Even then I tried to go up against Captain Gregory in such a way that I wouldn't tell him anything he didn't know already."
"And you allowed Captain Gregory to think I had employed you to find Rusty?"
"Yeah. I guess I did — when I was sure he had the case."
He closed his eyes. They twitched a little.
He spoke with them closed. "And do you consider that ethical?"
"Yes," I said. "I do."
The eyes opened again.
The piercing blackness of them was startling coming suddenly out of that dead face.
"Perhaps I don't understand," he said.
"Maybe you don't. The head of a Missing Persons Bureau isn't a talker.
He wouldn't be in that office if he was.
This one is a very smart cagey guy who tries, with a lot of success at first, to give the impression he's a middle-aged hack fed up with his job.
The game I play is not spillikins.
There's always a large element of bluff connected with it.
Whatever I might say to a cop, he would be apt to discount it.
And to that cop it wouldn't make much difference what I said.
When you hire a boy in my line of work it isn't like hiring a window-washer and showing him eight windows and saying:
'Wash those and you're through.'
You don't know what I have to go through or over or under to do your job for you.
I do it my way.
I do my best to protect you and I may break a few rules, but I break them in your favor.
The client comes first, unless he's crooked.
Even then all I do is hand the job back to him and keep my mouth shut.
After all you didn't tell me not to go to Captain Gregory."
"That would have been rather difficult," he said with a faint smile.
"Well, what have I done wrong?
Your man Norris seemed to think when Geiger was eliminated the case was over.
I don't see it that way.
Geiger's method of approach puzzled me and still does.
I'm not Sherlock Holmes or Philo Vance.
I don't expect to go over ground the police have covered and pick up a broken pen point and build a case from it.
If you think there is anybody in the detective business making a living doing that sort of thing, you don't know much about cops.
It's not things like that they overlook, if they overlook anything.
I'm not saying they often overlook anything when they're really allowed to work.
But if they do, it's apt to be something looser and vaguer, like a man of Geiger's type sending you his evidence of debt and asking you to pay like a gentleman — Geiger, a man in a shady racket, in a vulnerable position, protected by a racketeer and having at least some negative protection from some of the police.
Why did he do that?
Because he wanted to find out if there was anything putting pressure on you.
If there was, you would pay him. If not, you would ignore him and wait for his next move.
But there was something putting a pressure on you.
Regan.
You were afraid he was not what he had appeared to be, that he had stayed around and been nice to you just long enough to find out how to play games with your bank account." He started to say something but I interrupted him.
"Even at that it wasn't your money you cared about.
It wasn't even your daughters.
You've more or less written them off.
It's that you're still too proud to be played for a sucker — and you really liked Regan."
There was a silence.
Then the General said quietly:
"You talk too damn much, Marlowe.
Am I to understand you are still trying to solve that puzzle?"
"No.