Marlowe and the Spacewoman Read Online Free PDF Page B

wouldn’t recommend it.”
    Marlowe’s shoulders slumped.  “Gomer, can you tell me anything about the last twelve hours?”
    “Aside from the fact that the Mona Lisa has a man’s voice?  Nope.  A deep baritone, by the way.  Very unsettling.”
    “Shut up.”
    Marlowe opened the cage door and gingerly picked out a couple of the mushrooms.  He sniffed one, wrinkled his nose in displeasure, and put them down on the coffee table.  He’d have  House analyze them later.  He moved over to the closet and began leafing through the trench coats hanging inside.
    “House, what day is it?”
    “Wednesday.”
    “Wednesday.  OK.”
    Marlowe pushed aside hangers to gain access to his Wednesday trench coat.  It was beige and rain-stained, just like the rest.  It had “Thursday” stitched across the left breast pocket in large black letters.  He did that to confuse people.  It never hurt to confuse people when you worked in the private eye business.  All of his trench coats were like that, except Tuesday’s.  That one actually said Tuesday, to confuse the people who knew about his other trench coats.  
    Once he struggled into Wednesday’s coat, Marlowe began groping along the closet shelf for his tools of the trade: a screwdriver which had helped him force more than one mechanical lock; a slightly soft, no-longer-quite-green apple; his trilobite good luck rock; a bottle of Yummy Tummy bubbles (half full at this point and with a prominent skull and crossbones warning label indicating it was not intended for internal consumption); several loaded clips for his BB gun;and a small black box with a mother-of-pearl lid.  These he pocketed quickly, but soon his hand returned to searching for his most prized possession, which he found next to the camera - his gunmetal green with chrome highlights Swingline stapler.  This he gingerly placed in the hidden compartment of Wednesday’s coat.
    The camera, a Hasselblad ViewMaster 2100 nestled between Monday’s and Tuesday’s fedoras, which had “TAM” and “CRICKETBALL CAP” stitched across their fronts, gave Marlowe an idea.  Maybe the camera had seen something.  He pulled it down from the shelf.
    The ViewMaster was one of the first generation of intelligent cameras that had the skill and personality of a master photographer programmed into them.  Later generations had wisely been stripped of the personality, but Marlowe had been barely able to afford this older, used, and almost certainly stolen camera.  At the time he’d been glad to get it.  Until he started using it and the camera started mouthing off.  For a discreet photo surveillance of a cheating spouse, he’d be subjected to: “You know, if you stopped up and used a higher shutter speed, you can more effectively isolate the subject of the composition.”  At crime scenes, snapping pictures of a dead body, he had to endure pointers such as: “Centering to the left, and not using a flash would add to the drama of this shot.”  Once the camera had started screaming at a female subject he was tailing: “Work it baby!  Work it!  Oh yeah, work the camera!”  That had actually ended rather well; Marlowe still went out with her occasionally.  No, not the ideal camera for a low-profile private dick, but once he’d bought it, Marlowe couldn’t afford another.  And sometimes, despite himself, Marlowe had to agree with the camera’s artistic suggestions.  They DID look better.
    “Hassel, did you see anything odd this morning?”
    “Baby, you know I didn’t.  I may always be on, but the closet is dark when the door is closed.  And I do have a lens cap, you know.”
    Marlowe sighed.  “It was worth a try.”
    “I did hear some funky things, though.  Not having a whole lot of experience with sound, I’m not sure I can describe it properly.  A mumbling, gabbling sound, very similar to your snoring, but slightly less aggravating.  I heard it just after the loud thunky sound that came from