Free Black money by Ross MacDonald Page B

bourbon. The bartender wouldn't accept my dollar.

    "Sorry, no cash. Are you a member, sir?"

    "I'm Peter Jamieson's guest."

    "I'll put it on his bill, sir."

    Dr Sylvester turned and raised his black eyebrows at me. He used them so conspicuously that they seemed to be his main sense organs, distracting attention from his hard bright eyes.

    "Jamieson senior or junior?"

    "I know them both. I noticed you were talking to the young one."

    "Yes?"

    I told him my name and trade. "Peter hired me to look into this business of his ex-fiancée."

    "I was wondering how you got in here."

    He wasn't trying to insult me, exactly, just letting me know my place in his scheme of things. "Didn't I see you at the Fablon's house this noon?"

    "Yes. I understand you were Virginia Fablon's employer at one time."

    "That's true."

    "What do you think about her marriage?"

    I had succeeded in interesting him. "Good Lord, did she marry the fellow?"

    "So she told me. They were married on Saturday."

    "You've talked to her?"

    "An hour or so ago. I couldn't figure out what was going on in her mind. Of course the circumstances weren't normal, either. But she seemed to be living out some kind of romantic dream."

    "Most women are," he said dryly. "Did you see him?"

    "I talked to them together at his house."

    "I've never met him myself," Sylvester said. "I've seen him around here, of course, at a distance. What did you make of him?"

    "He's a very intelligent man, highly educated, with a good deal of force He seems to have Virginia pretty well dominated."

    "It won't last," Sylvester said. "You don't know the young lady. She has a lot of personal force of her own."

    He added wryly: "I've served in loco parentis to her since her father died, and it hasn't always been easy. Virginia likes to make up her own mind."

    "About men?"

    "There haven't been any men in her life, not lately. That's one of the problems she's had. Ever since her father's death she's done nothing but work and study French. You'd think her life was nothing but a memorial to Roy. Then a few weeks ago, as you might expect, the whole thing broke down. She dropped her studies, when she was within easy shooting distance of her degree, and went hog-wild for this Martel."

    He sipped his drink. "It's a disturbing picture."

    "Are you her doctor?"

    "I was until quite recently. Frankly, we had a disagreement about the - the wisdom of her course. I thought it best to refer her to another doctor. Why do you ask?"

    "I don't like the emotional risk she's taking. She's managed to convince herself that she's crazy about Martel, and she's perched way out on a limb. It could be brutal for her if the limb gets sawed off."

    "I tried to tell her that," Sylvester said. "You think he's a phony, eh?"

    "He has to be at least partly phony. I've had one Washington reference checked, and it didn't pan out. There were other things I won't go into."

    The rat, the blood on his heel, the gun peering out of his hand at Harry Hendricks.

    "What can I do about it? She's got the bit in her teeth, and she running with it."

    Sylvester paused, and finished his drink.

    "You want another, doctor?" the bartender asked.

    "No thanks, Marco. One thing I've learned in twenty years of practicing medicine," he said to me: "you have to let people make their own mistakes. Sooner or later they come around to reason. The men with emphysema will eventually give up smoking. The women with chronic alcoholism will go on the wagon. And the girls with bad cases of romanticism turn into realists. Like my dear wife here."

    A big woman in a kind of mantilla had come up behind us. Her chest gleamed like mother-of-pearl through black lace. She had bouffant yellow hair which made her as tall as I was when I stood up. Her mouth was discontented.

    "What about me?" she said. "I love to be talked about by men."

    "I was saying that you were a realist, Audrey. That women start out being romantic and end up realistic every time."

    "Men