The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

tell me, and somehow that was significant. I mean, it was significant that we had let it go. It wasn’t the most intimate thing she could have told me, not like her shoe size or what she wore or didn’t wear to bed at night. All the same, it had weight, the weight of something precious, a pearl or a diamond, that she had passed from her hand into mine. And the fact that I had taken it from her without comment, and that she had been content for me to say nothing, meant it was something held in secret between us, a token, a promise for the future. But then I decided that this was probably all hooey, just a case of wishful thinking on my part.
    When I had parked the Olds on the gravel, I noticed a sporty-looking young man coming toward me across the lawn. He was swinging a golf club and knocking the heads off daisies with it. He wore two-tone golf shoes and a white silk shirt with a floppy collar. His dark hair was floppy too, a wing of it falling over his brow so that he had to keep pushing it out of his eyes with a nervous flick of a pale and slender hand. He walked in a willowy sort of way, meandering a little, as if there were a weakness somewhere in the region of his knees. When he got close I saw with a shock that he had Clare Cavendish’s almond-shaped black eyes—they were much too pretty for him. I saw too that he wasn’t nearly as young as he’d seemed at a distance. I guessed he was in his late twenties, though with the light behind him he could have passed for nineteen. He stopped in front of me and looked me up and down with a faint sneer. “You the new chauffeur?” he asked.
    “Do I look like a chauffeur?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “What do chauffeurs look like?”
    “Leggings, cap with a shiny peak, insolent stare of the proletarian.”
    “Well, you haven’t got the leggings or the cap.”
    He had, I noticed, an expensive smell, cologne and leather and something else, probably that perfumed tissue paper they pack Fabergé eggs in. Or maybe he liked to dab on a bit of his ma’s finest. He was a precious lad, all right. “I’m here to see Mrs. Cavendish,” I said.
    “Are you now.” He snickered. “Then you must be one of her beaux.”
    “What do they—?”
    “Rugged, blue-eyed types. On second thought, you’re not that kind of material either.” He glanced past me at the Olds. “They come in scarlet coupés”—he pronounced it the French way—“or the odd Silver Wraith. So who are you?”
    I took a bit of time to light a cigarette. For some reason this seemed to amuse him, and he did that mean little laugh again. It sounded forced; he so much wanted to be a tough guy. “You must be Mrs. Cavendish’s brother,” I said.
    He gave me a wide-eyed theatrical stare. “Must I?”
    “Some part of the family, anyway. Which are you, pampered pet or black sheep?”
    He lifted his nose a disdainful inch into the air. “My name,” he said, “is Edwards, Everett Edwards. Everett Edwards the Third, as it happens.”
    “You mean there’ve been two of you already?”
    He relented a bit then and grinned, rolling his shoulders in a boyish shrug. “Stupid name, isn’t it,” he said, biting his lip.
    I did my own kind of shrug. “We don’t get to choose what we’re called.”
    “What about you—what are you called?”
    “Marlowe.”
    “Marlowe? Like the playwright.” He struck a histrionic pose, leaning sideways from the hips and pointing toward the sky with a trembling hand. “ See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament! ” he cried, making his lower lip quiver. I had to smile.
    “Tell me where I can find your sister, will you?” I said.
    He let his arm fall and straightened up to his former slouch. “She’s here somewhere,” he said. “Try the conservatory.” He pointed. “It’s around that way.”
    He couldn’t keep that sulky look out of his eyes. He was just an overgrown kid, spoiled and bored. “Thanks, Everett the Third,” I said.
    As I walked