We're not getting anywhere.
I want to know where Geiger is, for my own personal reasons.
I didn't like his racket and I didn't protect him.
I happen to own this house.
I'm not so crazy about that right now.
I can believe that whatever you know about all this is under glass, or there would be a flock of johns squeaking sole leather around this dump.
You haven't got anything to sell.
My guess is you need a little protection yourself.
So cough up."
It was a good guess, but I wasn't going to let him know it.
I lit a cigarette and blew the match out and flicked it at the glass eye of the totem pole.
"You're right," I said.
"If anything has happened to Geiger, I'll have to give what I have to the law.
Which puts it in the public domain and doesn't leave me anything to sell.
So with your permission I'll just drift."
His face whitened under the tan.
He looked mean, fast and tough for a moment.
He made a movement to lift the gun.
I added casually:
"By the way, how is Mrs. Mars these days?"
I thought for a moment I had kidded him a little too far.
His hand jerked at the gun, shaking. His face was stretched out by hard muscles.
"Beat it," he said quite softly. "I don't give a damn where you go or what you do when you get there.
Only take a word of advice, soldier. Leave me out of your plans or you'll wish your name was Murphy and you lived in Limerick."
"Well, that's not so far from Clonmel," I said. "I hear you had a pal came from there."
He leaned down on the desk, frozen-eyed, unmoving.
I went over to the door and opened it and looked back at him.
His eyes had followed me, but his lean gray body had not moved.
There was hate in his eyes.
I went out and through the hedge and up the hill to my car and got into it.
I turned it around and drove up over the crest.
Nobody shot at me.
After a few blocks I turned off, cut the motor and sat for a few moments.
Nobody followed me either.
I drove back into Hollywood.
14
It was ten minutes to five when I parked near the lobby entrance of the apartment house on Randall Place.
A few windows were lit and radios were bleating at the dusk.
I rode the automatic elevator up to the fourth floor and went along a wide hail carpeted in green and paneled in ivory.
A cool breeze blew down the hail from the open screened door to the fire escape.
There was a small ivory pushbutton beside the door marked "405."
I pushed it and waited what seemed a long time.
Then the door opened noiselessly about a foot.
There was a steady, furtive air in the way it opened.
The man was long-legged, long-waisted, high-shouldered and he had dark brown eyes in a brown expressionless face that had learned to control its expressions long ago.
Hair like steel wool grew far back on his head and gave him a great deal of domed brown forehead that might at a careless glance have seemed a dwelling place for brains.
His somber eyes probed at me impersonally.
His long thin brown fingers held the edge of the door.
He said nothing.
I said: "Geiger?"