"This is a gun, lady. Gentle now. Sound carries in the fog. Just hand me the bag."

"Yell," the man said, "and I'll cut you in half."

Light steps, the steps of a woman, came along the invisible pathway and the man in front of me moved forward and seemed to lean against the fog. I couldn't see the woman, then I could see her indistinctly. The arrogant carriage of her head seemed familiar. The man stepped out very quickly. The two figures blended in the fog, seemed to be part of the fog. There was dead silence for a moment. Then the man said:

The girl didn't make a sound. I moved forward a step. Quite suddenly I could see the foggy fuzz on the man's hat brim. The girl stood motionless. Then her breathing began to make a rasping sound, like a small file on soft wood.

She didn't yell. She didn't move. There was a movement from him, and a dry chuckle. "It better be in here," he said. A catch clicked and a fumbling sound came to me. The man turned and came towards my tree. When he had taken three or four steps he chuckled again. The chuckle was something out of my own memories. I reached a pipe out of my pocket and held it like a gun.

Nothing moved. The girl back on the path didn't move. I didn't move. Lanny didn't move.

The man stopped dead and started to bring his hand up. I said: "No. I told you never to do that, Lanny. You're covered."

I called out softly: "Hi, Lanny."

"Put the bag down between your feet, kid," I told him. "Slow and easy."

Our breaths met and mingled, our eyes were like the eyes of two tomcats on a wall. I stepped back.

He bent down. I jumped out and reached him still bent over. He straightened up against me breathing hard. His hands were empty.

"Tell me I can't get away with it," I said. I leaned against him and took the gun out of his overcoat pocket. "Somebody's always giving me guns," I told him. "I'm weighted down with them till I walk all crooked. Beat it."

"On your way, Lanny. No hard feelings. You keep it quiet and I keep it quiet. Okey?"

The fog swallowed him. The faint sound of his steps and then nothing. I picked the bag up and felt in it and went towards the path. She still stood there motionless, a gray fur coat held tight around her throat with an ungloved hand on which a ring made a faint glitter. She wore no hat. Her dark parted hair was part of the darkness of the night. Her eyes too.

"Okey," he said thickly.

"No."

"Looks that way. Here's the bag."

"I don't mind telling you. He thought I was looking for somebody he thought had run away with his wife."

We walked along the path and around a corner of the building and there was light ahead, then around another corner and came to a bright enclosed stable yard lit with two floodlights. It was still paved with brick and still sloped down to a grating in the middle. Cars glistened and a man in a brown smock got up off a stool and came forward.

"Eddie Mars wanted to see me."

"Nice work, Marlowe. Are you my bodyguard now?" Her voice had a harsh note.

She took it. I said: "Have you a car with you?"

"I didn't know you knew him. Why?"

"No."

She laughed. "I came with a man. What are you doing here?"

"To find out why he thought I was looking for somebody he thought had run away with his wife."

"You leak information like a radio announcer," she said. "I suppose it's none of my business -- even if the man was my husband. I thought you weren't interested in that."

"Then what did you come for?"

"Were you?"

"People keep throwing it at me."

She clicked her teeth in annoyance. The incident of the masked man with the gun seemed to have made no impression on her at all. "Well, take me to the garage," she said. "I have to look in at my escort."

"Did you find out?"

"I'm afraid he is, miss. I put a rug over him and run the windows up. He's okey, I guess. Just kind of resting."

"Is my boy friend still blotto?" Vivian asked him carelessly.

"Mr. Cobb was my escort," she said. "Such a nice escort, Mr. Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten -- when Larry Cobb was sober."

We went over to a big Cadillac and the man in the smock pulled the rear door open. On the wide back seat, loosely arranged, covered to the chin with a plaid robe, a man lay snoring with his mouth open. He seemed to be a big blond man who would hold a lot of liquor.

I grunted.

"Yeah," I said.

"Meet Mr. Larry Cobb," Vivian said. "Mister Cobb -- Mister Marlowe."

"I've even thought of marrying him," she went on in a high strained voice, as if the shock of the stick-up was just beginning to get to her. "At odd times when nothing pleasant would come into my mind. We all have those spells. Lots of money, you know. A yacht, a place on Long Island, a place at Newport, a place at Bermuda, places dotted here and there all over the world probably -- just a good Scotch bottle apart. And to Mr. Cobb a bottle of Scotch is not very far."

"Don't say 'yeah.' It's common." She looked at me with arched eyebrows. The man in the smock was chewing his lower lip hard. "Oh, undoubtedly a whole platoon of drivers. They probably do squads right in front of the garage every morning, buttons shining, harness gleaming, white gloves immaculate -- a sort of West Point elegance about them."

"Yeah," I said. "Does he have a driver to take him home?"

"Well, where the hell is this driver?" I asked.

"He drove hisself tonight," the man in the smock said, almost apologetically. "I could call his home and have somebody come down for him."

The man in the smock said: "Not if they sniffed him, miss."

Vivian turned around and smiled at him as if he had just presented her with a diamond tiara. "That would be lovely," she said. "Would you do that? I really wouldn't want Mr. Cobb to die like that -- with his mouth open. Someone might think he had died of thirst."

She opened her bag and grabbed a handful of paper money and pushed it at him. "You'll take care of him, I'm sure."

"Jeeze," the man said, pop-eyed. "I sure will, miss."

"No'm." His hands were doing frantic things with the fistful of money he was holding.

"Regan is the name," she said sweetly. "Mrs. Regan. You'll probably see me again. Haven't been here long, have you?"

"You'll get to love it here," she said. She took hold of my arm. "Let's ride in your car, Marlowe."

"Quite all right with me, Marlowe. I love a nice walk in the fog. You meet such interesting people."

"It's outside on the street."

"You better have a drink," I said.

She held on to my arm and began to shake. She held me hard all the way to the car. She had stopped shaking by the time we reached it. I drove down a curving lane of trees on the blind side of the house. The lane opened on De Cazens Boulevard, the main drag of Las Olindas. We passed under the ancient sputtering arc lights and after a while there was a town, buildings, dead-looking stores, a service station with a light over a nightbell, and at last a drugstore that was still open.

"Oh, nuts," I said.

"Two coffees," I said. "Black, strong and made this year."

"I could get as drunk as two sailors and love it."

I held the door for her and she got out close to me, brushing my cheek with her hair. We went into the drugstore. I bought a pint of rye at the liquor counter and carried it over to the stools and set it down on the cracked marble counter.

I lit the cigarettes and didn't pay any attention to him. He drew two cups of coffee from a tarnished nickel urn and set them in front of us. He looked at the bottle of rye, muttered under his breath and said wearily: "Okey, I'll watch the street while you pour it."

"You can't drink liquor in here," the clerk said. He had a washed-out blue smock, was thin on top as to hair, had fairly honest eyes and his chin would never hit a wall before he saw it.

She moved her chin, a point of paleness in the corner of the seat. I turned diagonally into the curb and parked. "A little black coffee and a smattering of rye would go well," I said.

Vivian Regan reached into her bag for a pack of cigarettes and shook a couple loose just like a man. She held them towards me.

"It's against the law to drink liquor in here," the clerk said.

The clerk turned suddenly and walked back behind the counter and went in behind the little glass window of the prescription room.

"My heart's in my mouth doing this," I said, and unscrewed the top of the whiskey bottle and loaded the coffee. "The law enforcement in this town is terrific. All through prohibition Eddie Mars' place was a night club and they had two uniformed men in the lobby every night -- to see that the guests didn't bring their own liquor instead of buying it from the house."

"You have wicked eyes," I said. "What's Eddie Mars got on you?"

He went and stood at the display window with his back to us and his ears hanging out.

"That might make him sore. You think he sent that loogan after you?"

She looked at me in the mirror. "I took plenty away from him tonight at roulette -- starting with five grand I borrowed from him yesterday and didn't have to use."

We sipped our loaded coffee. I looked at Vivian's face in the mirror back of the coffee urn. It was taut, pale, beautiful and wild. Her lips were red and harsh.

"How's the General? I don't pretend to be witty."

"Norris would tell him?"

"He hasn't many illusions," I said, "but I suppose he still has pride."

"Not too well. He didn't get up today. You could at least stop questioning me."

"I remember a time when I thought the same about you. How much does the General know?"

"We're losing the subject. What has Eddie Mars got on you?"

"You mean a hold on me of some sort?"

"Yes."

"We're his blood. That's the hell of it." She stared at me in the mirror with deep, distant eyes. "I don't want him to die despising his own blood. It was always wild blood, but it wasn't always rotten blood."

"A guy with a gun."

Her lip curled. "Wittier, please, Marlowe. Much wittier."

"I often wonder if there is a wrong side."

"Sure," I laughed. "But strictly speaking a loogan is on the wrong side of the fence."

"No. Wilde, the District Attorney, was out to see him. Did you burn those pictures?"

"He probably knows everything."

"Sure. You worry about your little sister, don't you -- from time to time."

"Are you a loogan?"

"I think she's all I do worry about. I worry about Dad in a way, to keep things from him."

"What's a loogan?"

I paid the check, put the bottle of rye in my pocket, and we left. The clerk still didn't like me.

"Let's get out of this rotten little town."

"You've got enough shady friends to know different."

"They're all soft compared to you."

"Thanks, lady. You're no English muffin yourself."

"Not yours. You're just playing the part."

"I guess you think so."

"Oh, you think I accounted for Geiger -- or Brody -- or both of them."

"Oh, nuts."

"One of those dark deadly quiet men who have no more feelings than a butcher has for slaughtered meat. I knew it the first time I saw you."

"Is it now?"

"The papers and the police fixed it up nicely. But I don't believe everything I read."

"That makes you just a killer at heart, like all cops."

"Me? How?"

She didn't say anything. "I didn't have to," I said. "I might have, I suppose, and got away with it. Neither of them would have hesitated to throw lead at me."

She looked down. I sipped some more coffee and lit another cigarette for us. "So you shoot people," she said quietly. "You're a killer."

We were close to Del Rey before she spoke to me for the first time since we left the drugstore. Her voice had a muffled sound, as if something was throbbing deep under it.

We drove away from Las Olindas through a series of little dank beach towns with shack-like houses built down on the sand close to the rumble of the surf and larger houses built back on the slopes behind. A yellow window shone here and there, but most of the houses were dark. A smell of kelp came in off the water and lay on the fog. The tires sang on the moist concrete of the boulevard. The world was a wet emptiness.

There was a winking yellow light at the intersection. I turned the car and slid down a slope with a high bluff on one side, interurban tracks to the right, a low straggle of lights far off beyond the tracks, and then very far off a glitter of pier lights and a haze in the sky over a city. That way the fog was almost gone. The road crossed the tracks where they turned to run under the bluff, then reached a paved strip of waterfront highway that bordered an open and uncluttered beach. Cars were parked along the sidewalk, facing out to sea, dark. The lights of the beach club were a few hundred yards away.

"Drive down by the Del Rey beach club. I want to look at the water. It's the next street on the left."

I moved out from under the wheel into the middle of the seat. She turned her body a little away from me as if to peer out of the window. Then she let herself fall backwards, without a sound, into my arms. Her head almost struck the wheel. Her eyes were closed, her face was dim. Then I saw that her eyes opened and flickered, the shine of them visible even in the darkness.

I braked the car against the curb and switched the headlights off and sat with my hands on the wheel. Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness.

I put my arms around her loosely at first. Her hair had a harsh feeling against my face. I tightened my arms and lifted her up. I brought her face slowly up to my face. Her eyelids were flickering rapidly, like moth wings.

"Move closer," she said almost thickly.

I kissed her tightly and quickly. Then a long slow clinging kiss. Her lips opened under mine. Her body began to shake in my arms.

"Hold me close, you beast," she said.

"Hobart Arms. Franklin near Kenmore."

"Killer," she said softly, her breath going into my mouth.

"I've never seen it."

"That's the way it is. Kissing is nice, but your father didn't hire me to sleep with you."

"Yes," she breathed.

"What has Eddie Mars got on you?"

I strained her against me until the shivering of her body was almost shaking mine. I kept on kissing her. After a long time she pulled her head away enough to say: "Where do you live?"

"Go ahead and scream."

"So that's the way it is," she said in a soft dull voice.

She jerked away and pulled herself upright, far back in the corner of the car.

"You son of a bitch," she said calmly, without moving.

I laughed in her face. "Don't think I'm an icicle," I said. "I'm not blind or without senses. I have warm blood like the next guy. You're easy to take -- too damned easy. What has Eddie Mars got on you?"

"Want to?"

Her body stiffened in my arms and her breath made a harsh sound. Her head pulled back until her eyes, wide open, ringed with white, were staring at me.

"If you say that again, I'll scream."

She fumbled in her bag and got a handkerchief out and bit on it, her head turned away from me. The tearing sound of the handkerchief came to me. She tore it with her teeth, slowly, time after time.

"Do I have to tell you I loathe your guts, Mister Detective?"

"Men have been shot for practically nothing. The first time we met I told you I was a detective. Get it through your lovely head. I work at it, lady. I don't play at it."

"Men have been shot for little things like that, Marlowe."

"What makes you think he has anything on me?" she whispered, her voice muffled by the handkerchief.

"He lets you win a lot of money and sends a gunpoke around to take it back for him. You're not more than mildly surprised. You didn't even thank me for saving it for you. I think the whole thing was just some kind of an act. If I wanted to flatter myself, I'd say it was at least partly for my benefit."

"You don't owe me anything. I'm paid off."

"You think he can win or lose as he pleases."

"Sure. On even money bets, four times out of five."

Her voice became an icy drawl. "Take me away from here, if you will be so kind. I'm quite sure I'd like to go home."

"I liked kissing you."

She tossed the shredded handkerchief out of the car window. "You have a lovely way with women."

"If I had a razor, I'd cut your throat -- just to see what ran out of it."

"I liked kissing you."

I started the car and turned it and drove back across the interurban tracks to the highway and so on into town and up to West Hollywood. She didn't speak to me. She hardly moved all the way back. I drove through the gates and up the sunken driveway to the porte-cochere of the big house. She jerked the car door open and was out of it before it had quite stopped. She didn't speak even then. I watched her back as she stood against the door after ringing the bell. The door opened and Norris looked out. She pushed past him quickly and was gone. The door banged shut and I was sitting there looking at it.

"You won't be a sister to me?"

"Caterpillar blood," I said.

"You kept your head beautifully. That's so flattering. Should I congratulate you, or my father?"

I turned back down the driveway and home.