that all right?" I leaned back and looked up at him and didn't touch the check and didn't answer him. His face was tight and drawn. His eyes were deep and empty. "I suppose you think I killed her and let Lennox take the rap," he said slowly. "She was a tramp all right. But you don't beat a woman's head in just because she's a tramp. Candy knows I went there sometimes. The funny part of it is I don't think he would tell. I could be wrong, but I don't think so." "Wouldn't matter if he did," I said. "Harlan Potter's Mends wouldn't listen to him. Also, she wasn't killed with that bronze thing. She was shot through the head with her own gun." "She maybe had a gun," he said almost dreamily. "But I didn't know she had been shot. It wasn't published." "Didn't know or didn't remember?" I asked him. "No, it wasn't published." "What are you trying to do to me, Marlowe?" His voice was still dreamy, almost gentle. "What do you want me to do? Tell my wife? Tell the police? What good would it do?" "You said a good man died for you." "All I meant was that if there had been any real investigation I might have been identified aS one—but only one—of the possible suspects. It would have finished me in several ways." "I didn't come here to accuse you of a murder, Wade. What's eating you is that you're not sure yourself. You have a record of violence to your wife. You black out when you're drunk. It's no argument to say you don't beat a woman's head in just because she's a tramp. That is exactly what somebody did do. And the guy who got credit for the job seemed to me a lot less likely than you." He walked to the open french windows and stood looking out at 'the shimmer of heat over the lake. He didn't answer me. He hadn't moved or spoken a couple of minutes later when there was a light knock at the door and Candy came in wheeling a tea wagon, with a crisp white cloth, silver-covered dishes, a pot of coffee, and two bottles of beer. "Open the beer, boss?" he asked Wade's back. "Bring me a bottle of whiskey." Wade didn't turn around. "Sorry, boss. No whiskey." Wade spun around and yelled at him, but Candy didn't budge. He looked down at the check lying on the cocktail table and his head twisted as he read it. Then he looked up at me and hissed something between his teeth. Then he looked at Wade. "I go now. This my day off." He turned and went. Wade laughed. "So I get it myself," he said sharply, and went. I lifted one of the covers and saw some neatly trimmed three-cornered sandwiches.' I took one and poured some beer and ate the sandwich standing up. Wade came back with a bottle and a glass. He Sat down on the couch and poured a stiff jolt and sucked it down. There was the sound of a car going away from the house, probably Candy leaving by the service driveway. I took another sandwich. "Sit down and make yourself comfortable," Wade said. "We have all afternoon to kill." He had a glow on already. His voice was vibrant and cheerful. "You don't like me, do you, Marlowe?" "That question has already been asked and answered." "Know something? You're a pretty ruthless son of a bitch. You'd do anything to find what you want. You'd even make love to my wife while I was helpless drunk in the next room." "You believe everything that knife thrower tells you?" He poured some more whiskey into his glass and held it up against the light. "Not everything, no. A pretty color whiskey is, isn't it? To drown in a golden flood—that's not so bad. 'To cease upon the midnight with no pain.' How does that go on? Oh, sorry, you wouldn't know. Too literary. You're some kind of a dick, aren't you? Mind telling me why you're here." He drank some more whiskey and grinned at me. Then he spotted the check lying on the table. He reached for it and read it over his glass. "Seems to be made out to somebody named Marlowe. 1 wonder why, what for. Seems I signed it. Foolish of me, I'm a gullible chap." "Stop acting," I said roughly. "Where's your wife?" He looked up politely, "My wife will be home in due course. No doubt by that time I shall be passed out and she can entertain you at her leisure. The house will be yours." "Where's the gun?" I asked suddenly. He looked blank. I told him I had put it in his desk. "Not there now, I'm sure," he said. "You may search if it pleases you. Just don't steal any rubber bands." I went to the desk and frisked it. No gun. That was something. Probably Eileen had hidden it. "Look, Wade, I asked you where your wife was. I think she ought to come home. Not for my benefit, friend, for yours. Somebody has to look out for you, and I'll be goddamned if it's going to be me." He stared vaguely. He was still holding the check. He put his glass down and, tore the check across, then again and again, and let the pieces fall to the floor. "Evidently the amount was too small," he said. "Your services come very high. Even a thousand dollars and my wife fail to satisfy you. Too bad, but I can't go any higher. Except on this." He patted the bottle. "I'm leaving," I said. 'But why? You wanted me to remember. Well—here in the bottle is my memory. Stick around, pal. When I get lit enough I'll tell you about all the women I have murdered." "All right, Wade. I'll stick around for a while. But not in here. If you need me, just smash a chair against the wall." I went out and left the door open. I walked across the big living room and out to the patio and pulled one of the chaises into the shadow of the overhang and stretched out on it. Across the lake there was a blue hare against the hills. The ocean breeze had begun to filter through the low mountains to the west. It wiped the air clean and it wiped away just enough of the heat. Idle Valley was having a perfect summer. Somebody had planned it that way. Paradise Incorporated, and also Highly Restricted. Only the nicest people. Absolutely no Central Europeans. Just the cream, the top drawer crowd, the lovely, lovely people. Like the Lorings and the Wades. Pure gold.
I lay there for half hour trying to make up my mind what to do. Part of me wanted to let him get good and drunk and see if anything came out. I didn't think anything much would happen to him in his own study in his own house. He might fall down again but it would be a long time. The guy had capacity. And somehow a drunk never hurts himself very badly. He might get back his mood of guilt, More likely, this time he would just go to sleep. The other part of me wanted to get out and stay out, but this was the part I never listened to. Because if I ever had I would have stayed in the town where I was born and worked in the hardware store and married the boss's daughter and had five kids and read them the funny paper on Sunday morning and smacked their heads when they got out of line and squabbled with the wife about how much spending money they were to get and what programs they could have on the radio or TV set. I might even have got rich — small-town rich, an eight-roam house, two cars in the garage, chicken every Sunday and the Reader's Digest on the living room table, the wife with a cast iron permanent and me with a brain like a sack of Portland cement. You take it, friend., I'll take the big sordid dirty crooked city. I got up and went back to the study. He was just sitting there staring at nothing, the Scotch bottle more than half empty, a loose frown on his face and a dull glitter in his eyes. He looked at me like a horse looking over a fence. "What d'you want?" "Nothing. You all right?" "Don't bother me. I have a little man on my shoulder telling me stories." I got another sandwich off the tea wagon and another glass of beer. I munched the sandwich and drank the beer, leaning against his desk. "Know something?" he asked suddenly, and his voice suddenly seemed much more clear. "I had a male secretary once. Used to dictate to him. Let him go. He bothered me sitting there waiting for me to create. Mistake. Ought to have kept him. Word would have got around I was a homo. The dever boys that write book reviews because they can't write anything else would have caught on and started giving me the buildup. Have to take care of their own, you know. They're all queer, every damn one of them. The queer is the artistic arbiter of our age, chum. The pervert is the top guy now." "That so? Always been around, hasn't he?" He wasn't looking at me. He was just talking. But he heard what I said. "Sure, thousands of years. And especially in all the great ages of art. Athens, Rome, the Renaissance, the Elizabethan Age, the Romantic Movement in France—loaded with them. Queen all over the place. Ever read The Golden Bough? No, too long for you. Shorter version though. Ought to read it. Proves our sexual habits are pure conventions like— wearing a black tie with a dinner jacket. Me. I'm a sex writer, but with frills and straight." He looked up at me and sneered. "You know something? I'm a liar. My heroes are eight feet tall and my heroines have callouses on their bottoms from lying in bed with their knees up. Lace and ruffles, swords and coaches, elegance and leisure, duels and gallant death. All lies. They used perfume instead of soap, their teeth rotted because they never deaned them, their fingernails smelled of stale gravy. The nobility of France urinated against the walls in the marble corridors of Versailles, and when you finally got several sets of underclothes off the lovely marquise the first thing you noticed was that she needed a bath. I ought to write it that way." "Why don't you?" He chuckled. "Sure, and live in a five-room house in Compton—if I was that lucky." He reached down and patted the whiskey bottle. "You're lonely, pal. You need company." He got up and walked fairly steadily out of the room. I waited, thinking about nothing. A speedboat came racketing down the lake. When it came in sight I could see that it was high out of the water on its step and towing a surfboard with a husky sunburned lad on it. I went over to the french windows and watched it make a sweeping turn. Too fast, the speedboat almost turned over. The surfboard rider danced on one foot trying to hold, his balance, ihen went shooting off into the water. The speedboat drifted to a stop and the man in the water came up to it in a lazy crawl, then went back along the tow rope and rolled himself on to the surfboard. Wade came back with another bottle of whiskey. The speedboat picked up and went off into the distance. Wade put his fresh bottle down beside the other. He sat down and brooded. "Christ, you're not going to drink all that, are you?" He squinted his eyes at me. "Take off, buster. Go on home and mop the kitchen floor or something. You're in my light." His voice was thick again. He had taken a couple in the kitchen, as usual. "If you want me, holler." "I couldn't get low enough to want you." "Yeah, thanks. I'll be around until Mrs. Wade comes home. Ever hear of anybody named Paul Marston?" His head came up slowly. His eyes focused, but with effort. I could see him fighting for controL He won the fight for the moment. His face became expressionless. "Never did," he said carefully, speaking very slowly, "Who's he?" The next time I looked in on him he was asleep, with his mouth open, his hair damp with sweat, and reeking of Scotch. His lips were pulled back from his teeth in a loose grimace and the furred surface of his tongue looked dry. One of the whiskey bottles was empty. A glass on the table had about two inches in it and the other bottle was about three quarters full. I put the empty on the tea wagon and rolled it out of the room, then went back to close the french windows and turn the slats of the blinds. The speedboat might come back and wake him. I shut the study door. I wheeled the tea wagon out to the kitchen, which was blue and white and large and airy and empty, I was still hungry. I ate another sandwich and drank what was left of the beer, then poured a cup of coffee and drank that. The beer was flat but the coffee was still hot. Then I went back to the patio. It was quite a long time before the speedboat came tearing down the lake again. It was almost four o'clock when I heard its distant roar swell into an ear-splitting howl of noise. There ought to be a law. Probably was and the guy in the speedboat didn't give a damn. He enjoyed making a nuisance of himself, like other people I was meeting. I walked down to the edge of the lake. He made it this time. The driver slowed just enough on the turn and the brown lad on the surfboard leaned far out against the centrifugal pull. The surfboard was almost out of the water, but one edge stayed in and then the speedboat straightened out and the surfboard still had a rider and they went back the way they had come and that was that. The waves stirred up by the boat came charging in towards the shore of the lake at my feet. They slapped h3rd against the piles of the short landing and jumped the tied boat up and down. They were still slapping it around when I turned back to the house. As I reached the patio I heard a bell chiming from the direction of the kitchen. When it sounded again I decided that only the front door would have chimes. I crossed to it and opened it. Eileen Wade was standing there looking away from the house. As she turned she said: "I'm sorry, I forgot my key." Then she saw me. "Oh—I thought it was Roger or Candy." "Candy isn't here. It's Thursday." She came in and I shut the door. She put a bag down on the table between the two davenports. She looked cool and also distant. She pulled off a pair of white pigskin gloves. "Is anything wrong?" "Well, there's a little drinking being done. Not bad. He's asleep on the couch in his study." "He called you?" "Yes, but not for that. He asked me to lunch. I'm afraid he didn't have any himself." "Oh." She sat down slowly on a davenport. "You know, I completely forgot it was Thursday. The cook's away too. How stupid." "Candy got the lunch before he left. I guess I'll blow now. I hope my car wasn't in your way." She smiled. "No. There was plenty of room. Won't you have some tea? I'm going to have some," "All right." I didn't know why I said that. I didn't want any tea. I just said it. She slipped off a linen jacket. She hadn't worn a hat. "I'll just look in and see if Roger is all right." I watched her cross to the study door and open it. She stood there a moment and closed the door and came back. "He's still asleep. Very soundly. I have to go upstairs for a moment. I'll be right down." I watched her pick up her jacket and gloves and bag and go up the stairs and into her room. The door closed. I crossed to the study with the idea of removing the bottle of hooch. If he was still asleep, he wouldn't need it.
The shutting of the French windows had made the room stuffy and the turning of the Venetian blinds had made it dim. There was an acrid smell on the air and there was too heavy a silence. It was not more than sixteen feet from the door to the couch and I didn't need more than half of that to know a dead man lay on that couch. He was on his side with his face to the back of the couch, one arm crooked under him and the forearm of the other lying almost across his eyes. Between his chest and the back of the couch there was a pool of blood and in that pool lay the Wébley Hammerless. The side of his face was a smeared mask. I bent over him, peering at the edge of the wide open eye, the bare and gaudy arm, at the inner curve of which I could see the puffed and blackened hole in his bead from which the blood oozed still. I left him like that. His wrist was warm but there was no doubt he was quite dead. I looked around for some kind of note or scribble. There was nothing but the pile of script on the desk. They don't always leave notes. The typewriter was uncovered on its stand. There was nothing in that. Otherwise everything looked natural enough. Suicides prepare themselves in all sorts of ways, some with liquor, some with elaborate champagne dinners. Some in evening clothes, some in no clothes. People have killed themselves on the tops of walls, in ditches, in bathrooms, in the water, over the water, on the water. They have hanged themselves in bars and gassed themselves in garages. This one looked simple. I hadn't heard the shot but it must have gone off when I was down by the lake watching the surfboard rider make his turn. There was plenty of noise. Why that should have mattered to Roger Wade I didn't know. Perhaps it hadn't. The final impulse had coincided with the run of the speedboat. I didn't like it, but nobody cared what I liked. The torn pieces of the check were still on the floor but I left them. The torn strips of that stuff he had written that other night were in the wastebasket. These I did not leave. I picked them out and made sure I had them all and stuffed them into my pocket. The basket was almost empty, which made it easy. No use wondering where the gun had been. There were too many places to hide it in. It could have been in a chair or in the couch, under one of the cushions. It could have been on the floor, behind the books, anywhere. I went out and shut the door. I listened. From the kitchen, sounds. I went out there. Eileen had a blue apron on and the kettle was just beginning to whistle. She turned the flame down and gave me a brief impersonal glance. "How do you like your tea, Mr. Marlowe?" "Just out of the pot as it comes." I leaned against the wall and got a cigarette out just to have something to do with my fingers. I pinched and squeezed it and broke it in half and threw one half on the floor. Her eyes followed it down. I bent and picked it up. I squeezed the two halves together into a little ball. She made the tea. "I always take cream and sugar," she said over her shoulder. "Strange, when I drink my coffee black. I learned tea drinking in England. They were using saccharin instead of sugar. When the war came they had no cream, of course." "You lived in England?" "I worked there. I stayed all through the Blitz. I met a man—but I told you about that." "Where did you meet Roger?" "In New York." "Married there?" She swung around, frowning. "No, we were not married in New York. Why?" "Just talking while the tea draws." She looked out of the window over the sink. She could see down to the lake from there. She leaned against the edge of the drainboard and her fingers fiddled with a folded tea towel. "It has to be stopped," she said, "and I don't know how. Perhaps he'll have to be committed to an institution. Somehow I can't quite see myself doing that. I'd have to sign something, wouldn't I?" She turned around when she asked that. "He could do it himself," I said. "That is, he could have up to now." The tea timer rang its bell. She turned back to the sink and poured the tea from one pot into another. Then she put the fresh pot on the tray she had already fixed up with cups. I went over and got the tray and carried it to the table between the two davenports in the living room. She sat down opposite me and poured two cups. I reached for mine and set it down in front of me for it to cool. I watched her fit hers with two lumps of sugar and the cream. She tasted it. "What did you mean by that last remark?" she asked suddenly. "That he could have up to now—committed himself to some institution, you meant, didn't you?" "I guess it was a wild pitch. Did you hide the gun I told you about? You know, the morning after he made that play upstairs." "Hide it?" she repeated frowning. "No. I never do anything like that. I don't believe in it. Why are you asking?" "And you forgot your house keys today?" "I told you I did." "But not the garage key. Usually in this kind of house the outside keys are mastered." "I don't need a key for the garage," she said sharply. "It opens by a switch. There's a relay switch inside the front door you push up as you go out. Then another switch beside the garage operates that door. Often we leave the garage open. Or Candy goes out and doses it." "I see." "You are making some rather strange remarks," she said with acid in her voice. "You did the other morning." "I've had some rather strange experiences in this house. Guns going off in the night, drunks lying out on the front lawn and doctors coming that won't do anything. Lovely women wrapping their arms around me and talking as if they thought I was someone else, Mexican houseboys throwing knives. It's a pity about that gun. But you don't really love your husband, do you? I guess I said that before too." She stood up slowly. She was as calm as a custard, but her violet eyes didn't seem quite the same color, nor of quite the same softness. Then her mouth began to tremble. "Is—is something wrong in there?" she asked very slowly, and looked towards the study. I barely had time to nod before she was running. She was at the door in a flash. She threw it open and darted in. If I expected a wild scream I was fooled. I didn't hear anything. I felt lousy. I ought to have kept her out and eased into that corny routine about bad news, prepare yourself, won't you sit down, I'm afraid something rather serious has happened. Blah, blah, blah. And when you have worked your way through it you haven't saved anybody a thing. Often enough you have made it worse. I got up and followed her into the study. She was kneeling beside the couch with his head pulled against her breast, smearing herself with his blood. She wasn't making a sound of any kind. Her eyes were shut. She was rocking back and forth on her knees as far as she could, holding him tight. I went back out and found a telephone and a book. I called the sheriff's substation that seemed to be nearest. Didn't matter, they'd relay it by radio in any case. Then I went out to the kitchen and turned the water on and fed the strips of yellow paper from my pocket down the electric garbage grinder. I dumped the tea leaves from the other pot after it. In a matter of seconds the stuff was gone. I shut off the water and switched off the motor. I went back to the living room and opened the front door and stepped outside. There must have been a deputy cruising close by because he was there in about six minutes. When I took him into the study she was still kneeling by the couch. He went over to her at once. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I understand how you must feel, but you shouldn't be touching anything." She turned her head, then scrambled to her feet. "It's my husband. He's been shot." He took his cap off and put it on the desk. He reached for the telephone. "His name is Roger Wade," she said in a high brittle voice. "He's the famous novelist." "I know who he is, ma'am," the deputy said, and dialed. She looked down at the front of her blouse. "May I go upstairs and change this?" "Sure." He nodded to her and spoke into the phone, then hung up and turned. "You say he's been shot. That mean somebody else shot him?" "I think this man murdered him," she said without looking at me, and went quickly out of the room. The deputy looked at me. He got a notebook out. He wrote something in it. "I better have your name," he said casually, "and address. You the one called in?" "Yes." I told him my name and address. "Just take it easy until Lieutenant Ohls gets here." "Bernie Ohls?" "Yeah. You know him?" "Sure. I've known him a long time. He used to work out of the D.A.'s office." "Not lately," the deputy said. "He's Assistant Chief of Homicide, working out of the L.A. Sheriff's office. You a friend of the family, Mr. Marlowe?" "Mrs. Wade didn't make it sound that way." He shrugged and half smiled. "Just take it easy, Mr. Marlowe. Not carrying a gun, are you?" "Not today." "I better make sure." He did. He looked towards the couch then. "In spots like this you can't expect the wife to make much sense. We better wait outside."
Ohls was a medium-sized thick man with short-cropped faded blond hair and faded blue eyes. He had stiff white eyebrows and in the days before he stopped wearing a hat you were always a little surprised when he took it off—there was so much more head than you expected. He was a hard tough cop with a grim outlook on life but a very decent guy underneath. He ought to have made captain years ago. He had passed the examination among the top three half a dozen times. But the Sheriff didn't like him and he didn't like the Sheriff. He came down the stairs rubbing the side of his jaw. Flashlights had been going off in the study for a long time. Men had gone in and out. I had just sat in the living room with a plain-clothes dick and waited. Ohls sat down on the edge of a chair and dangled his hands. He was chewing on an unlit cigarette. He looked at me broodingly. "Remember the old days when they had a gatehouse and a private police force in Idle Valley?" I nodded. "And gambling also." "Sure. You can't stop it. This whole valley is still private property. Like Arrowhead used to be, and Emerald Bay. Long time since I was on a case with no reporters jumping around. Somebody must have whispered in Sheriff Petersen's ear. They kept it off the teletype." "Real considerate of them," I said. "How is Mrs. Wade?" "Too relaxed. She must of grabbed some pills. There's a dozen kinds up there—even demeroL That's bad stuff. Your friends don't have a lot of luck lately, do they? They get dead." I didn't have anything to say to that. "Gunshot suicides always interest me," Ohls said loosely. "So easy to fake. The wife says you killed him. Why would she say that?" "She doesn't mean it literally." "Nobody else was here. She says you knew where the gun was, knew he was getting drunk, knew he had fired off the gun the other night when she had to fight with him to get the gun away from him, You were there that night too. Don't seem to help much, do you?" "I searched his desk this afternoon. No gun. I'd told her where it was and to put it away. She says now she didn't believe in that sort of thing." "Just when would 'now' be?" Ohls asked gruffly. "After she came home and before I phoned the substation." "You searched the desk. Why?" Ohls lifted his hands and put them on his knees. He was looking at me indifferently, as if he didn't care what I said. "He was getting drunk. I thought it just as well to have the gun somewhere else. But he didn't try to kill himself the other night. It was just show-off." Ohls nodded. He took the chewed cigarette out of his mouth, dropped it into a tray, and put a fresh one in place of it. "I quit smoking," he said. "Got me coughing too much, But the goddam things still ride me. Can't feel right without one in my mouth. You supposed to watch the guy when he's alone?" "Certainly not. He asked me to come out and have lunch. We talked and he was kind of depressed about his writing not going well. He decided to hit the bottle. Think I should have taken it away from him?" "I'm not thinking yet. I'm just trying to get a picture. How much drinking did you do?" "Beer." "It's your tough luck you were here, Marlowe. What was the check for? The one he wrote and signed and tore up?" "They all wanted me to come and live here and keep him in line. All means himself, his wife, and his publisher, a man named Howard Spencer. He's in New York, I guess. You can check with him. I turned it down. Afterwards she came to me and said her husband was off on a toot and she was worried and would I find him and bring him home. I did that. Next thing I knew I was carrying him in off his front lawn and putting him to bed. I didn't want any part of it, Bernie. It just kind of grew up around me." "Nothing to do with the Lennox case, huh?" "Aw, for Pete's sake. There isn't any Lennox case." "How true," Ohls said dryly. He squeezed his kneecaps. A man came in at the front door and spoke to the other dick. Then came across to Ohls. "There's a Dr. Loring outside, Lieutenant. Says he was called. He's the lady's doctor." "Let him in." The dick went back and Dr. Loring came in with his neat black bag. He was cool and elegant in a tropical worsted suit. He went past me without looking at me. "Upstairs?" he asked Ohls. "Yeah — in her room." Ohls stood up. "What you give her that demerol for, Doc?" Dr. Loring frowned at him. "I prescribe for my patient as I think proper," he said coldly. "I am not required to explain why. Who says I gave Mrs. Wade demerol?" "I do. The bottle's up there with your name on it. She's got a regular drugstore in her bathroom. Maybe you don't know it, Doc, but we have a pretty complete exhibit of the little pills downtown. Bluejays, redbirds, yellow jackets, goofballs, and all the rest of the list. Demerol's about the worst of the lot. That's the stuff Goering lived on, I heard somewhere. Took eighteen a day when they caught him. Took the army doctors three months to cut him down." "I don't know what those words mean," Dr. Loring said frigidly. "You don't? Pity. Bluejays are sodium amytal. Redbirds are seconal. Yellow jackets are nembutal. Goofballs are one of the barbiturates laced with benzedrine. Demerol is a synthetic narcotic that is very habit forming. You just hand 'em out, huh? Is the lady suffering from something serious?" "A drunken husband can be a very serious complaint indeed for a sensitive woman," Dr. Loring said. "You didn't get around to him, huh? Pity. Mrs. Wade's upstairs, Doc. Thanks for the time." "You are impertinent, sir. I shall report you." "Yeah, do that," Ohls said. "But before you report me, do something else. Keep the lady clear in her head. I've got .uestions to ask." "I shall do exactly what I think best for her condition. Do you know who I am, by any chance? And just to make matters clear, Mr. Wade was not my patient. I don't treat alcoholics." "Just their wives, huh?" Ohls snarled at him. "Yeah, I know who you are, Doc. I'm bleeding internally. My name is Ohls. Lieutenant Ohls." Dr. Loring went on up the stairs. Obis sat down again and grinned at me. "You got to be diplomatic with this kind of people," he said. A man came out of the study and came up to Ohls. A thin serious-looking man with glasses and a brainy forehead. "Lieutenant." "Shoot." "The wound is contact, typically suicidal, with a good deal of distention from gas pressure. The eyes are exophthalmic from the same cause. I don't think there will be any prints on the outside of the gun. It's been bled on too freely." "Could it be homicide if the guy was asleep or passed out drunk?" Ohls asked him. "Of course, but there's no indication of it. The gun's a Webley Hammerless. Typically, this gun takes a very stiff pull to cock it, but a very light pull to discharge it. The recoil explains the position of the gun. I see nothing against suicide so far. I expect a high figure on alcoholic concentration. If it's high enough — " the man stopped and shrugged meaningly—"I might be inclined to doubt suicide." "Thanks. Somebody call the coroner?" The man nodded and went away, Ohls yawned and looked at his watch. Then he looked at me. "You want to blow?" "Sure, if you'll let me. I thought I was a suspect." "We might oblige you later on. Stick around where you can be found, that's all. You were a dick once, you know how they go. Some you got to work fast before the evidence gets away from you, This one is just the opposite. If it was a homicide, who wanted him dead? His wife? She wasn't here. You? Fine, you had the house to yourself and knew where the gun was. A perfect setup, Everything but a motive, and we might perhaps give some weight to your experience. I figure if you wanted to kill a guy, you could maybe do it a little less obviously." "Thahks, Bernie. I could at that." "The help wasn't here. They're out. So it must have been somebody that just happened to drop by. That somebody had to know where Wade's gun was, had to find him drunk enough to be asleep or passed out, and had to pull the trigger when that speedboat was making enough noise to drown the shot, and had to get away before you came back into the house. That I don't buy on any knowledge I have now. The only person who had the means and opportunity was the one guy who wouldn't have used them — for the simple reason he was the one guy who had them." I stood up to go. "Okay, Bernie. I'll be home all evening." "There's just one thing," Ohls said musingly. "This man Wade was a big time writer. Lots of dough, lots of reputation. I don't go for his sort of crap myself. You might find nicer people than his characters in a whorehouse. That's a matter of taste and none of my business as a cop. With all this money he had a beautiful home in one of the best places to live in in the county. He had a beautiful wife, lots of friends, and no troubles at all. What I want to know is what made all that so tough that he had to pull a trigger? Sure as hell something did. If you know, you better get ready to lay it on the line. See you." I went to the door. The man on the door looked back at Ohls, got the sign, and let me out. I got into my car and had to edge over on the lawn to get around the various official cars that jammed the driveway. At the gate another deputy looked me over but didn't say anything. I slipped my dark glasses on and drove back towards the main highway. The road was empty and peacefuL The afternoon sun beat down on the manicured lawns and the large roomy expensive houses behind them. A man not unknown to the world had died in a pool of blood in a house in Idle Valley, but the lazy quiet had not been disturbed. So far as the newspapers were concerned it might have happened in Tibet. At a turn of the road the walls of two estates came down to the shoulder and a dark green sheriff's car was parked there. A deputy got out and held up his hand. I stopped. He came to the window. "May I see your driver's license, please?" I took out my wallet and handed it to him open. "Just the license, please, I'm not allowed to touch your wallet." I took it out and gave it to him. "What's the trouble?" He glanced into my car and handed me back my license. "No trouble," he said. "Just a routine check. Sorry to have troubled you." He waved me on and went back to the parked car. Just like a cop. They never tell you why they are doing anything. That way you don't find out they don't know themselves. I drove home, bought myself a couple of cold drinks, went out to dinner, came back, opened the windows and my shirt and waited for something to happen. I waited a long time. It was nine o'clock when Bernie Ohls called up and told me to come in and not stop on the way to pick any flowers.
They Candy in a chair against the wall of the Sheriff's anteroom. He hated me with his eyes as I went by him into the big square room where Sheriff Petersen held court in the middle of a collection of testimonials from a grateful public to his twenty years of faithful public service. The walls were loaded with photographs of horses and Sheriff Petersen made a personal appearance in every photograph. The corners of his carved desk were horses' heads. His inkwell was a mounted polished horse's hoof and his pens were planted in the mate to it filled with white sand. A gold plate on each of these said something or other about a date. In the middle of a spotless desk blotter lay a bag of Bull Durham and a pack of brown cigarette papers. Petersen rolled his own. He could roll one with one hand on horseback and often did, especially when leading a parade on a big white horse with a Mexican saddle loaded with beautiful Mexican silverwork. On horseback he wore a flat-crowned Mexican sombrero. He rode beautifully and his horse always knew exactly when to be quiet, when to act up so that the Sheriff with his calm inscrutable smile could bring the horse back under control with one hand. The Sheriff had a good act. He had a handsome hawklike profile, getting a little saggy under the chin by now, but he knew how to hold his head so it wouldn't show too much. He put a lot of hard work into having his picture taken. He was in his middle fifties and his father, a Dane, had left him a lot of money. The Sheriff didn't look like a Dane, because his hair was dark and his skin was brown and he had the impassive poise of a cigar store Indian and about the same kind of brains. But nobody had ever called him a crook. There had been crooks in his department and they had fooled him as well as they had fooled the public, but none of the crookedness rubbed off on Sheriff Petersen. He just went right on getting elected without even trying, riding white horses at the head of parades, and questioning suspects in front of cameras. That's what the captions said. As a matter of fact he never questioned anybody. He wouldn't have known how. He just sat at his desk looking sternly at the suspect, showing his profile to the camera. The flash bulbs would go off, the camera men woukl thank the Sheriff deferentially, and the suspect would be removed not having opened his mouth, and the Sheriff would go home to his ranch in the San Fernando Valley. There he could always be reached. If you couldn't reach him in person, you could talk to one of his horses. Once in a while, come election thne, some misguided politician would try to get Sheriff Petersen's job, and would be apt to call him things like The Guy With The Built-In Profile or The Ham That Smokes Itself, but it didn't get him anywhere. Sheriff Petersen just went right on getting re-elected, a living testimonial to the fact that you can hold an important public office forever in our country with no qualifications for it but a clean nose, a photogenic face, and a close mouth. If on top of that you look good on a horse, you are unbeatable. As Ohls and I went in, Sheriff Petersen was standing behind his desk and the camera boys were filing out by another door. The Sheriff had his white Stetson Ofl. He was rolling a cigarette. He was all set to go home. He looked at me sternly. "Who's this?" he asked in a rich baritone voice. "Name's Philip Marlowe, Chief," Ohls said. "Only person in the house when Wade shot himself. You want a picture?" The Sheriff studied me. "I don't think so," he said, and turned to a big tired-looking man with iron-gray hair. "If you need me, I'll be at the ranch, Captain Hernandez." "Yes, sir." Petersen lit his cigarette with a kitchen match. He lit it on his thumbnail. No lighters for Sheriff Petersen. He was strictly a roll-yourown-and-.light-'em-with-one-hand type. He said goodnight and went out. A deadpan character with hard black eyes went with him, his personal bodyguard. The door closed. When he was gone Captain Hernandez moved to the desk and sat in the Sheriff's enormous chair and a stenotype operator in the corner moved his stand out from the wall to get elbow room. Ohls sat at the end of the desk and looked amused. "All right, Marlowe," Hernandez said briskly. "Let's have it." "How come I don't get my photo taken?" "You heard what the Sheriff said." "Yeah, but why?" I whined. Ohls laughed. "You know damn well why." "You mean on account of I'm tall, dark, and handsome and somebody might look at me?" "Cut it," Hernandez said coldly. "Let's get on with your statement. Start from the beginning." I gave it to them from the beginning: my interview with Howard Spencer, my meeting with Eileen Wade, her asking me to find Roger, my finding him, her asking me to the house, what Wade asked me to do and how I found him passed out near the hibiscus bushes and the rest of it. The stenotype operator took it down. Nobody interrupted me. All of it was true. The truth and nothing but the truth. But not quite all the truth. What I left out was my business. "Nice," Hernandez said at the end. "But not quite complete." This was a cool competent dangerous guy, this Hernandez. Somebody in the Sheriff's office had to be. "The night Wade shot off the gun in his bedroom you went into Mrs. Wade's room and were in there for some time with the door shut. What were you doing in there?" "She called me in and asked me how he was." "Why shut the door?" "Wade was half asleep and I didn't want to make any noise. Also the hbuseboy was hanging around with his ear out. Also she asked me to shut the door. I didn't realize it was going to be important." "How long were you in there?" "I don't know. Three minutes maybe." "I suggest you were in there a couple of hours," Hernandez said coldly. "Do I make myself clear?" I looked at Ohls. Ohls didn't look at anything. He was chewing on an unlighted cigarette as usual. "You are misinformed, Captain." "We'll see. After you left the room you went downstairs to the study and spent the night on the couch. Perhaps I should say the rest of the night." "It was ten minutes to eleven when he called me at home. It was long past two o'clock when I went into the study for the last time that night. Call it the rest of the night if you like." "Get the houseboy in here," Hernandez said. Ohls went out and came back with Candy. They put Candy in a chair. Hernandez asked him a few questions to establish who he was and so on. Then he said: "All right, Candy—we'll call you that for convenience— after you helped Marlowe put Roger Wade to bed, what happened?" I knew what was coming more or less. Candy told his story in a quiet savage voice with very little accent. It seemed as if he could turn that on and off at will. His story was that he had hung around downstairs in case he was wanted again, part of the time in the kitchen where he got himself some food, part of the time in the living room. While in the living room sitting in a chair near the front door he had seen Eileen Wade standing in the door of her room and he had seen her take her clothes off. He had seen her put a robe on with nothing under it and he had seen me go into her room and I shut the door and stayed in there a long time, a couple of hours he thought. He had gone up the stairs and listened. He had heard the bedsprings making sounds. He had heard whispering. He made his meaning very obvious. When he had finished he gave me a corrosive look and his mouth was twisted tight with hatred. "Take him out," Hernandez said. "Just a minute," I said. "I want to question him." "I ask the questions here," Hernandez said sharply. "You don't know how, Captain. You weren't there. He's lying and he knows it and I know it." Hernandez leaned back and picked up one of the Sheriff's pens. He bent the handle of the pen. It was long and pointed and made of stiffened horsehair. When he let go of the point it sprang back. "Shoot," he said at last. I faced Candy. "Where were you when you saw Mrs. Wade take her clothes off?" "I was sitting down in a chair near the fiont door," he said in a surly tone. "Between the front door and the two facing davenports?" "What I said." "Where was Mrs. Wade?" "Just inside the door of her room. The door was open." "What light was there in the living room?" "One lamp. Tall lamp what they call a bridge lamp." "What light was on the balcony?" "No light. Light in her bedroom." "What kind of light in her bedroom?" "Not much light. Night table lamp, maybe." "Not a ceiling light?" "No." "After she took her clothes off—standing just inside the door of her room, you said—she put on a robe. What kind of robe?" "Blue robe. Long thing like a house coat. She tie it with a sash." "So if you hadn't actually seen her take her clothes off you wouldn't know what she had on under the robe?" He shrugged. He looked vaguely worried. "Si. That's right. But I see her take her clothes off." "You're a liar. There isn't any place in the living room from which you could see her take her clothes off right bang in her doorway, much less inside her room. She would have to come out to the edge of the balcony. If she had done that she would have seen you." He just glared at me. I turned to Ohls. "You've seen the house. Captain Hernandez hasn't—or has he?" Ohls shook his head slightly. Hernandez frowned andsaid nothing. "There is no spot in that living room, Captain Hernandez, from which he could see even the top of Mrs. Wade's head — even if he was standing up—and he says he was sitting down—provided she was as far back as her own doorway or inside it. I'm four inches taller than he is and I could only see the top foot of an open door when I was standing just inside the front door of the house, She would have to come out to the edge of the balcony for him to see what he says he saw. Why would she do that? Why would she undress in her doorway even? There's no sense to it." Hernandez just looked at me. Then he looked at Candy. "How about the time element?" he asked softly, speaking to me. "That's his word against mine. I'm talking about what can be proved." Hernandez spit Spanish at Candy too fast for me to understand. Candy just stared at him sulkily. "Take him out," Hernandez said. Ohls jerked a thumb and opened the door. Candy went out. Hernandez brought out a box of cigarettes, stuck one on his lip, and lit it with a gold lighter, Ohls came back into the room, Hernandez said calmly: "I just told him that if there was an inquest and he told that story on the stand, he'd find himself doing a one-to-three up in Q for perjury. Didn't seem to impress him much. It's obvious what's eating him, An old-fashioned case of hot pants, If he'd been around and we had any reason to suspect murder, he'd make a pretty good pigeon—except that he would have used a knife. I got the impression earlier that he felt pretty bad about Wade's death. Any questions you want to ask, Ohls?" Ohls shook his head. Hernandez looked at me and said: "Come back in the morning and sign your statement. We'll have it typed out by then. We ought to have a P.M. report by ten o'clock, preliminary anyway. Anything you don't like about this setup, Marlowe?" "Would you mind rephrasing the question? The way you put it suggests there might be something I do like about it." "Okay," he said wearily. "Take off. I'm going home." I stood up. "Of course I never did believe that stuff Candy pulled on us," he said. "Just used it for a corkscrew. No hard feelings, I hope." "No feelings at all, Captain. No feelings at all." They watched me go out and didn't say goodnight. I walked down the long corridor to the Hill Street entrance and got into my car and drove home. No feelings at all was exactly right. I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between the stars. When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of the traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent Twenty.four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn't have one. I didn't care. I finished the drink and went to bed.
The inquest was a flop. The coroner sailed into It before the medical evidence was complete, for fear the publicity would die on him. He needn't have worried. The death of a writer—even a loud writer—is not news for long, and that summer there was too much to compete. A king abdicated and another was assassinated. In one week three large passenger planes crashed. The head man of a big wire service was shot to pieces in Chicago in his own automobile. Twenty-four convicts were burned to death in a prison fire. The Coroner of Los Angeles County was out of luck. He was missing the good things in life. As I left the stand I saw Candy. He had a bright malicious grin on his face—I had no idea why—and as usual he was dressed just a little too well, in a cocoa brown gabardine suit with a white nylon shirt and midnight blue bow tie. On the witness stand he was quiet and made a good impression. Yes, the boss had been pretty drunk lately a lot of times. Yes, he had helped put him to bed the night the gun went off upstairs. Yes, the boss had demanded whiskey before he, Candy, left on the last day, but he had refused to get it. No, he didn't know anything about Mr. Wade's literary work, but he knew the boss had been discouraged. He kept throwing it away and then getting it out of the wastebasket again. No, he had never heard Mr. Wade quarreling with anyone. And so on. The coroner milked him but it was thin stuff. Somebody had done a good coaching job on Candy. Eileen Wade wore black and white. She was pale and spoke in a low clear voice which even the amplifer could not spoil. The coroner handled her with two pairs of velvet gloves. He talked to her as if he had trouble keeping the sobs out of his voice. When she left the stand he stood up and bowed and she gave him a faint fugitive smile that nearly made him choke on his salvia. She almost passed me without a glance on the way out, then at the last moment turned her head a couple of inches and nodded very slightly, as if I was somebody she must have met somewhere a long time ago, but couldn't quite place in her memory. Qutside on the steps when it was all over I ran into Ohls. He was watching the traffic down below, or pretending to. "Nice job," he said without turning his head. "Congratulations." "You did all right on Candy." "Not me, kid. The D.A. decided the sexy stuff was irrelevant" "What sexy stuff was that?" He looked at me then. "Ha, ha, ha," he said. "And I don't mean you." Then his expression got remote. "I been looking at them for too many years. It wearies a man. This one came out of the special bottle. Old private stock. Strictly for the carriage trade. So long, sucker. Call me when you start wearing twenty-dollar shirts. I'll drop around and hold your coat for you." People eddied around us going up and down the steps. We just stood there. Ohls took a cigarette out of his pocket and looked at it and dropped it on the concrete and ground it to nothing with his heel. "Wasteful," I said. "Only a cigarette, pal. It's not a life. After a while maybe you marry the girl, huh?" "Shove it." He laughed sourly. "I been talking to the right people about the wrong things," he said acidly. "Any objection?" "No objection, Lieutenant," I said, and went on down the steps. He said something behind me but I kept going. I went over to a corn-beef joint on Flower. It suited my mood. A rude sign over the entrance said: "Men Only. Dogs and Women Not Admitted." The service inside was equally polished. The waiter who tossed your food at you needed a shave and deducted his tip without being invited. The food was simple but very good and they had a brown Swedish beer which could hit as hard as a martini. When I got back to the office the phone was ringing. Ohls said: "I'm coming by your place. I've got things to say." He must have been at or near the Hollywood substation because he was in the office inside twenty minutes. He planted himself in the customer's chair and crossed his legs and growled: "I was out of line. Sorry. Forget it." "Why forget it? Let's open up the wound." "Suits me. Under the hat, though. To some people you're a wrong gee. I never knew you to do anything too crooked." "What was the crack about twenty-dollar shirts?" "Aw hell, I was just sore," Ohls said. "I was thinking of old man Potter. Like he told a secretary to tell a lawyer to tell District Attorney Springer to tell Captain Hernandez you were a personal friend of his." "He wouldn't take the trouble." "You met him. He gave you time." "I met him, period. I didn't like him, but perhaps it was only envy. He sent for me to give me some advice. He's big and he's tough and I don't know what else. I don't figure he's a crook." "There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks," Ohls said. "Maybe the head man thinks his hands are clean but somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut from under them and had to sell out for nickels, decent people lost their jobs, stocks got rigged on the market, proxies got bought up like a pennyweight of old gold, and the five per centers and the big law firms got paid hundred-grand fees for beating some law the people wanted but the rich guys didn't, on account of it cut into their profits. Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system. Maybe it's the best we can get, but it still ain't any Ivory Soap deal." "You sound like a Red," I said, just to needle him. "I wouldn't know," he said contemptuously. "I ain't been investigated yet You liked the suicide verdict, didn't you?" "What else could it be?" "Nothing else, I guess." He put his hard blunt hands on the desk and looked at the big brown freckles on the backs of them. "I'm getting old. Keratosis, they call those brown spots. You don't get them until you're past fifty. I'm an old cop and an old cop is an old bastard. I don't like a few things about this Wade death." "Such as?" I leaned back and watched the tight sun wrinkles around his eyes. "You get so you can smell a wrong setup, even when you know you can't do a damn thing about it. Then you jttst sit and talk like now. I don't like that he left no note." "He was drunk. Probably just a sudden crazy impulse." Ohls lifted his pale eyes and dropped his hands off the desk. "I went through his desk. He wrote letters to himself. He wrote and wrote and wrote. Drunk or sober he hit that typewriter. Some of it is wild, some of it kind of funny, and some of it is sad. The guy had something on his mind. He wrote all around it but he never quite touched it. That guy would have left a two-page letter if he knocked himself off." "He was drunk," I said again. "With him that didn't matter," Ohls said wearily. "The next thing I don't like is he did it there in that room and left his wife to find him. Okay, he was drunk. I still don't like it. The next thing I don't like Is he pulled the trigger just when the noise of that speedboat could drown out the shot What difference would it make to him? More coincidence, huh? More coincidence still that the wife forgot her door keys on the help's day off and had to ring the bell to get into the house." "She could have walked around to the back," I said. "Yeah, I know. What I'm talking about is a situation. Nobody to answer the door but you, and she said on the stand she didn't know you were there. Wade wouldn't have heard the bell if he had been alive and working in his study. His door is soundproofed. The help was away, That was Thursday. That she forgot. Like she forgot her keys." "You're forgetting something yourself, Bernie. My car was in the driveway. So she knew I was there — or that somebody was there — before she rang the bell." He grinned. "I forgot that, didn't I? All right, here's the picture. You were down at the lake, the speedboat was making all that racket — incidentally it was a couple of guys from Lake Arrowhead just visiting, had their boat on a trailer—Wade was asleep In his study or passed out, somebody took the gun out of his desk already, and she knew you had put it there because you told her that other time. Now suppose she didn't forget her keys, that she goes into the house, looks across and sees you down at the water, looks into the study and sees Wade asleep, knows where the gun is, gets it, waits for the right moment, plugs him, drops the gun where it was found, goes back outside the house, waits a little while for the speedboat to go away, and then rings the doorbell and waits for you to open it. Any objections?" "With what motive?" "Yeah," he said sourly. "That knocks it. If she wanted to slough the guy, it was easy. She had him over a barrel, habitual drunk, record of violence to her. Plenty alimony, nice fat property settlement, No motive at all. Anyhow the timing was too neat. Five minutes earlier and she couldn't have done it unless you were in on it." I started to say something but he put his hand up. "Take it easy. I'm not accusing anybody, just speculating. Five minutes later and you get the same answer. She had ten minutes to pull it off." "Ten minutes," I said irritably, "that couldn't possibly have been foreseen, much less planned." He leaned back in the chair and sighed. "I know. You've got all the answers, I've got all the answers. And I still don't like it. What the hell were you doing with these people anyway? The guy writes you a check for a grand, then tears it up. Got mad at you, you say. You didn't want it anyway, wouldn't have taken it, you say. Maybe. Did be think you were sleeping with his wife?" "Lay off, Bernie." "I didn't ask were you, I asked did he think you were." "Same answer." "Okay, try this. What did the Mex have on him?" "Nothing that I know of." "The Mex has too much money. Over fifteen hundred in the bank, all kinds of clothes, a brand new Chevvy." "Maybe he peddles dope," I said. Ohls pushed himself up out of the chair and scowled down at me. "You're an awful lucky boy, Marlowe. Twice you've slid out from under a heavy one. You could get overconfident. You were pretty helpful to those people and you didn't make a dime. You were pretty helpful to a guy named Lennox too, the way I hear it. And you didn't make a dime out of that one either. What do you do for eating money, pal? You got a lot saved so you don't have to work anymore?" I stood up and walked around the desk and faced him. a romantic, Bernie. I hear voices crying in the night and I go see what's the matter. You don't make a dime that way. You got sense, you shut your windows and turn up more sound on the TV set. Or you shove down on the gas and get far away from there. Stay out of other people's troubles. All it can get you is the smear. The last time I saw Terry Lennox we had a cup of coffee together that I made myself in my house, and we smoked a cigarette. So when I heard be was dead I went out to the kitchen and made some coffee and poured a cup for him and lit a cigarette for him and when the coffee was cold and the cigarette was burned down I said goodnight to him. You don't make a dime that way. You wouldn't do it. That's why you're a good cop and I'm private eye. Eileen Wade is worried about her husband, so I go out and find him and bring him home. Another time he's in trouble and calls me up and I go out and carry him in off the lawn and put him to bed and I don't make a dime out of it. No percentage at all. No nothing, except sometimes I get my face pushed in or get tossed in the can or get threatened by some fast money boy like Mendy Menendez. But no money, not a dime. I've got a five-thousand-dollar bill in my safe but I'll never spend a nickel of it. Because there was something wrong with the way I got it. I played with it a little at first and I still get it out once in a while and look at it. But that's all—not a dime of spending money." "Must be a phony," Ohls said dryly, "except they don't make them that big. So what's your point with all this yap?" "No point. I told you I was a romantic." "I heard you. And you don't make a dime at it. I heard that too." "But I can always tell a cop to go to hell. Go to hell, Bernie." "You wouldn't tell me to go to hell if I had you in the back room under the light, chum." "Maybe we'll find out about that some day." He walked to the door and yanked it open. "You know something, kid? You think you're cute but you're just stupid. You're a shadow on the wall. I've got twenty years on the cops without a mark against me. I know when I'm being kidded and I know when a guy is holding out on me. The wise guy never fools anybody but himself. Take it from me, chum. I know." He pulled his head back out of the doorway and let the door close. His heels hammered down the corridor. I could still hear them when the phone on my desk started to sound. The voice said in that clear professional tone: "New York is calling Mr. Philip Marlowe." "I'm Philip Marlowe." "Thank you. One moment, please, Mr. Marlowe. Here is your party." The next voice I knew. "Howard Spencer, Mr. Marlowe. We've heard about Roger Wade. It was a pretty hard blow. We haven't the full details, but your name seems to be involved." "I was there when it happened. He just got drunk and shot himself. Mrs. Wade came home a little later. The servants were away — Thursday's the day off." "You were alone with him?" "I wasn't with him. I was outside the house, just hanging around waiting for his wife to come home." "I see. Well, I suppose there will be an inquest." "It's all over, Mr. Spencer. Suicide. And remarkably little publicity." "Really? That's curious." He didn't exactly sound disappointed—more like puzzled and surprised. "He was so well known. I should have thought—well, never mind what I thought. I guess I'd better fly out there, but I can't make it before the end of next week. I'll send a wire to Mrs. Wade. There may be something I could do for her—and also about the book. I mean there may be enough of it so that we could get someone to finish it. I assume you did take the job after all." "No. Although he asked me to himself. I told him right out I couldn't stop him from drinking." "Apparently you didn't even try." "Look, Mr. Spencer, you don't know the first damn thing about this situation. Why not wait until you do before jumping to conclusions? Not that I don't blame myself a little. I guess that's inevitable when something like this happens, and you're the guy on the spot." "Of course," he said. "I'm sorry I made that remark. Most uncalled for. Will Eileen Wade be at her home now—or wouldn't you know?" "I wouldn't know, Mr. Spencer. Why don't you just call her up?" "I hardly think she would want to speak to anyone yet," he said slowly. "Why not? She talked to the Coroner and never batted an eye." He deared his throat. "You don't sound exactly sympathetic." "Roger Wade is dead, Spencer. He was a bit of a bastard and maybe a bit of a genius too. That's over my head. He was an egotistical drunk and he hated his own guts. He made me a lot of trouble and in the end a lot of grief. Why the hell should I be sympathetic?" "I was talking about Mrs. Wade," he said shortly. "So was I." "I'll call you when I get in," he said abruptly. "Goodbye." He hung up. I hung up. I stared at the telephone for a couple of minutes without moving. Then I got the phone book up on the desk and looked for a number.
I called Sewell Endicott's office. Somebody said he was in court and would not be available until late in the afternoon. Would I care to leave my name? No. I dialed the number of Mendy Menendez's joint on the Strip. It was called El Tapado this year, not a bad name either. In American Spanish that means buried treasure among other things. It had been called other names in the past, quite a few other names. One year it was just a blue neon number on a blank high wall facing south on the Strip, with its back against the hill and a driveway curving around one side Out of sight of the street. Very exclusive. Nobody knew much about it except vice cops and mobstem and people who could afford thirty bucks for a good dinner and any amount up to fifty grand in the big quiet room upstairs. I got a woman who didn't know from nothing. Then I got a captain with a Mex accent. "You wish to speak with Mr. Menendez? Who is calling?" "No names, amigo. Private matter." "Un momento, por favor." There was a longish wait. I got a hard boy this time. He sounded as if he was talking through the slit in an armored car. It was probably just the slit in his face. "Talk it up. Who wants him?" "The name's Marlowe." "Who's Marlowe?" "This Chick Agostino?" "No, this ain't Chick. Come on, let's have the password." "Go fry your face." There was a chuckle. "Hold the line." Finally another voice said: "Hello, cheapie. What's the time by you?" "You alone?" "You can talk, cheapie. I been looking over some acts for the floor show." "You could cut your throat for one." "What would I do for an encore?" I laughed. He laughed. "Been keeping your nose clean?" he asked. "Haven't you heard? I got to be friends with another guy who suicided. They're going to call me the 'Kiss-of-Death Kid' from now on." "That's funny, huh?" "No, it isn't funny. Also the other afternoon I had tea with Harlan Potter." "Nice going. I never drink the stuff myself." "He said for you to be nice to me." "I never met the guy and I don't figure to." "He casts a long shadow. All I want is a little information, Mendy. Like about Paul Marston." "Never heard of him." "You said that too quick. Paul Marston was the name Terry Lennox used one time in New York before he came west." "So?" "His prints were checked through the F.B.I. files. No record. That means he never served in the Armed Forces." "So?" "Do I have to draw you a picture? Either that foxhole yarn of yours was all spaghetti or it happened somewhere else." "I didn't say where it happened, cheapie. Take a kind word and forget the whole thing. You got told, you better stay told." "Oh sure. I do something you don't like and I'm swimming to Catalina with a streetcar on my back. Don't try to scare me, Mendy. I've been up against the pros. You ever been in England?" "Be smart, cheapie. Things can happen to a guy in this town. Things can happen to big strong boys like Big Willie Magoon. Take a look at the evening paper." "I'll get one if you say so. It might even have my picture in it. What about Magoon?" "Like I said—things can happen. I wouldn't know how except what I read. Seems Magoon tried to shake down four boys in a car with Nevada plates. Was parked right by his house. Nevada plates with big numbers like they don't have. Must have been some kind of a rib. Only Magoon ain't feeling funny, what with both arms in casts, and his jaw wired in three places, and one ]eg in high traction. Magoon ain't tough any more. It could happen to you," "He bothered you, huh? I saw him bounce your boy Chick off the wall in front of Victor's. Should I ring up a friend in the Sheriff's office and tell him?" "You do that, cheapie," he said very slowly. "You do that." "And I'll mention that at the time I was just through having a drink with Harlan Potter's daughter. Corroborative evidence, in a sense, don't you think? You figure to smash her up too?" "Listen to me careful, cheapie—" "Were you ever in England, Mendy? You and Randy Starr and Paul Marston or Terry Lennox or whatever his name was? In the British Army perhaps? Had a little racket in Soho and got hot and figured the Army was a cooling-off spot?" "Hold the line." I held it. Nothing happened except that I waited and my arm got tired. I switched the receiver to the other side. Finally he came back. "Now listen careful, Marlowe. You stir up that Lennox case and you're dead. Terry was a pal and I g9t feelings too. So you got feelings. I'll go along with you just this far. It was a Commando outfit. It was British. It happened in Norway, one of those islands off the coast. They got a million of them. November 1942. Now will you lie down and rest that tired brain of yours?" Thank you, Mendy. I will do that. Your secret is safe with me. I'm not telling it to anybody but the people I know." "Buy yourself a paper, cheapie. Read and remember. Big tough Willie Magoon. Beat up in front of his own house. Boy, was he surprised when he come out of the ether!" He hung up. I went downstairs and bought a paper and it was just as Menendez had said. There was a picture of Big Willie Magoon in his hospital bed. You could see half his face and one eye. The rest of him was bandages. Seriously but not critically injured. The boys had been very careful about that. They wanted him to live. After all he was a cop. In our town the mobs don't kill a cop. They leave that to the juveniles. And a live cop who has been put through the meat grinder is a much better advertisement. He gets well eventually and goes back to work. But from that time on something is missing—the last inch of steel that makes all the difference. He's a walking lesson that it is a mistake to push the racket boys too hard—espedally if you are on the vice squad and eating at the best places and driving a Cadillac. I sat there and brooded about it for a while and then I dialed the number of The Carne Organization and asked for George Peters. He was out. I left my name and said it was urgent. He was expected in about five-thirty. I went over to the Hollywood Public Library and asked questions in the reference room, but couldn't find what I wanted. So I had to go back for my Olds and drive downtown to the Main Library. I found it there, in a smallish red-bound book published in England. I copied what I wanted from it and drove home. I called The Carne Organization again. Peters was still out, so I asked the girl to reroute the call to me at home. I put the chessboard on the coffee table and set out a problem called The Sphynx. It is printed on the end papers of a book on chess by Blackburn, the English chess wizard, probably the most dynamic chess player who ever lived, although he wouldn't get to first base in the cold war type of chess they play nowadays. The Sphynx is an eleven-mover and it justifies its name. Chess problems seldom run to more than four or five moves. Beyond that the difficulty of solving them rises in almost geometrical progression. An eleven-mover is sheer unadulterated torture. Once in a long while when I feel mean enough I set It out and look for a new way to solve it. It's a nice quiet way to go crazy. You don't even scream, but you come awfully close. George Peters called me at five-forty. We exchanged pleasantries and condolences. "You've got yourself in another jam, I see," he said cheerfully. "Why don't you try some quiet business like embalming?" "Takes too long to learn. Listen, I want to become a client of your agency, if it doesn't cost too much." "Depends what you want done, old boy. And you'd have to talk to Carne." "No." "Well, tell me." "London is full of guys like me, but I wouldn't know one from the other. They call them private enquiry agents. Your outfit would have connections. I'd just have to pick a name at random and probably get hornswoggled. I want some information that should be easy enough to get, and I want it quick. Must have it before the end of next week." "Spill." "I want to know something about the war service of Terry Lennox or Paul Marston, whatever name he used. He was in the Commandos over there. He was captured wounded in November 1942 in a raid on some Norwegian island. I want to know what outfit he was posted from and what happened to him. The War Office will have all that. It's not secret information, or I wouldn't think so. Let's say a question of inheritance is involved." "You don't need a P.I. for that. You could get it direct. Write them a letter." "Shove it, George. I might get an answer in three months. I want one in five days." "You have a thought there, pal. Anything else?" "One thing more. They keep all their vital records over there in a place they call Somerset House. I want to know if he figures there in any connection—birth, marriage, naturalization, anything at all." "Why?" "What do you mean, why? Who's paying the bill?" "Suppose the names don't show?" "Then I'm stuck. If they do, I want certified copies of anything your man turns up. How much you soaking me?" "I'll have to ask Carne. He may thumb it out altogether, We don't want the kind of publicity you get. If he lets me handle it, and you agree not to mention the connection, I'd say three hundred bucks. Those guys over there don't get much by dollar standards. He might hit us for ten guineas, less than thirty bucks. On top of that any expenses he might have. Say fifty bucks altogether and Carne wouldn't open a file for less than two-fifty." "Professional rates." "Ha, ha. He never heard of them." "Call me, George. Want to eat dinner?" "Romanoff's?" "All right," I growled, "if they'll give me a reservation. — which I doubt." "We can have Carne's table. I happen to know he's dining privately. He's a regular at Romanoff's. It pays off in the upper brackets of the business. Carne is a pretty big boy in this town." "Yeah, sure. I know somebody—and know him personally—who could lose Carne under his little fingernail." "Good work, kid. I always knew you would come through in the dutch. See you about seven o'clock in the bar at Romanoff's. Tell the head thief you're waiting for Colonel Carne. He'll clear a space around you so you don't get elbowed by any riffraff like screenwriters or television actors." "See you at seven," I said. We hung up and I went back to the chess board. But The Sphynx didn't seem to interest me any more. In a little while Peters called me back and said it was all right with Carne provided the name of their agency was not connected with my problems. Peters said he would get a night letter off to London at once.