no jewelry. The rimless glasses gave her that librarian’s look.
“That’s no way to talk to people over the telephone,” she said sharply. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“I’m just too proud to show it,” I said. “Come on in.” I held the door for her. Then I held the chair for her.
She sat down on about two inches of the edge. “If I talked like that to one of Dr. Zugsmith’s patients,” she said, “I’d lose my position. He’s most particular how I speak to the patients—even the difficult ones.”
“How is the old boy? I haven’t seen him since that time I fell off the garage roof.”
She looked surprised and quite serious. “Why surely you can’t know Dr. Zugsmith.” The tip of a rather anemic tongue came out between her lips and searched furtively for nothing.
“I know a Dr. George Zugsmith,” I said, “in Santa Rosa.”
“Oh no. This is Dr. Alfred Zugsmith, in Manhattan. Manhattan, Kansas, you know, not Manhattan, New York.”
“Must be a different Dr. Zugsmith,” I said. “And your name?”
“I’m not sure I’d care to tell you.”
“Just window shopping, huh?”
“I suppose you could call it that. If I have to tell my family affairs to a total stranger, I at least have the right to decide whether he’s the kind of person I could trust.”
“Anybody ever tell you you’re a cute little trick?”
The eyes behind the rimless cheaters flashed. “I should hope not.”
I reached for a pipe and started to fill it. “Hope isn’t exactly the word,” I said. “Get rid of that hat and get yourself a pair of those slinky glasses with colored rims. You know, the ones that are all cockeyed and oriental —”
“Dr. Zugsmith wouldn’t permit anything like that,” she said quickly. Then, “Do you really think so?” she asked, and blushed ever so slightly.
I put a match to the pipe and puffed smoke across the desk. She winced back.
“If you hire me,” I said, “I’m the guy you hire. Me. Just as I am. If you think you’re going to find any lay readers in this business, you’re crazy. I hung up on you, but you came up here all the same. So you need help. What’s your name and trouble?”
She just stared at me.
“Look,” I said. “You come from Manhattan, Kansas. The last time I memorized the World Almanac that was a little town not far from Topeka. Population around twelve thousand. You work for Dr. Alfred Zugsmith and you’re looking for somebody named Orrin. Manhattan is a small town. It has to be. Only half a dozen places in Kansas are anything else. I already have enough information about you to find out your whole family history.”
“But why should you want to?” she asked, troubled.
“Me?” I said. “I don’t want to. I’m fed up with people telling me histories. I’m just sitting here because I don’t have any place to go. I don’t want to work. I don’t want anything.”
“You talk too much.”
“Yes,” I said, “I talk too much. Lonely men always talk too much. Either that or they don’t talk at all. Shall we get down to business? You don’t look like the type that goes to see private detectives, and especially private detectives you don’t know.”
“I know that,” she said quietly. “And Orrin would be absolutely livid. Mother would be furious too. I just picked your name out of the phone book—”
“What principle?” I asked. “And with the eyes closed or open?”
She stared at me for a moment as if I were some kind of freak. “Seven and thirteen,” she said quietly.
“How?”
“Marlowe has seven letters,” she said, “and Philip Marlowe has thirteen. Seven together with thirteen—”
“What’s your name?” I almost snarled.
“Orfamay Quest.” She crinkled her eyes as if she could cry. She spelled the first name out for me, all one word. “I live with my mother,” she went on, her voice getting rapid now as if my time is costing her. “My father died four years ago. He was a doctor. My brother Orrin was going to be a surgeon, too, but he changed into engineering after two years of medical. Then a year ago Orrin came out to work for the Cal-Western Aircraft Company in Bay City. He didn’t have to. He had a good job in Wichita. I guess he just sort of wanted to come out here to California. Most everybody does.”
“Almost everybody,” I said. “If you’re going to wear those rimless glasses, you might at least try to live up to them.”
She giggled and drew a line along the desk with her fingertip, looking down. “Did you mean those slanting kind of glasses that make you look kind of oriental?”
“Uh-huh. Now about Orrin. We’ve got him to California, and we’ve got him to Bay City. What do we do with him?”
She thought a moment and frowned. Then she studied my face as if making up her mind. Then her words came with a burst: “It wasn’t like Orrin not to write to us regularly. He only wrote twice to mother and three times to me in the last six months. And the last letter was several months ago. Mother and I got worried. So it was my vacation and I came out to see him. He’d never been away from Kansas before.” She stopped. “Aren’t you going to take any notes?” she asked.
