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

display of empty whiskey bottles on the table was very disgusting. Henry Eichelberger was nowhere to be seen. With an instinctive pang,
of which I was almost immediately ashamed, I hurried to my jacket hanging on the back of a chair and plunged my hand into the inner
breast pocket. The packet of bills was there intact. After a brief hesitation, and with a feeling of secret guilt, I drew them out and slowly
counted them over. Not a bill was missing. I replaced the money and tried to smile at myself for this lack of trust, and then switched on a
light and went into the bathroom to take alternate hot and cold showers until my brain was once more comparatively clear.
I had done this and was dressing in fresh linen when a key turned in the lock and Henry Fichelberger entered with two wrapped
bottles under his arm. He looked at me with what I thought was genuine affection.
"A guy that can sleep it off like you is a real champ, Walter," he said admiringly. "I snuck your keys so as not to wake you. I had to get
some eats and some more hooch. I done a little solo drinking, which as I told you is against my principles, but this is a big day.
However, we take it easy from now on as to the hooch. We can't afford no jitters till it's all over."
He had unwrapped a bottle wlile he was speaking and poured me a small drink. I drank it gratefully and immediately felt a warm
glow in my veins.
"I bet you looked in your poke for that deck of mazuma," Henry said, grinning at me.
I felt myself reddening, but I said nothing. "O.K., pal, you done right. What the heck do you know about Henry Eichelberger anyways?
I done something else." He reached behind him and drew a short automatic from his hip pocket. "If these boys wanta play rough," he
said, "I got me five bucks worth of iron that don't mind playin' rough a little itself. And the Eichelbergers ain't missed a whole lot of the
guys they shot at."
"I don't like that, Henry," I said severely. "That is contrary to the agreement."
"Nuts to the agreement," Henry said. "The boys get their dough and no cops. I'm out to see that they hand over them marbles and
don't pull any fast footwork."
I saw there was no use arguing with him, so I completed my dressing and prepared to leave the apartment. We each took one more
drink and then Henry put a full bottle in his pocket and we left.
On the way down the hail to the elevator he explained in a low voice: "I got a hack out front to tail you, just in case these boys got the
same idea. You might circle a few quiet blocks so as I can find out. More like they don't pick you up till down close to the beach."
"All this must be costing you a great deal of money, Henry," I told him, and while we were waiting for the elevator to come up I took
another twenty-dollar bill from my wallet and offered it to him. He took the money reluctantly, but finally folded it and placed it in his pocket.
I did as Henry had suggested, driving up and down a number of the hilly streets north of Hollywood Boulevard, and presently I heard
the unmistakable hoot of a taxicab horn behind me. I pulled over to the side of the road. Henry got out of the cab and paid off the driver
and got into my car beside me.
"All clear," he said. "No tail. I'll just keep kind of slumped down and you better stop somewhere for some groceries on account of if
we have to get rough with these mugs, a full head of steam will help."
So I drove westward and dropped down to Sunset Boulevard and presently stopped at a crowded drive-in restaurant where we sat
at the counter and ate a light meal of omelette and black coffee. We then proceeded on our way. When we reached Beverly Hills, Henry
again made me wind in and out through a number of residential streets where he observed very carefully through the rear window of the
car.
Fully satisfied at last we drove back to Sunset, and without incident onwards through Bel-Air and the fringes of Westwood, almost
as far as the Riviera Polo field. At this point, down in the hollow, there is a canyon called Mandeville Canyon, a very quiet place. Henry
had me drive up this for a short distance. We then stopped and had a little whiskey from his bottle and he climbed into the back of the
car and curled his big body up on the floor, with the rug over him and his automatic pistol and his bottle down on the floor conveniently to
his hand. That done I once more resumed my journey.
Pacific Palisades is a district whose inhabitants seem to retire rather early. When I reached what might be called the business
center nothing was open but the drugstore beside the bank. I parked the car, with Henry remaining silent under the rug in the back,
except for a slight gurgling noise I noticed as I stood on the dark sidewalk. Then I went into the drugstore and saw by its clock that it was
now fifteen minutes to eight. I bought a package of cigarettes and lit one and took up my position near the open telephone booth.
The druggist, a heavy-set red-faced man of uncertain age, had a small radio up very loud and was listening to some foolish serial. I
asked him to turn it down, as I was expecting an important telephone call. This he did, but not with any good grace, and immediately
retired to the back part of his store whence I saw him looking out at me malignantly through a small glass window.
At precisely one minute to eight by the drugstore clock the phone rang sharply in the booth. I hastened into it and pulled the door
tight shut. I lifted the receiver, trembling a little in spite of myself.
It was the same cool metallic voice. "Gage?"
"This is Mr. Gage."
"You done just what I told you?"
"Yes," I said. "I have the money in my pocket and I am entirely alone." I did not like the feeling of lying so brazenly, even to a thief, but I
steeled myself to it.
"Listen, then. Go back about three hundred feet the way you come. Beside the firehouse there's a service station, closed up, painted
green and red and white. Beside that, going south, is a dirt road. Follow it three quarters of a mile and you come to a white fence of
four-by-four built almost across the road. You can just squeeze your car by at the left side. Dim your lights and get through there and
keep going down the little hill into a hollow with sage all around. Park there, cut your lights, and wait. Get it?"
"Perfectly," I said coldly, "and it shall be done exactly that way."
"And listen, pal. There ain't a house in half a mile, and there ain't any folks around at all. You got ten minutes to get there. You're
watched right this minute. You get there fast and you get there alone--or you got a trip for biscuits. And don't light no matches or pills nor
use no flashlights. On your way."
The phone went dead and I left the booth. I was scarcely outside the drugstore before the druggist rushed at his radio and turned it
up to a booming blare. I got into my car and turned it and drove back along Sunset Boulevard, as directed. Henry was as still as the
grave on the floor behind me.
I was now very nervous and Henry had all the liquor which we had brought with us. I reached the firehouse in no time at all and
through its front window I could see four firemen playing cards. I turned to the right down the dirt road past the red-and-green-and-white
service station and almost at once the night was so still, in spite of the quiet sound of my car, that I could hear the crickets and treefrogs
chirping and trilling in all directions, and from some nearby watery spot came the hoarse croak of a solitary bullfrog.
The road dipped and rose again and far off there was a yellow window. Then ahead of me, ghostly in the blackness of the
moonless night, appeared the dim white barrier across the road. I noted the gap at the side and then dimmed my headlamps and
steered carefully through it and so on down a rough short hill into an oval-shaped hollow space surrounded by low brush and plentifully
50