The butler appeared with my hat. I put it on and said: "What do you think of him?" "He's not as weak as he looks, sir." "If he was, he'd be ready for burial. What did this Regan fellow have that bored into him so?" The butler looked at me levelly and yet with a queer lack of expression. "Youth, sir," he said. "And the soldier's eye." "Like yours," I said. "If I may say so, sir, not unlike yours." "Thanks. How are the ladies this morning?" He shrugged politely. "Just what I thought," I said, and he opened the door for me. I stood outside on the step and looked down the vistas of grassed terraces and trimmed trees and flowerbeds to the tall metal railing at the bottom of the gardens. I saw Carmen about halfway down, sitting on a stone bench, with her head between her hands, looking forlorn and alone. I went down the red brick steps that led from terrace to terrace. I was quite close before she heard me. She jumped up and whirled like a cat. She wore the light blue slacks she had worn the first time I saw her. Her blond hair was the same loose tawny wave. Her face was white. Red spots flared in her cheeks as she looked at me. Her eyes were slaty. "Bored?" I said. She smiled slowly, rather shyly, then nodded quickly. Then she whispered: "You're not mad at me?" "I thought you were mad at me." She put her thumb up and giggled. "I'm not." When she giggled I didn't like her any more. I looked around. A target hung on a tree about thirty feet away, with some darts sticking to it. There were three or four more on the stone bench where she had been sitting. "For people with money you and your sister don't seem to have much fun," I said. She looked at me under her long lashes. This was the look that was supposed to make me roll over on my back. I said: "You like throwing those darts?" "Uh-huh." "That reminds me of something." I looked back towards the house. By moving about three feet I made a tree hide me from it. I took her little pearl-handled gun out of my pocket. "I brought you back your artillery. I cleaned it and loaded it up. Take my tip-- don't shoot it at people, unless you get to be a better shot. Remember?" Her face went paler and her thin thumb dropped. She looked at me, then at the gun I was holding. There was a fascination in her eyes. "Yes," she said, and nodded. Then suddenly: "Teach me to shoot." "Huh?" "Teach me how to shoot. I'd like that." "Here? It's against the law." She came close to me and took the gun out of my hand, cuddled her hand around the butt. Then she tucked it quickly inside her slacks, almost with a furtive movement, and looked around.
"I know where," she said in a secret voice. "Down by some of the old wells." She pointed off down the hill. "Teach me?" I looked into her slaty blue eyes. I might as well have looked at a couple of bottle-tops. "All right. Give me back the gun until I see if the place looks all right." She smiled and made a mouth, then handed it back with a secret naughty air, as if she was giving me a key to her room. We walked up the steps and around to my car. The gardens seemed deserted. The sunshine was as empty as a headwaiter's smile. We got into the car and I drove down the sunken driveway and out through the gates. "Where's Vivian?" I asked. "Not up yet." She giggled. I drove on down the hill through the quiet opulent streets with their faces washed by the rain, bore east to La Brea, then south. We reached the place she meant in about ten minutes. "In there." She leaned out of the window and pointed. It was a narrow dirt road, not much more than a track, like the entrance to some foothill ranch. A wide five-barred gate was folded back against a stump and looked as if it hadn't been shut in years. The road was fringed with tall eucalyptus trees and deeply rutted. Trucks had used it. It was empty and sunny now, but not yet dusty. The rain had been too hard and too recent. I followed the ruts along and the noise of city traffic grew curiously and quickly faint, as if this were not in the city at all, but far away in a daydream land. Then the oil-stained, motionless walkingbeam of a squat wooden derrick stuck up over a branch. I could see the rusty old............