"It seems I do too.
I'm very fond of Rusty.
A big curly-headed Irishman from Clonmel, with sad eyes and a smile as wide as Wilshire Boulevard.
The first time I saw him I thought he might be what you are probably thinking he was, an adventurer who happened to get himself wrapped up in some velvet."
"You must have liked him," I said. "You learned to talk the language."
He put his thin bloodless hands under the edge of the rug.
I put my cigarette stub out and finished my drink.
"He was the breath of life to me — while he lasted.
He spent hours with me, sweating like a pig, drinking brandy by the quart and telling me stories of the Irish revolution.
He had been an officer in the I.R.A.
He wasn't even legally in the United States.
It was a ridiculous marriage of course, and it probably didn't last a month, as a marriage.
I'm telling you the family secrets, Mr. Marlowe."
"They're still secrets," I said. "What happened to him?"
The old man looked at me woodenly. "He went away, a month ago.
Abruptly, without a word to anyone.
Without saying good-by to me.
That hurt a little, but he had been raised in a rough school.
I'll hear from him one of these days.
Meantime I am being blackmailed again."
I said: "Again?"
He brought his hands from under the rug with a brown envelope in them.
"I should have been very sorry for anybody who tried to blackmail me while Rusty was around.
A few months before he came — that is to say about nine or ten months ago — I paid a man named Joe Brody five thousand dollars to let my younger daughter Carmen alone."
"Ah," I said.
He moved his thin white eyebrows.
"That means what?"
"Nothing," I said.
He went on staring at me, half frowning. Then he said:
"Take this envelope and examine it.
And help yourself to the brandy."
I took the envelope off his knees and sat down with it again.
I wiped off the palms of my hands and turned it around.
It was addressed to General Guy Stemwood, 3765 Alta Brea Crescent; West Hollywood, California.
The address was in ink, in the slanted printing engineers use.
The envelope was slit.
I opened it up and took out a brown card and three slips of stiff paper.
The card was of thin brown linen, printed in gold: "Mr. Arthur Gwynn Geiger."
No address.
Very small in the lower left-hand corner:
"Rare Books and De Luxe Editions."
I turned the card over.
More of the slanted printing on the back.
"Dear Sir: In spite of the legal uncollectibility of the enclosed, which frankly represent gambling debts, I assume you might wish them honored.
Respectfully, A. G. Geiger."
I looked at the slips of stiffish white paper.
They were promissory notes filled out in ink, dated on several dates early in the month before, September.
"On Demand I promise to pay to Arthur Gwynn Geiger or Order the sum of One Thousand Dollars ($1000.00) without interest.
Value Received.
Carmen Sternwood."