Two uniformed cops barged into the room. They were the usual large size and they had the usual weathered faces and suspicious eyes. One of them had a carnation tucked under his cap, behind his right ear. The other one was older, a little gray and grim. They stood and looked at me warily, then the older one said briefly:

“All right, where is it?”

“Downstairs in the bathroom, behind the shower curtain.”

“You stay here with him, Eddie.”

He went rapidly along the room and disappeared. The other one looked at me steadily and said out of the corner of his mouth:

“Don’t make any false moves, buddy.”

I sat down on the davenport again. The cop ranged the room with his eyes. There were sounds below stairs, feet walking. The cop with me suddenly spotted the gun lying on the telephone table. He charged at it violently, like a downfield blocker.

“This the death gun?” he almost shouted.

“I should imagine so. It’s been fired.”

“Ha!” He leaned over the gun, baring his teeth at me, and put his hand to his holster. His finger tickled the flap off the stud and he grasped the butt of the black revolver.

“You should what?” he barked.

“I should imagine so.”

“That’s very good,” he sneered. “That’s very good indeed.”

“It’s not that good,” I said.

He reeled back a little. His eyes were being careful of me. “What you shoot him for?” he growled.

“I’ve wondered and wondered.”

“Oh, a wisenheimer.”

“Let’s just sit down and wait for the homicide boys,” I said. “I’m reserving my defense.”

“Don’t give me none of that,” he said.

“I’m not giving you any of anything. If I had shot him, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have called up. You wouldn’t have found the gun. Don’t work so hard on the case. You won’t be on it more than ten minutes.”

His eyes looked hurt. He took his cap off and the carnation dropped to the floor. He bent and picked it up and twirled it between his fingers, then dropped it behind the fire screen.

“Better not do that,” I told him. “They might think it’s a clue and waste a lot of time on it.”

“Aw hell.” He bent over the screen and retrieved the carnation and put it in his pocket. “You know all the answers, don’t you, buddy?”

The other cop came back up the stairs, looking grave. He stood in the middle of the floor and looked at his wrist watch and made a note in a notebook and then looked out of the front windows, holding the venetian blinds to one side to do it.

The one who had stayed with me said: “Can I look now?”

“Let it lie, Eddie. Nothing in it for us. You call the coroner?”

“I thought homicide would do that.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Captain Webber will be on it and he likes to do everything himself.” He looked at me and said: “You’re a man named Marlowe?”

I said I was a man named Marlowe.

“He’s a wise guy, knows all the answers,” Eddie said.

The older one looked at me absently, looked at Eddie absently, spotted the gun lying on the telephone table and looked at that not at all absently.

“Yeah, that’s the death gun,” Eddie said. “I ain’t touched it.”

The other nodded. “The boys are not so fast today. What’s your line, mister? Friend of his?” He made a thumb towards the floor.

“Saw him yesterday for the first time. I’m a private operative from L.A.”

“Oh.” He looked at me very sharply. The other cop looked at me with deep suspicion.

“Cripes, that means everything will be all balled up,” he said.

That was the first sensible remark he had made. I grinned at him affectionately.

The older cop looked out of the front window again. “That’s the Almore place across the street, Eddie,” he said.

Eddie went and looked with him. “Sure is,” he said. “You can read the plate. Say, this guy downstairs might be the guy—”

“Shut up,” the other one said and dropped the venetian blind. They both turned around and stared at me woodenly.

A car came down the block and stopped and a door slammed and more steps came down the walk. The older of the prowl car boys opened the door to two men in plain clothes, one of whom I already knew.

TWENTY-ONE

The one who came first was a small man for a cop, middle-aged, thin-faced, with a permanently tired expression. His nose was sharp and bent a little to one side, as if somebody had given it the elbow one time when it was into something. His blue porkpie hat was set very square on his head and chalk-white hair showed under it. He wore a dull brown suit and his hands were in the side pockets of the jacket, with the thumbs outside the seam.

The man behind him was Degarmo, the big cop with the dusty blond hair and the metallic blue eyes and the savage, lined face who had not liked my being in front of Dr. Almore’s house.

The two uniformed men looked at the small man and touched their caps.

“The body’s in the basement, Captain Webber. Been shot twice after a couple of misses, looks like. Dead quite some time. This party’s name is Marlowe. He’s a private eye from Los Angeles. I didn’t question him beyond that.”

“Quite right,” Webber said sharply. He had a suspicious voice. He passed a suspicious eye over my face and nodded briefly. “I’m Captain Webber,” he said. “This is Lieutenant Degarmo. We’ll look at the body first.”

He went along the room. Degarmo looked at me as if he had never seen me before and followed him. They went downstairs, the older of the two prowl car men with them. The cop called Eddie and I stared each other down for a while.

I said: “This is right across the street from Dr. Almore’s place, isn’t it?”

All the expression went out of his face. There hadn’t been much to go. “Yeah. So what?”

“So nothing,” I said.

He was silent. The voices came up from below, blurred and indistinct. The cop cocked his ear and said in a more friendly tone: “You remember that one?”

“A little.”

He laughed. “They killed that one pretty,” he said. “They wrapped it up and hid it in back of the shelf. The top shelf in the bathroom closet. The one you can’t reach without standing on a chair.”

“So they did,” I said. “I wonder why.”

The cop looked at me sternly. “There was good reasons, pal. Don’t think there wasn’t. You know this Lavery well?”

“Not well.”

“On to him for something?”

“Working on him a little,” I said. “You knew him?”

The cop called Eddie shook his head. “Nope. I just remembered it was a guy from this house found Almore’s wife in the garage that night.”

“Lavery may not have been here then,” I said.

“How long’s he been here?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Would be about a year and a half,” the cop said, musingly. “The L.A. papers give it any play?”

“Paragraph on the Home Counties page,” I said, just to be moving my mouth.

He scratched his ear and listened. Steps were coming back up the stairs. The cop’s face went blank and he moved away from me and straightened up.