Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler Page B

through the mouthpiece longways, but only just enough. It opened out and there was another card underneath, rolled up, not touched this time.
    I spread it out fondly. It was a man's calling card. Thin pale ivory, just off white. Engraved on that were delicately shaded words. In the lower left hand corner a Stillwood Heights telephone number. In the lower right hand corner the legend, "By Appointment Only." In the middle, a little larger, but still discreet: "Jules Amthor." Below, a little smaller: "Psychic Consultant."
    I took hold of the third cigarette. This time, with a lot of difficulty. I teased the card out without cutting anything. It was the same. I put it back where it had been.
    I looked at my watch, put my pipe in an ashtray, and then had to look at my watch again to see what time it was. I rolled the two cut cigarettes and the cut card in part of the tissue paper, the one that was complete with card inside in another part of the tissue paper and locked both little packages away in my desk.
    I sat looking at the card. Jules Amthor, Psychic Consultant, By Appointment Only, Stillwood Heights phone number, no address. Three like that rolled inside three sticks of tea, in a Chinese or Japanese silk cigarette case with an imitation tortoise-shell frame, a trade article that might have cost thirty-five to seventy-five cents in any Oriental store, Hooey Phooey Sing--Long Sing Tung, that kind of place, where a nice-mannered Jap hisses at you, laughing heartily when you say that the Moon of Arabia incense smells like the girls in Frisco Sadie's back parlor.
    And all this in the pocket of a man who was very dead, and who had another and genuinely expensive cigarette case containing cigarettes which he actually smoked.
    He must have forgotten it. It didn't make sense. Perhaps it hadn't belonged to him at all. Perhaps he had picked it up in a hotel lobby. Forgotten he had it on him. Forgotten to turn it in. Jules Amthor, Psychic Consultant.
    The phone rang and I answered it absently. The voice had the cool hardness of a cop who thinks he is good. It was Randall. He didn't bark. He was the icy type.
    "So you didn't know who that girl was last night? And she picked you up on the boulevard and you walked over to there. Nice lying, Marlowe."
    "Maybe you have a daughter and you wouldn't like newscameramen jumping out of bushes and popping flashbulbs in her face."
    "You lied to me."
    "It was a pleasure."
    He was silent a moment, as if deciding something. "We'll let that pass," he said. "I've seen her. She came in and told me her story. She's the daughter of a man I knew and respected, as it happens."
    "She told you," I said, "and you told her."
    "I told her a little," he said coldly. "For a reason. I'm calling you for the same reason. This investigation is going to be undercover. We have a chance to break this jewel gang and we're going to do it."
    "Oh, it's a gang murder this morning. Okey."
    "By the way, that was marihuana dust in that funny cigarette case--the one with the dragons on it. Sure you didn't see him smoke one out of it?"
    "Quite sure. In my presence he smoked only the others. But he wasn't in my presence all the time."
    "I see. Well, that's all. Remember what I told you last night. Don't try getting ideas about this case. All we want from you is silence. Otherwise--"
    He paused. I yawned into the mouthpiece.
    "I heard that," he snapped. "Perhaps you think I'm not in a position to make that stick. I am. One false move out of you and you'll be locked up as a material witness."
    "You mean the papers are not to get the case?"
    "They'll get the murder--but they won't know what's behind it."
    "Neither do you," I said.
    "I've warned you twice now," be said. "The third time is out."
    "You're doing a lot of talking," I said, "for a guy that holds cards."
    I got the phone hung in my face for that. Okey, the hell with him, let him work at it.
    I walked around the office a little to cool off, bought myself a short drink, looked at