Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler Page A

he would be the type that would get picked up sometime and would talk--when they took his dope away from him. I mean they wouldn't kill a customer."
    "What makes you so sure the killer took dope?"
    "I'm not sure. I just said that. Most punks do."
    "Oh." She straightened up and nodded and smiled. "I guess you mean these," she said and reached quickly into her bag and laid a small tissue bag package on the desk.
    I reached for it, pulled a rubber band off it carefully and opened up the paper. On it lay three long thick Russian cigarettes with paper mouthpieces. I looked at her and didn't say anything.
    "I know I shouldn't have taken them," she said almost breathlessly. "But I knew they were jujus. They usually come in plain papers but lately around Bay City they have been putting them out like this. I've seen several. I thought it was kind of mean for the poor man to be found dead with marihuana cigarettes in his pocket."
    "You ought to have taken the case too," I said quietly. "There was dust in it. And it being empty was suspicious."
    "I couldn't--with you there. I--I almost went back and did. But I didn't quite have the courage. Did it get you in wrong?"
    "No," I lied. "Why should it?"
    "I'm glad of that," she said wistfully.
    "Why didn't you throw them away?"
    She thought about it, her bag clutched to her side, her wide-brimmed absurd hat tilted so that it hid one eye.
    "I guess it must be because I'm a cop's daughter," she said at last. "You just don't throw away evidence." Her smile was frail and guilty and her cheeks were flushed. I shrugged.
    "Well--" the word hung in the air, like smoke in a closed room. Her lips stayed parted after saying it. I let it hang. The flush on her face deepened.
    "I'm horribly sorry. I shouldn't have done it."
    I passed that too.
    She went very quickly to the door and out.
    14
    I poked at one of the long Russian cigarettes with a finger, then laid them in a neat row, side by side and squeaked my chair. You just don't throw away evidence. So they were evidence. Evidence of what? That a man occasionally smoked a stick of tea, a man who looked as if any touch of the exotic would appeal to him. On the other hand lots of tough guys smoked marihuana, also lots of band musicians and high school kids, and nice girls who had given up trying. American hasheesh. A weed that would grow anywhere. Unlawful to cultivate now. That meant a lot in a country as big as the U.S.A.
    I sat there and puffed my pipe and listened to the clacking typewriter behind the wall of my office and the bong-bong of the traffic lights changing on Hollywood Boulevard and spring rustling in the air, like a paper bag blowing along a concrete sidewalk.
    They were pretty big cigarettes, but a lot of Russians are, and marihuana is a coarse leaf. Indian hemp. American hasheesh. Evidence. God, what hats the women wear. My head ached. Nuts.
    I got my penknife out and opened the small sharp blade, the one I didn't clean my pipe with, and reached for one of them. That's what a police chemist would do. Slit one down the middle and examine the stuff under a microscope, to start with. There might just happen to be something unusual about it. Not very likely, but what the hell, he was paid by the month.
    I slit one down the middle. The mouthpiece part was pretty tough to slit. Okey, I was a tough guy. I slit it anyway. See if can you stop me.
    Out of the mouthpiece shiny segments of rolled thin cardboard partly straightened themselves and had printing on them. I sat up straight and pawed for them. I tried to spread them out on the desk in order, but they slid around on the desk. I grabbed another of the cigarettes and squinted inside the mouthpiece. Then I went to work with the blade of the pocket knife in a different way. I pinched the cigarette down to the place where the mouthpiece began. The paper was thin all the way, you could feel the grain of what was underneath. So I cut the mouthpiece off carefully and then still more carefully cut