“And if that was so,” I said, “don’t you think it’s about time you got the hell out of my office?”
She put her hands on the arms of her chair and started to get up, still smiling. I scooped the bag before she could change direction. Her eyes filled with glare. She made a spitting sound.
I opened the bag and went through and found a white envelope that looked a little familiar. Out of it I shook the photo at The Dancers, the two pieces fitted together and pasted on another piece of paper.
I closed the bag and tossed it across to her.
She was on her feet now, her lips drawn back over her teeth. She was very silent.
“Interesting,” I said and snapped a digit at the glazed surface of the print. “If it’s not a fake. Is that Steelgrave?”
The silvery laugh bubbled up again. “You are a ridicules character, amigo. You really are. I did not know they made such people any more.”
“Prewar stock,” I said. “We’re getting scarcer every day. Where did you get this?”
“From Mavis Weld’s purse in Mavis Weld’s dressing room. While she was on the set.”
“She know?”
“She does not know.”
“I wonder where she got it?”
“From you.”
“Nonsense.” I raised my eyebrows a few inches. “Where would I get it?”
She reached the gauntleted hand across the desk. Her voice was cold. “Give it back to me, please.”
“I’ll give it back to Mavis Weld. And I hate to tell you this, Miss Gonzales, but I’d never get anywhere as a blackmailer. I just don’t have the engaging personality.”
“Give it back to me,” she said sharply. “If you do not—”
She cut herself off. I waited for her to finish. A look of contempt showed on her smooth features.
“Very well,” she said. “It is my mistake. I thought you were smart, I can see that you are just another dumb private eye. This shabby little office,” she waved a black gloved hand at it, “and the shabby little life that goes on here—they ought to tell me what sort of idiot you are.”
“They do,” I said.
She turned slowly and walked to the door. I got around the desk and she let me open it for her.
She went out slowly. The way she did it hadn’t been learned at business college.
She went on down the hail without looking back. She had a beautiful walk.
The door bumped against the pneumatic door-closer and very softly clicked shut. It seemed to take a long time to do that. I stood there watching it as if I had never seen it happen before. Then I turned and started back towards my desk and the phone rang.
I picked it up and answered it. It was Christy French. “Marlowe? We’d like to see you down at headquarters.”
“Right away?”
“If not sooner,” he said and hung up.
I slipped the pasted-together print from under the blotter and went over to put it in the safe with the others. I put my hat on and closed the window. There was nothing to wait for. I looked at the green tip on the sweep hand of my watch. It was a long time until five o’clock. The sweep hand went around and around the dial like a door-to-door salesman. The hands stood at four-ten. You’d think she’d have called up by now. I peeled my coat off and unstrapped the shoulder harness and locked it with the Luger in the desk drawer. The cops don’t like you to be wearing a gun in their territory. Even if you have the right to wear one. They like you to come in properly humble, with your hat in your hand, and your voice low and polite, and your eyes full of nothing.
I looked at the watch again. I listened. The building seemed quiet this afternoon. After a while it would be silent and then the madonna of the dark-gray mop would come shuffling along the hall, trying doorknobs.
I put my coat back on and locked the communicating door and switched off the buzzer and let myself out into the hallway. And then the phone rang. I nearly took the door off its hinges getting back to it. It was her voice all right, but it had a tone I had never heard before. A cool balanced tone, not flat or empty or dead, or even childish. Just the voice of a girl I didn’t know and yet did know. What was in that voice I knew before she said more than three words.
“I called you up because you told me to,” she said. “But you don’t have to tell me anything. I went down there.”
I was holding the phone with both hands.
“You went down there,” I said. “Yes. I heard that. So?”
“I—borrowed a car,” she said. “I parked across the street. There were so many cars you would never have noticed me. There’s a funeral home there. I wasn’t following you. I tried to go after you when you came out but I don’t know the streets down there at all. I lost you. So I went back.”
“What did you go back for?”
“I don’t really know. I thought you looked kind of funny when you came out of the house. Or maybe I just had a feeling. He being my brother and all. So I went back and rang the bell. And nobody answered the door. I thought that was funny too. Maybe I’m psychic or something. All of a sudden I seemed to have to get into that house. And I didn’t know how to do it, but I had to.”
