"So you're just a brute5 after all," she said quietly, staring at me. "An utter callous6 brute. You killed a man last night. Never mind how I heard it. I heard it. And now you have to come out here and frighten my kid sister into a fit." I didn't say a word. She began to fidget. She moved over to a slipper7 chair and put her head back against a white cushion that lay along the back of the chair against the wall. She blew pale gray smoke upwards8 and watched it float towards the ceiling and come apart in wisps that were for a little while distinguishable from the air and then melted and were nothing. Then very slowly she lowered her eyes and gave me a cool, hard glance. "I don't understand you," she said. "I'm thankful as hell one of us kept his head the night before last. It's bad enough to have a bootlegger in my past. Why don't you for Christ's sake say something?" "How is she?" "Oh, she's all right, I suppose. Fast asleep. She always goes to sleep. What did you do to her?" "Not a thing. I came out of the house after seeing your father and she was out in front. She had been throwing darts9 at a target on a tree. I went down to speak to her because I had something that belonged to her. A little revolver Owen Taylor gave her once. She took it over to Brody's place the other evening, the evening he was killed. I had to take it away from her there. I didn't mention it, so perhaps you didn't know it." The black Sternwood eyes got large and empty. It was her turn not to say anything. "She was pleased to get her little gun back and she wanted me to teach her how to shoot and she wanted to show me the old oil wells down the hill where your family made some of its money. So we went down there and the place was pretty creepy, all rusted10 metal and old wood and silent wells and greasy11 scummy sumps. Maybe that upset her. I guess you've been there yourself. It was kind of eerie12." "Yes--it is." It was a small breathless voice now. "So we went in there and I stuck a can up in a bull wheel for her to pop at. She threw a wing-ding. Looked like a mild epileptic fit to me." "Yes." The same minute voice. "She has them once in a while. Is that all you wanted to see me about?" "I guess you still wouldn't tell me what Eddie Mars has on you." "Nothing at all. And I'm getting a little tired of that question," she said coldly. "Do you know a man named Canino?" She drew her fine black brows together in thought. "Vaguely13. I seem to remember the name." "Eddie Mars' trigger man. A tough hombre, they said. I guess he was. Without a little help from a lady I'd be where he is--in the morgue." "The ladies seem to--" She stopped dead and whitened. "I can't joke about it," she said simply. "I'm not joking, and if I seem to talk in circles, it just seems that way. It all ties together--everything. Geiger and his cute little blackmail14 tricks, Brody and his pictures, Eddie Mars and his roulette tables, Canino and the girl Rusty15 Regan didn't run away with. It all ties together." "I'm afraid I don't even know what you're talking about." "Suppose you did--it would be something like this. Geiger got his hooks into your sister, which isn't very difficult, and got some notes from her and tried to blackmail your father with them, in a nice way. Eddie Mars was behind Geiger, protecting him and using him for a cat's-paw. Your father sent for me instead of paying up, which showed he wasn't scared about anything. Eddie Mars wanted to know that. He had something on you and he wanted to know if he had it on the General too. If he had, he could collect a lot of money in a hurry. If not, he would have to wait until you got your share of the family fortune, and in the meantime be satisfied with whatever spare cash he could take away from you across the roulette table. Geiger was killed by Owen Taylor, who was in love with your silly little sister and didn't like the kind of games Geiger played with her. That didn't mean anything to Eddie. He was playing a deeper game than Geiger knew anything about, or than Brody knewanything about, or anybody except you and Eddie and a tough guy named Canino. Your husband disappeared and Eddie, knowing everybody knew there had been bad blood between him and Regan, hid his wife out at Realito and put Canino to guard her, so that it would look as if she had run away with Regan. He even got Regan's car into the garage of the place where Mona Mars had been living. But that sounds a little silly taken merely as an attempt to divert suspicion that Eddie had killed your husband or had him killed. It isn't so silly, really. He had another motive16. He was playing for a million or so. He knew where Regan had gone and why and he didn't want the police to have to find out. He wanted them to have an explanation of the disappearance17 that would keep them satisfied. Am I boring you?" "You tire me," she said in a dead, exhausted18 voice. "God, how you tire me!" "I'm sorry. I'm not just fooling around trying to be clever. Your father offered me a thousand dollars this morning to find Regan. That's a lot of money to me, but I can't do it." Her mouth jumped open. Her breath was suddenly strained and harsh. "Give me a cigarette," she said thickly. "Why?" The pulse in her throat had begun to throb19. I gave her a cigarette and lit a match and held it for her. She drew in a lungful of smoke and let it out raggedly20 and then the cigarette seemed to be forgotten between her fingers. She never drew on it again. "Well, the Missing Persons Bureau can't find him," I said. "It's not so easy. What they can't do it's not likely that I can do." "Oh." There was a shade of relief in her voice. "That's one reason. The Missing Persons people think he just disappeared on purpose, pulled down the curtain, as they call it. They don't think Eddie Mars did away with him." "Who said anybody did away with him?" "We're coming to it," I said. For a brief instant her face seemed to come to pieces, to become merely a set of features without form or control. Her mouth looked like the prelude21 to a scream. But only for an instant. The Sternwood blood had to be good for something more than her black eyes and her recklessness. I stood up and took the smoking cigarette from between her fingers and killed it in an ashtray22. Then I took Carmen's little gun out of my pocket and laid it carefully, with exaggerated care, on her white satin knee. I balanced it there, and stepped back with my head on one side like a window-dresser getting the effect of a new twist of a scarf around a dummy's neck. I sat down again. She didn't move. Her eyes came down millimeter by millimeter and looked at the gun. "It's harmless," I said. "All five chambers23 empty. She fired them all. She fired them all at me." The pulse jumped wildly in her throat. Her voice tried to say something and couldn't. She swallowed. "From a distance of five or six feet," I said. "Cute little thing, isn't she? Too bad I had loaded the gun with blanks." I grinned nastily. "I had a hunch24 about what she would do--if she got the chance." She brought her voice back from a long way off. "You're a horrible man," she said. "Horrible." "Yeah. You're her big sister. What are you going to do about it?" "You can't prove a word of it." "Can't prove what?" "That she fired at you. You said you were down there around the wells with her, alone. You can't prove a word of what you say." "Oh that," I said. "I wasn't thinking of trying. I was thinking of another time--when the shells in the little gun had bullets in them." Her eyes were pools of darkness, much emptier than darkness. "I was thinking of the day Regan disappeared," I said. "Late in the afternoon. When he took her down tothose old wells to teach her to shoot and put up a can somewhere and told her to pop at it and stood near her while she shot. And she didn't shoot at the can. She turned the gun and shot him, just the way she tried to shoot me today, and for the same reason." She moved a little and the gun slid off her knee and fell to the floor. It was one of the loudest sounds I ever heard. Her eyes were riveted25 on my face. Her voice was a stretched whisper of agony. "Carmen! Merciful God, Carmen! . . . Why?" "Do I really have to tell you why she shot at me?" "Yes." Her eyes were still terrible. "I'm--I'm afraid you do." "Night before last when I got home she was in my apartment. She'd kidded the manager into letting her in to wait for me. She was in my bed--naked. I threw her out on her ear. I guess maybe Regan did the same thing to her sometime. But you can't do that to Carmen." She drew her lips back and made a half-hearted attempt to lick them. It made her, for a brief instant, look like a frightened child. The lines of her cheeks sharpened and her hand went up slowly like an artificial hand worked by wires and its fingers closed slowly and stiffly around the white fur at her collar. They drew the fur tight against her throat. After that she just sat staring. "Money," she croaked26. "I suppose you want money." "How much money?" I tried not to sneer27. "Fifteen thousand dollars?" I nodded. "That would be about right. That would be the established fee. That was what he had in his pockets when she shot him. That would be what Mr. Canino got for disposing of the body when you went to Eddie Mars for help. But that would be small change to what Eddie expects to collect one of these days, wouldn't it?" "You son of a bitch!" she said. "Uh-huh. I'm a very smart guy. I haven't a feeling or a scruple29 in the world. All I have the itch28 for is money. I am so money greedy that for twenty-five bucks30 a day and expenses, mostly gasoline and whiskey, I do my thinking myself, what there is of it; I risk my whole future, the hatred31 of the cops and of Eddie Mars and his pals32. I dodge33 bullets and eat saps, and say thank you very much, if you have any more trouble, I hope you'll think of me, I'll just leave one of my cards in case anything comes up. I do all this for twenty-five bucks a day--and maybe just a little to protect what little pride a broken and sick old man has left in his blood, in the thought that his blood is not poison, and that although his two little girls are a trifle wild, as many nice girls are these days, they are not perverts34 or killers35. And that makes me a son of a bitch. All right. I don't care anything about that. I've been called that by people of all sizes and shapes, including your little sister. She called me worse than that for not getting into bed with her. I got five hundred dollars from your father, which I didn't ask for, but he can afford to give it to me. I can get another thousand for finding Mr. Rusty Regan, if I could find him. Now you offer me fifteen grand. That makes me a big shot. With fifteen grand I could own a home and a new car and four suits of clothes. I might even take a vacation without worrying about losing a case. That's fine. What are you offering it to me for? Can I go on being a son of a bitch, or do I have to become a gentleman, like that lush that passed out in his car the other night?" She was as silent as a stone woman. "All right," I went on heavily. "Will you take her away? Somewhere far off from here where they can handle her type, where they will keep guns and knives and fancy drinks away from her? Hell, she might even get herself cured, you know. It's been done." She got up and walked slowly to the windows. The drapes lay in heavy ivory folds beside her feet. She stood among the folds and looked out, towards the quiet darkish foothills. She stood motionless, almost blendinginto the drapes. Her hands hung loose at her sides. Utterly36 motionless hands. She turned and came back along the room and walked past me blindly. When she was behind me she caught her breath sharply and spoke37. "He's in the sump," she said. "A horrible decayed thing. I did it. I did just what you said. I went to Eddie Mars. She came home and told me about it, just like a child. She's not normal. I knew the police would get it all out of her. In a little while she would even brag38 about it. And if dad knew, he would call them instantly and tell them the whole story. And sometime in that night he would die. It's not his dying--it's what he would be thinking just before he died. Rusty wasn't a bad fellow. I didn't love him. He was all right, I guess. He just didn't mean anything to me, one way or another, alive or dead, compared with keeping it from dad." "So you let her run around loose," I said, "getting into other jams." "I was playing for time. Just for time. I played the wrong way, of course. I thought she might even forget it herself. I've heard they do forget what happens in those fits. Maybe she has forgotten it. I knew Eddie Mars would bleed me white, but I didn't care. I had to have help and I could only get it from somebody like him. . . . There have been times when I hardly believed it all myself. And other times when I had to get drunk quickly-whatever time of day it was. Awfully39 damn quickly." "You'll take her away," I said. "And do that awfully damn quickly." She still had her back to me. She said softly now: "What about you?" "Nothing about me. I'm leaving. I'll give you three days. If you're gone by then--okey. If you're not, out it comes. And don't think I don't mean that." She turned suddenly. "I don't know what to say to you. I don't know how to begin." "Yeah. Get her out of here and see that she's watched every minute. Promise?" "I promise. Eddie--" "Forget Eddie. I'll go see him after I get some rest. I'll handle Eddie." "He'll try to kill you." "Yeah," I said. "His best boy couldn't. I'll take a chance on the others. Does Norris know?" "He'll never tell." "I thought he knew." I went quickly away from her down the room and out and down the tiled staircase to the front hail. I didn't see anybody when I left. I found my hat alone this time. Outside, the bright gardens had a haunted look, as though small wild eyes were watching me from behind the bushes, as though the sunshine itself had a mysterious something in its light. I got into my car and drove off down the hill. What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied40 bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur41. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep. On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches42. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again.
The End
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1
extravagantly
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| adv.挥霍无度地 | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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pajamas
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| n.睡衣裤 | |
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copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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callous
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| adj.无情的，冷淡的，硬结的，起老茧的 | |
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slipper
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| n.拖鞋 | |
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upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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9
darts
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| n.掷飞镖游戏；飞镖( dart的名词复数 )；急驰，飞奔v.投掷，投射( dart的第三人称单数 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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rusted
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| v.（使）生锈( rust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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eerie
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| adj.怪诞的；奇异的；可怕的；胆怯的 | |
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13
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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blackmail
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| n.讹诈，敲诈，勒索，胁迫，恫吓 | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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raggedly
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| 破烂地，粗糙地 | |
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prelude
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| n.序言，前兆，序曲 | |
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ashtray
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| n.烟灰缸 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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24
hunch
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| n.预感，直觉 | |
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riveted
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| 铆接( rivet的过去式和过去分词 )； 把…固定住； 吸引； 引起某人的注意 | |
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croaked
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| v.呱呱地叫( croak的过去式和过去分词 )；用粗的声音说 | |
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sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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itch
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| n.痒，渴望，疥癣；vi.发痒，渴望 | |
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scruple
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| n./v.顾忌，迟疑 | |
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bucks
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| n.雄鹿( buck的名词复数 )；钱；（英国十九世纪初的）花花公子；（用于某些表达方式）责任v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的第三人称单数 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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pals
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| n.朋友( pal的名词复数 )；老兄；小子；（对男子的不友好的称呼）家伙 | |
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dodge
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| v.闪开，躲开，避开；n.妙计，诡计 | |
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perverts
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| n.性变态者( pervert的名词复数 )v.滥用( pervert的第三人称单数 )；腐蚀；败坏；使堕落 | |
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killers
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| 凶手( killer的名词复数 )； 消灭…者； 致命物； 极难的事 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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brag
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| v./n.吹牛，自夸；adj.第一流的 | |
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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canopied
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| adj. 遮有天篷的 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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42
scotches
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| n.伤口，刻痕( scotch的名词复数 )；阻止车轮滑动的木块v.阻止( scotch的第三人称单数 )；制止（车轮）转动；弄伤；镇压 | |
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