He ran his long pale fingers through his tousled black hair.
“I could make a lot of answers to that,” he said. They’d all sound about the same. The citizen is the law. In this country we haven’t got around to understanding that. We think of the law as an enemy. We’re a nation of cop- haters.”
“It’ll take a lot to change that,” I said. “On both sides.
He leaned forward and pressed a buzzer. “Yes,” he said quietly. “It will. But somebody has to make a beginning. Thanks for coming in.”
As I went out a secretary came in at another door with a fat file in her hand.
33
A shave and a second breakfast made me feel a little less like the box of shavings the cat had had kittens in. I went up to the office and unlocked the door and sniffed in the twice-breathed air and the smell of dust. I opened a window and inhaled the fry-cook smell from the coffee shop next door. I sat down at my desk and felt the grit on it with my fingertips. I filled a pipe and lit it and leaned back and looked around.
“Hello,” I said.
I was just talking to the office equipment, the three green filing cases, the threadbare piece of carpet, the customer’s chair across from me, and the light fixture in the ceiling with three dead moths in it that had been there for at least six months. I was talking to the pebbled glass panel and the grimy woodwork and the pen set on the desk and the tired, tired telephone. I was talking to the scales on an alligator, the name of the alligator being Marlowe, a private detective in our thriving little community. Not the brainiest guy in the world, but cheap. He started out cheap and he ended cheaper still.
I reached down and put the bottle of Old Forester up on the desk. It was about a third full. Old Forester. Now who gave you that, pal? That’s green-label stuff. Out of your class entirely. Must have been a client. I had a client once.
And that got me thinking about her, and maybe I have stronger thoughts than I know. The telephone rang, and the funny little precise voice sounded just as it had the first time she called me up.
“I’m in that telephone booth,” she said. “If you’re alone, I’m coming up.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I suppose you’re mad at me,” she said.
“I’m not mad at anybody. Just tired.”
“Oh yes you are,” her tight little voice said. “But I’m coming up anyway. I don’t care if you are mad at me.”
She hung up. I took the cork out of the bottle of Old Forester and gave a sniff at it. I shuddered. That settled it. Any time I couldn’t smell whiskey without shuddering I was through.
I put the bottle away and got up to unlock the communicating door. Then I heard her tripping along the hall. I’d know those tight little footsteps anywhere. I opened the door and she came up to me and looked at me shyly.
It was all gone. The slanted cheaters, and the new hair-do and the smart little hat and the perfume and the prettied-up touch. The costume jewelry, the rouge, the everything. All gone. She was right back where she started that first morning. Same brown tailor-made, same square bag, same rimless glasses, same prim little narrow- minded smile.
“It’s me,” she said. “I’m going home.”
She followed me into my private thinking parlor and sat down primly and I sat down just any old way and stared at her.
“Back to Manhattan,” I said. “I’m surprised they let you.”
“I may have to come back.”
“Can you afford it?”
She gave a quick little half-embarrassed laugh. “It won’t cost me anything,” she said. She reached up and touched the rimless glasses. “These feel all wrong now,” she said. “I liked the others. But Dr. Zugsmith wouldn’t like them at all.” She put her bag on the desk and drew a line along the desk with her fingertip. That was just like the first time too.
“I can’t remember whether I gave you back your twenty dollars or not,” I said. “We kept passing it back and forth until I lost count.”
“Oh, you gave it to me,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Sure?”
“I never make mistakes about money. Are you all right? Did they hurt you?”
“The police? No. And it was as tough a job as they ever didn’t do.”
She looked innocently surprised. Then her eyes glowed. “You must be awfully brave,” she said.
“Just luck,” I said. I picked up a pencil and felt the point. It was a good sharp point, if anybody wanted to write anything. I didn’t. I reached across and slipped the pencil through the strap of her bag and pulled it towards me.
“Don’t touch my bag,” she said quickly and reached for it.
I grinned and drew it out of her reach. “All right. But it’s such a cute little bag. It’s so like you.”
She leaned back. There was a vague worry behind her eyes, but she smiled. “You think I’m cute—Philip? I’m so ordinary.”
