Mexican Boat Ride

Get this and get it straight. Crime is a suckers road and those who travel had wind up in the gut of the prison of the grave. This time I took a beating and gave one.

The man who lived in the dock was afraid. Someone I never got to meet was murdered and a knife-wielding crab was destroyed. All because a girl who hated the water took a boat ride in old Mexico.

From the pan of Raymond Chandler, outstanding author of Mystery, comes his most famous character and crime's most deadly enemy as we present... The adventures of Philip Marlowe. Now with Gerald Moore, starred as Philip Marlowe, we bring you tonight's story, Mexican boat ride.

It was a rare morning clear and clean. You know the kind that knocks ten years off your age and makes you taste the sunshine in your orange juice? It was a day to be spent on an open road to someplace new and exciting.

But a phone call I'd received had reduced my open road to Kamalita Avenue and nothing more exciting than Beverly Hills. The house I stopped at was one of those you went through a tunnel of dank over hanging foliage on a flagstone path grown green with damp moss.

A low thick walled affair with tiny barred windows hidden from the sidewalk. I pressed the bell and the moment later a cello housekeeper opened the door with what seemed to be our last ounce of strength.

She squinted at my card and beckoned me inside. I followed her down a dusky carter to a heavy closed door where she signaled me to wait. We are in the house smelled thick and stale.