Read Online The High Window by Raymond Chandler - Free Book Online Page A

suspicious circumstances. You would want to buy it, if you could get it cheap and had the money to handle it. But you would want to know where it came from. And even if you were quite sure it was stolen, you could still buy it, if you could get it cheap enough.”
    “Oh, I could, could I?” He looked amused, but not in a large way.
    “Sure you could—if you are a reputable dealer. I’ll assume you are. By buying the coin—cheap—you would be protecting the owner or his insurance carrier from complete loss. They’d be glad to pay you back your outlay. It’s done all the time.”
    “Then the Murdock Brasher has been stolen,” he said abruptly.
    “Don’t quote me,” I said. “It’s a secret.”
    He almost picked his nose this time. He just caught himself. He picked a hair out of one nostril instead, with a quick jerk and a wince. He held it up and looked at it. Looking at me past it he said:
    “And how much will your principal pay for the return of the coin?”
    I leaned over the desk and gave him my shady leer. “One grand. What did you pay?”
    “I think you are a very smart young man,” he said. Then he screwed his face up and his chin wobbled and his chest began to bounce in and out and a sound came out of him like a convalescent rooster learning to crow again after a long illness.
    He was laughing.
    It stopped after a while. His face came all smooth again and his eyes opened, black and sharp and shrewd.
    “Eight hundred dollars,” he said. “Eight hundred dollars for an uncirculated specimen of the Brasher Doubloon.” He chortled.
    “Fine. Got it with you? That leaves you two hundred. Fair enough. A quick turnover, a reasonable profit and no trouble for anybody.”
    “It is not in my office,” he said. “Do you take me for a fool?” He reached an ancient silver watch out of his vest on a black fob. He screwed up his eyes to look at it. “Let us say eleven in the morning,” he said. “Come back with your money. The coin may or may not be here, but if I am satisfied with your behavior, I will arrange matters.”
    “That is satisfactory,” I said, and stood up. “I have to get the money anyhow.”
    “Have it in used bills,” he said almost dreamily. “Used twenties will do. An occasional fifty will do no harm.”
    I grinned and started for the door. Halfway there I turned around and went back to lean both hands on the desk and push my face over it.
    “What did she look like?”
    He looked blank.
    “The girl that sold you the coin.”
    He looked blanker.
    “Okay,” I said. “It wasn’t a girl. She had help. It was a man. What did the man look like?”
    He pursed his lips and made another steeple with his fingers. “He was a middle-aged man, heavy set, about five feet seven inches tall and weighing around one hundred and seventy pounds. He said his name was Smith. He wore a blue suit, black shoes, a green tie and shirt, no hat. There was a brown bordered handkerchief in his outer pocket. His hair was dark brown sprinkled with gray. There was a bald patch about the size of a dollar on the crown of his head and a scar about two inches long running down the side of his jaw. On the left side, I think. Yes, on the left side.”
    “Not bad,” I said. “What about the hole in his right sock?”
    “I omitted to take his shoes off.”
    “Darn careless of you,” I said.
    He didn’t say anything. We just stared at each other, half curious, half hostile, like new neighbors. Then suddenly he went into his laugh again.
    The five dollar bill I had given him was still lying on his side of the desk. I flicked a hand across and took it.
    “You won’t want this now,” I said. “Since we started talking in thousands.”
    He stopped laughing very suddenly. Then he shrugged.
    “At eleven A.M. ,” he said. “And no tricks, Mr. Marlowe. Don’t think I don’t know how to protect myself.”
    “I hope you do,” I said, “because what you are handling is dynamite.”
    I left him and tramped