“That’s what I’m getting at, Mrs. Murdock. The identification would seem to depend on tracing the history of the article back to you. At least to be convincing.”
“Yes. I suppose it would. Why? Do you know where it is?”
“Morningstar claims to have seen it. He says it was offered to him for sale—just as you suspected. He wouldn’t buy. The seller was not a woman, he says. That doesn’t mean a thing, because he gave me a detailed description of the party which was either made up or was a description of somebody he knew more than casually. So the seller may have been a woman.”
“I see. It’s not important now.”
“Not important?”
“No. Have you anything else to report?”
“Another question to ask. Do you know a youngish blond fellow named George Anson Phillips? Rather heavy set, wearing a brown suit and a dark pork pie hat with a gay band. Wearing that today. Claimed to be a private detective.”
“I do not. Why should I?”
“I don’t know. He enters the picture somewhere. I think he was the one who tried to sell the article. Morningstar tried to call him up after I left. I snuck back into his office and overheard.”
“You what?”
“I snuck.”
“Please do not be witty, Mr. Marlowe. Anything else?”
“Yes, I agreed to pay Morningstar one thousand dollars for the return of the—the article. He said he could get it for eight hundred . . .”
“And where were you going to get the money, may I ask?”
“Well, I was just talking. This Morningstar is a downy bird. That’s the kind of language he understands. And then again you might have wanted to pay it. I wouldn’t want to persuade you. You could always go to the police. But if for any reason you didn’t want to go to the police, it might be the only way you could get it back—buying it back.”
I would probably have gone on like that for a long time, not knowing just what I was trying to say, if she hadn’t stopped me with a noise like a seal barking.
“This is all very unnecessary now, Mr. Marlowe. I have decided to drop the matter. The coin has been returned to me.”
“Hold the wire a minute,” I said.
I put the phone down on the shelf and opened the booth door and stuck my head out, filling my chest with what they were using for air in the drugstore. Nobody was paying any attention to me. Up front the druggist, in a pale blue smock, was chatting across the cigar counter. The counter boy was polishing glasses at the fountain. Two girls in slacks were playing the pinball machine. A tall narrow party in a black shirt and a pale yellow scarf was fumbling magazines at the rack. He didn’t look like a gunman.
I pulled the booth shut and picked up the phone and said: “A rat was gnawing my foot. It’s all right now. You got it back, you said. Just like that. How?”
“I hope you are not too disappointed,” she said in her uncompromising baritone. “The circumstances are a little difficult. I may decide to explain and I may not. You may call at the house tomorrow morning. Since I do not wish to proceed with the investigation, you will keep the retainer as payment in full.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You actually got the coin back—not a promise of it, merely?”
“Certainly not. And I’m getting tired. So, if you—”
“One moment, Mrs. Murdock. It isn’t going to be as simple as all that. Things have happened.”
“In the morning you may tell me about them,” she said sharply, and hung up.
I pushed out of the booth and lit a cigarette with thick awkward fingers. I went back along the store. The druggist was alone now. He was sharpening a pencil with a small knife, very intent, frowning.
“That’s a nice sharp pencil you have there,” I told him. He looked up, surprised. The girls at the pinball machine looked at me, surprised. I went over and looked at myself in the mirror behind the counter. I looked surprised.
I sat down on one of the stools and said: “A double Scotch, straight.”
The counter man looked surprised. “Sorry, this isn’t a bar, sir. You can buy a bottle at the liquor counter.”
“So it is,” I said. “I mean, so it isn’t. I’ve had a shock. I’m a little dazed. Give me a cup of coffee, weak, and a very thin ham sandwich on stale bread. No, I better not eat yet either. Goodbye.”
I got down off the stool and walked to the door in a silence that was as loud as a ton of coal going down a chute. The man in the black shirt and yellow scarf was sneering at me over the New Republic.
“You ought to lay off that fluff and get your teeth into something solid, like a pulp magazine,” I told him, just to be friendly.
I went on out. Behind me somebody said: “Hollywood’s full of them.”
14
The wind had risen and had a dry taut feeling, tossing the tops of trees, and making the swung arc light up the side street cast shadows like crawling lava. I turned the car and drove east again.
The hock shop was on Santa Monica, near Wilcox, a quiet old-fashioned little place, washed gently by the lapping waves of time. In the front window there was everything you could think of, from a set of trout flies in a thin wooden box to a portable organ, from a folding baby carriage to a portrait camera with a four-inch lens, from a
