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there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying.
Large hard chairs with rounded red plush seats were backed into the vacant spaces of the wall round about.
They didn’t look as if anybody had ever sat in them.
The officer had a neat black Imperial, black mustachios, hot hard coalblack eyes, and the general look of a man it would pay to get along with. I thought this might be General Sternwood’s grandfather. It could hardly be the General himself,
even though I had heard he was pretty far gone in years to have a couple of daughters still in the dangerous twenties.
She wore pale blue slacks and they looked well on her. She walked as if she were floating.
Her face lacked color and didn’t look too healthy.
"You’re cute," she giggled. "I’m cute too."
I didn’t say anything. So the butler chose that convenient moment to come back through the French doors and see me holding her.
The light had an unreal greenish color, like light filtered through an aquarium tank.
Here, in a space of hexagonal flags, an old red Turkish rug was laid down and on the rug was a wheel chair, and in the wheel chair an old and obviously dying man watched us come with black eyes from which all fire had died long ago,
The old man didn’t move or speak, or even nod. He just looked at me lifelessly.
Then the old man dragged his voice up from the bottom of a well and said: "Brandy, Norris. How do you like your brandy, sir?"
"Any way at all," I said.
You may take your coat off, sir. It’s too hot in here for a man with blood in his veins."
Do you like orchids?" "Not particularly," I said.
The old man nodded, as if his neck was afraid of the weight of his head.
"I was fired. For insubordination. I test very high on insubordination, General."
"Did any of it strike you as peculiar?" "The Rusty Regan part, maybe. But I always got along with bootleggers myself."
"Ah," I said. He moved his thin white eyebrows. "That means what?" "Nothing," I said. He went on staring at me, half frowning.
"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."
"You write his checks?" "I have that privilege." "That ought to save you from a pauper’s grave.
The white made the ivory look dirty and the ivory made the white look bled out.
They seemed to be arranged to stare at.
the ankles long and slim and with enough melodic line for a tone poem.
"So you’re a private detective," she said. "I didn’t know they really existed, except in books. Or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotels."
There was nothing in that for me, so I let it drift with the current.
"I don’t see what there is to be cagey about," she snapped. "And I don’t like your manners."
"I’m not crazy about yours," I said. I didn’t ask to see you. You sent for me. I don’t mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. I don’t mind your showing me your legs. They’re very swell legs and it’s a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don’t waste your time trying to cross-examine me."
I had my horn-rimmed sunglasses on. I put my voice high and let a bird twitter in it. "Would you happen to have a Ben Hur 1860?" She didn’t say: "Huh?" but she wanted to. She smiled bleakly. "A first edition?" "Third," I said. "The one with the erratum on page 116." "I’m afraid not—at the moment." "How about a Chevalier Audubon 1840--the full set, of course?" "Er—not at the moment," she purred harshly. Her smile was now hanging by its teeth and eyebrows and wondering what it would hit when it dropped. "You do sell books?" I said in my polite falsetto.
He walked west, swinging his cane in a small tight arc just above his right shoe. He was easy to follow.
"Would you have a Ben Hur, 1860, Third Edition, the one with the duplicated line on page 116?" She pushed her yellow law book to one side and reached a fat volume up on the desk, leafed it through, found her page, and studied it. "Nobody would," she said without looking up. "There isn’t one." "Right." "What in the world are you driving at?" "The girl in Geiger’s store didn’t know that." She looked up. "I see. You interest me. Rather vaguely."
"Well, how’s the boy?" he began. He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn’t owe too much money.
The automatic elevator was propped open and the man in new overalls was grunting hard as he stacked heavy boxes in it. I stood beside him and lit a cigarette and watched him. He didn’t like my watching him.
a life is a life." "Right," I said. "Tell that to your coppers next time they shoot down some scared petty larceny crook running away up an alley with a stolen spare."
It’s a question of professional pride. You know—professional pride. I’m working for your father. He’s a sick man, very frail, very helpless. He sort of trusts me not to pull any stunts. Won’t you please get dressed, Carmen?" "Your name isn’t Doghouse Reilly," she said. "It’s Philip Marlowe. You can’t fool me." I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn’t a game for knights.
