Read Online Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler - Free Book Online Page A

forty-four. I didn’t even fire.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “O.K., you don’t believe me,” I said. “What did you kill Arbogast for? There was nothing fussy about that killing. He was just shot at his desk, three times with a twenty-two and he fell down on the floor. What did he ever do to your filthy little brother?”
    He jerked the gun up, but his smile held. “You got guts,” he said. “Who is this here Arbogast?”
    I told him. I told him slowly and carefully, in detail. I told him a lot of things. And he began in some vague way to look worried. His eyes flickered at me, away, back again, restlessly, like a hummingbird.
    “I don’t know any party named Arbogast, pal,” he said slowly. “Never heard of him. And I ain’t shot any fat guys today.”
    “You killed him,” I said. “And you killed young Jeeter—in the girl’s apartment at the El Milano. He’s lying there dead right now. You’re working for Marty Estel. He’s going to be awfully damn sorry about that kill. Go ahead and make it three in a row.”
    His face froze. The smile went away at last. His whole face looked waxy now. He opened his mouth and breathed through it, and his breath made a restless worrying sound. I could see the faint glitter of sweat on his forehead, and I could feel the cold from the evaporation of sweat on mine.
    Waxnose said very gently: “I ain’t killed anybody at all, friend. Not anybody. I wasn’t hired to kill people. Until Frisky stopped that slug I didn’t have no such ideas. That’s straight.”
    I tried not to stare at the metal tube on the end of the Woodsman.
    A flame flickered at the back of his eyes, a small, weak, smoky flame. It seemed to grow larger and clearer. He looked down at the floor between his feet. I looked around at the light switch, but it was too far away. He looked up again. Very slowly he began to unscrew the silencer. He had it loose in his hand. He dropped it back into his pocket, stood up, holding the two guns, one in each hand. Then he had another idea. He sat down again, took all the shells out of the Luger quickly and threw it on the floor after them.
    He came towards me softly across the room. “I guess this is your lucky day,” he said. “I got to go a place and see a guy.”
    “I knew all along it was my lucky day. I’ve been feeling so good.”
    He moved delicately around me to the door and opened it a foot and started through the narrow opening, smiling again.
    “I gotta see a guy,” he said very gently, and his tongue moved along his lips.
    “Not yet,” I said, and jumped.
    His gun hand was at the edge of the door, almost beyond the edge. I hit the door hard and he couldn’t bring it in quickly enough. He couldn’t get out of the way. I pinned him in the doorway, and used all the strength I had. It was a crazy thing. He had given me a break and all I had to do was to stand still and let him go. But I had a guy to see too—and I wanted to see him first.
    Waxnose leered at me. He grunted. He fought with his hand beyond the door edge. I shifted and hit his jaw with all I had. It was enough. He went limp. I hit him again. His head bounced against the wood. I heard a light thud beyond the door edge. I hit him a third time. I never hit anything any harder.
    I took my weight back from the door then and he slid towards me, blank-eyed, rubber-kneed and I caught him and twisted his empty hands behind him and let him fall. I stood over him panting. I went to the door. His Woodsman lay almost on the sill. I picked it up, dropped it into my pocket—not the pocket that held Miss Huntress’ gun. He hadn’t even found that.
    There he lay on the floor. He was thin, he had no weight, but I panted just the same. In a little while his eyes flickered open and looked up at me.
    “Greedy guy,” he whispered wearily. “Why did I ever leave Saint Looey?”
    I snapped handcuffs on his wrists and pulled him by the shoulders into the dressing room and tied his ankles with a piece of rope. I