The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

The old man looked at me woodenly. “He went away, a month ago. Abruptly, without a word to anyone. Without saying good-by to me. That hurt a little, but he had been raised in a rough school. I’ll hear from him one of these days. Meantime I am being blackmailed again.”

I said: “Again?”

He brought his hands from under the rug with a brown envelope in them. “I should have been very sorry for anybody who tried to blackmail me while Rusty was around. A few months before he came—that is to say about nine or ten months ago—I paid a man named Joe Brody five thousand dollars to let my younger daughter Carmen alone.”

“Ah,” I said.

He moved his thin white eyebrows. “That means what?”

“Nothing,” I said.

He went on staring at me, half frowning. Then he said: “Take this envelope and examine it. And help yourself to the brandy.”

I took the envelope off his knees and sat down with it again. I wiped off the palms of my hands and turned it around. It was addressed to General Guy Stemwood, 3765 Alta Brea Crescent; West Hollywood, California. The address was in ink, in the slanted printing engineers use. The envelope was slit. I opened it up and took out a brown card and three slips of stiff paper. The card was of thin brown linen, printed in gold: “Mr. Arthur Gwynn Geiger.” No address. Very small in the lower left-hand corner: “Rare Books and De Luxe Editions.” I turned the card over. More of the slanted printing on the back. “Dear Sir: In spite of the legal uncollectibility of the enclosed, which frankly represent gambling debts, I assume you might wish them honored. Respectfully, A. G. Geiger.”

I looked at the slips of stiffish white paper. They were promissory notes filled out in ink, dated on several dates early in the month before, September. “On Demand I promise to pay to Arthur Gwynn Geiger or Order the sum of One Thousand Dollars ($1000.00) without interest. Value Received. Carmen Sternwood.”

The written part was in a sprawling moronic handwriting with a lot of fat curlicues and circles for dots. I mixed myself another drink and sipped it and put the exhibit aside.

“Your conclusions?” the General asked.

“I haven’t any yet. Who is this Arthur Gwynn Geiger?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“What does Carmen say?”

“I haven’t asked her. I don’t intend to. If I did, she would suck her thumb and look coy.”

I said: “I met her in the hail. She did that to me. Then she tried to sit in my lap.”

Nothing changed in his expression. His clasped hands rested peacefully on the edge of the rug, and the heat; which made me feel like a New England boiled dinner, didn’t seem to make him even warm.

“Do I have to be polite?” I asked. “Or can I just be natural?”

“I haven’t noticed that you suffer from many inhibitions, Mr. Marlowe.”

“Do the two girls run around together?”

“I think not. I think they go their separate and slightly divergent roads to perdition. Vivian is spoiled, exacting, smart and quite ruthless. Carmen is a child who likes to pull wings off flies. Neither of them has any more moral sense than a cat. Neither have I. No Sternwood ever had. Proceed.”

“They’re well educated, I suppose. They know what they’re doing.”

“Vivian went to good schools of the snob type and to college. Carmen went to half a dozen schools of greater and greater liberality, and ended up where she started. I presume they both had, and still have, all the usual vices. If I sound a little sinister as a parent, Mr. Marlowe, it is because my hold on life is too slight to include any Victorian hypocrisy.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, then opened them again suddenly. “I need not add that a man who indulges in parenthood for the first time at the age of fifty-four deserves all he gets.”

I sipped my drink and nodded. The pulse in his lean gray throat throbbed visibly and yet so slowly that it was hardly a pulse at all. An old man two thirds dead and still determined to believe he could take it.

“Your conclusions?” he snapped suddenly.

“I’d pay him.”

“Why?”

“It’s a question of a little money against a lot of annoyance. There has to be something behind it. But nobody’s going to break your heart, if it hasn’t been done already. And it would take an awful lot of chiselers an awful lot of time to rob you of enough so that you’d even notice it.”

“I have pride, sir,” he said coldly.

“Somebody’s counting on that. It’s the easiest way to fool them. That or the police. Geiger can collect on these notes, unless you can show fraud. Instead of that he makes you a present of them and admits they are gambling debts, which gives you a defense, even if he had kept the notes. If he’s a crook, he knows his onions, and if he’s an honest man doing a little loan business on the side, he ought to have his money. Who was this Joe Brody you paid the five thousand dollars to?”

“Some kind of gambler. I hardly recall. Norris would know. My butler.”

“Your daughters have money in their own right, General?”

“Vivian has, but not a great deal. Carmen is still a minor under her mother’s will. I give them both generous allowances.”

I said: “I can take this Geiger off your back, General, if that’s what you want. Whoever he is and whatever he has. It may cost you a little money, besides what you pay me. And of course it won’t get you anything. Sugaring them never does. You’re already listed on their book of nice names.”

“I see.” He shrugged his wide sharp shoulders in the faded red bathrobe. “A moment ago you said pay him. Now you say it won’t get me anything.”

“I mean it might be cheaper and easier to stand for a certain amount of squeeze. That’s all.”

“I’m afraid I’m rather an impatient man, Mr. Marlowe. What are your charges?”

“I get twenty-five a day and expenses—when I’m lucky.”

“I see. It seems reasonable enough for removing morbid growths from people’s backs. Quite a delicate operation. You realize that, I hope. You’ll make your operation as little of a shock to the patient as possible? There might be several of them, Mr. Marlowe.”

I finished my second drink and wiped my lips and my face. The heat didn’t get any less hot with the brandy in me. The General blinked at me and plucked at the edge of his rug.

“Can I make a deal with this guy, if I think he’s within hooting distance of being on the level?”

“Yes. The matter is now in your hands. I never do things by halves.”

“I’ll take him out,” I said. “He’ll think a bridge fell on him.”

“I’m sure you will. And now I must excuse myself. I am tired.” He reached out and touched the bell on the arm of his chair. The cord was plugged into a black cable that wound along the side of the deep dark green boxes in which the orchids grew and festered. He closed his eyes, opened them again in a brief bright stare, and settled back among his cushions. The lids dropped again and he didn’t pay any more attention to me.

I stood up and lifted my coat off the back of the damp wicker chair and went off with it among the orchids, opened the two doors and stood outside in the brisk October air getting myself some oxygen. The chauffeur over by the garage had gone away. The butler came along the red path with smooth light steps and his back as straight as an ironing board. I shrugged into my coat and watched him come.

He stopped about two feet from me and said gravely: “Mrs. Regan would like to see you before you leave, sir. And in the matter of money the General has instructed me to give you a check for whatever seems desirable.”

“Instructed you how?”

He looked puzzled, then he smiled. “Ah, I see, sir. You are, of course, a detective. By the way he rang his bell.”

“You write his checks?”

“I have that privilege.”

“That ought to save you from a pauper’s grave. No money now, thanks. What does Mrs. Regan want to see me about?”

His blue eyes gave me a smooth level look. “She has a misconception of the purpose of your visit, sir.”

“Who told her anything about my visit?”

“Her windows command the greenhouse. She saw us go in. I was obliged to tell her who you were.”

“I don’t like that,” I said.

His blue eyes frosted. “Are you attempting to tell me my duties, sir?”

“No. But I’m having a lot of fun trying to guess what they are.”

We stared at each other for a moment. He gave me a blue glare and turned away.

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