Mark of Murder - Dell Shannon by Dell Shannon

he thought. He put it in his pocket and made a
tour of the office.
    The whole place had been searched, and the boys were
usually thorough; but that was before Art had been sent over the
cliff--maybe in connection with this thing. If they were doing it
over now, they might take the place apart a bit more. Just in case,
Mendoza looked. He upended the soiled-clothes hamper in the lavatory
and was rewarded with a white smock that had a smear of old dried
blood down its front.
    He rather liked that, so he looked further. Stuck to
the bottom of the metal wastebasket in the rear examination room he
found a tiny scrap of paper with the two letters MO printed on it. It
wasn't much, but he put that carefully away too.
    He looked at the scrapbook full of high-society
doings, and the start of a very tentative theory formed in his mind
about that. He went down to the nurse's desk and looked that over
very thoroughly, but evidently she'd been allowed to clear it of
personal belongings. There were all five of the city telephone books
there. A tedious little job for somebody, probably Sergeant Lake, but
they'd have to be gone through; some people jotted down things in
phone books, or underlined numbers. He took them out to the Ferrari.
    He went back and looked at all the rooms again. He
opened the top of the sterilizer; it was empty. He wished (as Hackett
had before him) that Hackett hadn't overlooked the precaution of
leaving a guard here that day, or had come back a little sooner.
Couldn't be helped now. He took down the white smock hanging in the
locker; it was unstained. But, after thought, he took the rubber
gloves along with him. Give the lab boys a little more work.
    He found, in the nurse's desk, a ledger. Whoever had
kept the accounts had kept very sketchy ones. Maybe on purpose. He
took that along too.
    He had looked up the address and phone number before
he left the office; now he dialed and asked whether Mr. Marlowe were
home.
    Yes, he was, who was calling, please?
    Mendoza thought that sounded like a servant. Did
anyone have butlers these days? A man's voice, anyway. He identified
himself, said he'd be obliged if Mr. Marlowe could give him a few
minutes, if he came by.
    The address was on Kenniston Avenue, the other side
of Rimpau. A very classy district indeed: wide quiet streets of big,
very expensive houses. A good many houses sprawling over two or three
city lots, with outsize pools behind them and walls everywhere for
privacy. The Marlowe house, when he found it, was one of those. It
looked vaguely as if it had been modeled on a French château,‘it
had a three-car garage, and what looked like an honest-to-God butler
opened the door.
    He was a small man, pale-faced, in a neat dark suit;
and Mendoza was a little surprise to him. He repeated his name
doubtfully, taking a second glance at Harrington's tailoring, the
Sulka tie, and the conservative black homburg he'd taken from
Mendoza's hand. Mendoza suspected he'd check the brand name in that
behind his back.
    "If you'll come down to the library, sir,"
he said, wooden-faced. Mendoza followed him down a very wide carpeted
hall, past a pair of double doors and several ordinary ones, all
closed, to a door at the end on the right. The man opened this and
stood back. "The--ah--lieutenant," he murmured. Very
likely, before he saw the tie he'd have said, "The policeman."
    Mendoza went into a large square room filled with
heavy furniture that belonged in a British men's club and was another
little surprise to the man who rose to welcome him. "Ah, yes--"
said William Marlowe, and stopped as if he'd blown up in his lines.
He eyed Harrington's tailoring and the tie too; he couldn't keep the
brief flicker of surprise out of his eyes. Mendoza let his expression
go very bland. He knew Marlowe's type at a glance, and he knew what
Marlowe had expected to meet in a Lieutenant Mendoza.
    "Well, and what can I do for you, Lieutenant? Do
sit dowr1, won't you?" Marlowe was not a big