"Please," she said. "Please.
You could find Rusty — if Dad wanted you to."
That didn't work either.
I nodded and asked:
"When did he go?"
"One afternoon a month back.
He just drove away in his car without saying a word.
They found the car in a private garage somewhere."
"They?"
She got cunning.
Her whole body seemed to go lax.
Then she smiled at me winningly.
"He didn't tell you then." Her voice was almost gleeful, as if she bad outsmarted me.
Maybe she had.
"He told me about Mr. Regan, yes.
That's not what he wanted to see me about.
Is that what you've been trying to get me to say?"
"I'm sure I don't care what you say."
I stood up again. "Then I'll be running along."
She didn't speak.
I went over to the tall white door I had come in at. When I looked back she had her lip between her teeth and was worrying it like a puppy at the fringe of a rug.
I went out, down the tile staircase to the hall, and the butler drifted out of somewhere with my hat in his hand.
I put it on while he opened the door for me.
"You made a mistake," I said. "Mrs. Regan didn't want to see me."
He inclined his silver head and said politely:
"I'm sorry, sir.
I make many mistakes."
He closed the door against my back.
I stood on the step breathing my cigarette smoke and looking down a succession of terraces with flowerbeds and trimmed trees to the high iron fence with gilt spears that hemmed in the estate.
A winding driveway dropped down between retaining walls to the open iron gates.
Beyond the fence the hill sloped for several miles.
On this lower level faint and far off I could just barely see some of the old wooden derricks of the oilfleld from which the Sternwoods had made their money.
Most of the field was public park now, cleaned up and donated to the city by General Sternwood.
But a little of it was still producing in groups of wells pumping five or six barrels a day.
The Sternwoods, having moved up the hill, could no longer smell the stale sump water or the oil, but they could still look out of their front windows and see what had made them rich.
If they wanted to.
I didn't suppose they would want to.
I walked down a brick path from terrace to terrace, followed along inside the fence and so out of the gates to where I had left my car under a pepper tree on the street.
Thunder was crackling in the foothills now and the sky above them was purple-black.
It was going to rain hard.
The air had the damp foretaste of rain.
I put the top up on my convertible before I started downtown.
She had lovely legs. I would say that for her.
They were a couple of pretty smooth citizens, she and her father.
He was probably just trying me out; the job he had given me was a lawyer's job.
Even if Mr. Arthur Gwynn Geiger, Rare Books and De Luxe Editions, turned out to be a blackmailer, it was still a lawyer's job.
Unless there was a lot more to it than met the eye.
At a casual glance I thought I might have a lot of fun finding out.
I drove down to the Hollywood public library and did a little superficial research in a stuffy volume called Famous First Editions.
Half an hour of it made me need my lunch.