The unlatched door swung inward when I knocked. I walked into the studio, which was as high and dim as a hayloft. The big north window in the opposite wall was hung with monk’s-cloth drapes that shut out the morning light. I found the switch next to the door and snapped it on. Several fluorescent tubes suspended from the naked rafters flickered and burned blue-white.
A strange woman faced me under the cruel light. She was only a charcoal sketch on an easel, but she gave me a chill. Her nude body, posed casually on a chair, was slim and round and pleasant to look at. But her face wasn’t pleasant at all. Bushy black eyebrows almost hid her eyes. A walrus mustache bracketed her mouth, and a thick beard fanned down over her torso.
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. Her black hair was drawn back severely.
“May I ask what you’re doing here?” she said brusquely.
“You may ask. I’m looking for Mr. Western.”
“Really? Have you tried looking behind the pictures?”
“Does he spend much of his 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, so I walked in.”
“You can now reverse the process.”
“Just a minute. Hugh isn’t sick?”
She glanced down at her white uniform, then 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 sharp. I got the impression she didn’t approve of Hugh’s friends.
“In the Philippines. He was attached to my group as a combat artist. My 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.
“Hugh gave me the wrong impression of you,” I said, “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 one-man 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, scratchboards, bleeding tubes of paint. Pictures in half a dozen mediums and half a dozen stages of completion hung on or leaned against the burlap-covered walk 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 door frame 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. After all, he’s an adult.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t always act like one.” A deep 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 peeved 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 has no discrimination about people at all.”
“You wouldn’t be talking about me?”
“No.” She smiled again. I liked her smile. “I guess I acted terribly 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 door frame.
Before she could answer, a siren bayed in the distance. She tilted her head. “Ten to one it’s for me.”
“Police?”
“Ambulance. The police sirens have a different tone. I am 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, her 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 wrist watch. “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.
“But I’m on vacation,” I said hopefully.
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.