Read The High Window for Free Online Page B

held out my card. Olive fingers took the card. The dog quietly backed out from between my legs, edged around the front end of the car, and faded silently into the distance.
    “Marlowe,” the man said. “Marlowe, eh? What’s this? A detective? What do you want?”
    “Want to see Mrs. Morny.”
    He looked me up and down, brilliant black eyes sweeping slowly and the silky fringes of long eyelashes following them.
    “Weren’t you told she was not in?”
    “Yeah, but I didn’t believe it. Are you Mr. Morny?”
    “No.”
    “That’s Mr. Vannier,” the chauffeur said behind my back, in the drawled, over-polite voice of deliberate insolence. “Mr. Vannier’s a friend of the family. He comes here quite a lot.”
    Vannier looked past my shoulder, his eyes furious. The chauffeur came around the car and spit the cigarette stub out of his mouth with casual contempt.
    “I told the shamus the boss wasn’t here, Mr. Vannier.”
    “I see.”
    “I told him Mrs. Morny and you was here. Did I do wrong?”
    Vannier said: “You could have minded your own business.”
    The chauffeur said: “I wonder why the hell I didn’t think of that.”
    Vannier said: “Get out before I break your dirty little neck for you.”
    The chauffeur eyed him quietly and then went back into the gloom of the garage and started to whistle. Vannier moved his hot angry eyes over to me and snapped:
    “You were told Mrs. Morny was not in, but it didn’t take. Is that it? In other words the information failed to satisfy you.”
    “If we have to have other words,” I said, “those might do.”
    “I see. Could you bring yourself to say what point you wish to discuss with Mrs. Morny?”
    “I’d prefer to explain that to Mrs. Morny herself.”
    “The implication is that she doesn’t care to see you.”
    Behind the car the chauffeur said: “Watch his right, Jack. It might have a knife in it.”
    Vannier’s olive skin turned the color of dried seaweed. He turned on his heel and rapped at me in a stifled voice: “Follow me.”
    He went along the brick path under the tunnel of roses and through a white gate at the end. Beyond was a walled-in garden containing flower-beds crammed with showy annuals, a badminton court, a nice stretch of greensward, and a small tiled pool glittering angrily in the sun. Beside the pool there was a flagged space set with blue and white garden furniture, low tables with composition tops, reclining chairs with footrests and enormous cushions, and over all a blue and white umbrella as big as a small tent.
    A long-limbed languorous type of showgirl blond lay at her ease in one of the chairs, with her feet raised on a padded rest and a tall misted glass at her elbow, near a silver ice bucket and a Scotch bottle. She looked at us lazily as we came over the grass. From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away. Her mouth was too wide, her eyes were too blue, her makeup was too vivid, the thin arch of her eyebrows was almost fantastic in its curve and spread, and the mascara was so thick on her eyelashes that they looked like miniature iron railings.
    She wore white duck slacks, blue and white open-toed sandals over bare feet and crimson lake toenails, a white silk blouse and a necklace of green stones that were not square cut emeralds. Her hair was as artificial as a night club lobby.
    On the chair beside her there was a white straw garden hat with a brim the size of a spare tire and a white satin chin strap. On the brim of the hat lay a pair of green sun glasses with lenses the size of doughnuts.
    Vannier marched over to her and snapped out: “You’ve got to can that nasty little red-eyed driver of yours, but quick. Otherwise I’m liable to break his neck any minute. I can’t go near him without getting insulted.”
    The blond coughed lightly, flicked a handkerchief around without doing anything with it, and said:
    “Sit down and