'His price will be higher than mine,' I said.
'Exactly so, sir.'
'And you know what I charge?'
'Yes, sir. You'll recall that I handled the General's checkbook for him when he employed you previously.'
'And you can afford me?'
'The General was very generous to me in his will, sir.'
I took a lungful of smoke and let it out slowly and tilted my chair on its back legs.
'But still you're working here,' I said.
'I believe the General would have wished that, sir. His daughters…' Norris let the rest of the sentence disappear into an eloquent servant's self-effacement.
'Yes,' I said. 'I'm sure he would have. When did Carmen disappear?'
'A week ago. I went on my weekly visit and found that she was gone. The staff was somewhat reticent about her disappearance, but I was able to ascertain that she had in fact been gone for at least two nights.'
'And no one had reported it?'
'Apparently not, sir. I informed Miss Vivian Sternwood, of course, and took the liberty of speaking on the telephone with Captain Gregory of the Missing Persons Bureau.'
'And?' I said.
'And it was, as I remember his words, 'the first I'd heard of it.' '
'And Vivian?' I said.
'Miss Vivian said that I was not to worry about it. That she had resources and that Carmen would turn up.'
'And by 'resources' you understood her to mean Eddie Mars?' I said.
'I did, sir.'
'How does she feel about you calling me?' I said.
'I have not yet informed her of that, sir.'
I drank the rest of the coffee laced with brandy. It had cooled enough to go down softly. I nodded more to myself than to Norris.
'What is the name of this sanitarium?' I said.
'Resthaven, sir. It is supervised by a Dr. Bonsentir.'
'Okay,' I said, 'I'll take a run out there.'
'Yes, sir,' Norris said. 'Thank you very much, sir. May I give you a retainer?'
'A dollar will do for now,' I said. 'Make it official. We'll talk about the rest of it later.'
'That's very kind indeed, sir,' Norris said. He took a long pale leather wallet out of his inside pocket and extracted a dollar bill and gave it to me. I wrote him out a receipt, took the bill, and put it in my pocket, negligently, like there were many more in there and I had no need to think about it.
'May I call you here?' I said.
'Indeed, sir. I often receive calls here. Answering the phone is normally among my duties.'
'And how is Vivian?' I said.
'She is still very beautiful, sir, if I may be so bold.'
'And still dating a loonigan,' I said.
'If you mean Mr. Mars, sir, I'm afraid that is the case.'
CHAPTER 2
I came out of the Sternwood house and stood on the front stoop with my hat in my hand, holding it by the brim against my right thigh. Below me, many terraced levels down the hill, was the big spiked fence that separated the Sternwoods, or what was left of them, from the people who still worked for a living. The sun glinted off the gilt spear points of the fence. To the north it shone on the snow in the San Gabriel Mountains. I looked back down the lawn the other way, at the few creaking oil derricks still tiredly pumping five or six barrels a day. It was hard to see them from here, and impossible to see beyond them to the stinking sump where Rusty Regan lay dreamless, sleeping the big sleep.
Behind me the door opened.
'Marlowe?'
I turned and looked at Vivian Regan, the General's older daughter, the one with the hot eyes and the sulky mouth and the great legs. She was in some kind of white silk lounging outfit today; a bell-sleeved silk top with a plunging neckline and wide floppy silk pants that hid the great legs but hinted to you that if you got a look they would indeed be great. She had an unlighted cigarette in her mouth.
'Got a match?' she said and leaned a little toward me through the open door.
I dug out a kitchen match and snapped it on my thumbnail and lit her cigarette.
'Still a masterful brute, aren't you,' she said.
