1She looked like her photo and not like it. She had the wide cool mouth, the short nose, the wide cool eyes, the dark hair parted in the middle and the broad white line between the parting. She was wearing a white coat over her dress, with the collar turned up. She had her hands in the pockets of the coat and a cigarette in her mouth.

2She looked older, her eyes were harder, and her lips seemed to have forgotten to smile. They would smile when she was singing, in that staged artificial smile. But in repose they were thin and tight and angry.

3She moved over to the desk and stood looking down, as if counting the copper ornaments. She saw the cut glass decanter, took the stopper out, poured herself a drink and tossed it down with a quick flip of the wrist.

4"You're a man named Marlowe?" she asked, looking at me. She put her hips against the end of the desk and crossed her ankles.

5I said I was a man named Marlowe.

6"By and large," she said, "I am quite sure I am not going to like you one damned little bit. So speak your piece and drift away."

7"What I like about this place is everything runs so true to type," I said. "The cop on the gate, the shine on the door, the cigarette and check girls, the fat greasy sensual Jew with the tall stately bored showgirl, the well-dressed, drunk and horribly rude director cursing the barman, the silent guy with the gun, the night club owner with the soft gray hair and the B-picture mannerisms, and now you—the tall dark torcher with the negligent sneer, the husky voice, the hard-boiled vocabulary."

8She said: "Is that so?" and fitted her cigarette between her lips and drew slowly on it. "And what about the wise-cracking snooper with the last year's gags and the come-hither smile?"

9"And what gives me the right to talk to you at all?" I said.

10"I'll bite. What does?"

11"She wants it back. Quickly. It has to be fast or there will be trouble."

12"I thought—" she started to say and stopped cold. I watched her remove the sudden trace of interest from her face by monkeying with her cigarette and bending her face over it. "She wants what back, Mr. Marlowe?"

13"The Brasher Doubloon."

14She looked up at me and nodded, remembering—letting me see her remembering.

15"Oh, the Brasher Doubloon."

16"I bet you completely forgot it," I said.

17"Well, no. I've seen it a number of times," she said. "She wants it back, you said. Do you mean she thinks I took it?"

18"Yeah. Just that."

19"She's a dirty old liar," Linda Conquest said.

20"What you think doesn't make you a liar," I said. "It only sometimes makes you mistaken. Is she wrong?"

21"Why would I take her silly old coin?"

22"Well—it's worth a lot of money. She thinks you might need money. I gather she was not too generous."

23She laughed, a tight sneering little laugh. "No," she said. "Mrs. Elizabeth Bright Murdock would not rate as very generous."

24"Maybe you just took it for spite, kind of," I said hopefully.

25"Maybe I ought to slap your face." She killed her cigarette in Morny's copper goldfish bowl, speared the crushed stub absently with the letter opener and dropped it into the wastebasket.

26"Passing on from that to perhaps more important matters," I said, "will you give him a divorce?"

27"For twenty-five grand," she said, not looking at me, "I should be glad to."

28"You're not in love with the guy, huh?"

29"You're breaking my heart, Marlowe."

30"He's in love with you," I said. "After all you did marry him."

31She looked at me lazily. "Mister, don't think I didn't pay for that mistake." She lit another cigarette. "But a girl has to live. And it isn't always as easy as it looks. And so a girl can make a mistake, marry the wrong guy and the wrong family, looking for something that isn't there. Security, or whatever."

32"But not needing any love to do it," I said.

33"I don't want to be too cynical, Marlowe. But you'd be surprised how many girls marry to find a home, especially girls whose arm muscles are all tired out fighting off the kind of optimists that come into these gin and glitter joints."

34"You had a home and you gave it up."

35"It got to be too dear. That port-sodden old fake made the bargain too tough. How do you like her for a client?"

36"I've had worse."

37She picked a shred of tobacco off her lip. "You notice what she's doing to that girl?"

38"Merle? I noticed she bullied her."

39"It isn't just that. She has her cutting out dolls. The girl had a shock of some kind and the old brute has used the effect of it to dominate the girl completely. In company she yells at her but in private she's apt to be stroking her hair and whispering in her ear. And the kid sort of shivers."

40"I didn't quite get all that," I said.

41"The kid's in love with Leslie, but she doesn't know it. Emotionally she's about ten years old. Something funny is going to happen in that family one of these days. I'm glad I won't be there."

42I said: "You're a smart girl, Linda. And you're tough and you're wise, I suppose when you married him you thought you could get your hands on plenty."

43She curled her lip. "I thought it would at least be a vacation. It wasn't even that. That's a smart ruthless woman, Marlowe. Whatever she's got you doing, it's not what she says. She's up to something. Watch your step."

44"Would she kill a couple of men?"

45She laughed.

46"No kidding," I said. "A couple of men have been killed and one of them at least is connected with rare coins."

47"I don't get it," she looked at me levelly. "Murdered, you mean?"

48I nodded.

49"You tell Morny all that?"

50"About one of them."

51"You tell the cops?"

52"About one of them. The same one."

53She moved her eyes over my face. We stared at each other. She looked a little pale, or just tired. I thought she had grown a little paler than before.

54"You're making that up," she said between her teeth.

55I grinned and nodded. She seemed to relax then.

56"About the Brasher Doubloon?" I said. "You didn't take it. Okay. About the divorce, what?"

57"That's none of your affair."

58"I agree. Well, thanks for talking to me. Do you know a fellow named Vannier?"

59"Yes." Her face froze hard now. "Not well. He's a friend of Lois."

60"A very good friend."

61"One of these days he's apt to turn out to be a small quiet funeral too."

62"Hints," I said, "have sort of been thrown in that direction. There's something about the guy. Every time his name comes up the party freezes."

63She stared at me and said nothing. I thought that an idea was stirring at the back of her eyes, but if so it didn't come out. She said quietly:

64"Morny will sure as hell kill him, if he doesn't lay off Lois."

65"Go on with you. Lois flops at the drop of a hat. Anybody can see that."

66"Perhaps Alex is the one person who can't see it."

67"Vannier hasn't anything to do with my job anyway. He has no connection with the Murdocks."

68She lifted a corner of her lip at me and said: "No? Let me tell you something. No reason why I should. I'm just a great big open-hearted kid. Vannier knows Elizabeth Bright Murdock and well. He never came to the house but once while I was there, but he called on the phone plenty of times. I caught some of the calls. He always asked for Merle."

69"Well—that's funny," I said. "Merle, huh?"

70She bent to crush out her cigarette and again she speared the stub and dropped it into the wastebasket.

71"I'm very tired," she said suddenly. "Please go away."

72I stood there for a moment, looking at her and wondering. Then I said: "Good night and thanks. Good luck."

73I went out and left her standing there with her hands in the pockets of the white coat, her head bent and her eyes looking at the floor.

74It was two o'clock when I got back to Hollywood and put the car away and went upstairs to my apartment. The wind was all gone but the air still had that dryness and lightness of the desert. The air in the apartment was dead and Breeze's cigar butt had made it a little worse than dead. I opened windows and flushed the place through while I undressed and stripped the pockets of my suit.

75Out of them with other things came the dental supply company's bill. It still looked like a bill to one H. R. Teager for 30 lbs. of crystobolite and 25 lbs. of albastone.

76I dragged the phone book up on the desk in the living room and looked up Teager. Then the confused memory clicked into place. His address was 422 West Ninth Street. The address of the Belfont Building was 422 West Ninth Street.

77H. R. Teager Dental Laboratories had been one of the names on doors on the sixth floor of the Belfont Building when I did my backstairs crawl away from the office of Elisha Morningstar.

78But even the Pinkertons have to sleep, and Marlowe needed far, far more sleep than the Pinkertons. I went to bed.