The Collected Raymond Chandler

by Raymond Chandler

  Her face stiffened a little. The hand holding the towels clutched and her nails made a scratching sound on the cloth. She moved back from the door and sat down in a straight chair against the wall. Trouble dwelt in her eyes.

  “A dick,” she breathed. “What goes on?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “All I heard was Mrs. Lacey left some money in a shoe she wanted a lift put on the heel, and I took it over to the shoemaker and he didn’t steal the money. And I didn’t, either. She got the money back, didn’t she?”

  “Don’t like cops, do you? Seems to me I know your face,” I said.

  The face hardened. “Look, copper, I got a job and I work at it. I don’t need any help from any copper. I don’t owe anybody a nickel.”

  “Sure,” I said. “When you took those shoes from the room did you go right over to the shoemaker with them?”

  She nodded shortly.

  “Didn’t stop on the way at all?”

  “Why would I?”

  “I wasn’t around then. I wouldn’t know.”

  “Well, I didn’t. Except to tell Weber I was going out for a guest.”

  “Who’s Mr. Weber?”

  “He’s the assistant manager. He’s down in the dining room a lot.”

  “Tall, pale guy that writes down all the race results?”

  She nodded. “That would be him.”

  “I see,” I said. I struck a match and lit my cigarette. I stared at her through smoke. “Thanks very much,” I said.

  She stood up and opened the door. “I don’t think I remember you,” she said, looking back at me.

  “There must be a few of us you didn’t meet,” I said.

  She flushed and stood there glaring at me.

  “They always change the towels this late in your hotel?” I asked her, just to be saying something.

  “Smart guy, ain’t you?”

  “Well, I try to give that impression,” I said with a modest smirk.

  “You don’t put it over,” she said, with a sudden trace of thick accent.

  “Anybody handle those shoes except you—after you took them?”

  “No. I told you I just stopped to tell Mr. Weber—” She stopped dead and thought a minute. “I went to get him a cup of coffee,” she said. “I left them on his desk by the cash register. How the hell would I know anybody handled them? And what difference does it make if they got their dough back all right?”

  “Well, I see you’re anxious to make me feel good about it. Tell me about this guy, Weber. He been here long?”

  “Too long,” she said nastily. “A girl don’t want to walk too close to him if you get what I mean. What am I talking about?”

  “About Mr. Weber.”

  “Well, to hell with Mr. Weber—if you get what I mean.”

  “You been having any trouble getting it across?”

  She flushed again. “And strictly off the record,” she said, “to hell with you.”

  “If I get what you mean,” I said.

  She opened the door and gave me a quick, half-angry smile and went out.

  Her steps made a tapping sound going along the hall. I didn’t hear her stop at any other doors. I looked at my watch. It was after half past nine.

  Somebody came along the hall with heavy feet, went into the room next to me and banged the door. The man started hawking and throwing shoes around. A weight flopped on the bed springs and started bounding around. Five minutes of this and he got up again. Two big, unshod feet thudded on the floor, a bottle tinkled against a glass. The man had himself a drink, lay down on the bed again, and began to snore almost at once.

  Except for that and the confused racket from downstairs in the dining room and the bar there was the nearest thing you get to silence in a mountain resort. Speedboats stuttered out on the lake, dance music murmured here and there, cars went by blowing horns, the .22’s snapped in the shooting gallery, and kids yelled at each other across the main drag.

  It was so quiet that I didn’t hear my door open. It was half open before I noticed it. A man came in quietly, half closed the door, moved a couple of steps farther into the room and stood looking at me. He was tall, thin, pale, quiet, and his eyes had a flat look of menace.

  “Okay, sport,” he said. “Let’s see it.”

  I rolled around and sat up. I yawned. “See what?”

  “The buzzer.”

  “What buzzer?”

  “Shake it up, half-smart. Let’s see the buzzer that gives you the right to ask questions of the help.”

  “Oh, that,” I said, smiling weakly. “I don’t have any buzzer, Mr. Weber.”

  “Well, that is very lovely,” Mr. Weber said. He came across the room, his long arms swinging. When he was about three feet from me he leaned forward a little and made a very sudden movement. An open palm slapped the side of my face hard. It rocked my head and made the back of it shoot pain in all directions.

  “Just for that,” I said, “you don’t go to the movies tonight.”

  He twisted his face into a sneer and cocked his right fist. He telegraphed his punch well ahead. I would almost have had time to run out and buy a catcher’s mask. I came up under the fist and stuck a gun in his stomach. He grunted unpleasantly. I said: “Putting the hands up, please.”

  He grunted again and his eyes went out of focus, but he didn’t move his hands. I went around him and backed towards the far side of the room. He turned slowly, eyeing me. I said: “Just a moment until I close the door. Then we will go into the case of the money in the shoe, otherwise known as the Clue of the Substituted Lettuce.”

  “Go to hell,” he said.

  “A right snappy comeback,” I said. “And full of originality.”

  I reached back for the knob of the door, keeping my eyes on him. A board creaked behind me. I swung around, adding a little power to the large, heavy, hard and business-like hunk of concrete which landed on the side of my jaw. I spun off into the distance, trailing flashes of lightning, and did a nose dive out into space. A couple of thousand years passed. Then I stopped a planet with my back, opened my eyes fuzzily and looked at a pair of feet.

  They were sprawled out at a loose angle, and legs came towards me from them. The legs were splayed out on the floor of the room. A hand hung down limp, and a gun lay just out of its reach. I moved one of the feet and was surprised to find it belonged to me. The lax hand twitched and reached automatically for the gun, missed it, reached again and grabbed the smooth grip. I lifted it. Somebody had tied a fifty-pound weight to it, but I lifted it anyway. There was nothing in the room but silence. I looked across and was staring straight at the closed door. I shifted a little and ached all over. My head ached. My jaw ached. I lifted the gun some more and then put it down again. The hell with it. I should be lifting guns around for what. The room was empty. All visitors departed. The droplight from the ceiling burned with an empty glare. I rolled a little and ached some more and got a leg bent and a knee under me. I came up grunting hard, grabbed the gun again and climbed the rest of the way. There was a taste of ashes in my mouth.

  “Ah, too bad,” I said out loud. “Too bad. Must do. Okay, Charlie. I’ll be seeing you.”

  I swayed a little, still groggy as a three-day drunk, swiveled slowly and prowled the room with my eyes.

  A man was kneeling in prayer against the side of the bed. He wore a gray suit and his hair was a dusty blond color. His legs were spread out, and his body was bent forward on the bed and his arms were flung out. His head rested sideways on his left arm.

  He looked quite comfortable. The rough deer-horn grip of the hunting knife under his left shoulder-blade didn’t seem to bother him at all.

  I went over to bend down and look at his face. It was the face of Mr. Weber. Poor Mr. Weber! From under the handle of the hunting knife, down the back of his jacket, a dark streak extended.

  It was not mercurochrome.

  I found my hat somewhere and put it on carefully, and put the gun under my arm and waded ove
r to the door. I reversed the key, switched the light off, went out and locked the door after me and dropped the key into my pocket.

  I went along the silent hallway and down the stairs to the office. An old wasted-looking night clerk was reading the paper behind the desk. He didn’t even look at me. I glanced through the archway into the dining room. The same noisy crowd was brawling at the bar. The same hillbilly symphony was fighting for life in the corner. The guy with the cigar and the John L. Lewis eyebrows was minding the cash register. Business seemed good. A couple of summer visitors were dancing in the middle of the floor, holding glasses over each other’s shoulders.

  CHAPTER 5

  I went out of the lobby door and turned left along the street to where my car was parked, but I didn’t go very far before I stopped and turned back into the lobby of the hotel. I leaned on the counter and asked the clerk: “May I speak to the maid called Gertrude?”

  He blinked at me thoughtfully over his glasses.

  “She’s off at nine-thirty. She’s gone home.”

  “Where does she live?”

  He stared at me without blinking this time.

  “I think maybe you’ve got the wrong idea,” he said.

  “If I have, it’s not the idea you have.”

  He rubbed the end of his chin and washed my face with his stare. “Something wrong?”

  “I’m a detective from L.A. I work very quietly when people let me work quietly.”

  “You’d better see Mr. Holmes,” he said. “The manager.”

  “Look, pardner, this is a very small place. I wouldn’t have to do more than wander down the row and ask in the bars and eating places for Gertrude. I could think up a reason. I could find out. You would save me a little time and maybe save somebody from getting hurt. Very badly hurt.”

  He shrugged. “Let me see your credentials, Mr.—”

  “Evans.” I showed him my credentials. He stared at them a long time after he had read them, then handed the wallet back and stared at the ends of his fingertips.

  “I believe she’s stopping at the Whitewater Cabins,” he said.

  “What’s her last name?”

  “Smith,” he said, and smiled a faint, old, and very weary smile, the smile of a man who has seen too much of one world. “Or possibly Schmidt.”

  I thanked him and went back out on the sidewalk. I walked half a block, then turned into a noisy little bar for a drink. A three-piece orchestra was swinging it on a tiny stage at the back. In front of the stage there was a small dance floor, and a few fuzzy-eyed couples were shagging around flat-footed with their mouths open and their faces full of nothing.

  I drank a jigger of rye and asked the barman where the Whitewater Cabins were. He said at the east end of the town, half a block back, on a road that started at the gas station.

  I went back for my car and drove through the village and found the road. A pale blue neon sign with an arrow on it pointed the way. The Whitewater Cabins were a cluster of shacks on the side of the hill with an office down front. I stopped in front of the office. People were sitting out on their tiny front porches with portable radios. The night seemed peaceful and homey. There was a bell in the office.

  I rang it and a girl in slacks came in and told me Miss Smith and Miss Hoffman had a cabin kind of off by itself because the girls slept late and wanted quiet. Of course, it was always kind of busy in the season, but the cabin where they were—it was called Tuck-Me-Inn—was quiet and it was at the back, way off to the left, and I wouldn’t have any trouble finding it. Was I a friend of theirs?

  I said I was Miss Smith’s grandfather, thanked her and went out and up the slope between the clustered cabins to the edge of the pines at the back. There was a long woodpile at the back, and at each end of the cleared space there was a small cabin. In front of the one to the left there was a coupe standing with its lights dim. A tall blonde girl was putting a suitcase into the boot. Her hair was tied in a blue handkerchief, and she wore a blue sweater and blue pants. Or dark enough to be blue, anyhow. The cabin behind her was lighted, and the little sign hanging from the roof said Tuck-Me-Inn.

  The blonde girl went back into the cabin, leaving the boot of the car open. Dim light oozed out through the open door. I went very softly up on the steps and walked inside.

  Gertrude was snapping down the top of a suitcase on a bed. The blonde girl was out of sight, but I could hear her out in the kitchen of the little white cabin.

  I couldn’t have made very much noise. Gertrude snapped down the lid of the suitcase, hefted it and started to carry it out. It was only then that she saw me. Her face went very white, and she stopped dead, holding the suitcase at her side. Her mouth opened, and she spoke quickly back over her shoulder: “Anna—achtung!”

  The noise stopped in the kitchen. Gertrude and I stared at each other.

  “Leaving?” I asked.

  She moistened her lips. “Going to stop me, copper?”

  “I don’t guess. What you leaving for?”

  “I don’t like it up here. The altitude is bad for my nerves.”

  “Made up your mind rather suddenly, didn’t you?”

  “Any law against it?”

  “I don’t guess. You’re not afraid of Weber, are you?”

  She didn’t answer me. She looked past my shoulder. It was an old gag, and I didn’t pay any attention to it. Behind me, the cabin door closed. I turned, then. The blonde girl was behind me. She had a gun in her hand. She looked at me thoughtfully, without any expression much. She was a big girl, and looked very strong.

  “What is it?” she asked, speaking a little heavily, in a voice almost like a man’s voice.

  “A Los Angeles dick,” replied Gertrude.

  “So,” Anna said. “What does he want?”

  “I don’t know,” Gertrude said. “I don’t think he’s a real dick. He don’t seem to throw his weight enough.”

  “So,” Anna said. She moved to the side and away from the door. She kept the gun pointed at me. She held it as if guns didn’t make her nervous—not the least bit nervous. “What do you want?” she asked throatily.

  “Practically everything,” I said. “Why are you taking a powder?”

  “That has been explained,” the blonde girl said calmly. “It is the altitude. It is making Gertrude sick.”

  “You both work at the Indian Head?”

  The blonde girl said: “Of no consequence.”

  “What the hell,” Gertrude said. “Yeah, we both worked at the hotel until tonight. Now we’re leaving. Any objection?”

  “We waste time,” the blonde girl said. “See if he has a gun.”

  Gertrude put her suitcase down and felt me over. She found the gun and I let her take it, big-hearted. She stood there looking at it with a pale, worried expression. The blonde girl said: “Put the gun down outside and put the suitcase in the car. Start the engine of the car and wait for me.”

  Gertrude picked her suitcase up again and started around me to the door.

  “That won’t get you anywhere,” I said. “They’ll telephone ahead and block you on the road. There are only two roads out of here, both easy to block.”

  The blonde girl raised her fine, tawny eyebrows a little. “Why should anyone wish to stop us?”

  “Yeah, why are you holding that gun?”

  “I did not know who you were,” the blonde girl said. “I do not know even now. Go on, Gertrude.”

  Gertrude opened the door, then looked back at me and moved her lips one over the other. “Take a tip, shamus, and beat it out of this place while you’re able,” she said quietly.

  “Which of you saw the hunting knife?”

  They glanced at each other quickly, then back at me. Gertrude had a fixed stare, but it didn’t look like a guilty kind of stare. “I pass,” she said. “You’re over my head.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I know you didn’t put it where it was. One more question: How long were you getting that cup of coffee for Mr. Weber the morning you t
ook the shoes out?”

  “You are wasting time, Gertrude,” the blonde girl said impatiently, or as impatiently as she would ever say anything. She didn’t seem an impatient type.

  Gertrude didn’t pay any attention to her. Her eyes held a tight speculation. “Long enough to get him a cup of coffee.”

  “They have that right in the dining room.”

  “It was stale in the dining room. I went out to the kitchen for it. I got him some toast, also.”

  “Five minutes?”

  She nodded. “About that.”

  “Who else was in the dining room besides Weber?”

  She stared at me very steadily. “At that time I don’t think anybody. I’m not sure. Maybe someone was having a late breakfast.”

  “Thanks very much,” I said. “Put the gun down carefully on the porch and don’t drop it. You can empty it if you like. I don’t plan to shoot anyone.”

  She smiled a very small smile and opened the door with the hand holding the gun and went out. I heard her go down the steps and then heard the boot of the car slammed shut. I heard the starter, then the motor caught and purred quietly.

  The blonde girl moved around to the door and took the key from the inside and put it on the outside. “I would not care to shoot anybody,” she said. “But I could do it if I had to. Please do not make me.”

  She shut the door and the key turned in the lock. Her steps went down off the porch. The car door slammed and the motor took hold. The tires made a soft whisper going down between the cabins. Then the noise of the portable radios swallowed that sound.

  I stood there looking around the cabin, then walked through it. There was nothing in it that didn’t belong there. There was some garbage in a can, coffee cups not washed, a saucepan full of grounds. There were no papers, and nobody had left the story of his life written on a paper match.

  The back door was locked, too. This was on the side away from the camp, against the dark wilderness of the trees. I shook the door and bent down to look at the lock. A straight bolt lock. I opened a window. A screen was nailed over it against the wall outside. I went back to the door and gave it the shoulder. It held without any trouble at all. It also started my head blazing again. I felt in my pockets and was disgusted. I didn’t even have a five-cent skeleton key.