The High Window Read Online Free PDF Page B

my office. You probably know where it is. Will that suit you?”
    “I’ll be there,” I said.
    I hung up and lit my pipe again and sat there looking at the wall. My face was stiff with thought, or with something that made my face stiff. I took Linda Murdock’s photo out of my pocket, stared at it for a while, decided that the face was pretty commonplace after all, locked the photo away in my desk. I picked Murdock’s second match out of my ashtray and looked it over. The lettering on this one read: TOP ROW W. D. WRIGHT ’36.
    I dropped it back in the tray, wondering what made this important. Maybe it was a clue.
    I got Mrs. Murdock’s check out of my wallet, endorsed it, made out a deposit slip and a check for cash, got my bank book out of the desk, and folded the lot under a rubber band and put them in my pocket.
    Lois Magic was not listed in the phone book.
    I got the classified section up on the desk and made a list of the half dozen theatrical agencies that showed in the largest type and called them. They all had bright cheerful voices and wanted to ask a lot of questions, but they either didn’t know or didn’t care to tell me anything about a Miss Lois Magic, said to be an entertainer.
    I threw the list in the waste basket and called Kenny Haste, a crime reporter on the
Chronicle.
    “What do you know about Alex Morny?” I asked him when we were through cracking wise at each other.
    “Runs a plushy night club and gambling joint in Idle Valley, about two miles off the highway back towards the hills. Used to be in pictures. Lousy actor. Seems to have plenty of protection. I never heard of him shooting anybody on the public square at high noon. Or at any other time for that matter. But I wouldn’t like to bet on it.”
    “Dangerous?”
    “I’d say he might be, if necessary. All those boys have been to picture shows and know how night club bosses are supposed to act. He has a bodyguard who is quite a character. His name’s Eddie Prue, he’s about six feet five inches tall and thin as an honest alibi. He has a frozen eye, the result of a war wound.”
    “Is Morny dangerous to women? ”
    “Don’t be Victorian, old top. Women don’t call it danger.”
    “Do you know a girl named Lois Magic, said to be an entertainer. A tall gaudy blond, I hear.”
    “No. Sounds as though I might like to.”
    “Don’t be cute. Do you know anybody named Vannier? None of these people are in the phone book.”
    “Nope. But I could ask Gertie Arbogast, if you want to call back. He knows all the night club aristocrats. And heels.”
    “Thanks, Kenny. I’ll do that. Half an hour?”
    He said that would be fine, and we hung up. I locked the office and left.
    At the end of the corridor, in the angle of the wall, a youngish blond man in a brown suit and a cocoa-colored straw hat with a brown and yellow tropical print band was reading the evening paper with his back to the wall. As I passed him he yawned and tucked the paper under his arm and straightened up.
    He got into the elevator with me. He could hardly keep his eyes open he was so tired. I went out on the street and walked a block to the bank to deposit my check and draw out a little folding money for expenses. From there I went to the Tigertail Lounge and sat in a shallow booth and drank a martini and ate a sandwich. The man in the brown suit posted himself at the end of the bar and drank coca colas and looked bored and piled pennies in front of him, carefully smoothing the edges. He had his dark glasses on again. That made him invisible.
    I dragged my sandwich out as long as I could and then strolled back to the telephone booth at the inner end of the bar. The man in the brown suit turned his head quickly and then covered the motion by lifting his glass. I dialed the
Chronicle
office again.
    “Okay,” Kenny Haste said. “Gertie Arbogast says Morny married your gaudy blond not very long ago. Lois Magic. He doesn’t know Vannier. He says Morny bought a place out