The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building.
I sneaked over to the side entrance and pressed a bell and somewhere a set of chimes made a deep mellow sound like church bells.
A man in a striped vest and gilt buttons opened the door, bowed, took my hat and was through for the day. Behind him in dimness, a man in striped knife-edged pants and a black coat and wing collar with gray striped tie leaned his gray head forward about half an inch and said: “Mr. Marlowe? If you will come this way, please — “
We went down a hall. It was a very quiet hail. Not a fly buzzed in it. The floor was covered with Oriental rugs and there were paintings along the walls. We turned a corner and there was more hall. A French window showed a gleam of blue water far off and I remembered almost with a shock that we were near the Pacific Ocean and that this house was on the edge of one of the canyons.
The butler reached a door and opened it against voices and stood aside and I went in. It was a nice room with large chesterfields and lounging chairs done in pale yellow leather arranged around a fireplace in front of which, on the glossy but not slippery floor, lay a rug as thin as silk and as old as Aesop’s aunt. A jet of flowers glistened in a corner, another on a low table, the walls were of dull painted parchment, there was comfort, space, coziness, a dash of the very modern and a dash of the very old, and three people sitting in a sudden silence watching me cross the floor.
One of them was Anne Riordan, looking just as I had seen her last, except that she was holding a glass of amber fluid in her hand. One was a tall thin sad-faced man with a stony chin and deep eyes and no color in his face but an unhealthy yellow. He was a good sixty, or rather a bad sixty. He wore a dark business suit, a red carnation, and looked subdued.
The third was the blonde. She was dressed to go out, in a pale greenish blue. I didn’t pay much attention to her clothes. They were what the guy designed for her and she would go to the right man. The effect was to make her look very young and to make her lapis lazuli eyes look very blue. Her hair was of the gold of old paintings and had been fussed with just enough but not too much. She had a full set of curves which nobody had been able to improve on. The dress was rather plain except for a clasp of diamonds at the throat. Her hands were not small, but they had shape, and the nails were the usual jarring note — almost magenta. She was giving me one of her smiles. She looked as if she smiled easily, but her eyes had a still look, as if they thought slowly and carefully. And her mouth was sensual.
“So nice of you to come,” she said. “This is my husband. Mix Mr. Marlowe a drink, honey.”
Mr. Grayle shook hands with me. His hand was cold and a little moist. His eyes were sad. He mixed a Scotch and soda and handed it to me.
Then he sat down in a corner and was silent. I drank half of the drink and grinned at Miss Riordan. She looked at me with a sort of absent expression, as if she had another clue.
“Do you think you can do anything for us?” the blonde asked slowly, looking down into her glass. “If you think you can, I’d be delighted. But the loss is rather small, compared with having any more fuss with gangsters and awful people.”
“I don’t know very much about it really,” I said.
“Oh, I hope you can.” She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.
I drank the other half of my drink. I began to feel rested. Mrs. Grayle rang a bell set into the arm of the leather chesterfield and a footman came in. She half pointed to the tray. He looked around and mixed two drinks. Miss Riordan was still playing cute with the same one and apparently Mr. Grayle didn’t drink. The footman went out.
Mrs. Grayle and I held our glasses. Mrs. Grayle crossed her legs, a little carelessly.
“I don’t know whether I can do anything,” I said. “I doubt it. What is there to go on?”
“I’m sure you can.” She gave me another smile. “How far did Lin Marriott take you into his confidence?”
She looked sideways at Miss Riordan. Miss Riordan just couldn’t catch the look. She kept right on sitting. She looked sideways the other way. Mrs. Grayle looked at her husband. “Do you have to bother with this, honey?”
Mr. Grayle stood up and said he was very glad to have met me and that he would go and lie down for a while. He didn’t feel very well. He hoped I would excuse him. He was so polite I wanted to carry him out of the room just to show my appreciation.
He left. He closed the door softly, as if he was afraid to wake a sleeper. Mrs. Grayle looked at the door for a moment and then put the smile back on her face and looked at me.
“Miss Riordan is in your complete confidence, of course.”
“Nobody’s In my complete confidence, Mrs. Grayle. She happens to know about this case — what there is to know.”
“Yes.” She drank a sip or two, then finished her glass at a swallow and set it aside.
“To hell with this polite drinking,” she said suddenly. “Let’s get together on this. You’re a very good-looking man to be in your sort of racket.”
“It’s a smelly business,” I said.
“I didn’t quite mean that. Is there any money in it — or is that impertinent?”
“There’s not much money in it. There’s a lot of grief. But there’s a lot of fun too. And there’s always a chance of a big case.”
“How does one get to be a private detective? You don’t mind my sizing you up a little? And push that table over here, will you? So I can reach the drinks.”
I got up and pushed the huge silver tray on a stand across the glossy floor to her side. She made two more drinks. I still had half of my second.
“Most of us are ex-cops,” I said. “I worked for the D.A. for a while. I got fired.”
She smiled nicely. “Not for incompetence, I’m sure.”
“No, for talking back. Have you had any more phone calls?”
“Well — “ She looked at Anne Riordan. She waited. Her look said things.
Anne Riordan stood up. She carried her glass, still full, over to the tray and set it down. “You probably won’t run short,” she said. “But if you do — and thanks very much for talking to me, Mrs. Grayle. I won’t use anything. You have my word for it.”
“Heavens, you’re not leaving,” Mrs. Grayle said with a smile.
Anne Riordan took her lower lip between her teeth and held it there for a moment as if making up her mind whether to bite it off and spit it out or leave it on a while longer.
“Sorry, afraid I’ll have to. I don’t work for Mr. Marlowe, you know. Just a friend. Good-by, Mrs. Grayle.”
The blonde gleamed at her. “I hope you’ll drop in again soon. Any time.” She pressed the bell twice. That got the butler. He held the door open.
Miss Riordan went out quickly and the door closed. For quite a while after it closed, Mrs. Grayle stared at it with a faint smile. “It’s much better this way, don’t you think?” she said after an interval of silence.
I nodded. “You’re probably wondering how she knows so much if she’s just a friend,” I said. “She’s a curious little girl. Some of it she dug out herself, like who you were and who owned the jade necklace. Some of it just happened. She came by last night to that dell where Marriott was killed. She was out riding. She happened to see a light and came down there.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Grayle lifted a glass quickly and made a face. “It’s horrible to think of. Poor Lin. He was rather a heel. Most of one’s friends are. But to die like that is awful.” She shuddered. Her eyes got large and dark.
“So it’s all right about Miss Riordan. She won’t talk. Her father was chief of police here for a long time,” I said.
“Yes. So she told me. You’re not drinking.”
“I’m doing what I call drinking.”
“You and I should get along. Did Lin — Mr. Marriott — tell you how the hold-up happened?”
“Between here and the Trocadero somewhere. He didn’t say exactly. Three or four men.”
She nodded her golden gleaming head. “Yes. You know there was something rather funny about that holdup. They gave me back one of my rings, rather a nice one, too.”
“He told me that.”
