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?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Supposing it made any difference to me.”
“You are hired to find my wife, I gather.”
I made a snorting sound and grinned at him over the pipe bowl.
“Marlowe,” he said, even more earnestly, “I’ll try hard, but I don’t think I am going to like you.”
“I’m screaming,” I said. “With rage and pain.”
“And if you will pardon a homely phrase, your tough guy act stinks.”
“Coming from you, that’s bitter.”
He leaned back again and brooded at me with pale eyes. He fussed around in the chair, trying to get comfortable. A lot of people had tried to get comfortable in that chair. I ought to try it myself sometime. Maybe it was losing business for me.
“Why should my mother want Linda found?” he asked slowly. “She hated her guts. I mean my mother hated Linda’s guts. Linda was quite decent to my mother. What do you think of her?”
“Your mother?”
“Of course. You haven’t met Linda, have you?”
“That secretary of your mother’s has her job hanging by a frayed thread. She talks out of turn.”
He shook his head sharply. “Mother won’t know. Anyhow, Mother couldn’t do without Merle. She has to have somebody to bully. She might yell at her or even slap her face, but she couldn’t do without her. What did you think of her?”
“Kind of cute—in an old world sort of way.”
He frowned. “I mean Mother. Merle’s just a simple little girl, I know.”
“Your powers of observation startle me,” I said.
He looked surprised. He almost forgot to fingernail the ash of his cigarette. But not quite. He was careful not to get any of it in the ashtray, however.
“About my mother,” he said patiently.
“A grand old warhorse,” I said. “A heart of gold, and the gold buried good and deep.”
“But why does she want Linda found? I can’t understand it. Spending money on it too. My mother hates to spend money. She thinks money is part of her skin. Why does she want Linda found?”
“Search me,” I said. “Who said she did?”
“Why, you implied so. And Merle—”
“Merle’s just romantic. She made it up. Hell, she blows her nose in a man’s handkerchief. Probably one of yours.”
He blushed. “That’s silly. Look, Marlowe. Please, be reasonable and give me an idea what it’s all about. I haven’t much money, I’m afraid, but would a couple of hundred—”
“I ought to bop you,” I said. “Besides I’m not supposed to talk to you. Orders.”
