would be locked up in the luggage. In the main part of the bag was what a woman carries, a lipstick, a compact, a change purse, some silver, and a few keys on a ring with a tiny bronze tiger hanging from it. A pack of cigarettes that seemed just about full but had been opened. A matchbook with one match used. Three handkerchiefs with no initials, a packet of emery boards, a cuticle knife, and some kind of eyebrow stuff, a comb in a leather case, a little round jar of nail polish, a tiny address book. I pounced on that. Blank, not used at all. Also in the bag were a pair of sun glasses with spangled rims in a case, no name on the case; a fountain pen, a small gold pencil, and that was all. I put the bag back where I had found it. I went over to the desk for a piece of hotel stationery and an envelope.
I used the hotel pen to write: “Dear Betty: So sorry I couldn’t stay dead. Will explain tomorrow. Larry.”
I sealed the note in the envelope, wrote
I opened the door, went out, shut the door, and went back to the fire stairs, then said out loud: “The hell with it,” and rang for the elevator. It didn’t come. I rang again and kept on ringing. Finally it came up and a sleepy-eyed young Mexican opened the doors and yawned at me, then grinned apologetically. I grinned back and said nothing.
There was nobody at the desk, which faced the elevators. The Mexican parked himself in a chair and went back to sleep before I had taken six steps. Everybody was sleepy but Marlowe. He works around the clock, and doesn’t even collect.
I drove back to the Rancho Descansado, saw nobody awake there, looked longingly at the bed, but packed my suitcase—with Betty’s gun in the bottom of it—put twelve bucks in an envelope and on the way out put that through the slot in the office door, with my room key.
I drove to San Diego, turned the rent car in, and ate breakfast at a joint across from the station. At seven- fifteen I caught the two-car diesel job that makes the run to L.A. nonstop and pulls in at exactly 10 A.M.
I rode home in a taxi and shaved and showered and ate a second breakfast and glanced through the morning paper. It was near on eleven o’clock when I called the office of Mr. Clyde Umney, the lawyer.
He answered himself. Maybe Miss Vermilyea hadn’t got up yet.
“This is Marlowe. I’m home. Can I drop around?”
“Did you find her?”
“Yeah. Did you call Washington?”
“Where is she?”
“I’d like to tell you in person. Did you call Washington?”
“I’d like your information first. I have a very busy day ahead.” His voice was brittle and lacked charm.
“I’ll be there in half an hour.” I hung up fast and called the place where my Olds was.
11
There are almost too many offices like Clyde Umney’s office. It was paneled in squares of combed plywood set at right angles one to the other to make a checkerboard effect. The lighting was indirect, the carpeting wall to wall, the furniture blond, the chairs comfortable, and the fees probably exorbitant. The metal window frames opened outward and there was a small but neat parking lot behind the building, and every slot in it had a name painted on a white board. For some reason Clyde Umney’s stall was vacant, so I used it. Maybe he had a chauffeur drive him to his office. The building was four stories high, very new, and occupied entirely by doctors and lawyers.
When I entered, Miss Vermilyea was just fixing herself for a hard day’s work by touching up her platinum blond coiffure. I thought she looked a little the worse for wear. She put away her hand mirror and fed herself a cigarette.
“Well, well. Mr. Hard Guy in person. To what may we attribute this honor?”
“Umney’s expecting me.”
“
“Boydie-boy to you, sister.”
She got raging in an instant. “Don’t call me ‘sister,’ you cheap gumshoe!”
“Then don’t call me buster, you very expensive secretary. What are you doing tonight? And don’t tell me you’re going out with four sailors again.”
The skin around her eyes turned whiter. Her hand crisped into a claw around a paperweight. She just didn’t heave it at me. “You son of a bitch!” she said somewhat pointedly. Then she flipped a switch on her talk box and said to the voice: “Mr. Marlowe is here, Mr. Umney.”
Then she leaned back and gave me the look. “I’ve got friends who could cut you down so small you’d need a stepladder to put your shoes on.”
“Somebody did a lot of hard work on that one,” I said. “But hard work’s no substitute for talent.”
Suddenly we both burst out laughing. The door opened and Umney stuck his face out. He gestured me in with his chin, but his eyes were on the platinum girl.
I went in and after a moment he closed the door and went behind his enormous semicircular desk, with a green leather top and just piles and piles of important documents on it. He was a dapper man, very carefully dressed, too short in the legs, too long in the nose, too sparse in the hair. He had limpid brown eyes which, for a lawyer, looked very trustful.
“You making a pass at my secretary?” he asked me in a voice that was anything but limpid.
“Nope. We were just exchanging pleasantries.”
I sat down in the customer’s chair and looked at him with something approaching politeness.
“She looked pretty mad to me.” He squatted in his executive vice-president type chair and made his face
