“I see. How do you establish that your daughter-in-law took it, Mrs. Murdock?”
“I don’t—in a strictly evidential sense. But I’m quite sure of it. The servants are three women who have been here many, many years—long before I married Mr. Murdock, which was only seven years ago. The gardener never comes in the house. I have no chauffeur, because either my son or my secretary drives me. My son didn’t take it, first because he is not the kind of fool that steals from his mother, and secondly, if he had taken it, he could easily have prevented me from speaking to the coin dealer, Morningstar. Miss Davis—ridiculous. Just not the type at all. Too mousy. No, Mr. Marlowe, Linda is the sort of lady who might do it just for spite, if nothing else. And you know what these nightclub people are.”
“All sorts of people—like the rest of us,” I said. “No signs of a burglar, I suppose? It would take a pretty smooth worker to lift just one valuable coin, so there wouldn’t be. Maybe I had better look the room over, though.”
She pushed her jaw at me and muscles in her neck made hard lumps. “I have just told you, Mr. Marlowe, that Mrs. Leslie Murdock, my daughter-in-law, took the Brasher Doubloon.”
I stared at her and she stared back. Her eyes were as hard as the bricks in her front walk. I shrugged the stare off and said:
“Assuming that is so, Mrs. Murdock, just what do you want done?”
“In the first place I want the coin back. In the second place I want an uncontested divorce for my son. And I don’t intend to buy it. I daresay you know how these things are arranged.”
She finished the current installment of port and laughed rudely.
“I may have heard,” I said. “You say the lady left no forwarding address. Does that mean you have no idea at all where she went?”
“Exactly that.”
“A disappearance then. Your son might have some ideas he hasn’t passed along to you. I’ll have to see him.”
The big gray face hardened into even ruggeder lines. “My son knows nothing. He doesn’t even know the doubloon has been stolen. I don’t want him to know anything. When the time comes I’ll handle him. Until then I want him left alone. He will do exactly what I want him to.”
“He hasn’t always,” I said.
“His marriage,” she said nastily, “was a momentary impulse. Afterwards he tried to act like a gentleman. I have no such scruples.”
“It takes three days to have that kind of momentary impulse in California, Mrs. Murdock.”
“Young man, do you want this job or don’t you?”
“I want it if I’m told the facts and allowed to handle the case as I see fit. I don’t want it if you’re going to make a lot of rules and regulations for me to trip over.”
She laughed harshly. “This is a delicate family matter, Mr. Marlowe. And it must be handled with delicacy.”
“If you hire me, you’ll get all the delicacy I have. If I don’t have enough delicacy, maybe you’d better not hire me. For instance, I take it you don’t want your daughter-in-law framed. I’m not delicate enough for that.”
She turned the color of a cold boiled beet and opened her mouth to yell. Then she thought better of it, lifted her port glass and tucked away some more of her medicine.
“You’ll do,” she said dryly, “I wish I had met you two years ago, before he married her.”
I didn’t know exactly what this last meant, so I let it ride. She bent over sideways and fumbled with the key on a house telephone and growled into it when she was answered.
There were steps and the little copper-blond came tripping into the room with her chin low, as if somebody might be going to take a swing at her.
“Make this man a check for two hundred and fifty dollars,” the old dragon snarled at her. “And keep your mouth shut about it.”
The little girl flushed all the way to her neck. “You know I never talk about your affairs, Mrs. Murdock,” she bleated. “You know I don’t. I wouldn’t dream of it, I—”
She turned with her head down and ran out of the room. As she closed the door I looked out at her. Her little lip was trembling but her eyes were mad.
“I’ll need a photo of the lady and some information,” I said when the door was shut again.
“Look in the desk drawer.” Her rings flashed in the dimness as her thick gray finger pointed.
I went over and opened the single drawer of the reed desk and took out the photo that lay all alone in the bottom of the drawer, face up, looking at me with cool dark eyes. I sat down again with the photo and looked it over. Dark hair parted loosely in the middle and drawn back loosely over a solid piece of forehead. A wide cool go-to-hell mouth with very kissable lips. Nice nose, not too small, not too large. Good bone all over the face. The expression of the face lacked something. Once the something might have been called breeding, but these days I didn’t know what to call it. The face looked too wise and too guarded for its age. Too many passes had been made at it and it had grown a little too smart in dodging them. And behind this expression of wiseness there was the look of simplicity of the little girl who still believes in Santa Claus.
I nodded over the photo and slipped it into my pocket. thinking I was getting too much out of it to get out of a mere photo, and in a very poor light at that.
The door opened and the little girl in the linen dress came in with a three-decker check book and a fountain pen and made a desk of her arm for Mrs. Murdock to sign. She straightened up with a strained smile and Mrs. Murdock made a sharp gesture towards me and the little girl tore the check out and gave it to me. She hovered inside the door, waiting. Nothing was said to her, so she went out softly again and closed the door.
I shook the check dry, folded it and sat holding it. “What can you tell me about Linda?”
“Practically nothing. Before she married my son she shared an apartment with a girl named Lois Magic—charming names these people choose for themselves—who is an entertainer of some sort. They worked at a place called the Idle Valley Club, out Ventura Boulevard way. My son Leslie knows it far too well. I know nothing about Linda’s family or origins. She said once she was born in Sioux Falls. I suppose she had parents. I was not interested enough to find out.”
Like hell she wasn’t. I could see her digging with both hands, digging hard, and getting herself a double handful of gravel.
“You don’t know Miss Magic’s address?”
“No. I never did know.”
“Would your son be likely to know—or Miss Davis?”
“I’ll ask my son when he comes in. I don’t think so. You can ask Miss Davis. I’m sure she doesn’t.”
“I see. You don’t know of any other friends of Linda’s?”
“No.”
“It’s possible that your son is still in touch with her, Mrs. Murdock—without telling you.”
She started to get purple again. I held my hand up and dragged a soothing smile over my face. “After all he has been married to her a year,” I said. “He must know something about her.”
“You leave my son out of this,” she snarled.
I shrugged and made a disappointed sound with my lips. “Very well. She took her car, I suppose. The one you gave her?”
“A steel gray Mercury, 1940 model, a coupe. Miss Davis can give you the license number, if you want that. I don’t know whether she took it.”
“Would you know what money and clothes and jewels she had with her?”
“Not much money. She might have had a couple of hundred dollars, at most.” A fat sneer made deep lines around her nose and mouth. “Unless of course she has found a new friend.”
“There’s that,” I said. “Jewelry?”
“An emerald and diamond ring of no very great value, a platinum Longines watch with rubies in the mounting, a very good cloudy amber necklace which I was foolish enough to give her myself. It has a diamond clasp with twenty-six small diamonds in the shape of a playing card diamond. She had other things, of course. I never paid much attention to them. S
he dressed well but not strikingly. Thank God for a few small mercies.”
She refilled her glass and drank and did some more of her semi-social belching.
“That’s all you can tell me, Mrs. Murdock?”
“Isn’t it enough?”
“Not nearly enough, but I’ll have to be satisfied for the time being. If I find she did not steal the coin, that ends the investigation as far as I’m concerned. Correct?”
“We’ll talk it over,” she said roughly. “She stole it all right. And I don’t intend to let her get away with it. Paste that in your hat, young man. And I hope you are even half as rough as you like to act, because these nightclub girls are apt to have some very nasty friends.”
I was still holding the folded check by one corner down between my knees. I got my wallet out and put it away and stood up, reaching my hat off the floor.
“I like them nasty,” I said. “The nasty ones have very simple minds. I’ll report to you when there is anything to report, Mrs. Murdock. I think I’ll tackle this coin dealer first. He sounds like a lead.”
She let me get to the door before she growled at my back: “You don’t like me very well, do you?”
I turned to grin back at her with my hand on the knob. “Does anybody?”
She threw her head back and opened her mouth wide and roared with laughter. In the middle of the laughter I opened the door and went out and shut the door on the rough mannish sound. I went back along the hall and knocked on the secretary’s half open door, then pushed it open and looked in.
She had her arms folded on her desk and her face down on the folded arms. She was sobbing. She screwed her head around and looked up at me with tear-stained eyes. I shut the door and went over beside her and put an arm around her thin shoulders.
“Cheer up,” I said. “You ought to feel sorry for her. She thinks she’s tough and she’s breaking her back trying to live up to it.”
The little girl jumped erect, away from my arm. “Don’t touch me,” she said breathlessly. “Please. I never let men touch me. And don’t say such awful things about Mrs. Murdock.”
Her face was all pink and wet from tears. Without her glasses her eyes were very lovely.
I stuck my long-waiting cigarette into my mouth and lit it.
“I—I didn’t mean to be rude,” she snuffled. “But she does humiliate me so. And I only want to do my best for her.” She snuffled some more and got a man’s handkerchief out of her desk and shook it out and wiped her eyes with it. I saw on the hanging down corner the initials L.M. embroidered in purple. I stared at it and blew cigarette smoke towards the corner of the room, away from her hair. “Is there something you want?” she asked.
“I want the license number of Mrs. Leslie Murdock’s car.”
“It’s 2X1111, a gray Mercury convertible, 1940 model.”
“She told me it was a coupe.”
“That’s Mr. Leslie’s car. They’re the same make and year and color. Linda didn’t take the car.”
“Oh. What do you know about a Miss Lois Magic?”
“I only saw her once. She used to share an apartment with Linda. She came here with a Mr.—a Mr. Vannier.”
“Who’s he?”
She looked down at her desk. “I—she just came with him. I don’t know him.”
“Okay, what does Miss Lois Magic look like?”
“She’s a tall handsome blond. Very—very appealing.”
“You mean sexy?”
“Well—” she blushed furiously, “in a nice well-bred sort of way, if you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” I said, “but I never got anywhere with it.”
“I can believe that,” she said tartly.
“Know where Miss Magic lives?”
She shook her head, no. She folded the big handkerchief very carefully and put it in the drawer of her desk, the one where the gun was.
“You can swipe another one when that’s dirty,” I said. She leaned back in her chair and put her small neat hands on her desk and looked at me levelly.
“I wouldn’t carry that tough-guy manner too far, if I were you, Mr. Marlowe. Not with me, at any rate.”
“No?”
“No. And I can’t answer any more questions without specific instructions. My position here is very confidential.”
“I’m not tough,” I said. “Just virile.”
She picked up a pencil and made a mark on a pad. She smiled faintly up at me, all composure again.
“Perhaps I don’t like virile men,” she said.
“You’re a screwball,” I said, “if ever I met one. Goodbye.”
I went out of her office, shut the door firmly, and walked back along the empty halls through the big silent sunken funereal living room and out of the front door.
The sun danced on the warm lawn outside. I put my dark glasses on and went over and patted the little Negro on the head again.
“Brother, it’s even worse than I expected,” I told him. The stumble-stones were hot through the soles of my shoes. I got into the car and started it and pulled away from the curb.
A small sand-colored coupe pulled away from the curb behind me. I didn’t think anything of it. The man driving it wore a dark porkpie type straw hat with a gay print band and dark glasses were over his eyes, as over mine.
I drove back towards the city. A dozen blocks later at a traffic stop, the sand-colored coupe was still behind me. I shrugged and just for the fun of it circled a few blocks. The coupe held its position. I swung into a street lined with immense pepper trees, dragged my heap around in a fast U-turn and stopped against the curbing.
The coupe came carefully around the corner. The blond head under the cocoa straw hat with the tropical print band didn’t even turn my way. The coupe sailed on and I drove back to the Arroyo Seco and on towards Hollywood. I looked carefully several times, but I didn’t spot the coupe again.
3
I had an office in the Cahuenga Building, sixth floor, two small rooms at the back. One I left open for a patient client to sit in, if I had a patient client. There was a buzzer on the door which I could switch on and off from my private thinking parlor.
I looked into the reception room. It was empty of everything but the smell of dust. I threw up another window, unlocked the communicating door and went into the room beyond. Three hard chairs and a swivel chair, flat desk with a glass top, five green filing cases, three of them full of nothing, a calendar and a framed license bond on the wall, a phone, a washbowl in a stained wood cupboard, a hat rack, a carpet that was just something on the floor, and two open windows with net curtains that puckered in and out like the lips of a toothless old man sleeping.
The same stuff I had had last year, and the year before that. Not beautiful, not gay, but better than a tent on the beach.
I hung my hat and coat on the hat rack, washed my face and hands in cold water, lit a cigarette and hoisted the phone book onto the desk. Elisha Morningstar was listed at 824 Belfont Building, 422 West Ninth Street. I wrote that down and the phone number that went with it and had my hand on the instrument when I remembered that I hadn’t switched on the buzzer for the reception room. I reached over the side of the desk and clicked it on and caught it right in stride. Somebody had just opened the door of the outer office.
I turned my pad face down on the desk and went over to see who it was. It was a slim tall self-satisfied looking number in a tropical worsted suit of slate blue, black and white shoes, a dull ivory-colored shirt and a tie and display handkerchief the color of jacaranda bloom. He was holding a long black cigarette-holder in a peeled back white pigskin glove and he was wrinkling his nose at the dead magazines on the library table and the chairs and the rusty floor covering and the general air of not much money being made.
As I opened the communicating door he made a quarter turn and stared at me out of a pair of rather dreamy pale eyes set close to a narrow nose. His skin was sun-flushed, his reddish hair was brushed back hard over a narrow sku
ll, and the thin line of his mustache was much redder than his hair.
He looked me over without haste and without much pleasure. He blew some smoke delicately and spoke through it with a faint sneer.
“You’re Marlowe?”
I nodded.
“I’m a little disappointed,” he said. “I rather expected something with dirty fingernails.”
“Come inside,” I said, “and you can be witty sitting down.”
I held the door for him and he strolled past me flicking cigarette ash on the floor with the middle nail of his free hand. He sat down on the customer’s side of the desk, took off the glove from his right hand and folded this with the other already off and laid them on the desk. He tapped the cigarette end out of the long black holder, prodded the coal with a match until it stopped smoking, fitted another cigarette and lit it with a broad mahogany-colored match. He leaned back in his chair with the smile of a bored aristocrat.
“All set?” I enquired. “Pulse and respiration normal? You wouldn’t like a cold towel on your head or anything?”
He didn’t curl his lip because it had been curled when he came in. “A private detective,” he said. “I never met one. A shifty business, one gathers. Keyhole peeping, raking up scandal, that sort of thing.”
“You here on business,” I asked him, “or just slumming?”
His smile was as faint as a fat lady at a fireman’s ball.
“The name is Murdock. That probably means a little something to you.”
“You certainly made nice time over here,” I said, and started to fill a pipe.
He watched me fill the pipe. He said slowly: “I understand my mother has employed you on a job of some sort. She has given you a check.”
I finished filling the pipe, put a match to it, got it drawing and leaned back to blow smoke over my right shoulder towards the open window. I didn’t say anything.
He leaned forward a little more and said earnestly: “I know being cagey is all part of your trade, but I am not guessing. A little worm told me, a simple garden worm, often trodden on, but still somehow surviving—like myself. I happened to be not far behind you. Does that help to clear things up?”
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