I sat there smoking. Ten minutes later the door was knocked on and I opened it to a boy in a uniform cap who took my signature and gave me a small square package, not more than two and a half inches wide, if that. I gave the boy a dime and listened to him whistling his way back to the elevators.
The label had my name and address printed on it in ink, in a quite fair imitation of typed letters, larger and thinner than pica. I cut the string that tied the label to the box and unwound the thin brown paper. Inside was a thin cheap cardboard box pasted over with brown paper and stamped Made in Japan with a rubber stamp. It would be the kind of box you would get in a Jap store to hold some small carved animal or a small piece of jade. The lid fitted down all the way and tightly. I pulled it off and saw tissue paper and cotton wool.
Separating these I was looking at a gold coin about the size of a half dollar, bright and shining as if it had just come from the mint.
The side facing me showed a spread eagle with a shield for a breast and the initials E.B. punched into the left wing. Around these was a circle of beading, between the beading and the smooth unmilled edge of the coin, the legend E PLURIBUS UNUM. At the bottom was the date 1787.
I turned the coin over on my palm. It was heavy and cold and my palm felt moist under it. The other side showed a sun rising or setting behind a sharp peak of mountain, then a double circle of what looked like oak leaves, then more Latin, NOVA EBOBACA COLUMBIA EXCELSIOR. At the bottom of this side, in smaller capitals, the name BRASHER.
I was looking at the Brasher Doubloon.
There was nothing else in the box or in the paper, nothing on the paper. The handwritten printing meant nothing to me. I didn’t know anybody who used it.
I filled an empty tobacco pouch half full, wrapped the coin up in tissue paper, snapped a rubber band around it and tucked it into the tobacco in the pouch and put more in on top. I closed the zipper and put the pouch in my pocket. I locked the paper and string and box and label up in a filing cabinet, sat down again and dialed Elisha Morningstar’s number on the phone. The bell rang eight times at the other end of the line. It was not answered. I hardly expected that. I hung up again, looked Elisha Morningstar up in the book and saw that he had no listing for a residence phone in Los Angeles or the outlying towns that were in the phone book.
I got a shoulder holster out of the desk and strapped it on and slipped a Colt .38 automatic into it, put on hat and coat, shut the windows again, put the whiskey away, clicked the lights off and had the office door unlatched when the phone rang.
The ringing bell had a sinister sound, for no reason of itself, but because of the ears to which it rang. I stood there braced and tense, lips tightly drawn back in a half grin. Beyond the closed window the neon lights glowed. The dead air didn’t move. Outside the corridor was still. The bell rang in darkness, steady and strong.
I went back and leaned on the desk and answered. There was a click and a droning on the wire and beyond that nothing. I depressed the connection and stood there in the dark, leaning over, holding the phone with one hand and holding the flat riser on the pedestal down with the other. I didn’t know what I was waiting for.
The phone rang again. I made a sound in my throat and put it to my ear again, not saying anything at all.
So we were there silent, both of us, miles apart maybe, each one holding a telephone and breathing and listening and hearing nothing, not even the breathing.
Then after what seemed a very long time there was the quiet remote whisper of a voice saying dimly, without any tone:
“Too bad for you, Marlowe.”
Then the click again and the droning on the wire and I hung up and went back across the office and out.
13
I drove west on Sunset, fiddled around a few blocks without making up my mind whether anyone was trying to follow me, then parked near a drugstore and went into its phone booth. I dropped my nickel and asked the o- operator for a Pasadena number. She told me how much money to put in.
The voice which answered the phone was angular and cold. “Mrs. Murdock’s residence.”
“Philip Marlowe here. Mrs. Murdock, please.”
I was told to wait. A soft but very clear voice said: “Mr. Marlowe? Mrs. Murdock is resting now. Can you tell me what it is?”
“You oughtn’t to have told him.”
“I—who—?”
“That loopy guy whose handkerchief you cry into.”
“How dare you?”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Now let me talk to Mrs. Murdock. I have to.”
“Very well. I’ll try.” The soft clear voice went away and I waited a long wait. They would have to lift her up on the pillows and drag the port bottle out of her hard gray paw and feed her the telephone. A throat was cleared suddenly over the wire. It sounded like a freight train going through a tunnel.
“This is Mrs. Murdock.”
“Could you identify the property we were talking about this morning, Mrs. Murdock? I mean could you pick it out from others just like it?”
“Well—are there others just like it?”
“There must be. Dozens, hundreds for all I know. Anyhow dozens. Of course I don’t know where they are.”
She coughed. “I don’t really know much about it. I suppose I couldn’t identify it then. But in the circumstances—”
