But it isn't as if he had to finish it for the rent money. I don't think that is quite enough reasons" "What sort of guy is he sober?" She smiled. "Well, I'm rather prejudiced. I think he is a very nice guy indeed." "And how is he drunk?" "Horrible. Bright and hard and cruel.

He thinks he is being witty when he is only being nasty." "You left out violent." She raised her tawny eyebrows. "just once, Mr. Marlowe. And too much has been made of that. I'd never have told Howard Spencer. Roger told him himself." I got up and walked around in the room. It was going to be a hot day. It already was hot. I turned the blinds on one of the windows to keep the sun out. Then I gave it to her straight. "I looked him up in Who's Who yesterday afternoon. He's forty-two years old, yours is his only marriage, no children. His people are New Englanders, he went to Andover and Princeton.

He has a war record and a good one. He has written twelve of these fat sex-and-swordplay historical novels and every damn one of them has been on the bestseller lists. He must have made plenty of the folding. If he had fallen out of love with his wife, he sounds like the type who would say so and get a divorce. If he was haring around with another woman, you would probably know about it, and anyway he wouldn't have to get drunk just to prove he felt bad. If you've been married five years, then he was thirty-seven when that happened. I'd say he knew most of what there is to know about women by that time. I say most, because nobody ever knows all of it." I stopped and  at me. I wasn't hurting her feelings. I went on. "Howard Spencer suggested—on what grounds I have no idea—that what's the matter with Roger Wade is something that happened a long time ago before you were married and that it has caught up with him now, and is hitting him harder than he can take. Spencer thought of blackmail. Would you know?" She shook her head slowly. "If you mean would I know if Roger had been paying out a lot of money to someone—no, I wouldn't know that a police shieldcould hold me upside down and drainmy gutschange your mind .