A gray Plymouth sedan tailed me away from the City Hall.
I gave it a chance to catch up with me on a quiet street.
It refused the offer, so I shook it off and went about my business.
21
I didn't go near the Sternwood family.
I went back to the office and sat in my swivel chair and tried to catch up on my foot-dangling.
There was a gusty wind blowing in at the windows and the soot from the oil burners of the hotel next door was down-drafted into the room and rolling across the top of the desk like tumbleweed drifting across a vacant lot.
I was thinking about going out to lunch and that life was pretty flat and that it would probably be just as flat if I took a drink and that taking a drink all alone at that time of day wouldn't be any fun anyway.
I was thinking this when Norris called up.
In his carefully polite manner he said that General Sternwood was not feeling very well and that certain items in the newspaper had been read to him and he assumed that my investigation was now completed.
"Yes, as regards Geiger," I said. "I didn't shoot him, you know."
"The General didn't suppose you did, Mr. Marlowe."
"Does the General know anything about those photographs Mrs. Regan was worrying about?"
"No, sir. Decidedly not."
"Did you know what the General gave me?"
"Yes, sir.
Three notes and a card, I believe."
"Right.
I'll return them.
As to the photos I think I'd better just destroy them."
"Very good, sir.
Mrs. Regan tried to reach you a number of times last night — "
"I was out getting drunk," I said.
"Yes.
Very necessary, sir, I'm sure.
The General has instructed me to send you a check for five hundred dollars.
Will that be satisfactory?"
"More than generous," I said.
"And I presume we may now consider the incident closed?"
"Oh sure.
Tight as a vault with a busted time lock."
"Thank you, sir.
I am sure we all appreciate it.
When the General is feeling a little better — possibly tomorrow — he would like to thank you in person."
"Fine," I said. "I'll come out and drink some more of his brandy, maybe with champagne."
"I shall see that some is properly iced," the old boy said, almost with a smirk in his voice.
That was that.
We said good-by and hung up.
The coffee shop smell from next door came in at the windows with the soot but failed to make me hungry.
So I got out my office bottle and took the drink and let my self-respect ride its own race.
I counted it up on my fingers.
Rusty Regan had run away from a lot of money and a handsome wife to go wandering with a vague blonde who was more or less married to a racketeer named Eddie Mars.
He had gone suddenly without good-bys and there might be any number of reasons for that.
The General had been too proud, or, at the first interview he gave me, too careful, to tell me the Missing Persons Bureau had the matter in hand.
The Missing Persons people were dead on their feet on it and evidently didn't think it worth bothering over. Regan had done what he had done and that was his business.
I agreed with Captain Gregory that Eddie Mars would have been very unlikely to involve himself in a double murder just because another man had gone to town with the blonde he was not even living with.
It might have annoyed him, but business is business, and you have to hold your teeth clamped around Hollywood to keep from chewing on stray blondes.
If there had been a lot of money involved, that would be different.
But fifteen grand wouldn't be a lot of money to Eddie Mars.
He was no two-bit chiseler like Brody.