Arthur Gwynn Geiger

Arthur Gwynn Geiger presents himself as a rare-books dealer, but his business is a front for renting illicit books and blackmailing the Sternwoods. His murder at his secluded house turns that concealed trade into a murder investigation, while the later revelation that Carmen Sternwood killed Terence Regan connects Geiger’s case to the novel’s deeper crime.

Identity and Business

Geiger’s name reaches Philip Marlowe through an envelope addressed to General Guy Sternwood. Inside are Geiger’s business card, marked “Rare Books and De Luxe Editions,” and a note presenting three promissory notes as gambling debts he assumes the General might wish to honor. Each note is for one thousand dollars and bears Carmen Sternwood’s signature. The papers establish the immediate leverage behind Geiger’s approach to the family: he presents a private debt as a matter for the General to settle, while the notes’ legal weakness does not prevent them from serving as pressure.

The apparent bookshop is not simply a dealer in rare editions. Marlowe identifies the store as a front for an illicit book-rental operation, and Captain Cronjager later acknowledges that Geiger was involved in what he calls the “smut book racket.” Marlowe argues that the Hollywood police had allowed the storefront to operate and warns that a grand jury might ask why. Geiger’s business therefore depends not only on private transactions but on an official tolerance that Marlowe can use as leverage when seeking to contain the scandal.

House and Murder

Marlowe follows Geiger from the store to a small house on Laverne Terrace, a narrow, rain-soaked street of homes set behind hedges. A woman arrives in a maroon Packard convertible registered to Carmen. At seven-twenty, a flash bursts from inside the house, followed by a scream; as Marlowe approaches, three shots sound and someone flees down the back steps.

Inside, Marlowe finds Geiger dead on the floor. A camera concealed in a totem-pole-like object is aimed at a naked, drugged Carmen, and a spent flashbulb accounts for the burst of light Marlowe saw outside. The scene makes the connection between Geiger’s illicit business and the Sternwood blackmail attempt stark: Carmen has been photographed in a compromising situation, and the concealed camera points to the purpose of the setup. The person who fired the shots is not identified at the scene.

Geiger’s house also becomes a site of immediate concealment. When Marlowe returns after taking Carmen away, the body has been removed and a rug placed where it had lain; strips of embroidered silk have also disappeared from the wall. He finds marks suggesting the body was dragged toward the front door. The unexplained removal turns a murder scene into an altered one and gives the case a second mystery: who moved Geiger’s body, and why?

Investigation and Cover-Up

Geiger’s absence from the store and the blood beneath a rug lead Joe Brody to suspect Marlowe knows more than he is saying. In their confrontation, Brody recognizes that Geiger was connected to the illicit-book racket. The evidence and the business are thus divided among people who have different reasons to suppress the truth: the murder, the photographs, and the profitable rental operation cannot be treated as a single public scandal without exposing the Sternwoods as well.

When Marlowe recounts the case to Captain Cronjager, Bernie Ohls, and Taggart Wilde, he deliberately leaves out Carmen’s visit to Brody’s apartment and Eddie Mars’s visit to Geiger’s house that afternoon. He later points to a book from Geiger’s store and says he would testify to its origin; he also expects Agnes to confirm what business the store conducted. By connecting that evidence to the police’s tolerance of the shop, Marlowe helps persuade Cronjager that publicity could damage the division. The investigation therefore proceeds through selective disclosure as well as evidence: Geiger’s murder is addressed, but the account given to the authorities is shaped to prevent the Sternwood scandal from becoming public.

Connection to the Deeper Mystery

The novel delays the explanation of Geiger’s death’s larger significance. Terence Regan disappeared on September 16, and Captain Gregory later reports that Regan’s car was found four days afterward in a garage at Casa de Oro. The apparent trail of a possible flight with Eddie Mars’s wife gives investigators a misleading way to interpret his disappearance, while Geiger’s murder initially appears to belong to the separate blackmail case.

At the old oil wells, Marlowe finally tells Vivian Regan what happened on the day Regan disappeared: Regan took Carmen there to teach her to shoot, and she turned the gun on him instead. The revelation reorders the cases. Geiger’s concealed camera and murder explain one immediate strand of Marlowe’s investigation, but the buried truth is Carmen’s killing of Regan and Vivian’s concealment of it. Geiger’s death is therefore both a crime in its own right and part of the novel’s wider pattern of hidden violence, misleading appearances, and truths kept outside the official account.