night.”
“That would buy, a whole busload of wetbacks like you.” He shrugged that off.
“The boss gets pretty rough when he blows his top. Better pay up, shamus.”
“Pachuco stuff,” I said contemptuously. “All you’re touching is the small money. Lots of men play around when they’re lit. Anyhow she knows all about it. You don’t have anything to sell. ”
There was a gleam in his eye. “Just don’t come round any more, tough boy.”
“I’m leaving.”
I stood up and walked around the table. He moved enough to keep facing towards me. I watched his hand but he evidently wasn’t wearing a knife this morning. When I was close enough I slapped a hand across his face.
“I don’t get called a son of a whore by the help, greaseball. I’ve got business here and I come around whenever I feel like it. Watch your lip from now on. You might get pistol-whipped. That pretty face of yours would never look the same again.”
He didn’t react at all, not even to the slap. That and being called a greaseball must have been deadly insults to him. But this time he just stood there wooden-faced, motionless. Then without a word he picked up the coffee tray and carried it out.
“Thanks for the coffee,” I said to his back.
He kept going. When he was gone I felt the bristles on my chin, shook myself, and decided to be on my way. I had had a skinful of the Wade family.
As I crossed the living room Eileen was coming down the stairs in white slacks and open-toed sandals and a pale blue shirt. She looked at me with complete surprise. “I didn’t know you were here, Mr. Marlowe,” she said, as though she hadn’t seen me for a week and at that time I had just dropped in for tea.
“I put his gun in the desk,” I said.
“Gun?” Then it seemed to dawn on her. “Oh, last night was a little hectic, wasn’t it? But I thought you had gone home.”
I walked over closer to her. She had a thin gold chain around her neck and some kind of fancy pendant in gold and blue on white enamel. The blue enameled part looked like a pair of wings, but not spread out. Against these there was a broad white enamel and gold dagger that pierced a scroll. I couldn’t read the words. It was some kind of military insigne.
“I got drunk,” I said. “Deliberately and not elegantly. I was a little lonely.”
“You didn’t have to be,” she said, and her eyes were as clear as water. There wasn’t a trace of guile in them.
“A matter of opinion,” I said. “I’m leaving now and I’m not sure I’ll be back. You heard what I said about the gun?”
“You put it in his desk. It might be a good idea to put it somewhere else. But he didn’t really mean to shoot himself, did he?”
“I can’t answer that. But next time he might.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I really don’t. You were a wonderful help last night, Mr. Marlowe. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You made a pretty good try.”
She got pink. Then she laughed. “I had a very curious dream in the night,” she said slowly, looking off over my shoulder. “Someone I used to know was here in the house. Someone who has been dead for ten years.” Her fingers went up and touched the gold and enamel pendant. “That’s why I am wearing this today. He gave it to me.”
“I had a curious dream myself,” I said. “But I’m not telling mine. Let me know how Roger gets on and if there is anything I can do.”
She lowered her eyes and looked into mine. “You said you were not coming back.”
“I said I wasn’t sure. I may have to come back. I hope I won’t. There is something very wrong in this house. And only part of it came out of a bottle.”
She stared at me, frowning. “What does that mean?”
“I think you know what I’m talking about.”
She thought it over carefully. Her fingers were still touching the pendant gently. She let out a slow patient sigh. “There’s always another woman,” she said quietly.
“At some time or other. It’s not necessarily fatal. We’re talking at cross-purposes, aren’t we? We are not even talking about the same thing, perhaps.”
“Could be,” I said. She was still standing on the steps, the third step from the bottom. She still had her fingers on the pendant. She still looked like a golden dream. “Especially if you have in mind that the other woman is Linda Loring.”
She dropped her hand from the pendant and came down one more step of the stairs.
“Dr. Loring seems to agree with me,” she said indifferently. “He must have some source of information.”
“You said he had played that scene with half the males in the valley.”
“Did I? Well—it was the conventional sort of thing to say at the time.” She came down another step.
“I haven’t shaved,” I said.
That startled her. Then she laughed. “Oh, I wasn’t expecting you to make love to me.”
