“Let her in,” I said, rapidly. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. She’s the secretary of a client. It’s a business matter entirely.”
“Quite. Oh yes. Shall I—er—remain with her?”
“Whatever you think,” I said and hung up.
Passing the open door of the wash cabinet I saw a stiff excited face in the glass.
27
As I turned the key in my door and opened it Shaw was already standing up from the davenport. He was a tall man with glasses and a high domed bald head that made his ears look as if they had slipped down on his head. He had the fixed smile of polite idiocy on his face.
The girl sat in my easy chair behind the chess table. She wasn’t doing anything, just sitting there.
“Ah, there you are, Mr. Marlowe,” Shaw chirped. “Yes. Quite. Miss Davis and I have been having such an interesting little conversation. I was telling her I originally came from England. She hasn’t—er—told me where she came from.” He was halfway to the door saying this.
“Very kind of you, Mr. Shaw,” I said.
“Not at all,” he chirped. “Not at all. I’ll just run along now. My dinner, possibly—”
“It’s very nice of you,” I said, “I appreciate it.”
He nodded and was gone. The unnatural brightness of his smile seemed to linger in the air after the door closed, like the smile of the Cheshire Cat.
I said: “Hello, there.”
She said: “Hello.” Her voice was quite calm, quite serious. She was wearing a brownish linen coat and skirt, a broad brimmed low-crowned straw hat with a brown velvet band that exactly matched the color of her shoes and the leather trimming on the edges of her linen envelope bag. The hat was tilted rather daringly, for her. She was not wearing her glasses.
Except for her face she would have looked all right. In the first place her eyes were quite mad. There was white showing all around the iris and they had a sort of fixed look. When they moved the movement was so stiff that you could almost hear something creak. Her mouth was in a tight line at the corners, but the middle part of her upper lip kept lifting off her teeth, upwards and outwards as if fine threads attached to the edge of the lip were pulling it. It would go up so far that it didn’t seem possible, and then the entire lower part of her face would go into a spasm and when the spasm was over her mouth would be tight shut, and then the process would slowly start all over again. In addition to this there was something wrong with her neck, so that very slowly her head was drawn around to the left about forty-five degrees. It would stop there, her neck would twitch, and her head would slide back the way it had come.
The combination of these two movements, taken with the immobility of her body, the tight-clasped hands in her lap, and the fixed stare of her eyes, was enough to start anybody’s nerves backfiring.
There was a can of tobacco on the desk, between which and her chair was the chess table with the chessmen in their box. I got the pipe out of my pocket and went over to fill it at the can of tobacco. That put me just on the other side of the chess table from her. Her bag was lying on the edge of the table, in front of her and a little to one side. She jumped a little when I went over there, but after that she was just like before. She even made an effort to smile.
I filled the pipe and struck a paper match and lit it and stood there holding the match after I had blown it out.
“You’re not wearing your glasses,” I said.
She spoke. Her voice was quiet, composed. “Oh, I only wear them around the house and for reading. They’re in my bag.”
“You’re in the house now,” I said. “You ought to be wearing them.”
I reached casually for the bag. She didn’t move. She didn’t watch my hands. Her eyes were on my face. I turned my body a little as I opened the bag. I fished the glass case out and slid it across the table.
“Put them on,” I said.
“Oh, yes, I’ll put them on,” she said. “But I’ll have to take my hat off, I think . . .”
“Yes, take your hat off,” I said.
She took her hat off and held it on her knees. Then she remembered about the glasses and forgot about the hat. The hat fell on the floor while she reached for the glasses. She put them on. That helped her appearance a lot, I thought.
While she was doing this I got the gun out of her bag and slid it into my hip pocket. I didn’t think she saw me. It looked like the same Colt .25 automatic with the walnut grip that I had seen in the top right hand drawer of her desk the day before.
I went back to the davenport and sat down and said: “Well, here we are. What do we do now? Are you hungry?”
“I’ve been over to Mr. Vannier’s house,” she said.
“Oh.”
“He lives in Sherman Oaks. At the end of Escamillo Drive. At the very end.”
“Quiet, probably,” I said without meaning, and tried to blow a smoke ring, but didn’t make it. A nerve in my cheek was trying to twang like a wire. I didn’t like it.
“Yes,” she said in her composed voice, with her upper lip still doing the hoist and flop movement and her chin still swinging around at anchor and back again. “It’s very quiet there. Mr. Vannier has been living there three years now. Before that he lived up in the Hollywood hills, on Diamond Street. Another man lived with him there, but they didn’t get along very well, Mr. Vannier said.”
