“Anything else?” Webber asked quietly.

Before I could answer, a car stopped outside the house, and then another. Webber skipped over to open the door. Three men came in, a short curly-haired man and a large ox-like man, both carrying heavy black leather cases. Behind them a tall thin man in a dark gray suit and black tie. He had very bright eyes and a poker face.

Webber pointed a finger at the curly-haired man and said: “Downstairs in the bathroom, Busoni. I want a lot of prints from all over the house, particularly any that seem to be made by a woman. It will be a long job.”

“I do all the work,” Busoni grunted. He and the oxlike man went along the room and down the stairs.

“We have a corpse for you, Garland,” Webber said to the third man. “Let’s go down and look at him. You’ve ordered the wagon?”

The bright-eyed man nodded briefly and he and Webber went downstairs after the other two.

Degarmo put the envelope and pencil away. He stared at me woodenly.

I said: “Am I supposed to talk about our conversation yesterday—or is that a private transaction?”

“Talk about it all you like,” he said. “It’s our job to protect the citizen.”

“You talk about it,” I said. “I’d like to know more about the Almore case.”

He flushed slowly and his eyes got mean. “You said you didn’t know Almore.”

“I didn’t yesterday, or know anything about him. Since then I’ve learned that Lavery knew Mrs. Almore, that she committed suicide, that Lavery found her dead, and that Lavery has at least been suspected of blackmailing him—or of being in a position to blackmail him. Also both your prowl car boys seemed interested in the fact that Almore’s house was across the street from here. And one of them remarked that the case had been killed pretty, or words to that effect.”

Degarmo said in a slow deadly tone: “I’ll have the badge off the son of a bitch. All they do is flap their mouths. God damn empty-headed bastards.”

“Then there’s nothing in it,” I said.

He looked at his cigarette. “Nothing in what?”

“Nothing in the idea that Almore murdered his wife, and had enough pull to get it fixed.”

Degarmo came to his feet and walked over to lean down at me. “Say that again,” he said softly.

I said it again.

He hit me across the face with his open hand. It jerked my head around hard. My face felt hot and large.

“Say it again,” he said softly.

I said it again. His hand swept and knocked my head to one side again.

“Say it again.”

“Nope. Third time lucky. You might miss.” I put a hand up and rubbed my cheek.

He stood leaning down, his lips drawn back over his teeth, a hard animal glare in his very blue eyes.

“Any time you talk like that to a cop,” he said, “you know what you got coming. Try it on again and it won’t be the flat of a hand I’ll use on you.”

I bit hard on my lips and rubbed my cheek.

“Poke your big nose into our business and you’ll wake up in an alley with the cats looking at you,” he said.

I didn’t say anything. He went and sat down again, breathing hard. I stopped rubbing my face and held my hand out and worked the fingers slowly, to get the hard clench out of them.

“I’ll remember that,” I said. “Both ways.”

TWENTY-TWO

It was early evening when I got back to Hollywood and up to the office. The building had emptied out and the corridors were silent. Doors were open and the cleaning women were inside with their vacuum cleaners and their dry mops and dusters.

I unlocked the door to mine and picked up an envelope that lay in front of the mail slot and dropped it on the desk without looking at it. I ran the windows up and leaned out, looking at the early neon lights glowing, smelling the warm, foody air that drifted up from the alley ventilator of the coffee shop next door.

I peeled off my coat and tie and sat down at the desk and got the office bottle out of the deep drawer and bought myself a drink. It didn’t do any good. I had another, with the same result.

By now Webber would have seen Kingsley. There would be a general alarm out for his wife, already, or very soon. The thing looked cut and dried to them. A nasty affair between two rather nasty people, too much loving, too much drinking, too much proximity ending in a savage hatred and a murderous impulse and death.

I thought this was all a little too simple.

I reached for the envelope and tore it open. It had no stamp. It read: “Mr. Marlowe: Florence Almore’s parents are a Mr. and Mrs. Eustace Grayson, presently residing at the Rossmore Arms, 640 South Oxford Avenue. I checked this by calling the listed phone number. Yrs. Adrienne Fromsett.”

An elegant handwriting, like the elegant hand that wrote it. I pushed it to one side and had another drink. I began to feel a little less savage. I pushed things around on the desk. My hands felt thick and hot and awkward. I ran a finger across the corner of the desk and looked at the streak made by the wiping off of the dust. I looked at the dust on my finger and wiped that off. I looked at my watch. I looked at the wall. I looked at nothing.

I put the liquor bottle away and went over to the washbowl to rinse the glass out. When I had done that I washed my hands and bathed my face in cold water and looked at it. The flush was gone from the left cheek, but it looked a little swollen. Not very much, but enough to make me tighten up again. I brushed my hair and looked at the gray in it. There was getting to be plenty of gray in it. The face under the hair had a sick look. I didn’t like the face at all.

I went back to the desk and read Miss Fromsett’s note again. I smoothed it out on the glass and sniffed it and smoothed it out some more and folded it and put it in my coat pocket.

I sat very still and listened to the evening grow quiet outside the open windows. And very slowly I grew quiet with it.

TWENTY-THREE