Read "The High Window" by Raymond Chandler online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It was a small room looking out on the back garden. It had an ugly red and brown carpet and was furnished as an office. It contained what you would expect to find in a small office. A thin fragile-looking blondish girl in shell glasses sat behind a desk with a typewriter on a pulled-out leaf at her left. She had her hands poised on the keys, but she didn't have any paper in the machine. She watched me come into the room with the stiff, half-silly expression of a self-conscious person posing for a snapshot. She had a clear soft voice, asking me to sit down.
"I am Miss Davis. Mrs. Murdock's secretary. She wanted me to ask you for a few references."