“I must have men, amigo. But the man I loved is dead. I killed him. That man I would not share.”
“You waited a long time.”
“I can be patient—as long as there is hope.”
“Oh, nuts.”
She smiled a free, beautiful and perfectly natural smile. “And you cannot do a damn thing about all this, darling, unless you destroy Mavis Weld utterly and finally.”
“Last night she proved she was willing to destroy her self.”
“If she was not acting.” She looked at me sharply and laughed. “That hurt, did it not? You are in love with her.”
I said slowly, “That would be kind of silly. I could sit in the dark with her and hold hands, but for how long? In a little while she will drift off into a haze of glamour and expensive clothes and froth and unreality and muted sex. She won’t be a real person any more. Just a voice from a sound track, a face on a screen. I’d want more than that.”
I moved towards the door without putting my back to her. I didn’t really expect a slug. I thought she liked better having me the way I was—and not being able to do a damn thing about any of it.
I looked back as I opened the door. Slim, dark and lovely and smiling. Reeking with sex. Utterly beyond the moral laws of this or any world I could imagine.
She was one for the book all right. I went out quietly. Very softly her voice came to me as I closed the door.
“Querido—I have liked you very much. It is too bad.”
I shut the door.
35
As the elevator opened at the lobby a man stood there waiting for it. He was tall and thin and his hat was pulled low over his eyes. It was a warm day but he wore a thin topcoat with the collar up. He kept his chin low.
“Dr. Lagardie,” I said softly.
He glanced at me with no trace of recognition. He moved into the elevator. It started up.
I went across to the desk and banged the bell. The large fat soft man came out and stood with a pained smile on his loose mouth. His eyes were not quite so bright.
“Give me the phone.”
He reached down and put it on the desk. I dialed Madison 7911. The voice said: “Police.” This was the Emergency Board.
“Chateau Bercy Apartments, Franklin and Girard in Hollywood. A man named Dr. Vincent Lagardie wanted for questioning by homicide, Lieutenants French and Beifus, has just gone up to Apartment 412. This is Philip Marlowe, a private detective.”
“Franklin and Girard. Wait there please. Are you armed?”
“Yes.”
“Hold him if he tries to leave.”
I hung up and wiped my mouth off. The fat softy was leaning against the counter, white around the eyes.
They came fast—but not fast enough. Perhaps I ought to have stopped him. Perhaps I had a hunch what he would do, and deliberately let him do it. Sometimes when I’m low I try to reason it out. But it gets too complicated. The whole damn case was that way. There was never a point where I could do the natural obvious thing without stopping to rack my head dizzy with figuring how it would affect somebody I owed something to.
When they cracked the door he was sitting on the couch holding her pressed against his heart. His eyes were blind and there was bloody foam on his lips. He had bitten through his tongue.
Under her left breast and tight against the flame-colored shirt lay the silver handle of a knife I had seen before. The handle was in the shape of a naked woman. The eyes of Miss Dolores Gonzales were half open and on her lips there was the dim ghost of a provocative smile.
“The Hippocrates smile,” the ambulance intern said, and sighed. “On her it looks good.”
He glanced across at Dr. Lagardie who saw nothing and heard nothing, if you could judge by his face.
“I guess somebody lost a dream,” the intern said. He bent over and closed her eyes.
THE END
About the Author
Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 23, 1888, but spent most of his boyhood and youth in England, where he attended Dulwich College and later worked as a free-lance journalist for The Westminster Gazette and The Spectator. During World War I, he served in France with the First Division of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, transferring later to the Royal Flying Corps (R.A.F.). In 1919 he returned to the United States, settling in California, where he eventually became director of a number of independent oil companies. The Depression put an end to his business career, and in 1933, at the age of forty-five, he turned to writing, publishing his first stories in Black Mask. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. Never a prolific writer, he published only one collection of stories and seven novels in his lifetime. In the last year of his life he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died in La Jolla, California, on March 26, 1959.