Black Mask (Vol. 29, No. 3 — January 1947)

Such high-class trade I get in my shabby office. Was it my reputation? The penuriousness of my clients? What it was in this case, I didn’t find out until later. Anyway, I decided that I would go and see this Rodney Carlton, first.

Downstairs, I stood on the curb a minute, watching a kid punt a football. It kept sliding off his foot wrong — he wasn’t getting directly behind the ball. Well, he had a lot of years ahead of him.

I walked up two blocks, to where the Dusy was parked. I started her elegant motor, and headed her east.

The very-near-east, where the rooming houses are, I passed through. The upper-east, where the fine apartments are, I also passed through. In the far-upper-east, the neighborhood can’t make up its mind. There are some new apartments, and some fine old homes. There are some cottages, new and inexpensive, but pleasant and in good taste.

This Rodney Carlton’s address was one of the cottages. A low white place, with red shutters, with a red door. With a man in the front yard.

The man had a golf club in his hands. It looked like a nine iron. He was trying to chip some balls he had into a washtub in the middle of the yard. He’d play each shot carefully and easily, with fine form, but they were all short.

“More wrist,” I said. “You’re not getting enough wrist into them.”

He looked up at me and out at the car. He studied me. Then: “You can’t be a collector, not with a Duesenberg. Are you selling insur— Who the hell are you. anyway?”

I shook my head. “My name is Jones, Mortimer Jones. I’m looking for a girl named Flame Harlin.”

He stood frozen a moment, a thin, good-looking young man with dark hair, with apprehension in his dark blue eyes. “Flame — she’s missing? You — expected to find her here?” He was staring now, and his voice roughened. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“I’m a private investigator,” I told him quietly. “Miss Townsbury has hired me to locate Miss Harlin, whom she has reason to suspect is missing.” What a hell of a sentence that was.

He was still staring. “That old battle-axe hired you? Why should she care? She doesn’t give a damn for Flame, either way.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” I said. “I thought, perhaps, you—”

“Come on in,” he said, and started for the door. I followed.

Rodney Carlton indicated a chair, and took one himself. He said: “Miss Harlin and I were engaged, at one time, you understand. But I haven’t seen her for a month. How long has she been — been missing?”

“A week,” I said, “at the least. I’ll know more later.” I told him about the papers and the milk, about Miss Townsbury’s phone calls and her letter.

When I had finished, he was thoughtful. He was considering something, I could tell. Finally, he said: “I’ve—” He was blushing. “I’ve a key to — to Miss Harlin’s apartment, if—” He paused. “Could I go along, if we took a look in there?”

“I don’t see why not,” I said. “It’s just as illegal for two to enter as for one. I’d be breaking the law, either way.”

He rose. “I guess you private detectives don’t worry much about breaking the law. I’ll get a coat.”

The movies, I thought. It’s the movies that give people those kinds of ideas about us.

While he went to get his coat, I went quietly on my rubber heels to the desk. He was a poet, I saw. There was a half-bom child of his mood this moment in the typewriter. I read: Deep, where the ground is cold.

Deep, where the sun never shines.

Deep and cold and all alone.

Bury them,

Bury them deep.

Then he was standing beside me, blushing again. “Bad?” he asked.

“I’m no judge,” I said.

“I have a small income,” he explained. “Thank God I don’t need to depend on that stuff for a living.”

“I’ve seen worse,” I said, “in print,” and hoped he wouldn’t ask me where

When we went out again, the sun was shining, and what had started as an early fall day was now a late summer day. Bury them, bury them deep... It stuck with me, for some reason.

The upper east side was where Miss Harlin lived. In a small and neat four-apartment building of stone and frame on a quiet, elm-shaded street. Her apartment was on the second floor.

I saw the papers, there. I pawed through them, and discovered that the earliest was eight days old. You’d think the paper boy would— But that was neither here nor there.

Eight days, then... Rodney Carlton handed me his key, and I fitted it, and the door swung open with a slight squeak.

The sunshine was slanting through the tall windows in the high living room. It was an expensively furnished, spacious and definitely feminine apartment — off-white and pastels the basic motif.

There was a faint and lovely fragrance haunting the air.

Everything was in order, everything shipshape. I asked him: “Did she have a maid? Wouldn’t the maid bring in the milk and the papers and pick up the mail downstairs?”