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

Outside the cabin, birds began to sing. lnside there was no sound but the scratching pen.
NINE
The sun was well up when Steve left the cabin, locked it up, walked down the steep path and along the narrow gravel road to his
car. The garage was empty now. The gray sedan was gone. Smoke from another cabin floated lazily above the pines and oaks half a
mile away. He started his car, drove it around a bend, past two old boxcars that had been converted into cabins, then on to a main road
with a stripe down the middle and so up the hill to Crestline.
He parked on the main street before the Rim-of-the-World Inn, had a cup of coffee at the counter, then shut himself in a phone booth
at the back of the empty lounge. He had the long distance operator get Jumbo Walters' number in Los Angeles, then called the owner of
the Club Shalotte.
A voice said silkily: "This is Mr. Walters' residence."
"Steve Grayce. Put him on, if you please."
"One moment, please." A click, another voice, not so smooth and much harder. "Yeah?"
"Steve Grayce. I want to speak to Mr. Walters."
"Sorry. I don't seem to know you. It's a little early, amigo. What's your business?"
"Did he go to Miss Chiozza's place?"
"Oh." A pause. "The shamus. I get it. Hold the line, pal."
Another voice now--lazy, with the faintest color of Irish in it. "You can talk, son. This is Walters."
"I'm Steve Grayce. I'm the man--"
"I know all about that, son. The lady is O.K., by the way. I think she's asleep upstairs. Go on."
"I'm at Crestline--top of the Arrowhead grade. Two men murdered Leopardi. One was George Millar, night auditor at the Canton
Hotel. The other his brother, an ex-fighter named Gaff Talley. Talley's dead--shot by his brother. Millar got away--but he left me a full
confession signed, detailed, complete."
Walters said slowly: "You're a fast worker, son--unless you're just plain crazy. Better come in here fast. Why did they do it?"
"They had a sister."
Walters repeated quietly: "They had a sister ... What about this fellow that got away? We don't want some hick sheriff or
publicity-hungry county attorney to get ideas--"
Steve broke in quietly: "I don't think you'll have to worry about that, Mr. Walters. I think I know where he's gone."
He ate breakfast at the inn, not because he was hungry, but because he was weak. He got into his car again and started down the
long smooth grade from Crestline to San Bernardino, a broad paved boulevard skirting the edge of a sheer drop into the deep valley.
There were places where the road went close to the edge, white guard-fences alongside.
Two miles below Crestline was the place. The road made a sharp turn around a shoulder of the mountain. Cars were parked on
the gravel off the pavement--several private cars, an official car, and a wrecking car. The white fence was broken through and men stood
around the broken place looking down.
Eight hundred feet below, what was left of a gray sedan lay silent and crumpled in the morning sunshine.
PEARLS ARE
A NUISANCE
ONE
It is quite true that I wasn't doing anything that morning except looking at a blank sheet of paper in my typewriter and thinking about
writing a letter. It is also quite true that I don't have a great deal to do any morning. But that is no reason why I should have to go out
hunting for old Mrs. Penruddock's pearl necklace. I don't happen to be a policeman.
It was Ellen Macintosh who called me up, which made a difference, of course. "How are you, darling?" she asked. "Busy?"
"Yes and no," I said. "Mostly no. I am very well. What is it now?"
"I don't think you love me, Walter. And anyway you ought to get some work to do. You have too much money. Somebody has stolen
Mrs. Penruddock's pearls and I want you to find them."
"Possibly you think you have the police department on the line," I said coldly. "This is the residence of Walter Gage. Mr. Gage talking."
"Well, you can tell Mr. Gage from Miss Ellen Macintosh," she said, "that if he is not out here in half an hour, he will receive a small
parcel by registered mail containing one diamond engagement ring."
"And a lot of good it did me," I said. "That old crow will live for another fifty years."
But she had already hung up so I put my hat on and went down and drove off in the Packard. It was a nice late April morning, if you
care for that sort of thing. Mrs. Penruddock lived on a wide quiet street in Carondelet Park. The house had probably looked exactly the
same for the last fifty years, but that didn't make me any better pleased that Ellen Macintosh might live in it another fifty years, unless old
Mrs. Penruddock died and didn't need a nurse any more. Mr. Penruddock had died a few years before, leaving no will, a thoroughly
tangled-up estate, and a list of pensioners as long as a star boarder's arm.
I rang the front doorbell and the door was opened, not very soon, by a little old woman with a maid's apron and a strangled knot of
gray hair on the top of her head. She looked at me as if she had never seen me before and didn't want to see me now.
"Miss Ellen Macintosh, please," I said. "Mr. Walter Gage calling."
She sniffed, turned without a word and we went back into the musty recesses of the house and came to a glassed-in porch full of
wicker furniture and the smell of Egyptian tombs. She went away, with another sniff.
In a moment the door opened again and Ellen Macintosh came in. Maybe you don't like tall girls with honey-colored hair and skin
like the first strawberry peach the grocer sneaks out of the box for himself. If you don't, I'm sorry for you.
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