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

ice bucket on it, then a siphon, glasses and spoons, and a triangular bottle that looked like good Scotch had come in it except that it was
covered with silver filigree work and fitted with a stopper.
Dolores Chiozza said, "Will you mix a drink?" in a formal voice.
He mixed two drinks, stirred them, handed her one. She sipped it, shook her head. "Too light," she said. He put more whiskey in it
and handed it back. She said, "Better," and leaned back against the corner of the davenport.
The maid came into the room again. She had a small rakish red hat on her wavy brown hair and was wearing a gray coat trimmed
with nice fur. She carried a black brocade bag that could have cleaned out a fair-sized icebox. She said: "Good night, Miss Dolores."
"Good night, Agatha."
The girl went out the front door, closed it softly. Her heels clicked down the walk. A car door opened and shut distantly and a motor
started. Its sound soon dwindled away. It was a very quiet neighborhood.
Steve put his drink down on the brass tray and looked levelly at the tall girl, said harshly: "That means she's out of the way?"
"Yes. She goes home in her own car. She drives me home from the studio in mine--when I go to the studio, which I did tonight. I
don't like to drive a car myself."
"Well, what are you waiting for?"
The red-haired girl looked steadily at the paneled fire screen and the unlit log fire behind it. A muscle twitched in her cheek.
After a moment she said: "Funny that I called you instead of Walters. He'd have protected me better than you can. Only he wouldn't
have believed me. I thought perhaps you would. I didn't invite Leopardi here. So far as I know--we two are the only people in the world
who know he's here."
Something in her voice jerked Steve upright.
She took a small crisp handkerchief from the breast pocket of the green velvet pajama-suit, dropped it on the floor, picked it up
swiftly and pressed it against her mouth. Suddenly, without making a sound, she began to shake like a leaf.
Steve said swiftly: "What the hell--I can handle that heel in my hip pocket. I did last night--and last night he had a gun and took a shot
at me."
Her head turned. Her eyes were very wide and staring. "But it couldn't have been my gun," she said in a dead voice.
"Huh? Of course not--what--?"
"It's my gun tonight," she said and stared at him. "You said a woman could get to him with a gun very easily."
He just stared at her. His face was white now and he made a vague sound in his throat.
"He's not drunk, Steve," she said gently. "He's dead. In yellow pajamas--in my bed. With my gun in his hand. You didn't think he was
just drunk--did you, Steve?"
He stood up in a swift lunge, then became absolutely motionless, staring down at her. He moved his tongue on his lips and after a
long time he formed words with it. "Let's go look at him," he said in a hushed voice.
SIX
The room was at the back of the house to the left. The girl took a key out of her pocket and unlocked the door. There was a low light
on a table, and the venetian blinds were drawn. Steve went in past her silently, on cat feet.
Leopardi lay squarely in the middle of the bed, a large smooth silent man, waxy and artificial in death. Even his mustache looked
phony. His half-open eyes, sightless as marbles, looked as if they had never seen. He lay on his back, on the sheet, and the bedclothes
were thrown over the foot of the bed.
The King wore yellow silk pajamas, the slip-on kind, with a turned collar. They were loose and thin. Over his breast they were dark
with blood that had seeped into the silk as if into blotting-paper. There was a little blood on his bare brown neck.
Steve stared at him and said tonelessly: "The King in Yellow. I read a book with that title once. He liked yellow, I guess. I packed
some of his stuff last night. And he wasn't yellow either. Guys like him usually are--or are they?"
The girl went over to the corner and sat down in a slipper chair and looked at the floor. It was a nice room, as modernistic as the
living room was casual. It had a chenille rug, caf‚-aulait color, severely angled furniture in inlaid wood, and a trick dresser with a mirror
for a top, a kneehole and drawers like a desk. It had a box mirror above and a semi-cylindrical frosted wall light set above the mirror, In
the corner there was a glass table with a crystal greyhound on top of it, and a lamp with the deepest drum shade Steve had ever seen.
He stopped looking at all this and looked at Leopardi again. He pulled the King's pajamas up gently and examined the wound. It
was directly over the heart and the skin was scorched and mottled there. There was not so very much blood. He had died in a fraction of
a second.
A small Mauser automatic lay cuddled in his right hand, on top of the bed's second pillow.
"That's artistic," Steve said and pointed. "Yeah, that's a nice touch. Typical contact wound, I guess. He even pulled his pajama shirt
up. I've heard they do that. A Mauser seven-sixthree about. Sure it's your gun?"
"Yes." She kept on looking at the floor. "It was in a desk in the living room--not loaded. But there were shells. I don't know why.
Somebody gave it to me once. I didn't even know how to load it."
Steve smiled. Her eyes lifted suddenly and she saw his smile and shuddered. "I don't expect anybody to believe that," she said. "We
may as well call the police, I suppose."
Steve nodded absently, put a cigarette in his mouth and flipped it up and down with his lips that were still puffy from Leopardi's
punch. He lit a match on his thumbnail, puffed a small plume of smoke and said quietly: "No cops. Not yet. Just tell it.'
The red-haired girl said: "I sing at KFQc, you know. Three nights a week--on a quarter-hour automobile program. This was one of
the nights. Agatha and I got home--oh, close to half-past ten. At the door I remembered there was no fizzwater in the house, so I sent her
back to the liquor store three blocks away, and came in alone. There was a queer smell in the house. I don't know what it was. As if
several men had been in here, somehow. When I came in the bedroom--he was exactly as he is now. I saw the gun and I went and
looked and then I knew I was sunk. I didn't know what to do. Even if the police cleared me, everywhere I went from now on--"
Steve said sharply: "He got in here--how?"
"I don't know."
"Goon," hesaid.
"I locked the door. Then I undressed--with that on my bed. I went into the bathroom to shower and collect my brains, if any. I locked
the door when I left the room and took the key. Agatha was back then, but I don't think she saw me. Well, I took the shower and it braced
me up a bit. Then I had a drink and then I came in here and called you."
She stopped and moistened the end of a finger and smoothed the end of her left eyebrow with it. "That's all, Steve-- absolutely all."
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