Lay Her Among The Lilies

notes, and then, leaving the file where it was, tramped over to the clerk who was watching me

with lazy curiosity.

“Can you get someone to put that file back?” I asked, propping myself up against the

counter. “I’m not as strong as I thought I was.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Malloy.”

“Another thing: who’s Dr. John Bewley, and where does he live?”

“He has a little place on Skyline Avenue,” the clerk told me. “Don’t go to him if you want a

good doctor.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

The clerk lifted tired shoulders.

“Just old. Fifty years ago he might have been all right. A horse-and-buggy doctor. I guess

he thinks trepanning is something to do with opening a can of beans.”

“Well, isn’t it?”

The clerk laughed.

“Depends on whose head we’re talking about.”

“Yeah. So he’s just an old washed-up croaker, huh?”

“That describes him. Still, he’s not doing any harm. I don’t suppose he has more than a

dozen patients now.” He scratched the side of his ear and looked owlishly at me. “Working

on something?”

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LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES

“I never work,” I said. “See you some time. So long.”

I went down the steps into the hard sunlight, slowly and thoughtfully. A girl worth a

million dies suddenly and they call in an old horse-and-buggy man. Not quite the millionaire

touch. One would have expected a fleet of the most expensive medicine men in town to have

been in on a kill as important as hers.

I crawled into the Buick and trod on the starter. Parked against the traffic, across the way,

was an olive-green Dodge limousine. Seated behind the wheel was a man in a fawn-coloured

hat, around which was a plaited cord. He was reading a newspaper. I wouldn’t have noticed

him or the car if he hadn’t looked up suddenly and, seeing me, hastily tossed the newspaper

on to the back seat and started his engine. Then I did look at him, wondering why he had so

suddenly lost interest in his paper. He seemed a big man with shoulders about as wide as a

barn door. His head sat squarely on his shoulders without any sign of a neck. He wore a

pencil-lined black moustache and his eyes were hooded. His nose and one ear had been hit

very hard at one time and had never fully recovered. He looked the kind of tough you see so

often in a Warner Brothers’ tough movie: the kind who make a drop-cloth for Humphrey

Bogart.

I steered the Buick into the stream of traffic and drove East, up Centre Avenue, not

hurrying, and keeping one eye on the driving-mirror.

The Dodge forced itself against the West-going traffic, did a U-turn while horns honked

and drivers cursed and came after me. I wouldn’t have believed it possible for anyone to have

done that on Centre Avenue and get away with it, but apparently the cops were either asleep

or it was too hot to bother.

At Westwood Avenue intersection I again looked into the mirror. The Dodge was right

there on my tail. I could see the driver lounging behind the wheel, a cheroot gripped between

his teeth, one elbow and arm on the rolled-down window. I pulled ahead so I could read his

registration number, and committed it to memory. If he was tailing me he was making a very

bad job of it. I put on speed on Hollywood Avenue and went to the top at sixty-five. The

Dodge, after a moment’s hesitation, jumped forward and roared behind me. At Foothills

Boulevard I swung to the kerb and pulled up sharply. The Dodge went by. The driver didn’t

look in my direction. He went on towards the Los Angeles and San Francisco Highway.

I wrote down the registration on the old envelope along with Doc Bewley’s name and

stowed it carefully away in my hip pocket. Then I started the Buick rolling again and drove

21

LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES

down Skyline Avenue. Halfway down I spotted a brass plate glittering in the sun. It was

attached to a low, wooden gate which guarded a small garden and a double-fronted bungalow

of Canadian pine wood. A modest, quiet little place; almost a slum beside the other ultramodern

houses on either side of it.

I pulled up and leaned out of the window. But, at that distance it was impossible to read the

worn engraving on the plate. I got out of the car and had a closer look. Even then it wasn’t

easy to decipher, but I made out enough to tell me this was Dr. John Bewley’s residence.

As I groped for the latch of the gate, the olive-green Dodge came sneaking down the road

and went past. The driver didn’t appear to look my way, but I knew he had seen me and

where I was going. I paused to look after the car. It went down the road fast and I lost sight of

it when it swung into Westwood Avenue.

I pushed my hat to the back of my head, took out a packet of Lucky Strike, lit up and

stowed the package away. Then I lifted the latch of the gate and walked down the gravel path

towards the bungalow.

The garden was small and compact, and as neat and as orderly as a barrack-room on

inspection day. Yellow sunblinds, faded and past their prime, screened the windows. The

front door could have done with a lick of paint. That went for the whole of the bungalow, too.