“You know him?”
“Only through selling him books.”
Spade pursed his lips, asked, “What day was it?” He gave her one of his business cards. “Please. It’s important.”
She went to a desk, turned the pages of a red-bound
sales-book, and came back to him with the book open in her hand. “It was last Wednesday,” she said, “and we delivered it to a Mr. Roger Ferris, 1981 Pacific Avenue.”
“Thanks a lot,” he said.
Outside, he hailed a taxicab and gave the driver Mr. Roger Ferris’s address. …
The Pacific Avenue house was a four-story, graystone one set behind a narrow strip of lawn. The room into which a plump-faced maid ushered Spade was large and
high-ceiled.
Spade sat down, but when the maid had gone away he rose and began to walk around the room. He halted at a table where there were three books. One of them had a salmon-colored jacket on which was printed in red an outline drawing of a bolt of lightning striking the ground between a man and a woman, and in black the words Colored Light, by Eli Haven.
Spade picked up the book and went back to his chair.
There was an inscription on the flyleaf — heavy, irregular characters written with blue ink:
To good old Buck, ‘who knew his colored lights, ‘in
memory of them there days.
EH
Spade turned pages at random and idly read a verse:
STATEMENT
Too many have lived As we live For our lives to be Proof of our living.
Too many have died As we die
For their deaths to be Proof of our dying.
He looked up from the book as a man in dinner clothes came into the room. He was not a tall man, but his erect-ness made him seem tall even when Spade’s six feet and a fraction of an inch were standing before him. He had bright blue eyes undimmed by his fifty-some years, a sunburned face in which no muscle sagged, a smooth, broad forehead, and thick, short, nearly white hair. There was dignity in his countenance, and amiability.
He nodded at the book Spade still held. “How do you like it?”
Spade grinned, said, “I guess I’m just a mug,” and put the book down. “That’s what I came to see you about, though, Mr. Ferris. You know Haven?”
“Yes, certainly. Sit down, Mr. Spade.” He sat in a chair not far from Spade’s. “I knew him as a kid. He’s not in trouble, is he?”
Spade said, “I don’t know. I’m trying to find him.”
Ferris spoke hesitantly: “Can I ask why?”
“You know Gene Colyer?”
“Yes.” Ferris hesitated again, then said, “This is in confidence. I’ve a chain of picture houses through northern California, you know, and a couple of years ago when I had some labor trouble I was told that Colyer was the man to get in touch with to have it straightened out. That’s how I happened to meet him.”
“Yes,” Spade said dryly. “A lot of people happen to
meet Gene that way.”
“But what’s he got to do with Eli?” “Wants him found. How long since you’ve seen him?” “Last Thursday he was here.” “What time did he leave?”
“Midnight — a little after. He came over in the afternoon around half past three. We hadn’t seen each other for years. I persuaded him to stay for dinner — he looked pretty seedy — and lent him some money.” “How much?”
“A hundred and fifty — all I had in the house.” “Say where he was going when he left?” Ferris shook his head. “He said he’d phone me the next
day.” “Did he phone you the next day?”
“No.”
“And you’ve known him all his life?”
“Not exactly, but he worked for me fifteen or sixteen years ago when I had a carnival company — Great Eastern and Western Combined Shows — with a partner for a while and then by myself, and I always liked the kid.”
“How long before Thursday since you’d seen him?”
“Lord knows,” Ferris replied. “I’d lost track of him for years. Then, Wednesday, out of a clear sky, that book came, with no address or anything, just that stuff written in the front, and the next morning he called me up. I was tickled to death to know he was still alive and doing something with himself. So he came over that afternoon and we Put in about nine hours straight talking about old times.”