microscopic wristwatch. The bar was filling up a little, but not yet noisy. The two sharpies were still waving their hands and the solo drinker on the barstool had a couple of pals with him. I looked back at Howard Spencer.
“Something to do with your problem?” I asked him. “This fellow Wade, I mean.”
He nodded. He was giving me a careful once over. “Tell me a little about yourself, Mr. Marlowe. That is, if you don’t find the request objectionable.”
“What sort of thing? I’m a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I’m a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I’ve been in jail more than once and I don’t do divorce business. I like liquor and women and chess and a few other things. The cops don’t like me too well, but I know a couple I get along with. I’m a native son, born in Santa Rosa, both parents dead, no brothers or sisters, and when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in my business, and to plenty of people in any business or no business at all these days, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life.”
“I see,” he said. “But all that doesn’t exactly tell me what I want to know.”
I finished the gin and orange. I didn’t like it. I grinned at him. “I left out one item, Mr. Spencer. I have a portrait of Madison in my pocket.”
“A portrait of Madison? I’m afraid I don’t—”
“A five-thousand-dollar bill,” I said. “Always carry it. My lucky piece.”
“Good God,” he said in a hushed voice. “Isn’t that terribly dangerous?”
“Who was it said that beyond a certain point all dangers are equal?”
“I think it was Walter Bagehot. He was talking about a steeplejack.” Then he grinned. “Sorry, but I am a publisher. You’re all right, Marlowe. I’ll take a chance on you. If I didn’t you would tell me to go to hell. Right?”
I grinned back at him. He called the waiter and ordered another pair of drinks.
“Here it is,” he said carefully. “We are in bad trouble over Roger Wade. He can’t finish a book. He’s losing his grip and there’s something behind it. The man seems to be going to pieces. Wild fits of drinking and temper. Every once in a while he disappears for days on end. Not very long ago he threw his wife downstairs and put her in the hospital with five broken ribs. There’s no trouble between them in the usual sense, none at all. The man just goes nuts when he drinks.” Spencer leaned back and looked at me gloomily. “We have to have that book finished. We need it badly. To a certain extent my job depends on it. But we need more than that. We want to save a very able writer who is capable of much better things than he has ever done. Something is very wrong. This trip he won’t even see me. I realize this sounds like a job for a psychiatrist. Mrs. Wade disagrees. She is convinced that he is perfectly sane but that something is worrying him to death. A blackmailer, for instance. The Wades have been married five years. Something from his past may have caught up with him. It might even be—just as a wild guess —a fatal hit-and-run accident and someone has the goods on him. We don’t know what it is. We want to know. And we are willing to pay well to correct the trouble. If it turns out to be a medical matter, well—that’s that. If not, there has to be an answer. And in the meantime Mrs. Wade has to be protected. He might kill her the next time. You never know.”
The second round of drinks came. I left mine untouched and watched him gobble half of his in one swallow. I lit a cigarette and just stared at him.
“You don’t want a detective,” I said. “You want a magician. What the hell could I do? If I happened to be there at exactly the right time, and if he isn’t too tough for me to handle, I might knock him out and put him to bed. But I’d have to
“He’s about your size,” Spencer said, “but he’s not in your condition. And you could be there all the time.”
“Hardly. And drunks are cunning. He’d be certain to pick a time when I wasn’t around to throw his wingding. I’m not in the market for a job as a male nurse.”
“A male nurse wouldn’t be any use. Roger Wade is not the kind of man to accept one. He is a very talented guy who has been jarred loose from his self-control. He has made too much money writing junk for halfwits. But the only salvation for a writer is to write. If there is anything good in him, it will come out.”
“Okay, I’m sold on him,” I said wearily. “He’s terrific. Also he’s damn dangerous. He has a guilty secret and he tries to drown it in alcohol. It’s not my kind of problem, Mr. Spencer.”
“I see.” He looked at his wristwatch with a worried frown that knotted his face and made it look older and smaller. “Well, you can’t blame me for trying.”
He reached for his fat briefcase. I looked across at the golden girl. She was getting ready to leave. The white- haired waiter was hovering over her with the check. She gave him some money and a lovely smile and he looked as if he had shaken hands with God. She touched up her lips and put her white gauntlets on and the waiter pulled the table halfway across the room for her to stroll out.
I glanced at Spencer. He was frowning down at the empty glass on the table edge. He had the briefcase on his knees.
“Look,” I said. “I’ll go see the man and try to size him up, if you want me to. I’ll talk to his wife. But my guess is he’ll throw me out of the house.”
A voice that was not Spencer’s said: “No, Mr. Marlowe, I don’t think he would do that. On the contrary I think he might like you.”
I looked up into the pair of violet eyes. She was standing at the end of the table. I got up and canted myself against the back of the booth in that awkward way you have to stand when you can’t slide out.
“Please don’t get up,” she said in a voice like the stuff they use to line summer clouds with. “I know I owe you an apology, but it seemed important for me to have a chance to observe you before I introduced myself. I am Eileen Wade.”
Spencer said grumpily: “He’s not interested, Eileen.”
She smiled gently. “I disagree.”
I pulled myself together. I had been standing there off balance with my mouth open and me breathing through it like a sweet girl graduate. This was really a dish. Seen close up she was almost paralyzing.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t interested, Mrs. Wade. What I said or meant to say was that I didn’t think I could do any
