THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDER by Raymond Chandler Copyright ...

and threw the can in a basket under the sink, and pushed his hand out in front of him, revolving the large thumb slowly against the next
two fingers. "Unless there's some of that," he added.
Steve said softly: "You've got big hands. You could have done it."
"Huh?" His small brown leathery eyes got silent and stared. Steve said: "Yeah. You might be clean. But with those hands the cops'd
go round and round with you just the same."
The big man moved a little to his left, away from the sink. He let his right hand hang down at his side, loosely. His mouth got so tight
that the cigar almost touched his nose.
"What's the beef, huh?" he barked. "What you shovin' at me, guy? What--"
"Cut it," Steve drawled. "She's been croaked. Strangled. Upstairs, on the floor under her bed. About midmorning, I'd say. Big hands
did it--hands like yours."
The big man did a nice job of getting the gun off his hip. It arrived so suddenly that it seemed to have grown in his hand and been
there all the time.
Steve frowned at the gun and didn't move. The big man looked him over. "You're tough," he said. "I been in the ring long enough to
size up a guy's meat. You're plenty hard, boy. But you ain't as hard as lead. Talk it up fast."
"I knocked at her door. No answer. The lock was a pushover. I went in. I almost missed her because the bed was pulled down and
she had been sitting on it, reading a magazine. There was no sign of struggle. I lifted the bed just before I left--and there she was. Very
dead, Mr. Stoyanoff. Put the gat away. Cops don't bother you, you said a minute ago."
The big man whispered: "Yes and no. They don't make me happy neither. I get a bump once'n a while. Mostly a Dutch. You said
something about my hands, mister."
Steve shook his head. "That was a gag," he said. "Her neck has nail marks. You bite your nails down close. You're clean."
The big man didn't look at his fingers. He was very pale. There was sweat on his lower lips, in the black stubble of his beard. He
was still leaning forward, still motionless, when there was a knocking beyond the kitchen door, the door from the living room to the
hallway. The creaking chair stopped and the woman's sharp voice screamed: "Hi, Jake! Company!"
The big man cocked his head. "That old slut wouldn't climb off'n her fanny if the house caught fire," he said thickly.
He stepped to the door and slipped through it, locking it behind him.
Steve ranged the kitchen swiftly with his eyes. There was a small high window beyond the sink, a trap low down for a garbage pail
and parcels, but no other door. He reached for his card Stoyanoff had left lying on the drainboard and slipped it back into his pocket.
Then he took a short-barreled Detective Special out of his left breast pocket where he wore it nose down, as in a holster.
He had got that far when the shots roared beyond the wall--muffled a little, but still loud--four of them blended in a blast of sound.
Steve stepped back and hit the kitchen door with his leg out straight. It held and jarred him to the top of his head and in his hip joint.
He swore, took the whole width of the kitchen and slammed into it with his left shoulder. It gave this time. He pitched into the living room.
The mud-faced woman sat leaning forward in her rocker, her head to one side and a lock of mousy hair smeared down over her bony
forehead.
"Backfire, huh?" she said stupidly. "Sounded kinda close. Musta been in the alley."
Steve jumped across the room, yanked the outer door open and plunged out into the hall.
The big man was still on his feet, a dozen feet down the hallway, in the direction of a screen door that opened flush on an alley. He
was clawing at the wall. His gun lay at his feet. His left knee buckled and he went down on it.
A door was flung open and a hard-looking woman peered out, and instantly slammed her door shut again. A radio suddenly gained
in volume beyond her door.
The big man got up off his left knee and the leg shook violently inside his trousers. He went down on both knees and got the gun
into his hand and began to crawl towards the screen door. Then, suddenly he went down flat on his face and tried to crawl that way,
grinding his face into the narrow hail runner.
Then he stopped crawling and stopped moving altogether. His body went limp and the hand holding the gun opened and the gun
rolled out of it.
Steve hit the screen door and was out in the alley. A gray sedan was speeding towards the far end of it. He stopped, steadied
himself and brought his gun up level, and the sedan whisked out of sight around the corner.
A man boiled out of another apartment house across the alley. Steve ran on, gesticulating back at him and pointing ahead. As he
ran he slipped the gun back into his pocket. When he reached the end of the alley, the gray sedan was out of sight. Steve skidded
around the wall onto the sidewalk, slowed to a walk and then stopped.
Half a block down a man finished parking a car, got out and went across the sidewalk to a lunchroom. Steve watched him go in,
then straightened his hat and walked along the wall to the lunchroom.
He went in, sat at the counter and ordered coffee. In a little while there were sirens.
Steve drank his coffee, asked for another cup and drank that. He lit a cigarette and walked down the long hill to Fifth, across to Hill,
back to the foot of the Angel's Flight, and got his convertible out of a parking lot.
He drove out west, beyond Vermont, to the small hotel where he had taken a room that morning.
FOUR
Bill Dockery, floor manager of the Club Shalotte, teetered on his heels and yawned in the unlighted entrance to the dining room. It
was a dead hour for business, late cocktail time, too early for dinner, and much too early for the real business of the club, which was
high-class gambling.
Dockery was a handsome mug in a midnight-blue dinner jacket and a maroon carnation. He had a two-inch forehead under black
lacquer hair, good features a little on the heavy side, alert brown eyes and very long curly eyelashes which he liked to let down over his
eyes, to fool troublesome drunks into taking a swing at him.
The entrance door of the foyer was opened by the uniformed dooman and Steve Grayce came in.
Dockery said, "Ho, hum," tapped his teeth and leaned his weight forward. He walked across the lobby slowly to meet the guest.
Steve stood just inside the doors and ranged his eyes over the high foyer walled with milky glass, lighted softly from behind. Molded in
the glass were etchings of sailing ships, beasts of the jungle, Siamese pagodas, temples of Yucatan. The doors were square frames of
chromium, like photo frames. The Club Shalotte had all the class there was, and the mutter of voices from the bar lounge on the left was
not noisy. The faint Spanish music behind the voices was delicate as a carved fan.
Dockery came up and leaned his sleek head forward an inch. "May I help you?"
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