Farewell, My Lovely - Chandler Raymond. Страница 23

“You have some identification.”

I let him look at the license on the steering post. “That doesn’t prove anything,” he said. “How do I know it’s your car?”

I pulled the key out of the ignition and threw the door open and got out. That put me about a foot from him. He had a nice breath. Haig and Haig at least.

“You’ve been at the sideboy again,” I said.

He smiled. His eyes measured me. I said:

“Listen, I’ll talk to the butler over that phone and he’ll know my voice. Will that pass me in or do I have to ride on your back?”

“I just work here,” he said softly. “If I didn’t — “ he let the rest hang in the air, and kept on smiling.

“You’re a nice lad,” I said and patted his shoulder. “Dartmouth or Dannemora?”

“Christ,” he said. “Why didn’t you say you were a cop?”

We both grinned. He waved his hand and I went in through the half open gate. The drive curved and tall molded hedges of dark green completely screened it from the street and from the house. Through a green gate I saw a Jap gardener at work weeding a huge lawn. He was pulling a piece of weed out of the vast velvet expanse and sneering at it the way Jap gardeners do. Then the tall hedge closed in again and I didn’t see anything more for a hundred feet. Then the hedge ended in a wide circle in which half a dozen cars were parked.

One of them was a small coupe. There were a couple of very nice two-tone Buicks of the latest model, good enough to go for the mail in. There was a black limousine, with dull nickel louvres and hubcaps the size of bicycle wheels. There was a long sport phaeton with the top down. A short very wide all-weather concrete driveway led from these to the side entrance of the house.

Off to the left, beyond the parking space there was a sunken garden with a fountain at each of the four corners. The entrance was barred by a wrought-iron gate with a flying Cupid in the middle. There were busts on light pillars and a stone seat with crouching griffins at each end. There was an oblong pool with stone, waterlilies in it and a big stone bullfrog sitting on one of the leaves. Still farther a rose colonnade led to a thing like an altar, hedged in at both sides, yet not so completely but that the sun lay in an arabesque along the steps of the altar. And far over to the left there was a wild garden, not very large, with a sun-dial in the corner near an angle of wall that was built to look like a ruin. And there were flowers. There were a million flowers.

The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building.

I sneaked over to the side entrance and pressed a bell and somewhere a set of chimes made a deep mellow sound like church bells.

A man in a striped vest and gilt buttons opened the door, bowed, took my hat and was through for the day. Behind him in dimness, a man in striped knife-edged pants and a black coat and wing collar with gray striped tie leaned his gray head forward about half an inch and said: “Mr. Marlowe? If you will come this way, please — “

We went down a hall. It was a very quiet hail. Not a fly buzzed in it. The floor was covered with Oriental rugs and there were paintings along the walls. We turned a corner and there was more hall. A French window showed a gleam of blue water far off and I remembered almost with a shock that we were near the Pacific Ocean and that this house was on the edge of one of the canyons.

The butler reached a door and opened it against voices and stood aside and I went in. It was a nice room with large chesterfields and lounging chairs done in pale yellow leather arranged around a fireplace in front of which, on the glossy but not slippery floor, lay a rug as thin as silk and as old as Aesop’s aunt. A jet of flowers glistened in a corner, another on a low table, the walls were of dull painted parchment, there was comfort, space, coziness, a dash of the very modern and a dash of the very old, and three people sitting in a sudden silence watching me cross the floor.

One of them was Anne Riordan, looking just as I had seen her last, except that she was holding a glass of amber fluid in her hand. One was a tall thin sad-faced man with a stony chin and deep eyes and no color in his face but an unhealthy yellow. He was a good sixty, or rather a bad sixty. He wore a dark business suit, a red carnation, and looked subdued.

The third was the blonde. She was dressed to go out, in a pale greenish blue. I didn’t pay much attention to her clothes. They were what the guy designed for her and she would go to the right man. The effect was to make her look very young and to make her lapis lazuli eyes look very blue. Her hair was of the gold of old paintings and had been fussed with just enough but not too much. She had a full set of curves which nobody had been able to improve on. The dress was rather plain except for a clasp of diamonds at the throat. Her hands were not small, but they had shape, and the nails were the usual jarring note — almost magenta. She was giving me one of her smiles. She looked as if she smiled easily, but her eyes had a still look, as if they thought slowly and carefully. And her mouth was sensual.

“So nice of you to come,” she said. “This is my husband. Mix Mr. Marlowe a drink, honey.”

Mr. Grayle shook hands with me. His hand was cold and a little moist. His eyes were sad. He mixed a Scotch and soda and handed it to me.

Then he sat down in a corner and was silent. I drank half of the drink and grinned at Miss Riordan. She looked at me with a sort of absent expression, as if she had another clue.

“Do you think you can do anything for us?” the blonde asked slowly, looking down into her glass. “If you think you can, I’d be delighted. But the loss is rather small, compared with having any more fuss with gangsters and awful people.”

“I don’t know very much about it really,” I said.

“Oh, I hope you can.” She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.

I drank the other half of my drink. I began to feel rested. Mrs. Grayle rang a bell set into the arm of the leather chesterfield and a footman came in. She half pointed to the tray. He looked around and mixed two drinks. Miss Riordan was still playing cute with the same one and apparently Mr. Grayle didn’t drink. The footman went out.

Mrs. Grayle and I held our glasses. Mrs. Grayle crossed her legs, a little carelessly.

“I don’t know whether I can do anything,” I said. “I doubt it. What is there to go on?”

“I’m sure you can.” She gave me another smile. “How far did Lin Marriott take you into his confidence?”

She looked sideways at Miss Riordan. Miss Riordan just couldn’t catch the look. She kept right on sitting. She looked sideways the other way. Mrs. Grayle looked at her husband. “Do you have to bother with this, honey?”

Mr. Grayle stood up and said he was very glad to have met me and that he would go and lie down for a while. He didn’t feel very well. He hoped I would excuse him. He was so polite I wanted to carry him out of the room just to show my appreciation.

He left. He closed the door softly, as if he was afraid to wake a sleeper. Mrs. Grayle looked at the door for a moment and then put the smile back on her face and looked at me.

“Miss Riordan is in your complete confidence, of course.”

“Nobody’s In my complete confidence, Mrs. Grayle. She happens to know about this case — what there is to know.”

“Yes.” She drank a sip or two, then finished her glass at a swallow and set it aside.

“To hell with this polite drinking,” she said suddenly. “Let’s get together on this. You’re a very good-looking man to be in your sort of racket.”

“It’s a smelly business,” I said.

“I didn’t quite mean that. Is there any money in it — or is that impertinent?”

“There’s not much money in it. There’s a lot of grief. But there’s a lot of fun too. And there’s always a chance of a big case.”