Farewell, My Lovely

The Indian and Marlowe drive well beyond the city into an area called Stillwood Heights. They pull into the driveway of a building made of “stucco and glass brick, raw and modernistic and yet not ugly and altogether a swell place for a psychic consultant to hang out his shingle. Nobody would be able to hear any screams” (146). Inside, the secretary that Marlowe had spoken with on the phone greets him at a desk: “She had sleek coiled hair and a dark, thin, wasted Asiatic face” (147). She was wearing many rings, but “her hands were dry and dark and not young and not fit for rings” (147).

Marlowe lays the hundred-dollar bill on her desk and says that he can’t accept the money until he finds out why Amthor wants to employ him. She takes him to an octagonal room “draped in black velvet from floor to ceiling, with a high remote black ceiling that may have been of velvet too” (148). In the middle of the room is a table with a “milk white globe” on it (148). Marlowe stands waiting until “an invisible door on the far side of the room slid open and a man stepped through and the door closed behind him” (148). It’s Amthor, and Marlowe notes that he has an almost ethereal appearance: “He might have been thirty-five or sixty-five. He was ageless” (149). To Marlowe, the man’s eyes were most concerning of all: “eyes without expression, without soul, eyes that could watch lions tear a man to pieces and never change, that could watch a man impaled and screaming in the hot sun with his eyelids cut off” (149).

Amthor tells Marlowe, “Please do not fidget. […] It breaks the waves, disturbs my concentration” (149). Marlowe makes a sarcastic comment, and Amthor says that he must have come here to find out what happened. Marlowe asks why he has employed suck a stinky man, referring to the Indian man sitting in the corner, keeping guard. Amthor says that the Indian is a “natural medium” (150).

Amthor says that he doesn’t know why Marriott had his card on him when he died, but that Marriott did seek his services on occasion. Marlowe says that he didn’t tell the cops about him; Amthor thinks that Marlowe is trying to blackmail him. Marlowe lies and tells Amthor that there was something written in invisible ink on the back of his card that was found on Marriott’s body. Then, the “lights went out. The room was as black as Carry Nation’s bonnet” (154). 

Marlowe immediately tries to go for his gun, but he’s too slow. The Indian man has him by the wrists and “[h]e twisted them from behind me fast and a knee like a corner stone went into my back. He bent me. I can be bent. I’m not the City Hall. He bent me” (155). Marlowe tries to scream, and nearly passes out. Amthor says to “[l]et him breathe—a little” (156). Amthor confiscates two of the marijuana cigarettes from his pocket; Marlowe confides that the third one is still in his office.

When he gets a chance, Marlowe punches Amthor in the face. Amthor’s nose gushes with blood, but he says, “I have visitors coming. I am so glad you hit me. It helps a great deal” (157). Marlowe stares at the light globe on the table and presumably passes out from his injuries. He says, “I think I went to sleep, just like that, with a bloody face on the table, and a thin beautiful devil with my gun in his hand watching me and smiling” (157). 

When Marlowe opens his eyes, he is being interrogated by two men that he later finds out are Bay City cops. The bigger cop, who Marlowe nicknames Hemingway, asks him if he was trying to blackmail Amthor. Marlowe doesn’t respond because his “throat felt as though it had been through a mangle. I reached up and felt it. That Indian. He had fingers like pieces of tool steel” (159). The cops escort Marlowe out of Amthor’s building.

Marlowe keeps asking about the Indian man and says that he wants to kill him because of what the man did to Marlowe. Marlowe figures that these cops have been bought by Amthor. They drive off the property, and the larger cop wonders why Marlowe keeps calling him Hemingway. He says because a Hemingway is a “guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin to believe it must be good” (164). The other cop’s name is Blane; Hemingway says that everyone knows him.

Hemingway pulls over in the middle of nowhere and tells Marlowe he has to walk home. Marlowe is about to get out of the car when “[t]he man in the back seat made a sudden flashing movement that I sensed rather than saw. A pool of darkness opened at my feet and was far, far deeper than the blackest night. I dived into it. It had no bottom” (165). 

When Marlowe opens his eyes, he’s in a room that seems smoky:

The smoke hung straight up in the air, in thick lines, straight up and down like a curtain of small clear beads. Two windows seemed to be open in an end wall, but the smoke didn’t move. I had never seen the room before. There were bars across the windows. I was dull, without thought. I felt as if I had slept for a year. But the smoke bothered me (165).

Worried by the smoke, he yells “Fire!” and a man in a white coat runs into the room. He asks Marlowe if he wants “more strait jacket” (166). Marlowe asks him where he is and how he got here, but the man won’t answer him. Instead, he leaves and locks Marlowe inside the room.

Marlowe tries to piece together where he is; he’s wearing “[c]otton flannel pajamas. The kind they have in the County Hospital” (167). He looks down at his arms and sees needle holes and bruises. He’s sees a bottle of whiskey on the table and takes a drink, but it tastes weird: “Time passed—an agony of nausea and staggering and dazedness and clinging to the edge of the bowl and making animal sounds for help” (169). He realizes that he has been maliciously injected with “dope to keep me quiet. Perhaps scopolamine too, to make me talk. Too much time for dope. I was having the French fits coming out of it. Some do, some don’t. It all depends how you are put together. Dope” (170). He realizes that’s why he’s seeing smoke: it’s just a hallucinatory effect of the drugs. Marlowe lies on the bed and tries to gather himself for an escape.

Marlowe digs the spring out of the mattress, yells “fire!” then waits for the nurse to rush in (172). Once he comes in, Marlowe “giggled and socked him. I laid the coil spring on the side of his head and stumbled forward. I followed him down to his knees. I hit him twice more. He made a moaning sound. I took the sap out of his limp hand. He whined” (173). He gets the key from the nurse and takes back the money that Marlowe presumes the man stole from his wallet. He gets his clothes and gun and leaves the room, locking the man inside.

Marlowe slinks down the hallway and realizes that he’s inside

[an] old house, built as once they built them and don’t build them any more. Standing probably on a quiet street with a rose arbor at the side and plenty of flowers in front. Gracious and cool and quiet in the bright California sun. And inside it who cares, but don’t let them scream too loud (174).

He’s about to walk out of the building when he hears a cough behind a “half-open door along the other hallway at the end” (174). Marlowe can’t just leave without finding out why he’s there, so he inconspicuously peeks his head into the room to see Moose Malloy reading a paper on a bed. He is about to leave again, but instead steps into another room.

The room is an office, and a presumed doctor named Sonderborg is sitting at his desk. Sonderborg reaches for a buzzer, but Marlowe says, “The buzzer […] won’t buy you anything tonight. I put your tough boy to sleep” (177). He says that Marlowe is a “very sick man” and needs to go back to his room (177). Marlowe ignores him and asks for some whiskey and makes Sonderborg drink some too, in order to make sure it hasn’t been drugged.

As they’re drinking, he says to Sonderborg:

I had a nightmare […] Silly idea. I dreamed I was tied to a cot and shot full of dope and locked in a barred room. I got very weak. I slept. I had no food. I was a sick man. I was knocked on the head and brought into a place where they did that to me. They took a lot of trouble. I’m not that important (178).

Of course, this isn’t a dream, this is what actually happened to Marlowe. Sonderborg doesn’t respond to the accusation.

Marlowe demands to know how he got to the house. Sonderborg eventually says that he was brought in by Bay City officers. They have another drink and the doctor says that Marlowe is “suffering from narcotic poisoning. […] You very nearly died. I had to give you digitalis three times. […] If you leave my hospital in this condition, you will get into serious trouble” (181).

Marlowe leaves and goes to Anne’s house. She tells him that he looks like “Hamlet’s father!” (184). 

Marlowe notes that Anne’s living room has nothing “womanish” in it except a mirror (184). She says, “I thought you were drunk. […] I thought you had to be drunk before you came to see me. I thought you had been out with that blonde. I thought—I don’t know what I thought” (185).

He tells her what happened to him, they share drinks, and they theorize about what actually happened to Marriott, and his connection to Amthor. She asks him to stay the night, but he declines. She gets mad at him, and he goes home: “I undressed and went to bed. I had nightmares and woke out of them sweating. But in the morning I was a well man again” (190).

Marlowe wakes up and sits:

on the side of [his] bed in [his] pajamas, thinking about getting up, but not yet committed. I didn’t feel very well, but I didn’t feel as sick as I ought to, not as sick as I would feel if I had a salaried job. My head hurt and felt large and hot and my tongue was dry and had gravel on it and my throat was stiff and my jaw was not untender. But I had had worse mornings (191).

Randall comes over, and Marlowe tells him about what happened. At first, Randall is mad that Marlowe has seemingly been keeping evidence from him, but then they decide to work together a bit and visit Mrs. Florian to question her about Velma. Randall agrees with Marlowe that Dr. Sonderborg is “probably a dope peddler” (202). 

Before going to Mrs. Florian’s, Randall and Marlowe stop by to see her neighbor, “Old Nosey” (204). They question her about whether Mrs. Florian received her registered letter this month, and she says no. It’s true that she didn’t get the letter, but the neighbor is lying about other details. Marlowe plays bad cop to get her to confess, but she runs away crying and he feels bad. He says to Randall, “Next time you play the tough part. I don’t like being rough with old ladies—even if they are lying gossips” (208).

They go over to Mrs. Florian’s and knock on the door, but she doesn’t answer. They let themselves in, and “[f]lies buzzed against the closed window of the kitchen. The place reeked” (210). They walk straight to her bedroom to find her lying “diagonally across the bed, in a rumpled cotton house dress, with her head close to one end of the footboard. The corner post of the bed was smeared darkly with something the flies liked. She had been dead long enough” (211).