She still had the gray coat on. She stood back from the door and I went past her into a square room with twin wall beds and a minimum of uninteresting furniture. A small lamp on a window table made a dim yellowish light. The window behind it was open.
The girl said: “Sit down and talk then.”
She closed the door and went to sit in a gloomy Boston rocker across the room. I sat down on a thick davenport. There was a dull green curtain hanging across an open door space, at one end of the davenport. That would lead to dressing room and bathroom. There was a closed door at the other end. That would be the kitchenette. That would be all there was.
The girl crossed her ankles and leaned her head back against the chair and looked at me under long beaded lashes. Her eyebrows were thin and arched and as brown as her hair. It was a quiet, secret face. It didn’t look like the face of a woman who would waste a lot of motion.
“I got a rather different idea of you,” I said, “from Kingsley.”
Her lips twisted a little. She said nothing.
“From Lavery too,” I said. “It just goes to show that we talk different languages to different people.”
“I haven’t time for this sort of talk,” she said. “What is it you have to know?”
“He hired me to find you. I’ve been working on it. I supposed you would know that.”
“Yes. His office sweetie told me that over the phone. She told me you would be a man named Marlowe. She told me about the scarf.”
I took the scarf off my neck and folded it up and slipped it into a pocket. I said: “So I know a little about your movements. Not very much. I know you left your car at the Prescott Hotel in San Bernardino and that you met Lavery there. I know you sent a wire from El Paso. What did you do then?”
“All I want from you is the money he sent. I don’t see that my movements are any of your business.”
“I don’t have to argue about that,” I said. “It’s a question of whether you want the money.”
“Well, we went to El Paso,” she said, in a tired voice. “I thought of marrying him then. So I sent that wire. You saw the wire?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I changed my mind. I asked him to go home and leave me. He made a scene.”
“Did he go home and leave you?”
“Yes. Why not?”
“What did you do then?”
“I went to Santa Barbara and stayed there a few days. Over a week in fact. Then to Pasadena. Same thing. Then to Hollywood. Then I came down here. That’s all.”
“You were alone all this time?”
She hesitated a little and then said: “Yes.”
“Not with Lavery—any part of it?”
“Not after he went home.”
“What was the idea?”
“Idea of what?” Her voice was a little sharp.
“Idea of going to these places and not sending any word. Didn’t you know he would be very anxious?”
“Oh, you mean my husband,” she said coolly. “I don’t think I worried much about him. He’d think I was in Mexico, wouldn’t he? As for the idea of it all—well, I just had to think things out. My life had got to be a hopeless tangle. I had to be somewhere quite alone and try to straighten myself out.”
“Before that,” I said, “you spent a month at Little Fawn Lake trying to straighten it out and not getting anywhere. Is that it?”
She looked down at her shoes and then up at me and nodded earnestly. The wavy brown hair surged forward along her cheeks. She put her left hand up and pushed it back and then rubbed her temple with one finger.
“I seemed to need a new place,” she said. “Not necessarily an interesting place. Just a strange place. Without associations. A place where I would be very much alone. Like a hotel.”
“How are you getting on with it?”
“Not very well. But I’m not going back to Derace Kingsley. Does he want me to?”
“I don’t know. But why did you come down here, to the town where Lavery was?”
She bit a knuckle and looked at me over her hand. “I wanted to see him again. He’s all mixed up in my mind. I’m not in love with him, and yet—well, I suppose in a way I am. But I don’t think I want to marry him. Does that make sense?”
“That part of it makes sense. But staying away from home in a lot of crummy hotels doesn’t. You’ve lived your own life for years, as I understand it.”
“I had to be alone, to—to think things out,” she said a little desperately and bit the knuckle again, hard. “Won’t you please give me the money and go away?”
“Sure. Right away. But wasn’t there any other reason for your going away from Little Fawn Lake just then? Anything connected with Muriel Chess, for instance?”
