Collected Stories of Raymond Chandler

by Raymond Chandler

  “Meathooks, did you say, sir? Very cute, if I may say so.”

  He laughed, released Mr. Sutton-Cornish’s arm and teetered on his heels.

  “What the hell’s it for?” he asked.

  Mr. Sutton-Cornish doubled over very swiftly and launched his thin body with furious speed at the big detective.

  “Take a little walk yourself—and find out!” he screamed.

  Detective-sergeant Lloyd was a big and solid man and probably used to being butted. Mr. Sutton-Cornish could hardly have moved him six inches, even with a running start. But the bronze door had a high sill. The detective moved with the deceptive quickness of his trade, swayed his body just enough, and jarred his foot against the bronze sill.

  If it hadn’t been for that he would have plucked Mr. Sutton-Cornish neatly out of the air and held him squirming like a kitten, between his large thumb and forefinger. But the sill jarred him off balance. He stumbled a little, and swayed his body completely out of Mr. Sutton-Cornish’s way.

  Mr. Sutton-Cornish butted empty space—the empty space framed by that majestic door of bronze. He sprawled forward clutching—falling—clutching—across the sill -

  Detective-sergeant Lloyd straightened up slowly, twisted his thick neck and stared. He moved back a little from the sill so that he could be perfectly certain the side of the door hid nothing from him. It didn’t. He saw a cabinet of odd pieces of china, odds and ends of carved ivory and shiny black wood, and on top of the cabinet three little statuettes of pink marble.

  He saw nothing else. There was nothing else in there to see.

  “Gorblimey!” he said at last, violently. At least he thought he said it. Somebody said it. He wasn’t quite sure. He was never absolutely sure about anything—after that night.

  7

  The whiskey looked all right. It smelled all right, too. Shaking so that he could hardly hold the decanter Detective-sergeant Lloyd poured a little into a glass and took a sip in his dry mouth and waited.

  After a little while he drank another spoonful. He waited again. Then he drank a stiff drink—a very stiff drink.

  He sat down in the chair beside the whiskey and took his large folded cotton handkerchief out of his pocket and unfolded it slowly and mopped his face and neck and behind his ears.

  In a little while he wasn’t shaking quite so much. Warmth began to flow through him. He stood up, drank some more whiskey, then slowly and bitterly moved back down the room.

  He swung the bronze door shut, locked it, put the key down in his own pocket. He opened the partition door at the side, braced himself and stepped through into the alcove. He looked at the back of the bronze door. He touched it. It wasn’t very light in there, but he could see that the place was empty, except for the silly-looking cabinet. He came out again shaking his head.

  “Can’t be,” he said out loud. “Not a chance. Not ‘arf a chance.”

  Then, with the sudden unreasonableness of the reasonable man, he flew into a rage.

  “If I get ‘ooked for this,” he said between his teeth, “I get ooked.”

  He went down to the dark cellar, rummaged around until he found a hand axe and carried it back upstairs.

  He hacked the woodwork to ribbons. When he was done the bronze door stood alone on its base, jagged wood all around it, but not holding it any longer. Detective-sergeant Lloyd put the hand axe down, wiped his hands and face on his big handkerchief, and went in behind the door. He put his shoulder to it and set his strong, yellow teeth.

  Only a brutally determined man of immense strength could have done it. The door fell forward with a heavy rumbling crash that seemed to shake the whole house. The echoes of that crash died away slowly, along infinite corridors of unbelief.

  Then the house was silent again. The big man went out into the hall and had another look out of the front door.

  He put his coat on, adjusted his hard hat, folded his damp handkerchief carefully and put it in his hip pocket, lit the cigar Mr. Sutton-Cornish had given him, took a drink of whiskey and swaggered to the door.

  At the door he turned and deliberately sneered at the bronze door, lying fallen but still huge in the welter of splintered wood.

  “To ‘ell with you, ‘ooever you are,” Detective-sergeant Lloyd said. “I ain’t no bloody primrose.”

  He shut the house door behind him. A little high fog outside, a few dim stars, a quiet street with lighted windows. Two or three cars of expensive appearance, very likely chauffeurs lounging in them, but no one in sight.

  He crossed the street at an angle and walked along beside the tall iron railing of the park. Faintly through the rhododendron bushes he could see the dull glimmer of the little ornamental lake. He looked up and down the street and took the big bronze key out of his pocket.

  “Make it a good ‘un,” he told himself softly.

  His arm swept up and over. There was a minute splash in the ornamental lake, then silence. Detective-sergeant Lloyd walked on calmly, puffing at his cigar.

  Back at the C.I.D. He gave his report steadily, and for the first and last time in his life, there was something besides truth in it. Couldn’t raise anybody at the house. All dark. Waited three hours. Must all be away.

  The inspector nodded and yawned.

  The Sutton-Cornish heirs eventually pried the estate out of Chancery and opened up No. 14 Grinling Crescent and found the bronze door lying in a welter of dust and splintered wood and matted cobwebs. They stared at it goggle-eyed, and when they found out what it was, sent for dealers, thinking there might be a little money in it. But the dealers sighed and said no, no money in that sort of thing now Better ship it off to a foundry and have it melted down for the metal. Get so much a pound. The dealers departed noiselessly with wry smiles.

  Sometimes when things are a little dull in the Missing Persons section of the C.I.D. They take the Sutton-Cornish file out and dust it off and look through it sourly and put it away again.

  Sometimes when Inspector—formerly Detective-sergeant—Thomas Lloyd is walking along an unusually dark and quiet street he will whirl suddenly, for no reason at all, and jump to one side with a swift anguished agility.

  But there isn’t really anybody there, trying to butt him.

  NO CRIME IN THE MOUNTAINS

  1

  The letter came just before noon, special delivery, a dimestore envelope with the return address F. S. Lacey, Puma Point, California. Inside was a check for a hundred dollars, made out to cash and signed Frederick S. Lacey, and a sheet of plain white bond paper typed with a number of strikeovers. It said:

  Mr. John Evans.

  Dear Sir:

  I have your name from Len Esterwald. My business is urgent and extremely confidential. I enclose a retainer. Please come to Puma Point Thursday afternoon or evening, if at all possible, register at the Indian Head Hotel, and call me at 2306.

  Yours,

  FRED LACEY

  There hadn’t been any business in a week, but this made it a nice day. The bank on which the check was drawn was about six blocks away. I went over and cashed it, ate lunch, and got the car out and started off.

  It was hot in the valley, hotter still in San Bernardino, and it was still hot at five thousand feet, fifteen miles up the high-gear road to Puma Lake. I had done forty of the fifty miles of curving, twisting highway before it started to cool off, but it didn’t get really cool until I reached the dam and started along the south shore of the lake past the piled-up granite boulders and the sprawled camps in the flats beyond. It was early evening when I reached Puma Point and I was as empty as a gutted fish.

  The Indian Head Hotel was a brown building on a corner, opposite a dance halt. I registered, carried my suitcase upstairs and dropped it in a bleak, hard-looking room with an oval rug on the floor, a double bed in the corner, and nothing on the bare pine wall but a hardware-store calendar all curled up from the dry mountain summer. I washed my face and hands and went downstairs to eat.

  The dining-drinking parlor that ad
joined the lobby was full to overflowing with males in sports clothes and liquor breaths and females in slacks and shorts with blood-red fingernails and dirty knuckles. A fellow with eyebrows like John L. Lewis was prowling around with a cigar screwed into his face. A lean, pale-eyed cashier in shirt-sleeves was fighting to get the race results from Hollywood Park on a small radio that was as full of static as the mashed potato was full of water. In the deep, black corner of the room a hillbilly symphony of five defeatists in white coats and purple shirts was trying to make itself heard above the brawl at the bar.

  I gobbled what they called the regular dinner, drank a brandy to sit on it, and went out on to the main stem. It was still broad daylight, but the neon lights were turned on and the evening was full of the noise of auto horns, shrill voices, the rattle of bowls, the snap of .22’s at the shooting gallery, jukebox music, and behind all this the hoarse, hard mutter of speedboats on the lake. At a corner opposite the post office a blue-and-white arrow said Telephone. I went down a dusty side road that suddenly became quiet and cool and piney. A tame doe deer with a leather collar on its neck wandered across the road in front of me. The phone office was a log cabin, and there was a booth in the corner with a coin-in-the-slot telephone. I shut myself inside and dropped my nickel and dialed 2306. A woman’s voice answered.

  I said: “Is Mr. Fred Lacey there?”

  “Who is calling, please?”

  “Evans is the name.”

  “Mr. Lacey is not here right now, Mr. Evans. Is he expecting you?”

  That gave her two questions to my one. I didn’t like it. I said: “Are you Mrs. Lacey?”

  “Yes. I am Mrs. Lacey.” I thought her voice was taut and overstrung, but some voices are like that all the time.

  “It’s a business matter,” I said. “When will he be back?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Some time this evening, I suppose. What did you—”

  “Where is your cabin, Mrs. Lacey?”

  “It’s…it’s on Ball Sage Point, about two miles west of the village. Are you calling from the village? Did you—”

  “I’ll call back in an hour, Mrs. Lacey,” I said, and hung up. I stepped out of the booth. In the other corner of the room a dark girl in slacks was writing in some kind of account book at a little desk. She looked up and smiled and said: “How do you like the mountains?”

  I said: “Fine.”

  “It’s very quiet up here,” she said. “Very restful.”

  “Yeah. Do you know anybody named Fred Lacey?”

  “Lacey? Oh, yes, they just had a phone put in. They bought the Baldwin cabin. It was vacant for two years, and they just bought it. It’s out at the end of Ball Sage Point, a big cabin on high ground, looking out over the lake. It has a marvelous view. Do you know Mr. Lacey?”

  “No,” I said, and went out of there.

  The tame doe was in the gap of the fence at the end of the walk. I tried to push her out of the way. She wouldn’t move, so I stepped over the fence and walked back to the Indian Head and got into my car.

  There was a gas station at the east end of the village. I pulled up for some gas and asked the leathery man who poured it where Ball Sage Point was.

  “Well,” he said. “That’s easy. That ain’t hard at all. You won’t have no trouble finding Ball Sage Point. You go down here about a mile and a half past the Catholic church and Kincaid’s Camp, and at the bakery you turn right and then you keep on the road to Willerton Boys’ Camp, and it’s the first road to the left after you pass on by. It’s a dirt road, kind of rough. They don’t sweep the snow off in winter, but it ain’t winter now. You know somebody out there?”

  “No.” I gave him money. He went for the change and came back.

  “It’s quiet out there,” he said. “Restful. What was the name?”

  “Murphy,” I said.

  “Glad to know you, Mr. Murphy,” he said, and reached for my hand. “Drop in any time. Glad to have the pleasure of serving you. Now, for Ball Sage Point you just keep straight on down this road—”

  “Yeah,” I said, and left his mouth flapping.

  I figured I knew how to find Ball Sage Point now, so I turned around and drove the other way. It was just possible Fred Lacey would not want me to go to his cabin.

  Half a block beyond the hotel the paved road turned down towards a boat landing, then east again along the shore of the lake. The water was low. Cattle were grazing in the sour-looking grass that had been under water in the spring. A few patient visitors were fishing for bass or bluegill from boats with outboard motors. About a mile or so beyond the meadows a dirt road wound out towards a long point covered with junipers. Close inshore there was a lighted dance pavilion. The music was going already, although it still looked like late afternoon at that altitude. The band sounded as if it was in my pocket. I could hear a girl with a throaty voice singing “The Woodpecker’s Song.” I drove on past and the music faded and the road got rough and stony. A cabin on the shore slid past me, and there was nothing beyond it but pines and junipers and the shine of the water. I stopped the car out near the tip of the point and walked over to a huge tree fallen with its roots twelve feet in the air. I sat down against it on the bone-dry ground and lit a pipe. It was peaceful and quiet and far from everything. On the far side of the lake a couple of speedboats played tag, but on my side there was nothing but silent water, very slowly getting dark in the mountain dusk. I wondered who the hell Fred Lacey was and what he wanted and why he didn’t stay home or leave a message if his business was so urgent. I didn’t wonder about it very long. The evening was too peaceful. I smoked and looked at the lake and the sky, and at a robin waiting on the bare spike at the top of a tall pine for it to get dark enough so he could sing his good-night song.

  At the end of half an hour I got up and dug a hole in the soft ground with my heel and knocked my pipe out and stamped down the dirt over the ashes. For no reason at all, I walked a few steps towards the lake, and that brought me to the end of the tree. So I saw the foot.

  It was in a white duck shoe, about size nine. I walked around the roots of the tree.

  There was another foot in another white duck shoe. There were pinstriped white pants with legs in them, and there was a torso in a pale-green sport shirt of the kind that hangs outside and has pockets like a sweater. It had a buttonless V-neck and chest hair showed through the V. The man was middle-aged, half bald, had a good coat of tan and a line mustache shaved up from the lip. His lips were thick, and his mouth, a little open as they usually are, showed big strong teeth. He had the kind of face that goes with plenty of food and not too much worry. His eyes were looking at the sky. I couldn’t seem to meet them.

  The left side of the green sport shirt was sodden with blood in a patch as big as a dinner plate. In the middle of the patch there might have been a scorched hole. I couldn’t be sure. The light was getting a little tricky.

  I bent down and felt matches and cigarettes in the pockets of the shirt, a couple of rough lumps like keys and silver in his pants pockets at the sides. I rolled him a little to get at his hip. He was still limp and only a little cooled off. A wallet of rough leather made a tight fit in his right hip pocket. I dragged it out, bracing my knee against his back.

  There was twelve dollars in the wallet and some cards, but what interested me was the name on his photostat driver’s license. I lit a match to make sure I read it right in the fading daylight.

  The name on the license was Frederick Shield Lacey.

  2

  I put the wallet back and stood up and made a full circle, staring hard. Nobody was in sight, on land or on the water. In that light, nobody could have seen what I was doing unless he was close.

  I walked a few steps and looked down to see if I was making tracks. No. The ground was half pine needles of many years past, and the other half pulverized rotten wood.

  The gun was about four feet away, almost under the fallen tree. I didn’t touch it. I bent down and looked at it. It was a .22 autom
atic, a Colt with a bone grip. It was half buried in a small pile of the powdery, brown, rotted wood. There were large black ants on the pile, and one of them was crawling along the barrel of the gun.

  I straightened up and took another quick look around. A boat idled offshore out of sight around the point. I could hear an uneven stutter from the throttled-down motor, but I couldn’t see it. I started back toward the car. I was almost up to it. A small figure rose silently behind a heavy manzanita bush. The light winked on glasses and on something else, lower down in a hand.

  A voice said hissingly: “Placing the hands up, please.”

  It was a nice spot for a very fast draw. I didn’t think mine would be fast enough. I placed the hands up.

  The small figure came around the manzanita bush. The shining thing below the glasses was a gun. The gun was large enough. It came towards me.

  A gold tooth winked out of a small mouth below a black mustache.

  “Turning around, please,” the nice little voice said soothingly. “You seeing man lie on ground?”

  “Look,” I said, “I’m a stranger here. I—”

  “Turning around very soon,” the man said coldly. I turned around.

  Then end of the gun made a nest against my spine. A light, deft hand prodded me here and there, rested on the gun under my arm. The voice cooed. The hand went to my hip. The pressure of my wallet went away. A very neat pick-pocket. I could hardly feel him touch me.

  “I look at wallet now. You very still,” the voice said. The gun went away.

  A good man had a chance now. He would fall quickly to the ground, do a back flip from a kneeling position, and come up with his gun blazing his hand. It would happen very fast. The good man would take the little man with glasses the way a dowager takes her teeth out, in an even smooth motion. I somehow didn’t think I was that good.

  The wallet went back on my hip, the gun barrel back into my back.

  “So,” the voice said softly. “You coming here you making mistake.”