The High Window by Raymond Chandler Read Free Book Online Page B

feet from the entrance to my building. I slid into the space, locked the car and stepped out. It was only then that I noticed the car in front of which I had parked was a familiar-looking sand-colored coupé. It didn’t have to be the same one. There were thousands of them. Nobody was in it. Nobody was near it that wore a cocoa straw hat with a brown and yellow band.
    I went around to the street side and looked at the steering post. No license holder. I wrote the license plate number down on the back of an envelope, just in case, and went on into my building. He wasn’t in the lobby, or in the corridor upstairs.
    I went into the office, looked on the floor for mail, didn’t find any, bought myself a short drink out of the office bottle and left. I didn’t have any time to spare to get downtown before three o’clock.
    The sand-colored coupé was still parked, still empty. I got into mine and started up and moved out into the traffic stream.
    I was below Sunset on Vine before he picked me up. I kept on going, grinning, and wondering where he had hid. Perhaps in the car parked behind his own. I hadn’t thought of that.
    I drove south to Third and all the way downtown on Third. The sand-colored coupé kept half a block behind me all the way. I moved over to Seventh and Grand, parked near Seventh and Olive, stopped to buy cigarettes I didn’t need, and then walked east along Seventh without looking behind me. At Spring I went into the Hotel Metropole, strolled over to the big horseshoe cigar counter to light one of my cigarettes and then sat down in one of the old brown leather chairs in the lobby.
    A blond man in a brown suit, dark glasses and the now familiar hat came into the lobby and moved unobtrusively among the potted palms and the stucco arches to the cigar counter. He bought a package of cigarettes and broke it open standing there, using the time to lean his back against the counter and give the lobby the benefit of his eagle eye.
    He picked up his change and went over and sat down with his back to a pillar. He tipped his hat down over his dark glasses and seemed to go to sleep with an unlighted cigarette between his lips.
    I got up and wandered over and dropped into the chair beside him. I looked at him sideways. He didn’t move. Seen at close quarters his face seemed young and pink and plump and the blond beard on his chin was very carelessly shaved. Behind the dark glasses his eyelashes flicked up and down rapidly. A hand on his knee tightened and pulled the cloth into wrinkles. There was a wart on his cheek just below the right eyelid.
    I struck a match and held the flame to his cigarette. “Light?”
    “Oh—thanks,” he said, very surprised. He drew breath in until the cigarette tip glowed. I shook the match out, tossed it into the sand jar at my elbow and waited. He looked at me sideways several times before he spoke.
    “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”
    “Over on Dresden Avenue in Pasadena. This morning.” I could see his cheeks get pinker than they had been. He sighed.
    “I must be lousy,” he said.
    “Boy, you stink,” I agreed.
    “Maybe it’s the hat,” he said.
    “The hat helps,” I said. “But you don’t really need it.”
    “It’s a pretty tough dollar in this town,” he said sadly.
    “You can’t do it on foot, you ruin yourself with taxi fares if you use taxis, and if you use your own car, it’s always where you can’t get to it fast enough. You have to stay too close.”
    “But you don’t have to climb in a guy’s pocket,” I said. “Did you want something with me or are you just practising?”
    “I figured I’d find out if you were smart enough to be worth talking to.”
    “I’m very smart,” I said. “It would be a shame not to talk to me.”
    He looked carefully around back of his chair and on both sides of where we were sitting and then drew a small, pigskin wallet out. He handed me a nice fresh card from it. It read: George Anson Phillips.