I went back to the first of the three doors marked with the name Walgreen. I tried it cautiously.
It was locked. It moved in a loose frame, an old door fitted many years past, made of half-seasoned wood and shrunken now.
I reached my wallet out and slipped the thick hard window of celluloid from over my driver's license. A burglar's tool the law had forgotten to proscribe.
I put my gloves on, leaned softly and lovingly against the door and pushed the knob hard away from the frame. I pushed the celluloid plate into the wide crack and felt for the slope of the spring lock.
There was a dry click, like a small icicle breaking.
I hung there motionless, like a lazy fish in the water.
Nothing happened inside. I turned the knob and pushed the door back into darkness.
I shut it behind me as carefully as I had opened it.
The lighted oblong of an uncurtained window faced me, cut by the angle of a desk.
On the desk a hooded typewriter took form, then the metal knob of a communicating door.
This was unlocked. I passed into the second of the three offices.
Rain rattled suddenly against the closed window.
Under its noise I crossed the room.
A tight fan of light spread from an inch opening of the door into the lighted office.
Everything very convenient.
I walked like a cat on a mantel and reached the hinged side of the door, put an eye to the crack and saw nothing but light against the angle of the wood.
The purring voice was now saying quite pleasantly:
"Sure, a guy could sit on his fanny and crab what another guy done if he knows what it's all about.
So you go to see this peeper.
Well, that was your mistake.
Eddie don't like it.
The peeper told Eddie some guy in a gray Plymouth was tailing him.
Eddie naturally wants to know who and why, see."
Harry Jones laughed lightly.
"What makes it his business?"
"That don't get you no place."
"You know why I went to the peeper.
I already told you.
Account of Joe Brody's girl.
She has to blow and she's shatting on her uppers.
She figures the peeper can get her some dough.
I don't have any."
The purring voice said gently:
"Dough for what?
Peepers don't give that stuff out to punks."
"He could raise it.
He knows rich people." Harry Jones laughed, a brave little laugh.
"Don't fuss with me, little man." The purring voice had an edge, like sand in the bearing.
"Okey, okey.
You know the dope on Brody's bump-off.
That screwy kid done it all right, but the night it happened this Marlowe was right there in the room."
"That's known, little man.
He told it to the law."
"Yeah — here's what isn't.
Brody was trying to peddie a nudist photo of the young Sternwood girl.
Marlowe got wise to him.
While they were arguing about it the young Sternwood girl dropped around herself — with a gat.
She took a shot at Brody. She lets one fly and breaks a window.
Only the peeper didn't tell the coppers about that.
And Agnes didn't neither.