“Somebody would. As long as there are the patients, there will be the doctor.”
He looked even more exhausted than before. “I think you are an ass, my friend. I did not know Dr. Almore. And I do not have the sort of practice you attribute to him. As for the needles—just to get that trifle out of the way— they are in somewhat constant use in the medical profession today, often for such innocent medicaments as vitamin injections. And needles get dull. And when they are dull they are painful. Therefore in the course of the day one may use a dozen or more. Without narcotics in a single one.”
He raised his head slowly and stared at me with a fixed contempt.
“I can be wrong,” I said. “Smelling that reefer smoke over at Clausen’s place yesterday, and having him call your number on the telephone—and call you by your first name—all this probably made me jump to wrong conclusions.”
“I have dealt with addicts,” he said. “What doctor has not? It is a complete waste of time.”
“They get cured sometimes.”
“They can be deprived of their drug. Eventually after great suffering they can do without it. That is not curing them, my friend. That is not removing the nervous or emotional flaw which made them become addicts. It is making them dull negative people who sit in the sun and twirl their thumbs and die of sheer boredom and inanition.”
“That’s a pretty raw theory, doctor.”
“You raised the subject. I have disposed of it. I will raise another subject. You may have noticed a certain atmosphere and strain about this house. Even with those silly mirror glasses on. Which you may now remove. They don’t make you look in the least like Cary Grant.”
I took them off. I’d forgotten all about them.
“The police have been here, Mr. Marlowe. A certain Lieutenant Maglashan, who is investigating Clausen’s death. He would be pleased to meet you. Shall I call him? I’m sure he would come back.”
“Go ahead, call him,” I said. “I just stopped off here on my way to commit suicide.”
His hand went towards the telephone but was pulled to the side by the magnetism of the paper knife. He picked it up again. Couldn’t leave it alone, it seemed.
“You could kill a man with that,” I said.
“Very easily,” and he smiled a little.
“An inch and a half in the back of the neck, square in the center, just under the occipital bulge.”
“An ice pick would be better,” he said. “Especially a short one, filed down very sharp. It would not bend. If you miss the spinal cord, you do no great damage.”
“Takes a bit of medical knowledge then?” I got out a poor old package of Camels and untangled one from the cellophane.
He just kept on smiling. Very faintly, rather sadly. It was not the smile of a man in fear. “That would help,” he said softly. “But any reasonably dexterous person could acquire the technique in ten minutes.”
“Orrin Quest had a couple of years medical,” I said.
“I told you I did not know anybody of that name.”
“Yeah, I know you did. I didn’t quite believe you.”
He shrugged his shoulders. But his eyes as always went to the knife in the end.
“We’re a couple of sweethearts,” I said. “We just sit here making with the old over-the-desk dialogue. As though we hadn’t a care in the world. Because both of us are going to be in the clink by nightfall.”
He raised his eyebrows again. I went on: “You, because Clausen knew you by your first name. And you may have been the last man he talked to. Me, because I’ve been doing all the things a P.I. never gets away with. Hiding evidence, hiding information, finding bodies and not coming in with my hat in my hand to these lovely incorruptible Bay City cops. Oh, I’m through. Very much through. But there’s a wild perfume in the air this afternoon. I don’t seem to care. Or I’m in love. I just don’t seem to care.”
“You have been drinking,” he said slowly.
“Only Chanel No. 5, and kisses, and the pale glow of lovely legs, and the mocking invitation in deep blue eyes. Innocent things like that.”
He just looked sadder than ever. “Women can weaken a man terribly, can they not?” he said.
“Clausen.”
“A hopeless alcoholic. You probably know how they are. They drink and drink and don’t eat. And little by little the vitamin deficiency brings on the symptoms of delirium. There is only one thing to do for them.” He turned and looked at the sterilizer. “Needles, and more needles. It makes me feel dirty. I am a graduate of the Sorbonne. But I practice among dirty little people in a dirty little town.”
“Why?”
“Because of something that happened years ago—in another city. Don’t ask me too much, Mr. Marlowe.”
“He used your first name.”
“It is a habit with people of a certain class. Onetime actors especially. And onetime crooks.”
“Oh,” I said. “That all there is to it?”
“All.”
“Then the cops coming here doesn’t bother you on account of Clausen. You’re just afraid of this other thing that happened somewhere else long gone. Or it could even be love.”
