Book completed: Trouble Is My Business

 

From the story "Red Wind" in Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler:

We were almost at my door. I jammed the key in and shook the lock around and heaved the door inward. I reached in far enough to switch lights on. She went in past me like a wave. Sandalwood floated on the air, very faint.

I shut the door, threw my hat into a chair and watched her stroll over to a card table on which I had a chess problem set out that I couldn’t solve. Once inside, with the door locked, her panic had left her.

“So you’re a chess player,” she said, in that guarded tone, as if she had come to look at my etchings. I wished she had.