The Big Sleep Read Online Free Page A

finger a stray, but not very stray, tendril of softly glowing hair. Her smile was tentative, but could be persuaded to be nice.
    “Was it something?” she enquired.
    I had my horn-rimmed sunglasses on. I put my voice high and let a bird twitter in it. “Would you happen to have a Ben Hur 1860?”
    She didn’t say: “Huh?” but she wanted to. She smiled bleakly. “A first edition?”
    “Third,” I said. “The one with the erratum on page 116.”
    “I’m afraid not—at the moment.”
    “How about a Chevalier Audubon 1840—the full set, of course?”
    “Er—not at the moment,” she purred harshly. Her smile was now hanging by its teeth and eyebrows and wondering what it would hit when it dropped.
    “You
do
sell books?” I said in my polite falsetto.
    She looked me over. No smile now. Eyes medium to hard. Pose very straight and stiff. She waved silver fingernails at the glassed-in shelves. “What do they look like—grapefruit?” she enquired tartly.
    “Oh, that sort of thing hardly interests me, you know. Probably has duplicate sets of steel engravings, tuppence colored and a penny plain. The usual vulgarity. No. I’m sorry. No.”
    “I see.” She tried to jack the smile back up on her face. She was as sore as an alderman with the mumps. “Perhaps Mr. Geiger—but he’s not in at the moment.” Her eyes studied me carefully. She knew as much about rare books as I knew about handling a flea circus.
    “He might be in later?”
    “I’m afraid not until late.”
    “Too bad,” I said. “Ah, too bad. I’ll sit down and smoke a cigarette in one of these charming chairs. I have rather a blank afternoon. Nothing to think about but my trigonometry lesson.”
    “Yes,” she said. “Ye-es, of course.”
    I stretched out in one and lit a cigarette with the round nickel lighter on the smoking stand. She still stood, holding her lower lip with her teeth, her eyes vaguely troubled. She nodded at last, turned slowly and walked back to her little desk in the corner. From behind the lamp she stared at me. I crossed my ankles and yawned. Her silver nails went out to the cradle phone on the desk, didn’t touch it, dropped and began to tap on the desk.
    Silence for about five minutes. The door opened and a tall hungry-looking bird with a cane and a big nose came in neatly, shut the door behind him against the pressure of the door closer, marched over to the corner and placed a wrapped parcel on the desk. He took a pinseal wallet with gold corners from his pocket and showed the blonde something. She pressed a button on the desk. The tall bird went to the door in the paneled partition and opened it barely enough to slip through.
    I finished my cigarette and lit another. The minutes dragged by. Horns tooted and grunted on the boulevard. A big red interurban car grumbled past. A traffic light gonged. The blonde leaned on her elbow and cupped a hand over her eyes and stared at me behind it. The partition door opened and the tall bird with the cane slid out. He had another wrapped parcel, the shape of a large book. He went over to the desk and paid money. He left as he had come, walking on the balls of his feet, breathing with his mouth open, giving me a sharp side glance as he passed.
    I got to my feet, tipped my hat to the blonde and went out after him. He walked west, swinging his cane in a small tight arc just above his right shoe. He was easy to follow. His coat was cut from a rather loud piece of horse robe with shoulders so wide that his neck stuck up out of it like a celery stalk and his head wobbled on it as he walked. We went a block and a half. At the Highland Avenue traffic signal I pulled up beside him and let him see me. He gave me a casual, then a suddenly sharpened side glance, and quickly turned away. We crossed Highland with the green light and made another block. He stretched his long legs and had twenty yards on me at the corner. He turned right. A hundred feet up the hill he stopped and hooked his