I slapped her around a little more. She didn't mind the slaps. She had been slapped plenty before now. They didn't bring her out of it.
"Get dressed," I said.
Her hands waved, wandered aimlessly for a moment before she found clothes on the couch. She struggled into a tight green dress and flat black shoes.
"Let's take a little walk," I said, "Let's take a nice little walk."
We took a little walk. Part of the time her earrings banged against my chest and part of the time we did the splits in unison, like an erotic dance couple. We walked over to Geiger's body and back. I had her look at him. She thought he was cute. She giggled and tried to tell me so, but she just bubbled. I walked her over to the divan and spread her out on it. She hiccupped twice, giggled a little and went to sleep. I stuffed her little clasp bag in my pocket and went over to the articulated recoding robot and looked at it closely. The cameras were frazzled all right, but the slot for the removable memory was empty. I looked around on the floor, thinking he might have got it out before he was shot. No memory. I didn't like this development.
I went into a hall at the back of the room and investigated the house. There was a bathroom on the right and a locked door, at kitchen at the back. The kitchen window had been jimmied. The screening was gone and the place where the lock had been pulled out showed on the sill. The back door was unlocked. I left it unlocked and looked into a bedroom on the left side of the hall. It was neat, fussy, woman-ish. The bed had a flounced cover. There was perfume on the triple-mirrored dressing table, beside a handkerchief, some loose money, a man's shaving set, an electronic key-holder. A man's clothes were in the closet and a man's slippers under the flounced edge of the bed cover. Mr Geiger's room.
I took the key-holder back to the living-room and went through the desk. There was a locked security box in the deep drawer. I used one of the keys on it. There was nothing in it but an old-fashioned blue leather book with an index and a lot of printed code, in the same slanting printing that had written to General Sternwood. I put the notebook in my pocket, closed the box and locked it up, pocketed the keys and tried to rouse Miss Sternwood. It couldn't be done. I swung her over my shoulder like a rag doll and carried her out to her car. I went back and put out all the lights and shut the front door, dug her keys out of her clasp bag and started the maroon ground car. We went off down the hill without lights. It was less than ten minutes' drive to the Sternwood mansion. Carmen spent them snoring and breathing brandy fumes into my face. I couldn't keep her head off my shoulder. It was all I could do to keep it out of my lap.
Part 2