keys. Difficult for an outsider, but anybody in the house could have stolen it.”
“I see. How do you establish that your daughter-in-law took it, Mrs. Murdock?”
“I don’t—in a strictly evidential sense. But I’m quite sure of it. The servants are three women who have been here many, many years—long before I married Mr. Murdock, which was only seven years ago. The gardener never comes in the house. I have no chauffeur, because either my son or my secretary drives me. My son didn’t take it, first because he is not the kind of fool that steals from his mother, and secondly, if he had taken it, he could easily have prevented me from speaking to the coin dealer, Morningstar. Miss Davis—ridiculous. Just not the type at all. Too mousy. No, Mr. Marlowe, Linda is the sort of lady who might do it just for spite, if nothing else. And you know what these nightclub people are.”
“All sorts of people—like the rest of us,” I said. “No signs of a burglar, I suppose? It would take a pretty smooth worker to lift just one valuable coin, so there wouldn’t be. Maybe I had better look the room over, though.”
She pushed her jaw at me and muscles in her neck made hard lumps. “I have just told you, Mr. Marlowe, that Mrs. Leslie Murdock, my daughter-in-law, took the Brasher Doubloon.”
I stared at her and she stared back. Her eyes were as hard as the bricks in her front walk. I shrugged the stare off and said:
“Assuming that is so, Mrs. Murdock, just what do you want done?”
“In the first place I want the coin back. In the second place I want an uncontested divorce for my son. And I don’t intend to buy it. I daresay you know how these things are arranged.”
She finished the current installment of port and laughed rudely.
“I may have heard,” I said. “You say the lady left no forwarding address. Does that mean you have no idea at all where she went?”
“Exactly that.”
“A disappearance then. Your son might have some ideas he hasn’t passed along to you. I’ll have to see him.”
The big gray face hardened into even ruggeder lines. “My son knows nothing. He doesn’t even know the doubloon has been stolen. I don’t want him to know anything. When the time comes I’ll handle him. Until then I want him left alone. He will do exactly what I want him to.”
“He hasn’t always,” I said.
“His marriage,” she said nastily, “was a momentary impulse. Afterwards he tried to act like a gentleman. I have no such scruples.”
“It takes three days to have that kind of momentary impulse in California, Mrs. Murdock.”
“Young man, do you want this job or don’t you?”
“I want it if I’m told the facts and allowed to handle the case as I see fit. I don’t want it if you’re going to make a lot of rules and regulations for me to trip over.”
She laughed harshly. “This is a delicate family matter, Mr. Marlowe. And it must be handled with delicacy.”
“If you hire me, you’ll get all the delicacy I have. If I don’t have enough delicacy, maybe you’d better not hire me. For instance, I take it you don’t want your daughter-in-law framed. I’m not delicate enough for that.”
She turned the color of a cold boiled beet and opened her mouth to yell. Then she thought better of it, lifted her port glass and tucked away some more of her medicine.
“You’ll do,” she said dryly, “I wish I had met you two years ago, before he married her.”
I didn’t know exactly what this last meant, so I let it ride. She bent over sideways and fumbled with the key on a house telephone and growled into it when she was answered.
There were steps and the little copper-blond came tripping into the room with her chin low, as if somebody might be going to take a swing at her.
“Make this man a check for two hundred and fifty dollars,” the old dragon snarled at her. “And keep your mouth shut about it.”
The little girl flushed all the way to her neck. “You know I never talk about your affairs, Mrs. Murdock,” she bleated. “You know I don’t. I wouldn’t dream of it, I—”
She turned with her head down and ran out of the room. As she closed the door I looked out at her. Her little lip was trembling but her eyes were mad.
“I’ll need a photo of the lady and some information,” I said when the door was shut again.
“Look in the desk drawer.” Her rings flashed in the dimness as her thick gray finger pointed.
I went over and opened the single drawer of the reed desk and took out the photo that lay all alone in the bottom of the drawer, face up, looking at me with cool dark eyes. I sat down again with the photo and looked it over. Dark hair parted loosely in the middle and drawn back loosely over a solid piece of forehead. A wide cool go- to-hell mouth with very kissable lips. Nice nose, not too small, not too large. Good bone all over the face. The expression of the face lacked something. Once the something might have been called breeding, but these days I didn’t know what to call it. The face looked too wise and too guarded for its age. Too many passes had been made at it and it had grown a little too smart in dodging them. And behind this expression of wiseness there was the look of simplicity of the little girl who still believes in Santa Claus.
I nodded over the photo and slipped it into my pocket. thinking I was getting too much out of it to get out of a mere photo, and in a very poor light at that.
The door opened and the little girl in the linen dress came in with a three-decker check book and a fountain pen and made a desk of her arm for Mrs. Murdock to sign. She straightened up with a strained smile and Mrs. Murdock made a sharp gesture towards me and the little girl tore the check out and gave it to me. She hovered inside the door, waiting. Nothing was said to her, so she went out softly again and closed the door.
