I'll sit down and smoke a cigarette in one of these charming chairs.
I have rather a blank afternoon. Nothing to think about but my trigonometry lesson." "Yes," she said.
"Ye-es, of course."
I stretched out in one and lit a cigarette with the round nickel lighter on the smoking stand.
She still stood, holding her lower lip with her teeth, her eyes vaguely troubled. She nodded at last, turned slowly and walked back to her little desk in the corner.
From behind the lamp she stared at me.
I crossed my ankles and yawned.
Her silver nails went out to the cradle phone on the desk, didn't touch it, dropped and began to tap on the desk.
Silence for about five minutes.
The door opened and a tall hungry-looking bird with a cane and a big nose came in neatly, shut the door behind him against the pressure of the door closer, marched over to the corner and placed a wrapped parcel on the desk. He took a pinseal wallet with gold corners from his pocket and showed the blonde something.
She pressed a button on the desk.
The tall bird went to the door in the paneled partition and opened it barely enough to slip through.
I finished my cigarette and lit another.
The minutes dragged by.
Horns tooted and grunted on the boulevard.
A big red interurban car grumbled past A traffic light gonged.
The blonde leaned on her elbow and cupped a hand over her eyes and stared at me behind it.
The partition door opened and the tall bird with the cane slid out.
He had another wrapped parcel, the shape of a large book.
He went over to the desk and paid money.
He left as he had come, walking on the balls of his feet, breathing with his mouth open, giving me a sharp side glance as he passed.
I got to my feet, tipped my hat to the blonde and went out after him.
He walked west, swinging his cane in a small tight arc just above his right shoe.
He was easy to follow.
His coat was cut from a rather loud piece of horse robe with shoulders so wide that his neck stuck up out of it like a celery stalk and his head wobbled on it as he walked.
We went a block and a half.
At the Highland Avenue traffic signal I pulled up beside him and let him see me.
He gave me a casual, then a suddenly sharpened side glance, and quickly turned away.
We crossed Highland with the green light and made another block.
He stretched his long legs and had twenty yards on me at the corner.
He turned right.
A hundred feet up the hill he stopped and hooked his cane over his arm and fumbled a leather cigarette case out of an inner pocket.
He put a cigarette in his mouth, dropped his match, looked back when he picked it up, saw me watching him from the corner, and straightened up as if somebody had booted him from behind.
He almost raised dust going up the block, walking with long gawky strides and jabbing his cane into the sidewalk.
He turned left again.
He had at least half a block on me when I reached the place where he had turned.
He had me wheezing.
This was a narrow tree-lined street with a retaining wall on one side and three bungalow courts on the other.
He was gone.
I loafed along the block peering this way and that.
At the second bungalow court I saw something. It was called "The La Baba," a quiet dim place with a double row of tree-shaded bungalows.
The central walk was lined with Italian cypresses trimmed short and chunky, something the shape of the oil jars in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
Behind the third jar a loud-patterned sleeve edge moved.
I leaned against a pepper tree in the parkway and waited.
The thunder in the foothills was rumbling again.
The glare of lightning was reflected on piled-up black clouds off to the south.
A few tentative raindrops splashed down on the sidewalk and made spots as large as nickels.
The air was as still as the air in General Sternwood's orchid house.
The sleeve behind the tree showed again, then a big nose and one eye and some sandy hair without a hat on It.
The eye stared at me. It disappeared.