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| 內容簡介： |
In the four long stories in this collection, Marlowe is hired
to protect a rich old guy from a gold digger, runs afoul of crooked
politicos, gets a line on some stolen jewels with a reward
attached, and stumbles across a murder victim who may have been an
extortionist.
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| 關於作者： |
Raymond Chandler was born in 1888 and published his first
story in 1933 in the pulp magazine Black Mask. By the time
he published his first novel, The Big Sleep 1939,
featuring, as did all his major works, the iconic private eye
Philip Marlowe, it was clear that he had not only mastered a genre
but had set a standard wo which others could only aspire. Chandler
created a body of work that ranks with the best of
twentieth-century literature. He died in 1959.
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| 目錄：
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Introduction
Trouble Is My Business
Finger Man
Goldfish
Red Wind
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| 內容試閱：
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ONE
Anna Halsey was about two hundred and forty pounds of middle-aged
putty-faced woman in a black tailor-made suit. Her eyes were shiny
black shoe buttons, her cheeks were as soft as suet and about the
same color. She was sitting behind a black glass desk that looked
like Napoleon''s tomb and she was smoking a cigarette in a black
holder that was not quite as long as a rolled umbrella. She said:
"I need a man."
I watched her shake ash from the cigarette to the shiny top of
the desk where flakes of it curled and crawled in the draft from an
open window.
"I need a man good-looking enough to pick up a dame who has a
sense of class, but he''s got to be tough enough to swap punches
with a power shovel. I need a guy who can act like a bar lizard and
backchat like Fred Allen, only better, and get hit on the head with
a beer truck and think some cutie in the leg-line topped him with a
breadstick."
"It''s a cinch," I said. "You need the New York Yankees, Robert
Donat, and the Yacht Club Boys."
"You might do," Anna said, "cleaned up a little. Twenty bucks a
day and ex''s. I haven''t brokered a job in years, but this one is
out of my line. I''m in the smooth-angles of the detecting business
and I make money without getting my can knocked off. Let''s see how
Gladys likes you."
She reversed the cigarette holder and tipped a key on a large
black-and-chromium annunciator box. "Come in and empty Anna''s ash
tray, honey.";
We waited.
The door opened and a tall blonde dressed better than the Duchess
of Windsor strolled in.
She swayed elegantly across the room, emptied Anna''s ash tray,
patted her fat cheek, gave me a smooth rippling glance and went out
again.
"I think she blushed," Anna said when the door closed. "I guess
you still have It."
"She blushed--and I have a dinner date with Darryl Zanuck," I
said. "Quit horsing around. What''s the story?"
"It''s to smear a girl. A redheaded number with bedroom eyes.
She''s shill for a gambler and she''s got her hooks into a rich man''s
pup."
"What do I do to her?"
Anna sighed. "It''s kind of a mean job, Philip, I guess. If she''s
got a record of any sort, you dig it up and toss it in her face. If
she hasn''t, which is more likely as she comes from good people,
it''s kind of up to you. You get an idea once in a while, don''t
you?"
"I can''t remember the last one I had. What gambler and what rich
man?"
"Marty Estel."
I started to get up from my chair, then remembered that business
had been bad for a month and that I needed the money.
I sat down again.
"You might get into trouble, of course," Anna said. "I never
heard of Marty bumping anybody off in the public square at high
noon, but he don''t play with cigar coupons."
"Trouble is my business," I said. "Twenty-five a day and
guarantee of two-fifty, if I pull the job."
"I gotta make a little something for myself," Anna whined.
"O.K. There''s plenty of coolie labor around town. Nice to have
seen you looking so well. So long, Anna."
I stood up this time. My life wasn''t worth much, but it was worth
that much. Marty Estel was supposed to be pretty tough people, with
the right helpers and the right protection behind him. His place
was out in West Hollywood, on the Strip. He wouldn''t pull anything
crude, but if he pulled at all, something would pop.
"Sit down, it''s a deal," Anna sneered. "I''m a poor old
broken-down woman trying to run a high-class detective agency on
nothing but fat and bad health, so take my last nickel and laugh at
me."
"Who''s the girl?" I had sat down again.
"Her name is Harriet Huntress--a swell name for the part too. She
lives in the El Milano, nineteen-hundred block on North Sycamore,
very high-class. Father went broke back in thirty-one and jumped
out of his office window. Mother dead. Kid sister in boarding
school back in Connecticut. That might make an angle."
"Who dug up all this?"
"The client got a bunch of photostats of notes the pup had given
to Marty. Fifty grand worth. The pup--he''s an adopted son to the
old man--denied the notes, as kids will. So the client had the
photostats experted by a guy named Arbogast, who pretends to be
good at that sort of thing. He said O.K. and dug around a bit, but
he''s too fat to do legwork, like me, and he''s off the case
now."
"But I could talk to him?"
"I don''t know why not." Anna nodded several of her chins.
"This client--does he have a name?"
"Son, you have a treat coming. You can meet him in person--right
now."
She tipped the key of her call box again. "Have Mr. Jeeter come
in, honey."
"That Gladys," I said, "does she have a steady?"
"You lay off Gladys!" Anna almost screamed at me. "She''s worth
eighteen grand a year in divorce business to me. Any guy that lays
a finger on her, Philip Marlowe, is practically cremated."
"She''s got to fall some day," I said. "Why couldn''t I catch
her?"
The opening door stopped that.
I hadn''t seen him in the paneled reception room, so he must have
been waiting in a private office. He hadn''t enjoyed it. He came in
quickly, shut the door quickly, and yanked a thin octagonal
platinum watch from his vest and glared at it. He was a tall
white-blond type in pin-striped flannel of youthful cut. There was
a small pink rosebud in his lapel. He had a keen frozen face, a
little pouchy under the eyes, a little thick in the lips. He
carried an ebony cane with a silver knob, wore spats and looked a
smart sixty, but I gave him close to ten years more. I didn''t like
him.
"Twenty-six minutes, Miss Halsey," he said icily. "My time
happens to be valuable. By regarding it as valuable I have managed
to make a great deal of money."
"Well, we''re trying to save you some of the money," Anna drawled.
She didn''t like him either. "Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Jeeter,
but you wanted to see the operative I selected and I had to send
for him."
"He doesn''t look the type to me," Mr. Jeeter said, giving me a
nasty glance. I think more of a gentleman--"
"You''re not the Jeeter of Tobacco Road, are you?" I asked
him.
He came slowly towards me and half lifted the stick. His icy eyes
tore at me like claws. "So you insult me," he said. "Me--a man in
my position."
"Now wait a minute," Anna began.
"Wait a minute nothing," I said. "This party said I was not a
gentleman. Maybe that''s O.K. for a man in his position, whatever it
is--but a man in my position doesn''t take a dirty crack from
anybody. He can''t afford to. Unless, of course, it wasn''t
intended."
Mr. Jeeter stiffened and glared at me. He took his watch out
again and looked at it. "Twenty-eight minutes," he said. "I
apologize, young man. I had no desire to be rude."
"That''s swell," I said. "I knew you weren''t the Jeeter in Tobacco
Road all along."
That almost started him again, but he let it go. He wasn''t sure
how I meant it.
"A question or two while we are together," I said. "Are you
willing to give this Huntress girl a little money--for
expenses?"
"Not one cent," he barked. "Why should I?"
"It''s got to be a sort of custom. Suppose she married him. What
would he have?"
"At the moment a thousand dollars a month from a trust fund
established by his mother, my late wife." He dipped his head. "When
he is twenty-eight years old, far too much money."
"You can''t blame the girl for trying," I said. "Not these days.
How about Marty Estel? Any settlement there?"
He crumpled his gray gloves with a purple-veined hand. "The debt
is uncollectible. It is a gambling debt."
Anna sighed wearily and flicked ash around on her desk.
"Sure," I said. "But gamblers can''t afford to let people welsh on
them. After all, if your son had won, Marty would have paid
him."
"I''m not interested in that," the tall thin man said
coldly.
"Yeah, but think of Marty sitting there with fifty grand in
notes. Not worth a nickel. How will he sleep nights?"
Mr. Jeeter looked thoughtful. "You mean there is danger of
violence?" he suggested, almost suavely.
"That''s hard to say. He runs an exclusive place, gets a good
movie crowd. He has his own reputation to think of. But he''s in a
racket and he knows people. Things can happen--a long way off from
where Marty is. And Marty is no bathmat. He gets up and
walks."
Mr. Jeeter looked at his watch again and it annoyed him. He
slammed it back into his vest. "All that is your affair," he
snapped. "The district attorney is a personal friend of mine. If
this matter seems to be beyond your powers--"
"Yeah," I told him. "But you came slumming down our street just
the same. Even if the D.A. is in your vest pocket--along with that
watch."
He put his hat on, drew on one glove, tapped the edge of his shoe
with his stick, walked to the door and opened it.
"I ask results and I pay for them," he said coldly. "I pay
promptly. I even pay generously sometimes, although I am not
considered a generous man. I think we all understand one
another."
He almost winked then and went on out. The door closed softly
against the cushion of air in the door-closer. I looked at Anna and
grinned.
"Sweet, isn''t he?"; she said. "I''d like eight of him for my
cocktail set."
I gouged twenty dollars out of her--for expenses.
TWO
The Arbogast I wanted was John D. Arbogast and he had an office
on Sunset near Ivar. I called him up from a phone booth. The voice
that answered was fat. It wheezed softly, like the voice of a man
who had just won a pie-eating contest.
"Mr. John D. Arbogast?"
"Yeah."
"This is Philip Marlowe, a private detective working on a case
you did some experting on. Party named Jeeter."
"Yeah?"
";Can I come up and talk to you about it--after I eat
lunch?"
"Yeah." He hung up. I decided he was not a talkative man.
I had lunch and drove out there. It was east of Ivar, an old
two-story building faced with brick which had been painted
recently. The street floor was stores and a restaurant. The
building entrance was the foot of a wide straight stairway to the
second floor. On the directory at the bottom I read: John D.
Arbogast, Suite 212. I went up the stairs and found myself in a
wide straight hall that ran parallel with the street. A man in a
smock was standing in an open doorway down to my right. He wore a
round mirror strapped to his forehead and pushed back, and his face
had a puzzled expression. He went back to his office and shut the
door.
I went the other way, about half the distance along the hall. A
door on the side away from Sunset was lettered: JOHN D. ARBOGAST,
EXAMINER OF QUESTIONED DOCUMENTS. PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. ENTER. The
door opened without resistance onto a small windowless anteroom
with a couple of easy chairs, some magazines, two chromium smoking
stands. There were two floor lamps and a ceiling fixture, all
lighted. A door on the other side of the cheap but thick new rug
was lettered: JOHN D. ARBOGAST, EXAMINER OF QUESTIONED DOCUMENTS.
PRIVATE.
A buzzer had rung when I opened the outer door and gone on
ringing until it closed. Nothing happened. Nobody was in the
waiting room. The inner door didn''t open. I went over and listened
at the panel-no sound of conversation inside. I knocked. That
didn''t buy me anything either. I tried the knob. It turned, so I
opened the door and went in.
This room had two north windows, both curtained at the sides and
both shut tight. There was dust on the sills. There was a desk, two
filing cases, a carpet which was just a carpet, and walls which
were just walls. To the left another door with a glass panel was
lettered: JOHN D. ARBOGAST. LABORATORY, PRIVATE.
I had an idea I might be able to remember the name.
The room in which I stood was small. It seemed almost too small
even for the pudgy hand that rested on the edge of the desk,
motionless, holding a fat pencil like a carpenter''s pencil. The
hand had a wrist, hairless as a plate. A buttoned shirt cuff, not
too clean, came down out of a coat sleeve. The rest of the sleeve
dropped over the far edge of the desk out of sight. The desk was
less than six feet long, so he couldn''t have been a very tall man.
The hand and the ends of the sleeves were all I saw of him from
where I stood. I went quietly back through the anteroom and fixed
its door so that it couldn''t be opened from the outside and put out
the three lights and went back to the private office. I went around
an end of the desk.
He was fat all right, enormously fat, fatter by far than Anna
Halsey. His face, what I could see of it, looked about the size of
a basket ball. It had a pleasant pinkness, even now. He was
kneeling on the floor. He had his large head against the sharp
inner corner of the kneehole of the desk, and his left hand was
flat on the floor with a piece of yellow paper under it. The
fingers were outspread as much as such fat fingers could be, and
the yellow paper showed between. He looked as if he were pushing
hard on the floor, but he wasn''t really. What was holding him up
was his own fat. His body was folded down against his enormous
thighs, and the thickness and fatness of them held him that way,
kneeling, poised solid. It would have taken a couple of good
blocking backs to knock him over. That wasn''t a very nice idea at
the moment, but I had it just the same. I took time out and wiped
the back of my neck, although it was not a warm day.
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