The door creaked behind me. The girl who appeared in the doorway wore a starched white uniform. Her face had a little starch in it, too, though not enough to spoil her good looks entirely. Her black hair was drawn back severely from her forehead.
“May I ask what you’re doing here?”
“You may ask. I’m looking for Mr. Western.”
“Really? Have you tried looking behind the pictures?”
“Does he spend much time there?”
“No, and another thing he doesn’t do – he doesn’t receive visitors in his studio when he isn’t here himself.”
“Sorry. The door was open. I walked in.”
“You can reverse the process.”
“Just a minute. Hugh isn’t sick?”
She glanced down at her white uniform and shook her head.
“Are you a friend of his?” I said.
“I try to be.” She smiled slightly. “It isn’t always easy, with a sib. I’m his sister.”
“Not the one he was always talking about?”
“I’m the only one he has.”
I reached back into my mental grab bag of war souvenirs. “Mary. The name was Mary.”
“It still is Mary. Are you a friend of Hugh’s?”
“I guess I qualify. I used to be.”
“When?” The question was brusque. I got the impression she didn’t approve of Hugh’s friends, or some of them.
“In the Philippines. He was attached to my group as a combat artist. The name is Archer, by the way. Lew Archer.”
“Oh. Of course.”
Her disapproval didn’t extend to me, at least not yet. She gave me her hand. It was cool and firm, and went with her steady gaze. I said:
“Hugh gave me the wrong impression of you. I thought you were still a kid in school.”
“That was four years ago, remember. People grow up in four years. Anyway, some of them do.”
She was a very serious girl for her age. I changed the subject.
“I saw the announcement of his show in the L.A. papers. I’m driving through to San Francisco, and I thought I’d look him up.”
“I know he’ll be glad to see you. I’ll go and wake him. He keeps the most dreadful hours. Sit down, won’t you, Mr. Archer?”
I had been standing with my back to the bearded nude, more or less consciously shielding her from it. When I moved aside and she saw it, she didn’t turn a hair.
“What next?” was all she said.
But I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to Hugh Western’s sense of humor. I looked around the room for something that might explain the ugly sketch.
It was a typical working artist’s studio. The tables and benches were cluttered with things that are used to make pictures: palettes and daubed sheets of glass, sketch pads, scratch-boards, bleeding tubes of paint. Pictures in half a dozen mediums and half a dozen stages of completion hung or leaned against the burlap-covered walls. Some of them looked wild and queer to me, but none so wild and queer as the sketch on the easel.
There was one puzzling thing in the room, besides the pictures. The wooden doorframe was scarred with a row of deep round indentations, four of them. They were new, and about on a level with my eyes. They looked as if an incredible fist had struck the wood a superhuman blow.
“He isn’t in his room,” the girl said from the doorway. Her voice was very carefully controlled.
“Maybe he got up early.”
“His bed hasn’t been slept in. He’s been out all night.”
“I wouldn’t worry. He’s an adult after all.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t always act like one.” Some feeling buzzed under her calm tone. I couldn’t tell if it was fear or anger. “He’s twelve years older than I am, and still a boy at heart. A middle-aging boy.”
“I know what you mean. I was his unofficial keeper for a while. I guess he’s a genius, or pretty close to it, but he needs somebody to tell him to come in out of the rain.”
“Thank you for informing me. I didn’t know.”
“Now don’t get mad at me.”
“I’m sorry. I suppose I’m a little upset.”
“Has he been giving you a bad time?”
“Not really. Not lately, that is. He’s come down to earth since he got engaged to Alice. But he still makes the weirdest friends. He can tell a fake Van Gogh with his eyes shut, literally, but he’s got no discrimination about people at all.”
“You wouldn’t be talking about me? Or am I having ideas of reference?”
“No.” She smiled again. I liked her smile. “I guess I actedterribly suspicious when I walked in on you. Some pretty dubious characters come to see him.”
“Anyone in particular?” I said it lightly. Just above her head I could see the giant fist-mark on the doorframe.
Before she could answer, a siren bayed in the distance. She cocked her head. “Ten to one it’s for me.”
“Police?”
“Ambulance. The police sirens have a different tone. I’m an X-ray technician at the hospital, so I’ve learned to listen for the ambulance. And I’m on call this morning.” I followed her into the hall. “Hugh’s show opens tonight. He’s bound to come back for that.”
She turned at the opposite door, tier face brightening. “You know, he may have spent the night working in the gallery. He’s awfully fussy about how his pictures are hung.”
“Why don’t I phone the gallery?”
“There’s never anybody in the office till nine.” She looked at her unfeminine steel wristwatch. “It’s twenty to.”
“When did you last see him?”
“At dinner last night. We ate early. He went back to the gallery after dinner. He said he was only going to work a couple of hours.”
“And you stayed here?”
“Until about eight, when I was called to the hospital. I didn’t get home until quite late, and I thought he was in bed.” She looked at me uncertainly, with a little wrinkle of doubt between her straight eyebrows. “Could you be cross-questioning me?”
“Sorry. It’s my occupational disease.”
“What do you do in real life?”
“Isn’t this real?”
“I mean now you’re out of the army. Are you a lawyer?”
“A private detective.”
“Oh. I see.” The wrinkle between her eyebrows deepened. I wondered what she’d been reading.
“But I’m on vacation.” I hoped.
A phone burred behind her apartment door. She went to answer it, and came back wearing a coat. “It was for me. Somebody fell out of a loquat tree and broke a leg. You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Archer.”
“Wait a second. If you’ll tell me where the art gallery is, I’ll see if Hugh’s there now.”
“Of course, you don’t know San Marcos.”
She led me to the French windows at the rear end of the hall. They opened on a blacktop parking space which was overshadowed on the far side by a large stucco building, the shape of a flattened cube. Outside the windows was a balcony from which a concrete staircase slanted down to the parking lot. She stepped outside and pointed to the stucco cube:
“That’s the gallery. It’s no problem to find, is it? You can take a shortcut down the alley to the front.”
A tall young man in a black leotard was polishing a red convertible in the parking lot. He struck a pose, in the fifth position, and waved his hand:
“Bonjour, Marie.”
“Bonjour, my phony Frenchman.” There was an edge of contempt on her good humor. “Have you seen Hugh this morning?”
“Not I. Is the prodigal missing again?”
“I wouldn’t say missing–”
“I was wondering where your car was. It’s not in the garage.” His voice was much too musical.
“Who’s he?” I asked her in an undertone.
“Hilary Todd. He runs the art shop downstairs. If the car’s gone, Hugh can’t be at the gallery. I’ll have to take a taxi to the hospital.”