The Collected Raymond Chandler

by Raymond Chandler

  Miss Riordan watched me with disapproval. I was no longer a solid man. She didn’t say anything. I drank the drink and put the bottle away again and sat down.

  “You didn’t offer me one,” she said coolly.

  “Sorry. It’s only eleven o’clock or less. I didn’t think you looked the type.”

  Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “Is that a compliment?”

  “In my circle, yes.”

  She thought that over. It didn’t mean anything to her. It didn’t mean anything to me either when I thought it over. But the drink made me feel a lot better.

  She leaned forward and scraped her gloves slowly across the glass of the desk. “You wouldn’t want to hire an assistant, would you? Not if it only cost you a kind word now and then?”

  “No.”

  She nodded. “I thought probably you wouldn’t. I’d better just give you my information and go on home.”

  I didn’t say anything. I lit my pipe again. It makes you look thoughtful when you are not thinking.

  “First of all, it occurred to me that a jade necklace like that would be a museum piece and would be well known,” she said.

  I held the match in the air, still burning and watching the flame crawl close to my fingers. Then I blew it out softly and dropped it in the tray and said:

  “I didn’t say anything to you about a jade necklace.”

  “No, but Lieutenant Randall did.”

  “Somebody ought to sew buttons on his face.”

  “He knew my father. I promised not to tell.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “You knew already, silly.”

  Her hand suddenly flew up as if it was going to fly to her mouth, but it only rose halfway and then fell back slowly and her eyes widened. It was a good act, but I knew something else about her that spoiled it.

  “You did know, didn’t you?” She breathed the words, hushedly.

  “I thought it was diamonds. A bracelet, a pair of earrings, a pendant, three rings, one of the rings with emeralds too.”

  “Not funny,” she said. “Not even fast.”

  “Fei Tsui jade. Very rare. Carved beads about six carats apiece, sixty of them. Worth eighty thousand dollars.”

  “You have such nice brown eyes,” she said. “And you think you’re tough.”

  “Well, who does it belong to and how did you find out?”

  “I found out very simply. I thought the best jeweler in town would probably know, so I went and asked the manager of Block’s. I told him I was a writer and wanted to do an article on rare jade—you know the line.”

  “So he believed your red hair and your beautiful figure.”

  She flushed clear to the temples. “Well, he told me anyway. It belongs to a rich lady who lives in Bay City, in an estate on the canyon. Mrs. Lewin Lockridge Grayle. Her husband is an investment banker or something, enormously rich, worth about twenty million. He used to own a radio station in Beverly Hills, Station KFDK, and Mrs. Grayle used to work there. He married her five years ago. She’s a ravishing blonde. Mr. Grayle is elderly, liverish, stays home and takes calomel while Mrs. Grayle goes places and has a good time.”

  “This manager of Block’s,” I said. “He’s a fellow that gets around.”

  “Oh, I didn’t get all that from him, silly. Just about the necklace. The rest I got from Giddy Gertie Arbogast.”

  I reached into the deep drawer and brought the office bottle up again.

  “You’re not going to turn out lobe one of those drunken detectives, are you?” she asked anxiously.

  “Why not? They always solve their cases and they never even sweat. Get on with the story.”

  “Giddy Gertie is the society editor of the Chronicle. I’ve known him for years. He weighs two hundred and wears a Hitler mustache. He got out his morgue file on the Grayles. Look.”

  She reached into her bag and slid a photograph across the desk, a five-by-three glazed still.

  It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. She was wearing street clothes that looked black and white, and a hat to match and she was a little haughty, but not too much. Whatever you needed, wherever you happened to be—she had it. About thirty years old.

  I poured a fast drink and burned my throat getting it down. “Take it away,” I said. “I’ll start jumping.”

  “Why, I got it for you. You’ll want to see her, won’t you?”

  I looked at it again. Then I slid it under the blotter. “How about tonight at eleven?”

  “Listen, this isn’t just a bunch of gag lines, Mr. Marlowe. I called her up. She’ll see you. On business.”

  “It may start out that way.”

  She made an impatient gesture, so I stopped fooling around and got my battle-scarred frown back on my face. “What will she see me about?”

  “Her necklace, of course. It was like this. I called her up and had a lot of trouble getting to talk to her, of course, but finally I did. Then I gave her the song and dance I had given the nice man at Block’s and it didn’t take. She sounded as if she had a hangover. She said something about talking to her secretary, but I managed to keep her on the phone and ask her if it was true she had a Fei Tsui jade necklace. After a while she said, yes. I asked if I might see it. She said, what for? I said my piece over again and it didn’t take any better than the first time. I could hear her yawning and bawling somebody outside the mouthpiece for putting me on. Then I said I was working for Philip Marlowe. She said ‘So what?’ Just like that.”

  “Incredible. But all the society dames talk like tramps nowadays.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Miss Riordan said sweetly. “Probably some of them are tramps. So I asked her if she had a phone with no extension and she said what business was it of mine. But the funny thing was she hadn’t hung up on me.”

  “She had the jade on her mind and she didn’t know what you were leading up to. And she may have heard from Randall already.”

  Miss Riordan shook her head. “No. I called him later and he didn’t know who owned the necklace until I told him. He was quite surprised that I had found out.”

  “He’ll get used to you,” I said. “He’ll probably have to. What then?”

  “So I said to Mrs. Grayle: ‘You’d still like it back, wouldn’t you?’ Just like that. I didn’t know any other way to say it. I had to say something that would jar her a bit. It did. She gave me another number in a hurry. And I called that and I said I’d like to see her. She seemed surprised. So I had to tell her the story. She didn’t like it. But she had been wondering why she hadn’t heard from Marriott. I guess she thought he had gone south with the money or something. So I’m to see her at two o’clock. Then I’ll tell her about you and how nice and discreet you are and how you would be a good man to help her get it back, if there’s any chance and so on. She’s already interested.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just stared at her. She looked hurt. “What’s the matter? Did I do right?”

  “Can’t you get it through your head that this is a police case now and that I’ve been warned to stay off it?”

  “Mrs. Grayle has a perfect right to employ you, if she wants to.”

  “To do what?”

  She snapped and unsnapped her bag impatiently. “Oh, my goodness—a woman like that—with her looks—can’t you see—” She stopped and bit her lip. “What kind of man was Marriott?”

  “I hardly knew him. I thought he was a bit of a pansy. I didn’t like him very well.”

  “Was he a man who would be attractive to women?”

  “Some women. Others would want to spit.”

  “Well, it looks as if he might have been attractive to Mrs. Grayle. She went out with him.”

  “She probably goes out with a hundred men. There’s very little chance to get the necklace now.”

  “Why?”

  I got up and walked to the end of the office and slapped the wall with the flat of my hand, hard. The clacking typewriter on the oth
er side stopped for a moment, and then went on. I looked down through the open window into the shaft between my building and the Mansion House Hotel. The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on. I went back to my desk, dropped the bottle of whiskey back into the drawer, shut the drawer and sat down again. I lit my pipe for the eighth or ninth time and looked carefully across the half-dusted glass to Miss Riordan’s grave and honest little face.

  You could get to like that face a lot. Glamoured up blondes were a dime a dozen, but that was a face that would wear. I smiled at it.

  “Listen, Anne. Killing Marriott was a dumb mistake. The gang behind this holdup would never pull anything like that. What must have happened was that some gowed-up run they took along for a gun-holder lost his head. Marriott made a false move and some punk beat him down and it was done so quickly nothing could be done to prevent it. Here is an organized mob with inside information on jewels and the movements of the women that wear them. They ask moderate returns and they would play ball. But here also is a back alley murder that doesn’t fit at all. My idea is that whoever did it is a dead man hours ago, with weights on his ankles, deep in the Pacific Ocean. And either the jade went down with him or else they have some idea of its real value and they have cached it away in a place where it will stay for a long time—maybe for years before they dare bring it out again. Or, if the gang is big enough, it may show up on the other side of the world. The eight thousand they asked seems pretty low if they really know the value of the jade. But it would be hard to sell. I’m sure of one thing. They never meant to murder anybody.”

  Anne Riordan was listening to me with her lips slightly parted and a rapt expression on her face, as if she was looking at the Dalai Lhama.

  She closed her mouth slowly and nodded once. “You’re wonderful,” she said softly. “But you’re nuts.”

  She stood up and gathered her bag to her. “Will you go to see her or won’t you?”

  “Randall can’t stop me—if it comes from her.”

  “All right. I’m going to see another society editor and get some more dope on the Grayles if I can. About her love life. She would have one, wouldn’t she?”

  The face framed in auburn hair was wistful.

  “Who hasn’t?” I sneered.

  “I never had. Not really.”

  I reached up and shut my mouth with my hand. She gave me a sharp look and moved towards the door.

  “You’ve forgotten something,” I said.

  She stopped and turned. “What?” She looked all over the top of the desk.

  “You know damn well what.”

  She came back to the desk and leaned across it earnestly. “Why would they kill the man that killed Marriott, if they don’t go in for murder?”

  “Because he would be the type that would get picked up sometime and would talk—when they took his dope away from him. I mean they wouldn’t kill a customer.”

  “What makes you so sure the killer took dope?”

  “I’m not sure. I just said that. Most punks do.”

  “Oh.” She straightened up and nodded and smiled. “I guess you mean these,” she said and reached quickly into her bag and laid a small tissue bag package on the desk.

  I reached for it, pulled a rubber band off it carefully and opened up the paper. On it lay three long thick Russian cigarettes with paper mouthpieces. I looked at her and didn’t say anything.

  “I know I shouldn’t have taken them,” she said almost breathlessly. “But I knew they were jujus. They usually come in plain papers but lately around Bay City they have been putting them out like this. I’ve seen several. I thought it was kind of mean for the poor man to be found dead with marihuana cigarettes in his pocket.”

  “You ought to have taken the case too,” I said quietly. “There was dust in it. And it being empty was suspicious.”

  “I couldn’t—with you there. I—I almost went back and did. But I didn’t quite have the courage. Did it get you in wrong?”

  “No,” I lied. “Why should it?”

  “I’m glad of that,” she said wistfully.

  “Why didn’t you throw them away?”

  She thought about it, her bag clutched to her side, her wide-brimmed absurd hat tilted so that it hid one eye.

  “I guess it must be because I’m a cop’s daughter,” she said at last. “You just don’t throw away evidence.” Her smile was frail and guilty and her cheeks were flushed. I shrugged.

  “Well—” the word hung in the air, like smoke in a closed room. Her lips stayed parted after saying it. I let it hang. The flush on her face deepened.

  “I’m horribly sorry. I shouldn’t have done it.”

  I passed that too.

  She went very quickly to the door and out.

  CHAPTER 14

  I poked at one of the long Russian cigarettes with a finger, then laid them in a neat row, side by side and squeaked my chair. You just don’t throw away evidence. So they were evidence. Evidence of what? That a man occasionally smoked a stick of tea, a man who looked as if any touch of the exotic would appeal to him. On the other hand lots of tough guys smoked marihuana, also lots of band musicians and high school kids, and nice girls who had given up trying. American hasheesh. A weed that would grow anywhere. Unlawful to cultivate now. That meant a lot in a country as big as the U.S.A.

  I sat there and puffed my pipe and listened to the clacking typewriter behind the wall of my office and the bong-bong of the traffic lights changing on Hollywood Boulevard and spring rustling in the air, like a paper bag blowing along a concrete sidewalk.

  They were pretty big cigarettes, but a lot of Russians are, and marihuana is a coarse leaf. Indian hemp. American hasheesh. Evidence. God, what hats the women wear. My head ached. Nuts.

  I got my penknife out and opened the small sharp blade, the one I didn’t clean my pipe with, and reached for one of them. That’s what a police chemist would do. Slit one down the middle and examine the stuff under a microscope, to start with. There might just happen to be something unusual about it. Not very likely, but what the hell, he was paid by the month.

  I slit one down the middle. The mouthpiece part was pretty tough to slit. Okey, I was a tough guy, I slit it anyway. See if you can stop me.

  Out of the mouthpiece shiny segments of rolled thin cardboard partly straightened themselves and had printing on them. I sat up straight and pawed for them. I tried to spread them out on the desk in order, but they slid around on the desk. I grabbed another of the cigarettes and squinted inside the mouthpiece. Then I went to work with the blade of the pocket knife in a different way. I pinched the cigarette down to the place where the mouthpieces began. The paper was thin all the way, you could feel the grain of what was underneath. So I cut the mouthpiece off carefully and then still more carefully cut through the mouthpiece longways, but only just enough. It opened out and there was another card underneath, rolled up, not touched this time.

  I spread it out fondly. It was a man’s calling card. Thin pale ivory, just off white. Engraved on that were delicately shaded words. In the lower left hand corner a Stillwood Heights telephone number. In the lower right hand corner the legend, “By Appointment Only.” In the middle, a little larger, but still discreet: “Jules Amthor.” Below, a little smaller: “Psychic Consultant.”

  I took hold of the third cigarette. This time, with a lot of difficulty, I teased the card out without cutting anything. It was the same. I put it back where it had been.

  I looked at my watch, put my pipe in an ashtray, and then had to look at my watch again to see what time it was. I rolled the two cut cigarettes and the cut card in part of the tissue paper, the one that was complete with card inside in another part of the tissue paper and locked both little packages away in my desk.

  I sat looking at the card. Jules Amthor, Psychic Consultant, By Appointment Only, Stillwood Heights phone number, no address. Three like that rolled inside three sticks of tea, in a Chinese or Japanese silk cigarette case with an imitation t
ortoise-shell frame, a trade article that might have cost thirty-five to seventy-five cents in any Oriental store, Hooey Phooey Sing—Long Sing Tung, that kind of place, where a nice-mannered Jap hisses at you, laughing heartily when you say that the Moon of Arabia incense smells like the girls in Frisco Sadie’s back parlor.

  And all this in the pocket of a man who was very dead, and who had another and genuinely expensive cigarette case containing cigarettes which he actually smoked.

  He must have forgotten it. It didn’t make sense. Perhaps it hadn’t belonged to him at all. Perhaps he had picked it up in a hotel lobby. Forgotten he had it on him. Forgotten to turn it in. Jules Amthor, Psychic Consultant.

  The phone rang and I answered it absently. The voice had the cool hardness of a cop who thinks he is good. It was Randall. He didn’t bark. He was the icy type.

  “So you didn’t know who that girl was last night? And she picked you up on the boulevard and you walked over to there. Nice lying, Marlowe.”

  “Maybe you have a daughter and you wouldn’t like news cameramen jumping out of bushes and popping flashbulbs in her face.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “It was a pleasure.”

  He was silent a moment, as if deciding something. “We’ll let that pass,” he said. “I’ve seen her. She came in and told me her story. She’s the daughter of a man I knew and respected, as it happens.”

  “She told you,” I said, “and you told her.”

  “I told her a little,” he said coldly. “For a reason. I’m calling you for the same reason. This investigation is going to be undercover. We have a chance to break this jewel gang and we’re going to do it.”

  “Oh, it’s a gang murder this morning. Okey.”

  “By the way, that was marihuana dust in that funny cigarette case—the one with the dragons on it. Sure you didn’t see him smoke one out of it?”

  “Quite sure. In my presence he smoked only the others. But he wasn’t in my presence all the time.”