legs, sat down between them, let his tongue out all the way and started to pant.
I stepped over him and braced myself against the side of the car and got my handkerchief out.
A male voice called: “Here, Heathcliff. Here, Heathcliff.” Steps sounded on a hard walk.
“That’s Heathcliff,” the chauffeur said sourly.
“Heathcliff?”
“Cripes, that’s what they call the dog, Jack.”
“Wuthering Heights?” I asked.
“Now you’re double-talking again,” he sneered. “Look out—company.”
He picked up the sponge and the hose and went back to washing the car. I moved away from him. The cocker spaniel immediately moved between my legs again; almost tripping me.
“Here, Heathcliff,” the male voice called out louder, and a man came into view through the opening of a latticed tunnel covered with climbing roses.
Tall, dark, with a clear olive skin, brilliant black eyes, gleaming white teeth. Sideburns. A narrow black mustache. Sideburns too long, much too long. White shirt with embroidered initials on the pocket, white slacks, white shoes. A wristwatch that curved halfway around a lean dark wrist, held on by a gold chain. A yellow scarf around a bronzed slender neck.
He saw the dog squatted between my legs and didn’t like it. He snapped long fingers and snapped a clear hard voice:
“Here, Heathcliff. Come here at once!”
The dog breathed hard and didn’t move, except to lean a little closer to my right leg.
“Who are you?” the man asked, staring me down.
I held out my card. Olive fingers took the card. The dog quietly backed out from between my legs, edged around the front end of the car, and faded silently into the distance.
“Marlowe,” the man said. “Marlowe, eh? What’s this? A detective? What do you want?”
“Want to see Mrs. Morny.”
He looked me up and down, brilliant black eyes sweeping slowly and the silky fringes of long eyelashes following them.
“Weren’t you told she was not in?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t believe it. Are you Mr. Morny?”
“No.”
“That’s Mr. Vannier,” the chauffeur said behind my back, in the drawled, over-polite voice of deliberate insolence. “Mr. Vannier’s a friend of the family. He comes here quite a lot.”
Vannier looked past my shoulder, his eyes furious. The chauffeur came around the car and spit the cigarette stub out of his mouth with casual contempt.
“I told the shamus the boss wasn’t here, Mr. Vannier.”
“I see.”
“I told him Mrs. Morny and you was here. Did I do wrong?”
Vannier said: “You could have minded your own business.”
The chauffeur said: “I wonder why the hell I didn’t think of that.”
Vannier said: “Get out before I break your dirty little neck for you.”
The chauffeur eyed him quietly and then went back into the gloom of the garage and started to whistle. Vannier moved his hot angry eyes over to me and snapped:
“You were told Mrs. Morny was not in, but it didn’t take. Is that it? In other words the information failed to satisfy you.”
“If we have to have other words,” I said, “those might do.”
“I see. Could you bring yourself to say what point you wish to discuss with Mrs. Morny?”
“I’d prefer to explain that to Mrs. Morny herself.”
“The implication is that she doesn’t care to see you.”
Behind the car the chauffeur said: “Watch his right, Jack. It might have a knife in it.”
Vannier’s olive skin turned the color of dried seaweed. He turned on his heel and rapped at me in a stifled voice: “Follow me.”
He went along the brick path under the tunnel of roses and through a white gate at the end. Beyond was a walled-in garden containing flowerbeds crammed with showy annuals, a badminton court, a nice stretch of greensward, and a small tiled pool glittering angrily in the sun. Beside the pool there was a flagged space set with blue and white garden furniture, low tables with composition tops, reclining chairs with footrests and enormous cushions, and over all a blue and white umbrella as big as a small tent.
A long-limbed languorous type of showgirl blond lay at her ease in one of the chairs, with her feet raised on a padded rest and a tall misted glass at her elbow, near a silver ice bucket and a Scotch bottle. She looked at us lazily as we came over the grass. From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away. Her mouth was too wide, her eyes were too blue, her makeup
