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

He said: "I'm wrong, angel. I don't know him at all. Good night."
He went back across the room, through the little hallway, opened the door. When the door opened the girl clutched at the curtain
and rubbed her face against it slowly.
Carmady didn't shut the door. He stood quite still halfway through it, looking at two men who stood there with guns.
They stood close to the door, as if they had been about to knock. One was thick, dark, saturnine. The other one was an albino with
sharp red eyes, a narrow head that showed shining snow-white hair under a rain-spattered dark hat. He had the thin sharp teeth and
the drawn-back grin of a rat.
Carmady started to close the door behind him. The albino said: "Hold it, rube. The door, I mean. We're goin' in."
The other man slid forward and pressed his left hand up and down Carmady's body carefully. He stepped away, said: "No gat, but a
swell flask under his arm."
The albino gestured with his gun. "Back up, rube. We want the broad, too."
Carmady said tonelessly: "It doesn't take a gun, Critz. I know you and I know your boss. If he wants to see me, I'll be glad to talk to
him."
He turned and went back into the room with the two gunmen behind him.
Jean Adrian hadn't moved. She stood by the window still, the curtain against her cheek, her eyes closed, as if she hadn't heard the
voices at the door at all.
Then she heard them come in and her eyes snapped open. She turned slowly, stared past Carmady at the two gunmen. The albino
walked to the middle of the room, looked around it without speaking, went on into the bedroom and bathroom. Doors opened and shut.
He came back in quiet catlike feet, pulled his overcoat open and pushed his hat back on his head.
"Get dressed, sister. We have to go for a ride in the rain. Okey?"
The girl stared at Carmady now. He shrugged, smiled a little, spread his hands.
"That's how it is, angel. Might as well fall in line."
The lines of her face got thin and contemptuous. She said slowly: "You--You--------.' Her voice trailed off into a sibilant, meaningless
mutter. She went across the room stiffly and out of it into the bedroom.
The albino slipped a cigarette between his sharp lips, chuckled with a wet, gurgling sound, as if his mouth was full of saliva.
"She don't seem to like you, rube."
Carmady frowned. He walked slowly to the writing desk, leaned his hips against it, stared at the floor.
"She thinks I sold her out," he said dully.
"Maybe you did, rube," the albino drawled.
Carmady said: "Better watch her. She's neat with a gun."
His hands, reaching casually behind him on the desk, tapped the top of it lightly, then without apparent change of movement folded
the leather photo frame down on its side and edged it under the blotter.
EIGHT
There was a padded arm rest in the middle of the rear seat of the car, and Carmady leaned an elbow on it, cupped his chin in his
hand, stared through the half-misted windows at the rain. It was thick white spray in the headlights, and the noise of it on the top of the
car was like drum fire very far off.
Jean Adrian sat on the other side of the arm rest, in the corner. She wore a black hat and a gray coat with tufts of silky hair on it,
longer than caracul and not so curly. She didn't look at Carmady or speak to him.
The albino sat on the right of the thick dark man, who drove. They went through silent streets, past blurred houses, blurred trees, the
blurred shine of street lights. There were neon signs behind the thick curtains of mist. There was no sky.
Then they climbed and a feeble arc light strung over an intersection threw light on a signpost, and Carmady read the name "Court
Street."
He said softly: "This is woptown, Critz. The big guy can't be so dough-heavy as he used to be."
Lights flickered from the albino's eyes as he glanced back. "You should know, rube."
The car slowed in front of a big frame house with a trellised porch, walls finished in round shingles, blind, lightless windows.
Across the street, a stencil sign on a brick building built sheer to the sidewalk said: "Paolo Perrugini Funeral Parlors."
The car swung out to make a wide turn into a gravel driveway. Lights splashed into an open garage. They went in, slid to a stop
beside a big shiny undertaker's ambulance.
The albino snapped: "All out!"
Carmady said: "I see our next trip is all arranged for."
"Funny guy," the albino snarled. "A wise monkey."
"Uh-uh. I just have nice scaffold manners," Carmady drawled.
The dark man cut the motor and snapped on a big flash, then cut the lights, got out of the car. He shot the beam of the flash up a
narrow flight of wooden steps in the corner. The albino said: "Up you go, rube. Push the girl ahead of you. I'm behind with my rod."
Jean Adrian got out of the car past Carmady, without looking at him. She went up the steps stiffly, and the three men made a
procession behind her.
There was a door at the top. The girl opened it and hard white light came out at them. They went into a bare attic with exposed
studding, a square window in front and rear, shut tight, the glass painted black. A bright bulb hung on a drop cord over a kitchen table
and a big man sat at the table with a saucer of cigarette butts at his elbow. Two of them still smoked.
A thin loose-lipped man sat on a bed with a Luger beside his left hand. There was a worn carpet on the floor, a few sticks of
furniture, a half-opened clapboard door in the corner through which a toilet seat showed, and one end of a big old-fashioned bathtub
standing up from the floor on iron legs.
The man at the kitchen table was large but not handsome. He had carroty hair and eyebrows a shade darker, a square aggressive
face, a strong jaw. His thick lips held his cigarette brutally. His clothes looked as if they had cost a great deal of money and had been
slept in.
He glanced carelessly at Jean Adrian, said around the cigarette: "Park the body, sister. Hi, Carmady. Gimme that rod, Lefty, and you
boys drop down below again."
The girl went quietly across the attic and sat down in a straight wooden chair. The man on the bed stood up, put the Luger at the big
man's elbow on the kitchen table. The three gunmen went down the stairs, leaving the door open.
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