The Chinese Doll полностью

The letter “s” in Boost was partly chipped away; no doubt the handiwork of a gentle critic.

I complained to the girl about the great lack of heat in my office.

She gave me a receipt, said thanks chum, and yak, yak, don’t you know there’s a coal shortage? We must conserve heat.

I answered you’re welcome, and yak, yak, according to Scheinfeld there’s a man shortage. Don’t you know you should conserve me? She didn’t get it.

That made me feel good so I walked across the street to deposit four hundred and a half in the big bank. That made me feel better. I kept the remaining thirty in my pocket. That made me feel wonderful.

Considering.

I thought about all the things that had happened since the big stranger walked into my office yesterday, over some hot coffee in Thompson’s. Judy was working the counter. She hasn’t yet learned how to make good coffee; she makes it hot and stops.

About the gun: Louise, I can’t name one worthwhile reason why I should carry a gun. I’ve never fired it in my life except to make a little extra noise on Fourths of July; and I never expect to fire it for any other reason. If the police department had ever asked me why a private detective needed to carry a gun, I couldn’t have answered them.

Those movie sleuths like to pretend to be awfully slick characters, dashing around town arresting culprits and getting tangled up in flaming gun battles — but that’s sham. Pure boloney. You’d be surprised at the number of people who don’t know the truth. A private cop can’t arrest anyone; he has no more authority than a junior G-man. The movie pinkertons get away with murder.

For that matter what does the license do for me? It permits me to hang up a sign saying I’m a licensed investigator.

It doesn’t allow me to do anything an ordinary citizen can’t do, except flash a badge on some befuddled guy and tell him to come across or else. Any man with a little weight to throw around can pry into anything I can.

Just the same I’m going back out to the barn and get my gun. Dammit, Louise, you gave me that gun for Christmas and I want it back.

And then there is Harry Evans and his Studebaker sedan. On the face of it, it looks as if Evans’ girl friend got sick and tired of him and relieved him of the necessity of dying of old age. The ironic touch was the use of his car.

But I think the face is false. A clever girl could think of too many ways to get rid of Harry without running him down herself. There was too much risk involved. That great risk, in view of what actually happened, may prove to be the best key to the puzzle. Maybe one out of a hundred hit-and-run cases safely get away with it. That driver couldn’t (and wouldn’t) have counted on being the one. She probably did count on some other safety device — or was told she could. For it was planned from beginning to Evans’ end. That much is apparent.

My only fear is that the locals will accept it for what it seems to be on the surface: bad girl runs over nice man and ditches the car; case written off (if she is not found) as manslaughter. If she is found it is still manslaughter — only she was naughty to become frightened and drive away. Where did she steal the car?

But don’t you believe it Louise. Reread my letters of yesterday. They, whoever they are, simply waited until they found him crossing a street.

The girl in the car might have been following him all morning at a discreet distance, waiting for a favorable moment to catch him in the street. On the other hand she may never have seen him until he left my office. And bang.

Harry Evans retained me yesterday for a definite purpose: protection. He thought he would need it from the police, which implies that he was engaged in questionable activities of some sort. I don’t understand why he thought that any more than I could understand a frame job upon the part of the police. Not in Boone. But that isn’t the point.

The point is that he was expecting trouble, and trouble found him. That it was not the precise kind of trouble he expected doesn’t alter my suspicions.

People seldom believe they are going to die, despite all the Biblical evidence to the contrary that only two men in recorded history escaped death. Evans found himself in a spot and his reasoning told him someone was framing him. His reasoning failed him in that it did not warn him the spot might be a fatal one. The girl in the sedan. That girl has to turn up somewhere, sometime, but when she does, it will be as tough as hell to pin anything on her.

They — the other people behind Evans’ fears — will have seen to that.

I telephoned the Groyden attorney.

His receptionist accepted my reversed charges without hesitation, so I was still on the right side of the ledger. I had decided to repeat one of yesterday’s questions and listen to the man deny knowledge of the answer.

“Good morning,” he greeted me gravely.

“Hello. What was Evans’ occupation?”

“I think I’ve told you.” There had been the barest hesitation. I was hoping he would trip up.