The Big Sleep (19 page)

“Yeah. Get her out of here and see that she’s watched every minute. Promise?”

“I promise. Eddie—”

“Forget Eddie. I’ll go see him after I get some rest. I’ll handle Eddie.”

“He’ll try to kill you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “His best boy couldn’t. I’ll take a chance on the others. Does Norris know?”

“He’ll never tell.”

“I thought he knew.”

I went quickly away from her down the room and out and down the tiled staircase to the front hall. I didn’t see anybody when I left. I found my hat alone this time. Outside the bright gardens had a haunted look, as though small wild eyes were watching me from behind the bushes, as though the sunshine itself had a mysterious something in its light. I got into my car and drove off down the hill.

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn’t have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.

On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn’t do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again.

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler was born in 1888 and published his first story in 1933 in the pulp magazine
Black Mask
. By the time he published his first novel,
The Big Sleep
(1939), featuring, as did all his major works, the iconic private eye Philip Marlowe, it was clear that he had not only mastered a genre but had set a standard to which others could only aspire. Chandler created a body of work that ranks with the best of twentieth-century literature. He died in 1959.

OTHER BOOKS BY
RAYMOND CHANDLER

AVAILABLE AS VINTAGE eBOOKS

Farewell, My Lovely

The High Window

The Lady in the Lake

The Little Sister

The Simple Art of Murder

Trouble Is My Business

The Long Goodbye

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The Big Sleep (1939)

When a dying millionaire hires Phillip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.

Copyright © 1939 by Raymond Chandler

Copyright renewed 1966 by Mrs. Helga Greene

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published, in hardcover, by Alfred A. Knopf, in 1939, and, in paperback, by Vintage, in 1976. Also available in a print edition from Vintage Books ISBN.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chandler, Raymond, 1888-1959.

The big sleep.

I. Title.

PS3505.H3224B5    1988    813’.52    91-50919

eISBN: 978-1-4000-3015-6

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