“You knew already, silly.”
Her hand suddenly flew up as if it was going to fly to her mouth, but it only rose halfway and then fell back slowly and her eyes widened. It was a good act, but I knew something else about her that spoiled it.
“You did know, didn’t you?” She breathed the words, hushedly.
“I thought it was diamonds. A bracelet, a pair of earrings, a pendant, three rings, one of the rings with emeralds too.”
“Not funny,” she said. “Not even fast.”
“Fei Tsui jade. Very rare. Carved beads about six carats apiece, sixty of them. Worth eighty thousand dollars.”
“You have such nice brown eyes,” she said. “And you think you’re tough.”
“Well, who does it belong to and how did you find out?”
“I found out very simply. I thought the best jeweler in town would probably know, so I went and asked the manager of Block’s. I told him I was a writer and wanted to do an article on rare jade — you know the line.”
“So he believed your red hair and your beautiful figure.” She flushed clear to the temples. “Well, he told me anyway. It belongs to a rich lady who lives in Bay City, in an estate on the canyon. Mrs. Lewin Lockridge Grayle. Her husband is an investment banker or something, enormously rich, worth about twenty millions. He used to own a radio station in Beverly Hills, Station KFDK, and Mrs. Grayle used to work there. He married her five years ago. She’s a ravishing blonde. Mr. Grayle is elderly, liverish, stays home and takes calomel while Mrs. Grayle goes places and has a good time.”
“This manager of Block’s,” I said. “He’s a fellow that gets around.”
“Oh, I didn’t get all that from him, silly. Just about the necklace. The rest I got from Giddy Gertie Arbogast.”
I reached into the deep drawer and brought the office bottle up again.
“You’re not going to turn out to be one of those drunken detectives, are you?” she asked anxiously.
“Why not? They always solve their cases and they never even sweat. Get on with the story.”
“Giddy Gertie is the society editor of the Chronicle. I’ve known him for years. He weighs two hundred and wears a Hitler mustache. He got out his morgue file on the Grayles. Look.”
She reached into her bag and slid a photograph across the desk, a five-by-three glazed still.
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. She was wearing street clothes that looked black and white, and a hat to match and she was a little haughty, but not too much. Whatever you needed, wherever you happened to be — she had it. About thirty years old.
I poured a fast drink and burned my throat getting it down. “Take it away,” I said. “I’ll start jumping.”
“Why, I got it for you. You’ll want to see her, won’t you?”
I looked at it again. Then I slid it under the blotter. “How about tonight at eleven?”
“Listen, this isn’t just a bunch of gag lines, Mr. Marlowe. I called her up. She’ll see you. On business.”
“It may start out that way.”
She made an impatient gesture, so I stopped fooling around and got my battle-scarred frown back on my face. “What will she see me about?”
“Her necklace, of course. It was like this. I called her up and had a lot of trouble getting to talk to her, of course, but finally I did. Then I gave her the song and dance I had given the nice man at Block’s and it didn’t take. She sounded as if she had a hangover. She said something about talking to her secretary, but I managed to keep her on the phone and ask her if it was true she had a Fei Tsui jade necklace. After a while she said, yes. I asked if I might see it. She said, what for? I said my piece over again and it didn’t take any better than the first time. I could hear her yawning and bawling somebody outside the mouthpiece for putting me on. Then I said I was working for Philip Marlowe. She said ‘So what?’ Just like that.”
“Incredible. But all the society dames talk like tramps nowadays.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Miss Riordan said sweetly. “Probably some of them are tramps. So I asked her if she had a phone with no extension and she said what business was it of mine. But the funny thing was she hadn’t hung up on me.”
“She had the jade on her mind and she didn’t know what you were leading up to. And she may have heard from Randall already.”
Miss Riordan shook her head. “No, I called him later and he didn’t know who owned the necklace until I told him. He was quite surprised that I had found out.”
“He’ll get used to you,” I said. “He’ll probably have to. What then?”
“So I said to Mrs. Grayle: ‘You’d still like it back, wouldn’t you?’ Just like that. I didn’t know any other way to say. I had to say something that would jar her a bit. It did. She gave me another number in a hurry. And I called that and I said I’d like to see her. She seemed surprised. So I had to tell her the story. She didn’t like it. But she had been wondering why she hadn’t heard from Marriott. I guess she thought he had gone south with the money or something. So I’m to see her at two o’clock. Then I’ll tell her about you and how nice and discreet you are and how you would be a good man to help her get it back, if there’s any chance and so on. She’s already interested.”
I didn’t say anything. I just stared at her. She looked hurt. “What’s the matter? Did I do right?”
“Can’t you get it through your head that this is a police case now and that I’ve been warned to stay off it?”
“Mrs. Grayle has a perfect right to employ you, if she wants to.”
“To do what?”
She snapped and unsnapped her bag impatiently. “Oh, my goodness — a woman like that — with her looks — can’t you see — “ She stopped and bit her lip. “What kind of man was Marriott?”
“I hardly knew him. I thought he was a bit of a pansy. I didn’t like him very well.”
“Was he a man who would be attractive to women?”
“Some women. Others would want to spit.”
“Well, it looks as if he might have been attractive to Mrs. Grayle. She went out with him.”
“She probably goes out with a hundred men. There’s very little chance to get the necklace now.”
“Why?”
I got up and walked to the end of the office and slapped the wall with the flat of my hand, hard. The clacking typewriter on the other side stopped for a moment, and then went on. I looked down through the open window into the shaft between my building and the Mansion House Hotel. The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on. I went back to my desk, dropped the bottle of whiskey back into the drawer, shut the drawer and sat down again. I lit my pipe for the eighth or ninth time and looked carefully across the half-dusted glass to Miss Riordan’s grave and honest little face.
You could get to like that face a lot. Glamoured up blondes were a dime a dozen, but that was a face that would wear. I smiled at it.
“Listen, Anne. Killing Marriott was a dumb mistake. The gang behind this holdup would never pull anything like that. What must have happened was that some gowed-up run they took along for a gun-holder lost his head. Marriott made a false move and some punk beat him down and it was done so quickly nothing could be done to prevent it. Here is an organized mob with inside information on jewels and the movements of the women that wear them. They ask moderate returns and they would play ball. But here also is a back alley murder that doesn’t fit at all. My idea is that whoever did it is a dead man hours ago, with weights on his ankles, deep in the Pacific Ocean. And either the jade went down with him or else they have some idea of its real value and they have cached it away in a place where it will stay for a long time — maybe for years before they dare bring it out again. Or, if the gang is big enough, it may show up on the other side of the world. The eight thousand they asked seems pretty low if they really know the value of the jade. But it would be hard to sell. I’m sure of one thing. They never meant to murder anybody.”
Anne Riordan was listening to me with her lips slightly parted and a rapt expression on her face, as if she was looking at the Dalai Lhama.
She closed her mouth slowly and nodded once. “You’re wonderful,” she said softly. “But you’re nuts.”
She stood up and gathered her bag to her. “Will you go to see her or won’t you?”
“Randall can’t stop me — if it comes from her.”
“All right. I’m going to see another society editor and get some more dope on the Grayles if I can. About her love life. She would have one, wouldn’t she?”
