and the Dying, and the author was Russell Dancer. I had never heard of the novel, but the writer's name was familiar. Russell Dancer had been a prolific pulp creator of detective and adventure fiction through the forties and very early fifties, until the complete collapse of the pulp market, and his name was prominently featured on at least a hundred covers among the five thousand pulp magazines which comprised my own collection. But it seemed odd that Paige would have a book like that with the newsstands filled with more modern paperbacks- unless he had been an aficionado of Dancer's work or the field in general…
I turned away from the bag. The odor of blood was thickly brackish in there, and my head ached malignantly. I went to the door and outside without looking at Paige again, and made certain the door was unlocked before I shut it. Then I crossed to the motel office.
Orchard was sitting behind the counter, reading the Monterey newspaper. He looked up at me, started to smile, and changed it to a frown when he saw my face. He stood up. 'Is something the matter, sir?'
'Yeah,' I said. 'You'd better call the police, Mr. Orchard.'
His eyelids worked up and down like intricately veined fans. 'The police?'
'There's been a killing in one of your cottages.'
'Killing? Killing?'
'In Number nine,' I said. 'Walter Paige.'
All the color drained out of Orchard's cheeks, and his parted, too-red lips were like an open wound against the sudden marmoreal cast of his face. 'Are you sure? A killing- here? My God!'
'You can go out and have a look yourself, if you want.'
'Oh no, no, I… believe you. It's just that… Mr. Paige, you say?'
'That's right.'
'What happened? How did-?'
'Somebody stabbed him.'
'Stabbed… him…' His eyes widened, and he shrank away from me with his hands fluttering in front of him like restless white doves. 'You… it wasn't…'
'No,' I said, 'it wasn't. Listen, will you call the police or do you want me to do it?'
'No,' Orchard said, 'no, it's my responsibility, I’ll call them..' The doves came together and mated fretfully, and he turned away and got himself through the doorway into his private office. 'A killing… we've never had… the Beachwood is a respectable family motel… oh God, oh my God!'
I went around the counter and watched him at a polished mahogany desk, fumbling with the telephone. It took him thirty seconds to dial seven digits, and a full minute to get two sentences' worth of facts reported thickly into the receiver; but he got the story straight enough, remembering my name and using it freely. When he had finished the call, he put the handset down and began mopping at his face with a yard of silk handkerchief.
I said from the doorway, 'How long will it take them to get here?'
'Five minutes, or ten, I don't know.'
'We'd better go outside and wait for them.'
'Yes. Yes, all right.'
We went out, and it was almost dusk. Three-quarters of the sun had fallen beyond the gray rim of the sea; what little light remained had a blood-red tinge. Orchard looked up at the darkening sky and went back inside and turned on the night lighting for the motel groundscarriage-style lamps on high ivy-covered poles. The white gravel on the drive seemed luminescent under their glare.
When Orchard came out again, he paced back and forth in front of the office, worrying his hands. Cottage Number 9 seemed to have a magnetic pull on his eyes. I sat on the topmost of the three steps that led up to the office entrance, and smoked my last cigarette.
I said to him, 'Is this the first time Paige has stayed here? Or have you seen him before?'
'What? Oh-no, he's been quite a regular weekend guest.'
'For how long?'
'For the past month or so.'
'Do you know what business he had in Cypress Bay?'
'Of course not. How would I know?'
'I thought he might have mentioned something to you.'
'No, he didn't. No.'
'Did he have any visitors that you know about?'
'I really don't recall.'
'Did you ever see him with a woman?'
'Here? At the Beachwood?'
'Or anywhere else.'
'A respectable family motel… no, no, certainly not.'
'How about a bald guy, forty or so, heavy-featured?'
'No.'
'Do you know of any local acquaintances he might have had?'
'I do not,' Orchard said. 'See here, why are you asking all these questions? Did you know Mr. Paige?'
Before I could give him any kind of answer, two black-and-white police cruisers turned off Ocean Boulevard to enter the motel grounds; they used no sirens. A third cruiser remained at the entrance to screen admittance. The first two pulled up to where Orchard and I were standing, and a couple of uniformed cops got out of one and two guys in business suits got out of the other.
One of the latter-wearing a dark-brown gabardine- was six and a half feet tall, with iron-gray hair and a long, sad, intelligent face; he was maybe fifty-five, and he walked with long, shambling strides, as if he had never quite learned the art of bodily coordination. His eyes were dark and deep-set, the lids canted sharply, so that when he blinked he had a vaguely Oriental appearance. His name was Ned Quartermain, and he was the Chief of Police of Cypress Bay. The other plainclothesman was a Lieutenant Favor; thin of body, he had unruly brown hair and a thick, incongruous mustache; he reminded me of a silent-movie comedian. But his eyes, like Quartermain's, were shrewd, and you knew immediately there was nothing of the Chaplinesque buffoon about him. He was outfitted with a police camera, a fingerprint kit, and another small technician's kit: a walking crime lab.
Orchard fluttered a little, like a frightened gull, and Quartermain told him to relax; then he said to me, 'You're the one who discovered the body?' His voice was soft and faintly sepulchral, but in a way that was not displeasing.
I answered, 'Yes.'
'Can I see some identification?'
I got my wallet and gave it to him and watched him open it up and find the photostat of my investigator's license. He read it very carefully, and then looked up at me again. 'Private detective,' he said with no inflection.
'Yes.'
'Here on a case?'
'Yes.'
'This Walter Paige a part of it?'
'He was all of it.'
'You want to give me the details?'
I nodded. 'Now-or after you've looked at the body?'
'After. I'll call you down when I want you.'
'Whatever you say.'
'Number nine, is that right?'
'Yes.'
'Door unlocked?'
'Yes.'
He made a thoughtful motion with his head and turned and went down there with Favor and one of the uniformed cops at his heels; the other cop, a very young one, stayed with Orchard and me. I watched Quartermain open the door to Paige's cottage, pause, enter with Favor, and shut the door again. A couple of other guests had seen the arrival of the police cars, and were out of their cottages and walking around the way they do, rubber-
