quarter-hour to find out that the party who went with the telephone number one-three-five-seven-two in Bay City was a Dr. Vincent Lagardie, who called himself a neurologist, had his home and offices on Wyoming Street, which according to my map was not quite in the best residential neighborhood and not quite out of it. I locked the Bay City telephone book up in my desk and went down to the corner drugstore for a sandwich and a cup of coffee and used a pay booth to call Dr. Vincent Lagardie. A woman answered and I had some trouble getting through to Dr. Lagardie himself. When I did his voice was impatient. He was very busy, in the middle of an examination he said. I never knew a doctor who wasn’t. Did he know Lester B. Clausen? He never heard of him. What was the purpose of my inquiry?
“Mr. Clausen tried to telephone you this morning,” I said. “He was too drunk to talk properly.”
“But I don’t know Mr. Clausen,” the doctor’s cool voice answered. He didn’t seem to be in quite such a hurry now.
“Well that’s all right then,” I said. “Just wanted to make sure. Somebody stuck an ice pick into the back of his neck.”
There was a quiet pause. Dr. Lagardie’s voice was now almost unctuously polite. “Has this been reported to the police?”
“Naturally,” I said. “But it shouldn’t bother you—unless of course it was your ice pick.”
He passed that one up. “And who is this speaking?” he inquired suavely.
“The name is Hicks,” I said. “George W. Hicks. I just moved out of there. I don’t want to get mixed up with that sort of thing. I just figured when Clausen tried to call you—this was before he was dead you understand—that you might be interested.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hicks,” Dr. Lagardie’s voice said, “but I don’t know Mr. Clausen. I have never heard of Mr. Clausen or had any contact with him whatsoever. And I have an excellent memory for names.”
“Well, that’s fine,” I said. “And you won’t meet him now. But somebody may want to know why he tried to telephone you—unless I forget to pass the information along.”
There was a dead pause. Dr. Lagardie said: “I can’t think of any comment to make on that.”
I said: “Neither can I. I may call you again. Don’t get me wrong, Dr. Lagardie. This isn’t any kind of a shake. I’m just a mixed-up little man who needs a friend. I kind of felt that a doctor—like a clergyman—”
“I’m at your entire disposal,” Dr. Lagardie said. “Please feel free to consult me.”
“Thank you, doctor,” I said fervently. “Thank you very very much.”
I hung up. If Dr. Vincent Lagardie was on the level, he would now telephone the Bay City Police Department and tell them the story. If he didn’t telephone the police, he wasn’t on the level. Which might or might not be useful to know.
7
The phone on my desk rang at four o’clock sharp. “Did you find Orrin yet, Mr. Marlowe?”
“Not yet. Where are you?”
“Why I’m in the drugstore next to—”
“Come on up and stop acting like Mata Hari,” I said.
“Aren’t you ever polite to anybody?” she snapped.
I hung up and fed myself a slug of Old Forester to brace my nerves for the interview. As I was inhaling it I heard her steps tripping along the corridor. I moved across and opened the door.
“Come in this way and miss the crowd,” I said.
She seated herself demurely and waited.
“All I could find out,” I told her, “is that the dump on Idaho Street is peddling reefers. That’s marijuana cigarettes.”
“Why, how disgusting,” she said.
“We have to take the bad with the good in this life,” I said. “Orrin must have got wise and threatened to report it to the police.”
“You mean,” she said in her little-girl manner, “that they might hurt him for doing that?”
“Well, most likely they’d just throw a scare into him first.”
“Oh, they couldn’t scare Orrin, Mr. Marlowe,” she said decisively. “He just gets mean when people try to run him.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But we’re not talking about the same things. You can scare anybody—with the right technique.”
She set her mouth stubbornly. “No, Mr. Marlowe. They couldn’t scare Orrin.”
“Okay,” I said. “So they didn’t scare him. Say they just cut off one of his legs and beat him over the head with it. What would he do then—write to the Better Business Bureau?”
“You’re making fun of me,” she said politely. Her voice was as cool as boarding-house soup. “Is that all you did all day? Just find Orrin had moved and it was a bad neighborhood? Why I found that out for myself, Mr. Marlowe. I thought you being a detective and all—” She trailed off, leaving the rest of it in the air.
“I did a little more than that,” I said. “I gave the landlord a little gin and went through the register and talked to a man named Hicks. George W. Hicks. He wears a toupee. I guess maybe you didn’t meet him. He has, or had, Orrin’s room. So I thought maybe—” It was my turn to do a little trailing in the air.
She fixed me with her pale blue eyes enlarged by the glasses. Her mouth was small and firm and tight, her hands clasped on the desk in front of her over her large square bag, her whole body stiff and erect and formal and
