The Maltese falcon

By Dashiell Hammett

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Title: The Maltese falcon

Author: Dashiell Hammett

Release date: January 1, 2026 [eBook #77600]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930

Credits: This ebook was produced by: Al Haines, Cindy Beyer & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MALTESE FALCON ***




                 *        *        *        *        *

                          [Cover Illustration]




                           THE
                           MALTESE
                           FALCON

                           DASHIELL HAMMETT


                           ALFRED · A · KNOPF
                           NEW YORK




                   COPYRIGHT 1930 BY DASHIELL HAMMETT
               COPYRIGHT RENEWED 1957 BY DASHIELL HAMMETT

           All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
           reproduced in any form or by any mechanical means,
           including mimeograph and tape recorder, without
           permission in writing from the publisher.

                Printed in the United States of America




                               TO _JOSE_




                                   1


                             SPADE & ARCHER

SAMUEL SPADE’S jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the
more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another,
smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v _motif_ was
picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above
a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down—from high flat
temples—in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a
blond satan.

He said to Effie Perine: “Yes, sweetheart?”

She was a lanky sunburned girl whose tan dress of thin woolen stuff
clung to her with an effect of dampness. Her eyes were brown and playful
in a shiny boyish face. She finished shutting the door behind her,
leaned against it, and said: “There’s a girl wants to see you. Her
name’s Wonderly.”

“A customer?”

“I guess so. You’ll want to see her anyway: she’s a knockout.”

“Shoo her in, darling,” said Spade. “Shoo her in.”

Effie Perine opened the door again, following it back into the outer
office, standing with a hand on the knob while saying: “Will you come
in, Miss Wonderly?”

A voice said, “Thank you,” so softly that only the purest articulation
made the words intelligible, and a young woman came through the doorway.
She advanced slowly, with tentative steps, looking at Spade with
cobalt-blue eyes that were both shy and probing.

She was tall and pliantly slender, without angularity anywhere. Her body
was erect and high-breasted, her legs long, her hands and feet narrow.
She wore two shades of blue that had been selected because of her eyes.
The hair curling from under her blue hat was darkly red, her full lips
more brightly red. White teeth glistened in the crescent her timid smile
made.

Spade rose bowing and indicating with a thick-fingered hand the oaken
armchair beside his desk. He was quite six feet tall. The steep rounded
slope of his shoulders made his body seem almost conical—no broader
than it was thick—and kept his freshly pressed grey coat from fitting
very well.

Miss Wonderly murmured, “Thank you,” softly as before and sat down on
the edge of the chair’s wooden seat.

Spade sank into his swivel-chair, made a quarter-turn to face her,
smiled politely. He smiled without separating his lips. All the v’s in
his face grew longer.

The tappity-tap-tap and the thin bell and muffled whir of Effie Perine’s
typewriting came through the closed door. Somewhere in a neighboring
office a power-driven machine vibrated dully. On Spade’s desk a limp
cigarette smoldered in a brass tray filled with the remains of limp
cigarettes. Ragged grey flakes of cigarette-ash dotted the yellow top of
the desk and the green blotter and the papers that were there. A
buff-curtained window, eight or ten inches open, let in from the court a
current of air faintly scented with ammonia. The ashes on the desk
twitched and crawled in the current.

Miss Wonderly watched the grey flakes twitch and crawl. Her eyes were
uneasy. She sat on the very edge of the chair. Her feet were flat on the
floor, as if she were about to rise. Her hands in dark gloves clasped a
flat dark handbag in her lap.

Spade rocked back in his chair and asked: “Now what can I do for you,
Miss Wonderly?”

She caught her breath and looked at him. She swallowed and said
hurriedly: “Could you—? I thought—I—that is—” Then she tortured her
lower lip with glistening teeth and said nothing. Only her dark eyes
spoke now, pleading.

Spade smiled and nodded as if he understood her, but pleasantly, as if
nothing serious were involved. He said: “Suppose you tell me about it,
from the beginning, and then we’ll know what needs doing. Better begin
as far back as you can.”

“That was in New York.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know where she met him. I mean I don’t know where in New York.
She’s five years younger than I—only seventeen—and we didn’t have the
same friends. I don’t suppose we’ve ever been as close as sisters should
be. Mama and Papa are in Europe. It would kill them. I’ve got to get her
back before they come home.”

“Yes,” he said.

“They’re coming home the first of the month.”

Spade’s eyes brightened. “Then we’ve two weeks,” he said.

“I didn’t know what she had done until her letter came. I was frantic.”
Her lips trembled. Her hands mashed the dark handbag in her lap. “I was
too afraid she had done something like this to go to the police, and the
fear that something had happened to her kept urging me to go. There
wasn’t anyone I could go to for advice. I didn’t know what to do. What
could I do?”

“Nothing, of course,” Spade said, “but then her letter came?”

“Yes, and I sent her a telegram asking her to come home. I sent it to
General Delivery here. That was the only address she gave me. I waited a
whole week, but no answer came, not another word from her. And Mama and
Papa’s return was drawing nearer and nearer. So I came to San Francisco
to get her. I wrote her I was coming. I shouldn’t have done that, should
I?”

“Maybe not. It’s not always easy to know what to do. You haven’t found
her?”

“No, I haven’t. I wrote her that I would go to the St. Mark, and I
begged her to come and let me talk to her even if she didn’t intend to
go home with me. But she didn’t come. I waited three days, and she
didn’t come, didn’t even send me a message of any sort.”

Spade nodded his blond satan’s head, frowned sympathetically, and
tightened his lips together.

“It was horrible,” Miss Wonderly said, trying to smile. “I couldn’t sit
there like that—waiting—not knowing what had happened to her, what
might be happening to her.” She stopped trying to smile. She shuddered.
“The only address I had was General Delivery. I wrote her another
letter, and yesterday afternoon I went to the Post Office. I stayed
there until after dark, but I didn’t see her. I went there again this
morning, and still didn’t see Corinne, but I saw Floyd Thursby.”

Spade nodded again. His frown went away. In its place came a look of
sharp attentiveness.

“He wouldn’t tell me where Corinne was,” she went on, hopelessly. “He
wouldn’t tell me anything, except that she was well and happy. But how
can I believe that? That is what he would tell me anyhow, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” Spade agreed. “But it might be true.”

“I hope it is. I do hope it is,” she exclaimed. “But I can’t go back
home like this, without having seen her, without even having talked to
her on the phone. He wouldn’t take me to her. He said she didn’t want to
see me. I can’t believe that. He promised to tell her he had seen me,
and to bring her to see me—if she would come—this evening at the
hotel. He said he knew she wouldn’t. He promised to come himself if she
wouldn’t. He—”

She broke off with a startled hand to her mouth as the door opened.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The man who had opened the door came in a step, said, “Oh, excuse me!”
hastily took his brown hat from his head, and backed out.

“It’s all right, Miles,” Spade told him. “Come in. Miss Wonderly, this
is Mr. Archer, my partner.”

Miles Archer came into the office again, shutting the door behind him,
ducking his head and smiling at Miss Wonderly, making a vaguely polite
gesture with the hat in his hand. He was of medium height, solidly
built, wide in the shoulders, thick in the neck, with a jovial
heavy-jawed red face and some grey in his close-trimmed hair. He was
apparently as many years past forty as Spade was past thirty.

Spade said: “Miss Wonderly’s sister ran away from New York with a fellow
named Floyd Thursby. They’re here. Miss Wonderly has seen Thursby and
has a date with him tonight. Maybe he’ll bring the sister with him. The
chances are he won’t. Miss Wonderly wants us to find the sister and get
her away from him and back home.” He looked at Miss Wonderly. “Right?”

“Yes,” she said indistinctly. The embarrassment that had gradually been
driven away by Spade’s ingratiating smiles and nods and assurances was
pinkening her face again. She looked at the bag in her lap and picked
nervously at it with a gloved finger.

Spade winked at his partner.

Miles Archer came forward to stand at a corner of the desk. While the
girl looked at her bag he looked at her. His little brown eyes ran their
bold appraising gaze from her lowered face to her feet and up to her
face again. Then he looked at Spade and made a silent whistling mouth of
appreciation.

Spade lifted two fingers from the arm of his chair in a brief warning
gesture and said:

“We shouldn’t have any trouble with it. It’s simply a matter of having a
man at the hotel this evening to shadow him away when he leaves, and
shadow him until he leads us to your sister. If she comes with him, and
you persuade her to return with you, so much the better. Otherwise—if
she doesn’t want to leave him after we’ve found her—well, we’ll find a
way of managing that.”

Archer said: “Yeh.” His voice was heavy, coarse.

Miss Wonderly looked up at Spade, quickly, puckering her forehead
between her eyebrows.

“Oh, but you must be careful!” Her voice shook a little, and her lips
shaped the words with nervous jerkiness. “I’m deathly afraid of him, of
what he might do. She’s so young and his bringing her here from New York
is such a serious—Mightn’t he—mightn’t he do—something to her?”

Spade smiled and patted the arms of his chair.

“Just leave that to us,” he said. “We’ll know how to handle him.”

“But mightn’t he?” she insisted.

“There’s always a chance.” Spade nodded judicially. “But you can trust
us to take care of that.”

“I do trust you,” she said earnestly, “but I want you to know that he’s
a dangerous man. I honestly don’t think he’d stop at anything. I don’t
believe he’d hesitate to—to kill Corinne if he thought it would save
him. Mightn’t he do that?”

“You didn’t threaten him, did you?”

“I told him that all I wanted was to get her home before Mama and Papa
came so they’d never know what she had done. I promised him I’d never
say a word to them about it if he helped me, but if he didn’t Papa would
certainly see that he was punished. I—I don’t suppose he believed me,
altogether.”

“Can he cover up by marrying her?” Archer asked.

The girl blushed and replied in a confused voice: “He has a wife and
three children in England. Corinne wrote me that, to explain why she had
gone off with him.”

“They usually do,” Spade said, “though not always in England.” He leaned
forward to reach for pencil and pad of paper. “What does he look like?”

“Oh, he’s thirty-five years old, perhaps, and as tall as you, and either
naturally dark or quite sunburned. His hair is dark too, and he has
thick eyebrows. He talks in a rather loud, blustery way and has a
nervous, irritable manner. He gives the impression of being—of
violence.”

Spade, scribbling on the pad, asked without looking up: “What color
eyes?”

“They’re blue-grey and watery, though not in a weak way. And—oh,
yes—he has a marked cleft in his chin.”

“Thin, medium, or heavy build?”

“Quite athletic. He’s broad-shouldered and carries himself erect, has
what could be called a decidedly military carriage. He was wearing a
light grey suit and a grey hat when I saw him this morning.”

“What does he do for a living?” Spade asked as he laid down his pencil.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“What time is he coming to see you?”

“After eight o’clock.”

“All right, Miss Wonderly, we’ll have a man there. It’ll help if—”

“Mr. Spade, could either you or Mr. Archer?” She made an appealing
gesture with both hands. “Could either of you look after it personally?
I don’t mean that the man you’d send wouldn’t be capable, but—oh!—I’m
so afraid of what might happen to Corinne. I’m afraid of him. Could you?
I’d be—I’d expect to be charged more, of course.” She opened her
handbag with nervous fingers and put two hundred-dollar bills on Spade’s
desk. “Would that be enough?”

“Yeh,” Archer said, “and I’ll look after it myself.”

Miss Wonderly stood up, impulsively holding a hand out to him.

“Thank you! Thank you!” she exclaimed, and then gave Spade her hand,
repeating: “Thank you!”

“Not at all,” Spade said over it. “Glad to. It’ll help some if you
either meet Thursby downstairs or let yourself be seen in the lobby with
him at some time.”

“I will,” she promised, and thanked the partners again.

“And don’t look for me,” Archer cautioned her. “I’ll see you all right.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Spade went to the corridor-door with Miss Wonderly. When he returned to
his desk Archer nodded at the hundred-dollar bills there, growled
complacently, “They’re right enough,” picked one up, folded it, and
tucked it into a vest-pocket. “And they had brothers in her bag.”

Spade pocketed the other bill before he sat down. Then he said: “Well,
don’t dynamite her too much. What do you think of her?”

“Sweet! And you telling me not to dynamite her.” Archer guffawed
suddenly without merriment. “Maybe you saw her first, Sam, but I spoke
first.” He put his hands in his trousers-pockets and teetered on his
heels.

“You’ll play hell with her, you will.” Spade grinned wolfishly, showing
the edges of teeth far back in his jaw. “You’ve got brains, yes you
have.” He began to make a cigarette.




                                   2


                            DEATH IN THE FOG

A TELEPHONE-BELL rang in darkness. When it had rung three times
bed-springs creaked, fingers fumbled on wood, something small and hard
thudded on a carpeted floor, the springs creaked again, and a man’s
voice said:

“Hello. . . . Yes, speaking. . . . Dead? . . . Yes. . . . Fifteen
minutes. Thanks.”

A switch clicked and a white bowl hung on three gilded chains from the
ceiling’s center filled the room with light. Spade, barefooted in green
and white checked pajamas, sat on the side of his bed. He scowled at the
telephone on the table while his hands took from beside it a packet of
brown papers and a sack of Bull Durham tobacco.

Cold steamy air blew in through two open windows, bringing with it half
a dozen times a minute the Alcatraz foghorn’s dull moaning. A tinny
alarm-clock, insecurely mounted on a corner of Duke’s _Celebrated
Criminal Cases of America_—face down on the table—held its hands at
five minutes past two.

Spade’s thick fingers made a cigarette with deliberate care, sifting a
measured quantity of tan flakes down into curved paper, spreading the
flakes so that they lay equal at the ends with a slight depression in
the middle, thumbs rolling the paper’s inner edge down and up under the
outer edge as forefingers pressed it over, thumbs and fingers sliding to
the paper cylinder’s ends to hold it even while tongue licked the flap,
left forefinger and thumb pinching their end while right forefinger and
thumb smoothed the damp seam, right forefinger and thumb twisting their
end and lifting the other to Spade’s mouth.

He picked up the pigskin and nickel lighter that had fallen to the
floor, manipulated it, and with the cigarette burning in a corner of his
mouth stood up. He took off his pajamas. The smooth thickness of his
arms, legs, and body, the sag of his big rounded shoulders, made his
body like a bear’s. It was like a shaved bear’s: his chest was hairless.
His skin was childishly soft and pink.

He scratched the back of his neck and began to dress. He put on a thin
white union-suit, grey socks, black garters, and dark brown shoes. When
he had fastened his shoes he picked up the telephone, called Graystone
4500, and ordered a taxicab. He put on a green-striped white shirt, a
soft white collar, a green necktie, the grey suit he had worn that day,
a loose tweed overcoat, and a dark grey hat. The street-door-bell rang
as he stuffed tobacco, keys, and money into his pockets.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Where Bush Street roofed Stockton before slipping downhill to Chinatown,
Spade paid his fare and left the taxicab. San Francisco’s night-fog,
thin, clammy, and penetrant, blurred the street. A few yards from where
Spade had dismissed the taxicab a small group of men stood looking up an
alley. Two women stood with a man on the other side of Bush Street,
looking at the alley. There were faces at windows.

Spade crossed the sidewalk between iron-railed hatchways that opened
above bare ugly stairs, went to the parapet, and, resting his hands on
the damp coping, looked down into Stockton Street.

An automobile popped out of the tunnel beneath him with a roaring swish,
as if it had been blown out, and ran away. Not far from the tunnel’s
mouth a man was hunkered on his heels before a billboard that held
advertisements of a moving picture and a gasoline across the front of a
gap between two store-buildings. The hunkered man’s head was bent almost
to the sidewalk so he could look under the billboard. A hand flat on the
paving, a hand clenched on the billboard’s green frame, held him in this
grotesque position. Two other men stood awkwardly together at one end of
the billboard, peeping through the few inches of space between it and
the building at that end. The building at the other end had a blank grey
sidewall that looked down on the lot behind the billboard. Lights
flickered on the sidewall, and the shadows of men moving among lights.

Spade turned from the parapet and walked up Bush Street to the alley
where men were grouped. A uniformed policeman chewing gum under an
enameled sign that said _Burritt St._ in white against dark blue put out
an arm and asked:

“What do you want here?”

“I’m Sam Spade. Tom Polhaus phoned me.”

“Sure you are.” The policeman’s arm went down. “I didn’t know you at
first. Well, they’re back there.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“Bad business.”

“Bad enough,” Spade agreed, and went up the alley.

Half-way up it, not far from the entrance, a dark ambulance stood.
Behind the ambulance, to the left, the alley was bounded by a waist-high
fence, horizontal strips of rough boarding. From the fence dark ground
fell away steeply to the billboard on Stockton Street below.

A ten-foot length of the fence’s top rail had been torn from a post at
one end and hung dangling from the other. Fifteen feet down the slope a
flat boulder stuck out. In the notch between boulder and slope Miles
Archer lay on his back. Two men stood over him. One of them held the
beam of an electric torch on the dead man. Other men with lights moved
up and down the slope.

One of them hailed Spade, “Hello, Sam,” and clambered up to the alley,
his shadow running up the slope before him. He was a barrel-bellied tall
man with shrewd small eyes, a thick mouth, and carelessly shaven dark
jowls. His shoes, knees, hands, and chin were daubed with brown loam.

“I figured you’d want to see it before we took him away,” he said as he
stepped over the broken fence.

“Thanks, Tom,” Spade said. “What happened?” He put an elbow on a
fence-post and looked down at the men below, nodding to those who nodded
to him.

Tom Polhaus poked his own left breast with a dirty finger. “Got him
right through the pump—with this.” He took a fat revolver from his
coat-pocket and held it out to Spade. Mud inlaid the depressions in the
revolver’s surface. “A Webley. English, ain’t it?”

Spade took his elbow from the fence-post and leaned down to look at the
weapon, but he did not touch it.

“Yes,” he said, “Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver. That’s it.
Thirty-eight, eight shot. They don’t make them any more. How many gone
out of it?”

“One pill.” Tom poked his breast again. “He must’ve been dead when he
cracked the fence.” He raised the muddy revolver. “Ever seen this
before?”

Spade nodded. “I’ve seen Webley-Fosberys,” he said without interest, and
then spoke rapidly: “He was shot up here, huh? Standing where you are,
with his back to the fence. The man that shot him stands here.” He went
around in front of Tom and raised a hand breast-high with leveled
forefinger. “Lets him have it and Miles goes back, taking the top off
the fence and going on through and down till the rock catches him. That
it?”

“That’s it,” Tom replied slowly, working his brows together. “The blast
burnt his coat.”

“Who found him?”

“The man on the beat, Shilling. He was coming down Bush, and just as he
got here a machine turning threw headlights up here, and he saw the top
off the fence. So he came up to look at it, and found him.”

“What about the machine that was turning around?”

“Not a damned thing about it, Sam. Shilling didn’t pay any attention to
it, not knowing anything was wrong then. He says nobody didn’t come out
of here while he was coming down from Powell or he’d’ve seen them. The
only other way out would be under the billboard on Stockton. Nobody went
that way. The fog’s got the ground soggy, and the only marks are where
Miles slid down and where this here gun rolled.”

“Didn’t anybody hear the shot?”

“For the love of God, Sam, we only just got here. Somebody must’ve heard
it, when we find them.” He turned and put a leg over the fence. “Coming
down for a look at him before he’s moved?”

Spade said: “No.”

Tom halted astride the fence and looked back at Spade with surprised
small eyes.

Spade said: “You’ve seen him. You’d see everything I could.”

Tom, still looking at Spade, nodded doubtfully and withdrew his leg over
the fence.

“His gun was tucked away on his hip,” he said. “It hadn’t been fired.
His overcoat was buttoned. There’s a hundred and sixty-some bucks in his
clothes. Was he working, Sam?”

Spade, after a moment’s hesitation, nodded.

Tom asked: “Well?”

“He was supposed to be tailing a fellow named Floyd Thursby,” Spade
said, and described Thursby as Miss Wonderly had described him.

“What for?”

Spade put his hands into his overcoat-pockets and blinked sleepy eyes at
Tom.

Tom repeated impatiently: “What for?”

“He was an Englishman, maybe. I don’t know what his game was, exactly.
We were trying to find out where he lived.” Spade grinned faintly and
took a hand from his pocket to pat Tom’s shoulder. “Don’t crowd me.” He
put the hand in his pocket again. “I’m going out to break the news to
Miles’s wife.” He turned away.

Tom, scowling, opened his mouth, closed it without having said anything,
cleared his throat, put the scowl off his face, and spoke with a husky
sort of gentleness:

“It’s tough, him getting it like that. Miles had his faults same as the
rest of us, but I guess he must’ve had some good points too.”

“I guess so,” Spade agreed in a tone that was utterly meaningless, and
went out of the alley.

                 *        *        *        *        *

In an all-night drug-store on the corner of Bush and Taylor Streets,
Spade used a telephone.

“Precious,” he said into it a little while after he had given a number,
“Miles has been shot. . . . Yes, he’s dead. . . . Now don’t get
excited. . . . Yes. . . . You’ll have to break it to Iva. . . . No, I’m
damned if I will. You’ve got to do it. . . . That’s a good girl. . . .
And keep her away from the office. . . . Tell her I’ll see her—uh—some
time. . . . Yes, but don’t tie me up to anything. . . . That’s the
stuff. You’re an angel. ’Bye.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Spade’s tinny alarm-clock said three-forty when he turned on the light
in the suspended bowl again. He dropped his hat and overcoat on the bed
and went into his kitchen, returning to the bedroom with a wine-glass
and a tall bottle of Bacardi. He poured a drink and drank it standing.
He put bottle and glass on the table, sat on the side of the bed facing
them, and rolled a cigarette. He had drunk his third glass of Bacardi
and was lighting his fifth cigarette when the street-door-bell rang. The
hands of the alarm-clock registered four-thirty.

Spade sighed, rose from the bed, and went to the telephone-box beside
his bathroom-door. He pressed the button that released the
street-door-lock. He muttered, “Damn her,” and stood scowling at the
black telephone-box, breathing irregularly while a dull flush grew in
his cheeks.

The grating and rattling of the elevator-door opening and closing came
from the corridor. Spade sighed again and moved towards the
corridor-door. Soft heavy footsteps sounded on the carpeted floor
outside, the footsteps of two men. Spade’s face brightened. His eyes
were no longer harassed. He opened the door quickly.

“Hello, Tom,” he said to the barrel-bellied tall detective with whom he
had talked in Burritt Street, and, “Hello, Lieutenant,” to the man
beside Tom. “Come in.”

They nodded together, neither saying anything, and came in. Spade shut
the door and ushered them into his bedroom. Tom sat on an end of the
sofa by the windows. The Lieutenant sat on a chair beside the table.

The Lieutenant was a compactly built man with a round head under
short-cut grizzled hair and a square face behind a short-cut grizzled
mustache. A five-dollar gold-piece was pinned to his necktie and there
was a small elaborate diamond-set secret-society-emblem on his lapel.

Spade brought two wine-glasses in from the kitchen, filled them and his
own with Bacardi, gave one to each of his visitors, and sat down with
his on the side of the bed. His face was placid and uncurious. He raised
his glass, and said, “Success to crime,” and drank it down.

Tom emptied his glass, set it on the floor beside his feet, and wiped
his mouth with a muddy forefinger. He stared at the foot of the bed as
if trying to remember something of which it vaguely reminded him.

The Lieutenant looked at his glass for a dozen seconds, took a very
small sip of its contents, and put the glass on the table at his elbow.
He examined the room with hard deliberate eyes, and then looked at Tom.

Tom moved uncomfortably on the sofa and, not looking up, asked: “Did you
break the news to Miles’s wife, Sam?”

Spade said: “Uh-huh.”

“How’d she take it?”

Spade shook his head. “I don’t know anything about women.”

Tom said softly: “The hell you don’t.”

The Lieutenant put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. His
greenish eyes were fixed on Spade in a peculiarly rigid stare, as if
their focus were a matter of mechanics, to be changed only by pulling a
lever or pressing a button.

“What kind of gun do you carry?” he asked.

“None. I don’t like them much. Of course there are some in the office.”

“I’d like to see one of them,” the Lieutenant said. “You don’t happen to
have one here?”

“No.”

“You sure of that?”

“Look around.” Spade smiled and waved his empty glass a little. “Turn
the dump upside-down if you want. I won’t squawk—if you’ve got a
search-warrant.”

Tom protested: “Oh, hell, Sam!”

Spade set his glass on the table and stood up facing the Lieutenant.

“What do you want, Dundy?” he asked in a voice hard and cold as his
eyes.

Lieutenant Dundy’s eyes had moved to maintain their focus on Spade’s.
Only his eyes had moved.

Tom shifted his weight on the sofa again, blew a deep breath out through
his nose, and growled plaintively: “We’re not wanting to make any
trouble, Sam.”

Spade, ignoring Tom, said to Dundy: “Well, what do you want? Talk
turkey. Who in hell do you think you are, coming in here trying to rope
me?”

“All right,” Dundy said in his chest, “sit down and listen.”

“I’ll sit or stand as I damned please,” said Spade, not moving.

“For Christ’s sake be reasonable,” Tom begged. “What’s the use of us
having a row? If you want to know why we didn’t talk turkey it’s because
when I asked you who this Thursby was you as good as told me it was none
of my business. You can’t treat us that way, Sam. It ain’t right and it
won’t get you anywheres. We got our work to do.”

Lieutenant Dundy jumped up, stood close to Spade, and thrust his square
face up at the taller man’s.

“I’ve warned you your foot was going to slip one of these days,” he
said.

Spade made a depreciative mouth, raising his eyebrows. “Everybody’s foot
slips sometime,” he replied with derisive mildness.

“And this is yours.”

Spade smiled and shook his head. “No, I’ll do nicely, thank you.” He
stopped smiling. His upper lip, on the left side, twitched over his
eyetooth. His eyes became narrow and sultry. His voice came out deep as
the Lieutenant’s. “I don’t like this. What are you sucking around for?
Tell me, or get out and let me go to bed.”

“Who’s Thursby?” Dundy demanded.

“I told Tom what I knew about him.”

“You told Tom damned little.”

“I knew damned little.”

“Why were you tailing him?”

“I wasn’t. Miles was—for the swell reason that we had a client who was
paying good United States money to have him tailed.”

“Who’s the client?”

Placidity came back to Spade’s face and voice. He said reprovingly: “You
know I can’t tell you that until I’ve talked it over with the client.”

“You’ll tell it to me or you’ll tell it in court,” Dundy said hotly.
“This is murder and don’t you forget it.”

“Maybe. And here’s something for you to not forget, sweetheart. I’ll
tell it or not as I damned please. It’s a long while since I burst out
crying because policemen didn’t like me.”

Tom left the sofa and sat on the foot of the bed. His carelessly shaven
mud-smeared face was tired and lined.

“Be reasonable, Sam,” he pleaded. “Give us a chance. How can we turn up
anything on Miles’s killing if you won’t give us what you’ve got?”

“You needn’t get a headache over that,” Spade told him. “I’ll bury my
dead.”

Lieutenant Dundy sat down and put his hands on his knees again. His eyes
were warm green discs.

“I thought you would,” he said. He smiled with grim content. “That’s
just exactly why we came to see you. Isn’t it, Tom?”

Tom groaned, but said nothing articulate.

Spade watched Dundy warily.

“That’s just exactly what I said to Tom,” the Lieutenant went on. “I
said: ‘Tom, I’ve got a hunch that Sam Spade’s a man to keep the
family-troubles in the family.’ That’s just what I said to him.”

The wariness went out of Spade’s eyes. He made his eyes dull with
boredom. He turned his face around to Tom and asked with great
carelessness: “What’s itching your boy-friend now?”

Dundy jumped up and tapped Spade’s chest with the ends of two bent
fingers.

“Just this,” he said, taking pains to make each word distinct,
emphasizing them with his tapping finger-ends: “Thursby was shot down in
front of his hotel just thirty-five minutes after you left Burritt
Street.”

Spade spoke, taking equal pains with his words: “Keep your God-damned
paws off me.”

Dundy withdrew the tapping fingers, but there was no change in his
voice: “Tom says you were in too much of a hurry to even stop for a look
at your partner.”

Tom growled apologetically: “Well, damn it, Sam, you did run off like
that.”

“And you didn’t go to Archer’s house to tell his wife,” the Lieutenant
said. “We called up and that girl in your office was there, and she said
you sent her.”

Spade nodded. His face was stupid in its calmness.

Lieutenant Dundy raised his two bent fingers towards Spade’s chest,
quickly lowered them, and said: “I give you ten minutes to get to a
phone and do your talking to the girl. I give you ten minutes to get to
Thursby’s joint—Geary near Leavenworth—you could do it easy in that
time, or fifteen at the most. And that gives you ten or fifteen minutes
of waiting before he showed up.”

“I knew where he lived?” Spade asked. “And I knew he hadn’t gone
straight home from killing Miles?”

“You knew what you knew,” Dundy replied stubbornly. “What time did you
get home?”

“Twenty minutes to four. I walked around thinking things over.”

The Lieutenant wagged his round head up and down. “We knew you weren’t
home at three-thirty. We tried to get you on the phone. Where’d you do
your walking?”

“Out Bush Street a way and back.”

“Did you see anybody that—?”

“No, no witnesses,” Spade said and laughed pleasantly. “Sit down, Dundy.
You haven’t finished your drink. Get your glass, Tom.”

Tom said: “No, thanks, Sam.”

Dundy sat down, but paid no attention to his glass of rum.

Spade filled his own glass, drank, set the empty glass on the table, and
returned to his bedside-seat.

“I know where I stand now,” he said, looking with friendly eyes from one
of the police-detectives to the other. “I’m sorry I got up on my hind
legs, but you birds coming in and trying to put the work on me made me
nervous. Having Miles knocked off bothered me, and then you birds
cracking foxy. That’s all right now, though, now that I know what you’re
up to.”

Tom said: “Forget it.”

The Lieutenant said nothing.

Spade asked: “Thursby die?”

While the Lieutenant hesitated Tom said: “Yes.”

Then the Lieutenant said angrily: “And you might just as well know
it—if you don’t—that he died before he could tell anybody anything.”

Spade was rolling a cigarette. He asked, not looking up: “What do you
mean by that? You think I did know it?”

“I meant what I said,” Dundy replied bluntly.

Spade looked up at him and smiled, holding the finished cigarette in one
hand, his lighter in the other.

“You’re not ready to pinch me yet, are you, Dundy?” he asked.

Dundy looked with hard green eyes at Spade and did not answer him.

“Then,” said Spade, “there’s no particular reason why I should give a
damn what you think, is there, Dundy?”

Tom said: “Aw, be reasonable, Sam.”

Spade put the cigarette in his mouth, set fire to it, and laughed smoke
out.

“I’ll be reasonable, Tom,” he promised. “How did I kill this Thursby?
I’ve forgotten.”

Tom grunted disgust. Lieutenant Dundy said: “He was shot four times in
the back, with a forty-four or forty-five, from across the street, when
he started to go in the hotel. Nobody saw it, but that’s the way it
figures.”

“And he was wearing a Luger in a shoulder-holster,” Tom added. “It
hadn’t been fired.”

“What do the hotel-people know about him?” Spade asked.

“Nothing except that he’d been there a week.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

“What did you find on him? or in his room?”

Dundy drew his lips in and asked: “What’d you think we’d find?”

Spade made a careless circle with his limp cigarette. “Something to tell
you who he was, what his story was. Did you?”

“We thought you could tell us that.”

Spade looked at the Lieutenant with yellow-grey eyes that held an almost
exaggerated amount of candor. “I’ve never seen Thursby, dead or alive.”

Lieutenant Dundy stood up looking dissatisfied. Tom rose yawning and
stretching.

“We’ve asked what we came to ask,” Dundy said, frowning over eyes hard
as green pebbles. He held his mustached upper lip tight to his teeth,
letting his lower lip push the words out. “We’ve told you more than
you’ve told us. That’s fair enough. You know me, Spade. If you did or
you didn’t you’ll get a square deal out of me, and most of the breaks. I
don’t know that I’d blame you a hell of a lot—but that wouldn’t keep me
from nailing you.”

“Fair enough,” Spade replied evenly. “But I’d feel better about it if
you’d drink your drink.”

Lieutenant Dundy turned to the table, picked up his glass, and slowly
emptied it. Then he said, “Good night,” and held out his hand. They
shook hands ceremoniously. Tom and Spade shook hands ceremoniously.
Spade let them out. Then he undressed, turned off the lights, and went
to bed.




                                   3


                              THREE WOMEN

WHEN Spade reached his office at ten o’clock the following morning Effie
Perine was at her desk opening the morning’s mail. Her boyish face was
pale under its sunburn. She put down the handful of envelopes and the
brass paper-knife she held and said: “She’s in there.” Her voice was low
and warning.

“I asked you to keep her away,” Spade complained. He too kept his voice
low.

Effie Perine’s brown eyes opened wide and her voice was irritable as
his: “Yes, but you didn’t tell me how.” Her eyelids went together a
little and her shoulders drooped. “Don’t be cranky, Sam,” she said
wearily. “I had her all night.”

Spade stood beside the girl, put a hand on her head, and smoothed her
hair away from its parting. “Sorry, angel, I haven’t—” He broke off as
the inner door opened. “Hello, Iva,” he said to the woman who had opened
it.

“Oh, Sam!” she said.

She was a blonde woman of a few more years than thirty. Her facial
prettiness was perhaps five years past its best moment. Her body for all
its sturdiness was finely modeled and exquisite. She wore black clothes
from hat to shoes. They had as mourning an impromptu air. Having spoken,
she stepped back from the door and stood waiting for Spade.

He took his hand from Effie Perine’s head and entered the inner office,
shutting the door. Iva came quickly to him, raising her sad face for his
kiss. Her arms were around him before his held her. When they had kissed
he made a little movement as if to release her, but she pressed her face
to his chest and began sobbing.

He stroked her round back, saying: “Poor darling.” His voice was tender.
His eyes, squinting at the desk that had been his partner’s, across the
room from his own, were angry. He drew his lips back over his teeth in
an impatient grimace and turned his chin aside to avoid contact with the
crown of her hat. “Did you send for Miles’s brother?” he asked.

“Yes, he came over this morning.” The words were blurred by her sobbing
and his coat against her mouth.

He grimaced again and bent his head for a surreptitious look at the
watch on his wrist. His left arm was around her, the hand on her left
shoulder. His cuff was pulled back far enough to leave the watch
uncovered. It showed ten-ten.

The woman stirred in his arms and raised her face again. Her blue eyes
were wet, round, and white-ringed. Her mouth was moist.

“Oh, Sam,” she moaned, “did you kill him?”

Spade stared at her with bulging eyes. His bony jaw fell down. He took
his arms from her and stepped back out of her arms. He scowled at her
and cleared his throat.

She held her arms up as he had left them. Anguish clouded her eyes,
partly closed them under eyebrows pulled up at the inner ends. Her soft
damp red lips trembled.

Spade laughed a harsh syllable, “Ha!” and went to the buff-curtained
window. He stood there with his back to her looking through the curtain
into the court until she started towards him. Then he turned quickly and
went to his desk. He sat down, put his elbows on the desk, his chin
between his fists, and looked at her. His yellowish eyes glittered
between narrowed lids.

“Who,” he asked coldly, “put that bright idea in your head?”

“I thought—” She lifted a hand to her mouth and fresh tears came to her
eyes. She came to stand beside the desk, moving with easy sure-footed
grace in black slippers whose smallness and heel-height were extreme.
“Be kind to me, Sam,” she said humbly.

He laughed at her, his eyes still glittering. “You killed my husband,
Sam, be kind to me.” He clapped his palms together and said: “Jesus
Christ.”

She began to cry audibly, holding a white handkerchief to her face.

He got up and stood close behind her. He put his arms around her. He
kissed her neck between ear and coat-collar. He said: “Now, Iva, don’t.”
His face was expressionless. When she had stopped crying he put his
mouth to her ear and murmured: “You shouldn’t have come here today,
precious. It wasn’t wise. You can’t stay. You ought to be home.”

She turned around in his arms to face him and asked: “You’ll come
tonight?”

He shook his head gently. “Not tonight.”

“Soon?”

“Yes.”

“How soon?”

“As soon as I can.”

He kissed her mouth, led her to the door, opened it, said, “Good-bye,
Iva,” bowed her out, shut the door, and returned to his desk.

He took tobacco and cigarette-papers from his vest-pockets, but did not
roll a cigarette. He sat holding the papers in one hand, the tobacco in
the other, and looked with brooding eyes at his dead partner’s desk.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Effie Perine opened the door and came in. Her brown eyes were uneasy.
Her voice was careless. She asked: “Well?”

Spade said nothing. His brooding gaze did not move from his partner’s
desk.

The girl frowned and came around to his side. “Well,” she asked in a
louder voice, “how did you and the widow make out?”

“She thinks I shot Miles,” he said. Only his lips moved.

“So you could marry her?”

Spade made no reply to that.

The girl took his hat from his head and put it on the desk. Then she
leaned over and took the tobacco-sack and the papers from his inert
fingers.

“The police think I shot Thursby,” he said.

“Who is he?” she asked, separating a cigarette-paper from the packet,
sifting tobacco into it.

“Who do you think I shot?” he asked.

When she ignored that question he said: “Thursby’s the guy Miles was
supposed to be tailing for the Wonderly girl.”

Her thin fingers finished shaping the cigarette. She licked it, smoothed
it, twisted its ends, and placed it between Spade’s lips. He said,
“Thanks, honey,” put an arm around her slim waist, and rested his cheek
wearily against her hip, shutting his eyes.

“Are you going to marry Iva?” she asked, looking down at his pale brown
hair.

“Don’t be silly,” he muttered. The unlighted cigarette bobbed up and
down with the movement of his lips.

“She doesn’t think it’s silly. Why should she—the way you’ve played
around with her?”

He sighed and said: “I wish to Christ I’d never seen her.”

“Maybe you do now.” A trace of spitefulness came into the girl’s voice.
“But there was a time.”

“I never know what to do or say to women except that way,” he grumbled,
“and then I didn’t like Miles.”

“That’s a lie, Sam,” the girl said. “You know I think she’s a louse, but
I’d be a louse too if it would give me a body like hers.”

Spade rubbed his face impatiently against her hip, but said nothing.

Effie Perine bit her lip, wrinkled her forehead, and, bending over for a
better view of his face, asked: “Do you suppose she could have killed
him?”

Spade sat up straight and took his arm from her waist. He smiled at her.
His smile held nothing but amusement. He took out his lighter, snapped
on the flame, and applied it to the end of his cigarette. “You’re an
angel,” he said tenderly through smoke, “a nice rattle-brained angel.”

She smiled a bit wryly. “Oh, am I? Suppose I told you that your Iva
hadn’t been home many minutes when I arrived to break the news at three
o’clock this morning?”

“Are you telling me?” he asked. His eyes had become alert though his
mouth continued to smile.

“She kept me waiting at the door while she undressed or finished
undressing. I saw her clothes where she had dumped them on a chair. Her
hat and coat were underneath. Her singlet, on top, was still warm. She
said she had been asleep, but she hadn’t. She had wrinkled up the bed,
but the wrinkles weren’t mashed down.”

Spade took the girl’s hand and patted it. “You’re a detective, darling,
but”—he shook his head—“she didn’t kill him.”

Effie Perine snatched her hand away. “That louse wants to marry you,
Sam,” she said bitterly.

He made an impatient gesture with his head and one hand.

She frowned at him and demanded: “Did you see her last night?”

“No.”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly. Don’t act like Dundy, sweetheart. It ill becomes you.”

“Has Dundy been after you?”

“Uh-huh. He and Tom Polhaus dropped in for a drink at four o’clock.”

“Do they really think you shot this what’s-his-name?”

“Thursby.” He dropped what was left of his cigarette into the brass tray
and began to roll another.

“Do they?” she insisted.

“God knows.” His eyes were on the cigarette he was making. “They did
have some such notion. I don’t know how far I talked them out of it.”

“Look at me, Sam.”

He looked at her and laughed so that for the moment merriment mingled
with the anxiety in her face.

“You worry me,” she said, seriousness returning to her face as she
talked. “You always think you know what you’re doing, but you’re too
slick for your own good, and some day you’re going to find it out.”

He sighed mockingly and rubbed his cheek against her arm. “That’s what
Dundy says, but you keep Iva away from me, sweet, and I’ll manage to
survive the rest of my troubles.” He stood up and put on his hat. “Have
the _Spade & Archer_ taken off the door and _Samuel Spade_ put on. I’ll
be back in an hour, or phone you.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Spade went through the St. Mark’s long purplish lobby to the desk and
asked a red-haired dandy whether Miss Wonderly was in. The red-haired
dandy turned away, and then back shaking his head. “She checked out this
morning, Mr. Spade.”

“Thanks.”

Spade walked past the desk to an alcove off the lobby where a plump
young-middle-aged man in dark clothes sat at a flat-topped mahogany
desk. On the edge of the desk facing the lobby was a triangular prism of
mahogany and brass inscribed _Mr. Freed_.

The plump man got up and came around the desk holding out his hand.

“I was awfully sorry to hear about Archer, Spade,” he said in the tone
of one trained to sympathize readily without intrusiveness. “I’ve just
seen it in the _Call_. He was in here last night, you know.”

“Thanks, Freed. Were you talking to him?”

“No. He was sitting in the lobby when I came in early in the evening. I
didn’t stop. I thought he was probably working and I know you fellows
like to be left alone when you’re busy. Did that have anything to do
with his—?”

“I don’t think so, but we don’t know yet. Anyway, we won’t mix the house
up in it if it can be helped.”

“Thanks.”

“That’s all right. Can you give me some dope on an ex-guest, and then
forget that I asked for it?”

“Surely.”

“A Miss Wonderly checked out this morning. I’d like to know the
details.”

“Come along,” Freed said, “and we’ll see what we can learn.”

Spade stood still, shaking his head. “I don’t want to show in it.”

Freed nodded and went out of the alcove. In the lobby he halted suddenly
and came back to Spade.

“Harriman was the house-detective on duty last night,” he said. “He’s
sure to have seen Archer. Shall I caution him not to mention it?”

Spade looked at Freed from the corners of his eyes. “Better not. That
won’t make any difference as long as there’s no connection shown with
this Wonderly. Harriman’s all right, but he likes to talk, and I’d as
lief not have him think there’s anything to be kept quiet.”

Freed nodded again and went away. Fifteen minutes later he returned.

“She arrived last Tuesday, registering from New York. She hadn’t a
trunk, only some bags. There were no phone-calls charged to her room,
and she doesn’t seem to have received much, if any, mail. The only one
anybody remembers having seen her with was a tall dark man of thirty-six
or so. She went out at half-past nine this morning, came back an hour
later, paid her bill, and had her bags carried out to a car. The boy who
carried them says it was a Nash touring car, probably a hired one. She
left a forwarding address—the Ambassador, Los Angeles.”

Spade said, “Thanks a lot, Freed,” and left the St. Mark.

When Spade returned to his office Effie Perine stopped typing a letter
to tell him: “Your friend Dundy was in. He wanted to look at your guns.”

“And?”

“I told him to come back when you were here.”

“Good girl. If he comes back again let him look at them.”

“And Miss Wonderly called up.”

“It’s about time. What did she say?”

“She wants to see you.” The girl picked up a slip of paper from her desk
and read the memorandum penciled on it: “She’s at the Coronet, on
California Street, apartment one thousand and one. You’re to ask for
Miss Leblanc.”

Spade said, “Give me,” and held out his hand. When she had given him the
memorandum he took out his lighter, snapped on the flame, set it to the
slip of paper, held the paper until all but one corner was curling black
ash, dropped it on the linoleum floor, and mashed it under his shoesole.

The girl watched him with disapproving eyes.

He grinned at her, said, “That’s just the way it is, dear,” and went out
again.




                                   4


                             THE BLACK BIRD

MISS WONDERLY, in a belted green crêpe silk dress, opened the door of
apartment 1001 at the Coronet. Her face was flushed. Her dark red hair,
parted on the left side, swept back in loose waves over her right
temple, was somewhat tousled.

Spade took off his hat and said: “Good morning.”

His smile brought a fainter smile to her face. Her eyes, of blue that
was almost violet, did not lose their troubled look. She lowered her
head and said in a hushed, timid voice: “Come in, Mr. Spade.”

She led him past open kitchen-, bathroom-, and bedroom-doors into a
cream and red living-room, apologizing for its confusion: “Everything is
upside-down. I haven’t even finished unpacking.”

She laid his hat on a table and sat down on a walnut settee. He sat on a
brocaded oval-backed chair facing her.

She looked at her fingers, working them together, and said: “Mr. Spade,
I’ve a terrible, terrible confession to make.”

Spade smiled a polite smile, which she did not lift her eyes to see, and
said nothing.

“That—that story I told you yesterday was all—a story,” she stammered,
and looked up at him now with miserable frightened eyes.

“Oh, that,” Spade said lightly. “We didn’t exactly believe your story.”

“Then—?” Perplexity was added to the misery and fright in her eyes.

“We believed your two hundred dollars.”

“You mean—?” She seemed to not know what he meant.

“I mean that you paid us more than if you’d been telling the truth,” he
explained blandly, “and enough more to make it all right.”

Her eyes suddenly lighted up. She lifted herself a few inches from the
settee, settled down again, smoothed her skirt, leaned forward, and
spoke eagerly: “And even now you’d be willing to—?”

Spade stopped her with a palm-up motion of one hand. The upper part of
his face frowned. The lower part smiled. “That depends,” he said. “The
hell of it is, Miss—— Is your name Wonderly or Leblanc?”

She blushed and murmured: “It’s really O’Shaughnessy—Brigid
O’Shaughnessy.”

“The hell of it is, Miss O’Shaughnessy, that a couple of murders”—she
winced—“coming together like this get everybody stirred up, make the
police think they can go the limit, make everybody hard to handle and
expensive. It’s not—”

He stopped talking because she had stopped listening and was waiting for
him to finish.

“Mr. Spade, tell me the truth.” Her voice quivered on the verge of
hysteria. Her face had become haggard around desperate eyes. “Am I to
blame for—for last night?”

Spade shook his head. “Not unless there are things I don’t know about,”
he said. “You warned us that Thursby was dangerous. Of course you lied
to us about your sister and all, but that doesn’t count: we didn’t
believe you.” He shrugged his sloping shoulders. “I wouldn’t say it was
your fault.”

She said, “Thank you,” very softly, and then moved her head from side to
side. “But I’ll always blame myself.” She put a hand to her throat. “Mr.
Archer was so—so alive yesterday afternoon, so solid and hearty and—”

“Stop it,” Spade commanded. “He knew what he was doing. They’re the
chances we take.”

“Was—was he married?”

“Yes, with ten thousand insurance, no children, and a wife who didn’t
like him.”

“Oh, please don’t!” she whispered.

Spade shrugged again. “That’s the way it was.” He glanced at his watch
and moved from his chair to the settee beside her. “There’s no time for
worrying about that now.” His voice was pleasant but firm. “Out there a
flock of policemen and assistant district attorneys and reporters are
running around with their noses to the ground. What do you want to do?”

“I want you to save me from—from it all,” she replied in a thin
tremulous voice. She put a timid hand on his sleeve. “Mr. Spade, do they
know about me?”

“Not yet. I wanted to see you first.”

“What—what would they think if they knew about the way I came to
you—with those lies?”

“It would make them suspicious. That’s why I’ve been stalling them till
I could see you. I thought maybe we wouldn’t have to let them know all
of it. We ought to be able to fake a story that will rock them to sleep,
if necessary.”

“You don’t think I had anything to do with the—the murders—do you?”

Spade grinned at her and said: “I forgot to ask you that. Did you?”

“No.”

“That’s good. Now what are we going to tell the police?”

She squirmed on her end of the settee and her eyes wavered between heavy
lashes, as if trying and failing to free their gaze from his. She seemed
smaller, and very young and oppressed.

“Must they know about me at all?” she asked. “I think I’d rather die
than that, Mr. Spade. I can’t explain now, but can’t you somehow manage
so that you can shield me from them, so I won’t have to answer their
questions? I don’t think I could stand being questioned now. I think I
would rather die. Can’t you, Mr. Spade?”

“Maybe,” he said, “but I’ll have to know what it’s all about.”

She went down on her knees at his knees. She held her face up to him.
Her face was wan, taut, and fearful over tight-clasped hands.

“I haven’t lived a good life,” she cried. “I’ve been bad—worse than you
could know—but I’m not all bad. Look at me, Mr. Spade. You know I’m not
all bad, don’t you? You can see that, can’t you? Then can’t you trust me
a little? Oh, I’m so alone and afraid, and I’ve got nobody to help me if
you won’t help me. I know I’ve no right to ask you to trust me if I
won’t trust you. I do trust you, but I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you
now. Later I will, when I can. I’m afraid, Mr. Spade. I’m afraid of
trusting you. I don’t mean that. I do trust you, but—I trusted Floyd
and—I’ve nobody else, nobody else, Mr. Spade. You can help me. You’ve
said you can help me. If I hadn’t believed you could save me I would
have run away today instead of sending for you. If I thought anybody
else could save me would I be down on my knees like this? I know this
isn’t fair of me. But be generous, Mr. Spade, don’t ask me to be fair.
You’re strong, you’re resourceful, you’re brave. You can spare me some
of that strength and resourcefulness and courage, surely. Help me, Mr.
Spade. Help me because I need help so badly, and because if you don’t
where will I find anyone who can, no matter how willing? Help me. I’ve
no right to ask you to help me blindly, but I do ask you. Be generous,
Mr. Spade. You can help me. Help me.”

Spade, who had held his breath through much of this speech, now emptied
his lungs with a long sighing exhalation between pursed lips and said:
“You won’t need much of anybody’s help. You’re good. You’re very good.
It’s chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get into your voice
when you say things like ‘Be generous, Mr. Spade.’”

She jumped up on her feet. Her face crimsoned painfully, but she held
her head erect and she looked Spade straight in the eyes.

“I deserve that,” she said. “I deserve it, but—oh!—I did want your
help so much. I do want it, and need it, so much. And the lie was in the
way I said it, and not at all in what I said.” She turned away, no
longer holding herself erect. “It is my own fault that you can’t believe
me now.”

Spade’s face reddened and he looked down at the floor, muttering: “Now
you are dangerous.”

Brigid O’Shaughnessy went to the table and picked up his hat. She came
back and stood in front of him holding the hat, not offering it to him,
but holding it for him to take if he wished. Her face was white and
thin.

Spade looked at his hat and asked: “What happened last night?”

“Floyd came to the hotel at nine o’clock, and we went out for a walk. I
suggested that so Mr. Archer could see him. We stopped at a restaurant
in Geary Street, I think it was, for supper and to dance, and came back
to the hotel at about half-past twelve. Floyd left me at the door and I
stood inside and watched Mr. Archer follow him down the street, on the
other side.”

“Down? You mean towards Market Street?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what they’d be doing in the neighborhood of Bush and
Stockton, where Archer was shot?”

“Isn’t that near where Floyd lived?”

“No. It would be nearly a dozen blocks out of his way if he was going
from your hotel to his. Well, what did you do after they had gone?”

“I went to bed. And this morning when I went out for breakfast I saw the
headlines in the papers and read about—you know. Then I went up to
Union Square, where I had seen automobiles for hire, and got one and
went to the hotel for my luggage. After I found my room had been
searched yesterday I knew I would have to move, and I had found this
place yesterday afternoon. So I came up here and then telephoned your
office.”

“Your room at the St. Mark was searched?” he asked.

“Yes, while I was at your office.” She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean to
tell you that.”

“That means I’m not supposed to question you about it?”

She nodded shyly.

He frowned.

She moved his hat a little in her hands.

He laughed impatiently and said: “Stop waving the hat in my face.
Haven’t I offered to do what I can?”

She smiled contritely, returned the hat to the table, and sat beside him
on the settee again.

He said: “I’ve got nothing against trusting you blindly except that I
won’t be able to do you much good if I haven’t some idea of what it’s
all about. For instance, I’ve got to have some sort of a line on your
Floyd Thursby.”

“I met him in the Orient.” She spoke slowly, looking down at a pointed
finger tracing eights on the settee between them. “We came here from
Hongkong last week. He was—he had promised to help me. He took
advantage of my helplessness and dependence on him to betray me.”

“Betray you how?”

She shook her head and said nothing.

Spade, frowning with impatience, asked: “Why did you want him shadowed?”

“I wanted to learn how far he had gone. He wouldn’t even let me know
where he was staying. I wanted to find out what he was doing, whom he
was meeting, things like that.”

“Did he kill Archer?”

She looked up at him, surprised. “Yes, certainly,” she said.

“He had a Luger in a shoulder-holster. Archer wasn’t shot with a Luger.”

“He had a revolver in his overcoat-pocket,” she said.

“You saw it?”

“Oh, I’ve seen it often. I know he always carries one there. I didn’t
see it last night, but I know he never wears an overcoat without it.”

“Why all the guns?”

“He lived by them. There was a story in Hongkong that he had come out
there, to the Orient, as bodyguard to a gambler who had had to leave the
States, and that the gambler had since disappeared. They said Floyd knew
about his disappearing. I don’t know. I do know that he always went
heavily armed and that he never went to sleep without covering the floor
around his bed with crumpled newspaper so nobody could come silently
into his room.”

“You picked a nice sort of playmate.”

“Only that sort could have helped me,” she said simply, “if he had been
loyal.”

“Yes, if.” Spade pinched his lower lip between finger and thumb and
looked gloomily at her. The vertical creases over his nose deepened,
drawing his brows together. “How bad a hole are you actually in?”

“As bad,” she said, “as could be.”

“Physical danger?”

“I’m not heroic. I don’t think there’s anything worse than death.”

“Then it’s that?”

“It’s that as surely as we’re sitting here”—she shivered—“unless you
help me.”

He took his fingers away from his mouth and ran them through his hair.
“I’m not Christ,” he said irritably. “I can’t work miracles out of thin
air.” He looked at his watch. “The day’s going and you’re giving me
nothing to work with. Who killed Thursby?”

She put a crumpled handkerchief to her mouth and said, “I don’t know,”
through it.

“Your enemies or his?”

“I don’t know. His, I hope, but I’m afraid—I don’t know.”

“How was he supposed to be helping you? Why did you bring him here from
Hongkong?”

She looked at him with frightened eyes and shook her head in silence.
Her face was haggard and pitifully stubborn.

Spade stood up, thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and
scowled down at her. “This is hopeless,” he said savagely. “I can’t do
anything for you. I don’t know what you want done. I don’t even know if
you know what you want.”

She hung her head and wept.

He made a growling animal noise in his throat and went to the table for
his hat.

“You won’t,” she begged in a small choked voice, not looking up, “go to
the police?”

“Go to them!” he exclaimed, his voice loud with rage. “They’ve been
running me ragged since four o’clock this morning. I’ve made myself God
knows how much trouble standing them off. For what? For some crazy
notion that I could help you. I can’t. I won’t try.” He put his hat on
his head and pulled it down tight. “Go to them? All I’ve got to do is
stand still and they’ll be swarming all over me. Well, I’ll tell them
what I know and you’ll have to take your chances.”

She rose from the settee and held herself straight in front of him
though her knees were trembling, and she held her white panic-stricken
face up high though she couldn’t hold the twitching muscles of mouth and
chin still. She said: “You’ve been patient. You’ve tried to help me. It
is hopeless, and useless, I suppose.” She stretched out her right hand.
“I thank you for what you have done. I—I’ll have to take my chances.”

Spade made the growling animal noise in his throat again and sat down on
the settee. “How much money have you got?” he asked.

The question startled her. Then she pinched her lower lip between her
teeth and answered reluctantly: “I’ve about five hundred dollars left.”

“Give it to me.”

She hesitated, looking timidly at him. He made angry gestures with
mouth, eyebrows, hands, and shoulders. She went into her bedroom,
returning almost immediately with a sheaf of paper money in one hand.

He took the money from her, counted it, and said: “There’s only four
hundred here.”

“I had to keep some to live on,” she explained meekly, putting a hand to
her breast.

“Can’t you get any more?”

“No.”

“You must have something you can raise money on,” he insisted.

“I’ve some rings, a little jewelry.”

“You’ll have to hock them,” he said, and held out his hand. “The
Remedial’s the best place—Mission and Fifth.”

She looked pleadingly at him. His yellow-grey eyes were hard and
implacable. Slowly she put her hand inside the neck of her dress,
brought out a slender roll of bills, and put them in his waiting hand.

He smoothed the bills out and counted them—four twenties, four tens,
and a five. He returned two of the tens and the five to her. The others
he put in his pocket. Then he stood up and said: “I’m going out and see
what I can do for you. I’ll be back as soon as I can with the best news
I can manage. I’ll ring four times—long, short, long, short—so you’ll
know it’s me. You needn’t go to the door with me. I can let myself out.”

He left her standing in the center of the floor looking after him with
dazed blue eyes.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Spade went into a reception-room whose door bore the legend _Wise,
Merican & Wise_. The red-haired girl at the switchboard said: “Oh,
hello, Mr. Spade.”

“Hello, darling,” he replied. “Is Sid in?”

He stood beside her with a hand on her plump shoulder while she
manipulated a plug and spoke into the mouthpiece: “Mr. Spade to see you,
Mr. Wise.” She looked up at Spade. “Go right in.”

He squeezed her shoulder by way of acknowledgment, crossed the
reception-room to a dully lighted inner corridor, and passed down the
corridor to a frosted glass door at its far end. He opened the frosted
glass door and went into an office where a small olive-skinned man with
a tired oval face under thin dark hair dotted with dandruff sat behind
an immense desk on which bales of paper were heaped.

The small man flourished a cold cigar-stub at Spade and said: “Pull a
chair around. So Miles got the big one last night?” Neither his tired
face nor his rather shrill voice held any emotion.

“Uh-huh, that’s what I came in about.” Spade frowned and cleared his
throat. “I think I’m going to have to tell a coroner to go to hell, Sid.
Can I hide behind the sanctity of my clients’ secrets and identities and
what-not, all the same priest or lawyer?”

Sid Wise lifted his shoulders and lowered the ends of his mouth. “Why
not? An inquest is not a court-trial. You can try, anyway. You’ve gotten
away with more than that before this.”

“I know, but Dundy’s getting snotty, and maybe it is a little bit thick
this time. Get your hat, Sid, and we’ll go see the right people. I want
to be safe.”

Sid Wise looked at the papers massed on his desk and groaned, but he got
up from his chair and went to the closet by the window. “You’re a son of
a gun, Sammy,” he said as he took his hat from its hook.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Spade returned to his office at ten minutes past five that evening.
Effie Perine was sitting at his desk reading _Time_. Spade sat on the
desk and asked: “Anything stirring?”

“Not here. You look like you’d swallowed the canary.”

He grinned contentedly. “I think we’ve got a future. I always had an
idea that if Miles would go off and die somewhere we’d stand a better
chance of thriving. Will you take care of sending flowers for me?”

“I did.”

“You’re an invaluable angel. How’s your woman’s intuition today?”

“Why?”

“What do you think of Wonderly?”

“I’m for her,” the girl replied without hesitation.

“She’s got too many names,” Spade mused, “Wonderly, Leblanc, and she
says the right one’s O’Shaughnessy.”

“I don’t care if she’s got all the names in the phone-book. That girl is
all right, and you know it.”

“I wonder.” Spade blinked sleepily at Effie Perine. He chuckled. “Anyway
she’s given up seven hundred smacks in two days, and that’s all right.”

Effie Perine sat up straight and said: “Sam, if that girl’s in trouble
and you let her down, or take advantage of it to bleed her, I’ll never
forgive you, never have any respect for you, as long as I live.”

Spade smiled unnaturally. Then he frowned. The frown was unnatural. He
opened his mouth to speak, but the sound of someone’s entrance through
the corridor-door stopped him.

Effie Perine rose and went into the outer office. Spade took off his hat
and sat in his chair. The girl returned with an engraved card—_Mr. Joel
Cairo_.

“This guy is queer,” she said.

“In with him, then, darling,” said Spade.

Mr. Joel Cairo was a small-boned dark man of medium height. His hair was
black and smooth and very glossy. His features were Levantine. A
square-cut ruby, its sides paralleled by four baguette diamonds, gleamed
against the deep green of his cravat. His black coat, cut tight to
narrow shoulders, flared a little over slightly plump hips. His trousers
fitted his round legs more snugly than was the current fashion. The
uppers of his patent-leather shoes were hidden by fawn spats. He held a
black derby hat in a chamois-gloved hand and came towards Spade with
short, mincing, bobbing steps. The fragrance of _chypre_ came with him.

Spade inclined his head at his visitor and then at a chair, saying: “Sit
down, Mr. Cairo.”

Cairo bowed elaborately over his hat, said, “I thank you,” in a
high-pitched thin voice and sat down. He sat down primly, crossing his
ankles, placing his hat on his knees, and began to draw off his yellow
gloves.

Spade rocked back in his chair and asked: “Now what can I do for you,
Mr. Cairo?” The amiable negligence of his tone, his motion in the chair,
were precisely as they had been when he had addressed the same question
to Brigid O’Shaughnessy on the previous day.

Cairo turned his hat over, dropping his gloves into it, and placed it
bottom-up on the corner of the desk nearest him. Diamonds twinkled on
the second and fourth fingers of his left hand, a ruby that matched the
one in his tie even to the surrounding diamonds on the third finger of
his right hand. His hands were soft and well cared for. Though they were
not large their flaccid bluntness made them seem clumsy. He rubbed his
palms together and said over the whispering sound they made: “May a
stranger offer condolences for your partner’s unfortunate death?”

“Thanks.”

“May I ask, Mr. Spade, if there was, as the newspapers inferred, a
certain—ah—relationship between that unfortunate happening and the
death a little later of the man Thursby?”

Spade said nothing in a blank-faced definite way.

Cairo rose and bowed. “I beg your pardon.” He sat down and placed his
hands side by side, palms down, on the corner of the desk. “More than
idle curiosity made me ask that, Mr. Spade. I am trying to recover
an—ah—ornament that has been—shall we say?—mislaid. I thought, and
hoped, you could assist me.”

Spade nodded with eyebrows lifted to indicate attentiveness.

“The ornament is a statuette,” Cairo went on, selecting and mouthing his
words carefully, “the black figure of a bird.”

Spade nodded again, with courteous interest.

“I am prepared to pay, on behalf of the figure’s rightful owner, the sum
of five thousand dollars for its recovery.” Cairo raised one hand from
the desk-corner and touched a spot in the air with the broad-nailed tip
of an ugly forefinger. “I am prepared to promise that—what is the
phrase?—no questions will be asked.” He put his hand on the desk again
beside the other and smiled blandly over them at the private detective.

“Five thousand is a lot of money,” Spade commented, looking thoughtfully
at Cairo. “It—”

Fingers drummed lightly on the door.

When Spade had called, “Come in,” the door opened far enough to admit
Effie Perine’s head and shoulders. She had put on a small dark felt hat
and a dark coat with a grey fur collar.

“Is there anything else?” she asked.

“No. Good night. Lock the door when you go, will you?”

Spade turned in his chair to face Cairo again, saying: “It’s an
interesting figure.”

The sound of the corridor-door’s closing behind Effie Perine came to
them.

Cairo smiled and took a short compact flat black pistol out of an inner
pocket. “You will please,” he said, “clasp your hands together at the
back of your neck.”




                                   5


                             THE LEVANTINE

SPADE did not look at the pistol. He raised his arms and, leaning back
in his chair, intertwined the fingers of his two hands behind his head.
His eyes, holding no particular expression, remained focused on Cairo’s
dark face.

Cairo coughed a little apologetic cough and smiled nervously with lips
that had lost some of their redness. His dark eyes were humid and
bashful and very earnest. “I intend to search your offices, Mr. Spade. I
warn you that if you attempt to prevent me I shall certainly shoot you.”

“Go ahead.” Spade’s voice was as empty of expression as his face.

“You will please stand,” the man with the pistol instructed him at whose
thick chest the pistol was aimed. “I shall have to make sure that you
are not armed.”

Spade stood up pushing his chair back with his calves as he straightened
his legs.

Cairo went around behind him. He transferred the pistol from his right
hand to his left. He lifted Spade’s coat-tail and looked under it.
Holding the pistol close to Spade’s back, he put his right hand around
Spade’s side and patted his chest. The Levantine face was then no more
than six inches below and behind Spade’s right elbow.

Spade’s elbow dropped as Spade spun to the right. Cairo’s face jerked
back not far enough: Spade’s right heel on the patent-leathered toes
anchored the smaller man in the elbow’s path. The elbow struck him
beneath the cheek-bone, staggering him so that he must have fallen had
he not been held by Spade’s foot on his foot. Spade’s elbow went on past
the astonished dark face and straightened when Spade’s hand struck down
at the pistol. Cairo let the pistol go the instant that Spade’s fingers
touched it. The pistol was small in Spade’s hand.

Spade took his foot off Cairo’s to complete his about-face. With his
left hand Spade gathered together the smaller man’s coat-lapels—the
ruby-set green tie bunching out over his knuckles—while his right hand
stowed the captured weapon away in a coat-pocket. Spade’s yellow-grey
eyes were somber. His face was wooden, with a trace of sullenness around
the mouth.

Cairo’s face was twisted by pain and chagrin. There were tears in his
dark eyes. His skin was the complexion of polished lead except where the
elbow had reddened his cheek.

Spade by means of his grip on the Levantine’s lapels turned him slowly
and pushed him back until he was standing close in front of the chair he
had lately occupied. A puzzled look replaced the look of pain in the
lead-colored face. Then Spade smiled. His smile was gentle, even dreamy.
His right shoulder raised a few inches. His bent right arm was driven up
by the shoulder’s lift. Fist, wrist, forearm, crooked elbow, and upper
arm seemed all one rigid piece, with only the limber shoulder giving
them motion. The fist struck Cairo’s face, covering for a moment one
side of his chin, a corner of his mouth, and most of his cheek between
cheek-bone and jaw-bone.

Cairo shut his eyes and was unconscious.

Spade lowered the limp body into the chair, where it lay with sprawled
arms and legs, the head lolling back against the chair’s back, the mouth
open.

Spade emptied the unconscious man’s pockets one by one, working
methodically, moving the lax body when necessary, making a pile of the
pockets’ contents on the desk. When the last pocket had been turned out
he returned to his own chair, rolled and lighted a cigarette, and began
to examine his spoils. He examined them with grave unhurried
thoroughness.

There was a large wallet of dark soft leather. The wallet contained
three hundred and sixty-five dollars in United States bills of several
sizes; three five-pound notes; a much-visaed Greek passport bearing
Cairo’s name and portrait; five folded sheets of pinkish onion-skin
paper covered with what seemed to be Arabic writing; a raggedly clipped
newspaper-account of the finding of Archer’s and Thursby’s bodies; a
post-card-photograph of a dusky woman with bold cruel eyes and a tender
drooping mouth; a large silk handkerchief, yellow with age and somewhat
cracked along its folds; a thin sheaf of Mr. Joel Cairo’s engraved
cards; and a ticket for an orchestra seat at the Geary Theatre that
evening.

Besides the wallet and its contents there were three gaily colored silk
handkerchiefs fragrant of _chypre_; a platinum Longines watch on a
platinum and red gold chain, attached at the other end to a small
pear-shaped pendant of some white metal; a handful of United States,
British, French, and Chinese coins; a ring holding half a dozen keys; a
silver and onyx fountain-pen; a metal comb in a leatherette case; a
nail-file in a leatherette case; a small street-guide to San Francisco;
a Southern Pacific baggage-check; a half-filled package of violet
pastilles; a Shanghai insurance-broker’s business-card; and four sheets
of Hotel Belvedere writing paper, on one of which was written in small
precise letters Samuel Spade’s name and the addresses of his office and
his apartment.

Having examined these articles carefully—he even opened the back of the
watch-case to see that nothing was hidden inside—Spade leaned over and
took the unconscious man’s wrist between finger and thumb, feeling his
pulse. Then he dropped the wrist, settled back in his chair, and rolled
and lighted another cigarette. His face while he smoked was, except for
occasional slight and aimless movements of his lower lip, so still and
reflective that it seemed stupid; but when Cairo presently moaned and
fluttered his eyelids Spade’s face became bland, and he put the
beginning of a friendly smile into his eyes and mouth.

Joel Cairo awakened slowly. His eyes opened first, but a full minute
passed before they fixed their gaze on any definite part of the ceiling.
Then he shut his mouth and swallowed, exhaling heavily through his nose
afterward. He drew in one foot and turned a hand over on his thigh. Then
he raised his head from the chair-back, looked around the office in
confusion, saw Spade, and sat up. He opened his mouth to speak, started,
clapped a hand to his face where Spade’s fist had struck and where there
was now a florid bruise.

Cairo said through his teeth, painfully: “I could have shot you, Mr.
Spade.”

“You could have tried,” Spade conceded.

“I did not try.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you strike me after I was disarmed?”

“Sorry,” Spade said, and grinned wolfishly, showing his jaw-teeth, “but
imagine my embarrassment when I found that five-thousand-dollar offer
was just hooey.”

“You are mistaken, Mr. Spade. That was, and is, a genuine offer.”

“What the hell?” Spade’s surprise was genuine.

“I am prepared to pay five thousand dollars for the figure’s return.”
Cairo took his hand away from his bruised face and sat up prim and
business-like again. “You have it?”

“No.”

“If it is not here”—Cairo was very politely skeptical—“why should you
have risked serious injury to prevent my searching for it?”

“I should sit around and let people come in and stick me up?” Spade
flicked a finger at Cairo’s possessions on the desk. “You’ve got my
apartment-address. Been up there yet?”

“Yes, Mr. Spade. I am ready to pay five thousand dollars for the
figure’s return, but surely it is natural enough that I should try first
to spare the owner that expense if possible.”

“Who is he?”

Cairo shook his head and smiled. “You will have to forgive my not
answering that question.”

“Will I?” Spade leaned forward smiling with tight lips. “I’ve got you by
the neck, Cairo. You’ve walked in and tied yourself up, plenty strong
enough to suit the police, with last night’s killings. Well, now you’ll
have to play with me or else.”

Cairo’s smile was demure and not in any way alarmed. “I made somewhat
extensive inquiries about you before taking any action,” he said, “and
was assured that you were far too reasonable to allow other
considerations to interfere with profitable business relations.”

Spade shrugged. “Where are they?” he asked.

“I have offered you five thousand dollars for—”

Spade thumped Cairo’s wallet with the backs of his fingers and said:
“There’s nothing like five thousand dollars here. You’re betting your
eyes. You could come in and say you’d pay me a million for a purple
elephant, but what in hell would that mean?”

“I see, I see,” Cairo said thoughtfully, screwing up his eyes. “You wish
some assurance of my sincerity.” He brushed his red lower lip with a
fingertip. “A retainer, would that serve?”

“It might.”

Cairo put his hand out towards his wallet, hesitated, withdrew the hand,
and said: “You will take, say, a hundred dollars?”

Spade picked up the wallet and took out a hundred dollars. Then he
frowned, said, “Better make it two hundred,” and did.

Cairo said nothing.

“Your first guess was that I had the bird,” Spade said in a crisp voice
when he had put the two hundred dollars into his pocket and had dropped
the wallet on the desk again. “There’s nothing in that. What’s your
second?”

“That you know where it is, or, if not exactly that, that you know it is
where you can get it.”

Spade neither denied nor affirmed that: he seemed hardly to have heard
it. He asked: “What sort of proof can you give me that your man is the
owner?”

“Very little, unfortunately. There is this, though: nobody else can give
you any authentic evidence of ownership at all. And if you know as much
about the affair as I suppose—or I should not be here—you know that
the means by which it was taken from him shows that his right to it was
more valid than anyone else’s—certainly more valid than Thursby’s.”

“What about his daughter?” Spade asked.

Excitement opened Cairo’s eyes and mouth, turned his face red, made his
voice shrill. “_He_ is not the owner!”

Spade said, “Oh,” mildly and ambiguously.

“Is he here, in San Francisco, now?” Cairo asked in a less shrill, but
still excited, voice.

Spade blinked his eyes sleepily and suggested: “It might be better all
around if we put our cards on the table.”

Cairo recovered composure with a little jerk. “I do not think it would
be better.” His voice was suave now. “If you know more than I, I shall
profit by your knowledge, and so will you to the extent of five thousand
dollars. If you do not then I have made a mistake in coming to you, and
to do as you suggest would be simply to make that mistake worse.”

Spade nodded indifferently and waved his hand at the articles on the
desk, saying: “There’s your stuff”; and then, when Cairo was returning
them to his pockets: “It’s understood that you’re to pay my expenses
while I’m getting this black bird for you, and five thousand dollars
when it’s done?”

“Yes, Mr. Spade; that is, five thousand dollars less whatever moneys
have been advanced to you—five thousand in all.”

“Right. And it’s a legitimate proposition.” Spade’s face was solemn
except for wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “You’re not hiring me to
do any murders or burglaries for you, but simply to get it back if
possible in an honest and lawful way.”

“If possible,” Cairo agreed. His face also was solemn except for the
eyes. “And in any event with discretion.” He rose and picked up his hat.
“I am at the Hotel Belvedere when you wish to communicate with me—room
six-thirty-five. I confidently expect the greatest mutual benefit from
our association, Mr. Spade.” He hesitated. “May I have my pistol?”

“Sure. I’d forgotten it.”

Spade took the pistol out of his coat-pocket and handed it to Cairo.

Cairo pointed the pistol at Spade’s chest.

“You will please keep your hands on the top of the desk,” Cairo said
earnestly. “I intend to search your offices.”

Spade said: “I’ll be damned.” Then he laughed in his throat and said:
“All right. Go ahead. I won’t stop you.”




                                   6


                         THE UNDERSIZED SHADOW

FOR half an hour after Joel Cairo had gone Spade sat alone, still and
frowning, at his desk. Then he said aloud in the tone of one dismissing
a problem, “Well, they’re paying for it,” and took a bottle of Manhattan
cocktail and a paper drinking-cup from a desk-drawer. He filled the cup
two-thirds full, drank, returned the bottle to the drawer, tossed the
cup into the wastebasket, put on his hat and overcoat, turned off the
lights, and went down to the night-lit street.

An undersized youth of twenty or twenty-one in neat grey cap and
overcoat was standing idly on the corner below Spade’s building.

Spade walked up Sutter Street to Kearny, where he entered a cigar-store
to buy two sacks of Bull Durham. When he came out the youth was one of
four people waiting for a street-car on the opposite corner.

Spade ate dinner at Herbert’s Grill in Powell Street. When he left the
Grill, at a quarter to eight, the youth was looking into a nearby
haberdasher’s window.

Spade went to the Hotel Belvedere, asking at the desk for Mr. Cairo. He
was told that Cairo was not in. The youth sat in a chair in a far corner
of the lobby.

Spade went to the Geary Theatre, failed to see Cairo in the lobby, and
posted himself on the curb in front, facing the theatre. The youth
loitered with other loiterers before Marquard’s restaurant below.

At ten minutes past eight Joel Cairo appeared, walking up Geary Street
with his little mincing bobbing steps. Apparently he did not see Spade
until the private detective touched his shoulder. He seemed moderately
surprised for a moment, and then said: “Oh, yes, of course you saw the
ticket.”

“Uh-huh. I’ve got something I want to show you.” Spade drew Cairo back
towards the curb a little away from the other waiting theatre-goers.
“The kid in the cap down by Marquard’s.”

Cairo murmured, “I’ll see,” and looked at his watch. He looked up Geary
Street. He looked at a theatre-sign in front of him on which George
Arliss was shown costumed as Shylock, and then his dark eyes crawled
sidewise in their sockets until they were looking at the kid in the cap,
at his cool pale face with curling lashes hiding lowered eyes.

“Who is he?” Spade asked.

Cairo smiled up at Spade. “I do not know him.”

“He’s been tailing me around town.”

Cairo wet his lower lip with his tongue and asked: “Do you think it was
wise, then, to let him see us together?”

“How do I know?” Spade replied. “Anyway, it’s done.”

Cairo removed his hat and smoothed his hair with a gloved hand. He
replaced his hat carefully on his head and said with every appearance of
candor: “I give you my word I do not know him, Mr. Spade. I give you my
word I have nothing to do with him. I have asked nobody’s assistance
except yours, on my word of honor.”

“Then he’s one of the others?”

“That may be.”

“I just wanted to know, because if he gets to be a nuisance I may have
to hurt him.”

“Do as you think best. He is not a friend of mine.”

“That’s good. There goes the curtain. Good night,” Spade said, and
crossed the street to board a westbound street-car.

The youth in the cap boarded the same car.

Spade left the car at Hyde Street and went up to his apartment. His
rooms were not greatly upset, but showed unmistakable signs of having
been searched. When Spade had washed and had put on a fresh shirt and
collar he went out again, walked up to Sutter Street, and boarded a
westbound car. The youth boarded it also.

Within half a dozen blocks of the Coronet Spade left the car and went
into the vestibule of a tall brown apartment-building. He pressed three
bell-buttons together. The street-door-lock buzzed. He entered, passed
the elevator and stairs, went down a long yellow-walled corridor to the
rear of the building, found a back door fastened by a Yale lock, and let
himself out into a narrow court. The court led to a dark back street, up
which Spade walked for two blocks. Then he crossed over to California
Street and went to the Coronet. It was not quite half-past nine o’clock.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The eagerness with which Brigid O’Shaughnessy welcomed Spade suggested
that she had been not entirely certain of his coming. She had put on a
satin gown of the blue shade called Artoise that season, with chalcedony
shoulder-straps, and her stockings and slippers were Artoise.

The red and cream sitting-room had been brought to order and livened
with flowers in squat pottery vases of black and silver. Three small
rough-barked logs burned in the fireplace. Spade watched them burn while
she put away his hat and coat.

“Do you bring me good news?” she asked when she came into the room
again. Anxiety looked through her smile, and she held her breath.

“We won’t have to make anything public that hasn’t already been made
public.”

“The police won’t have to know about me?”

“No.”

She sighed happily and sat on the walnut settee. Her face relaxed and
her body relaxed. She smiled up at him with admiring eyes. “However did
you manage it?” she asked more in wonder than in curiosity.

“Most things in San Francisco can be bought, or taken.”

“And you won’t get into trouble? Do sit down.” She made room for him on
the settee.

“I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble,” he said with not too much
complacence.

He stood beside the fireplace and looked at her with eyes that studied,
weighed, judged her without pretense that they were not studying,
weighing, judging her. She flushed slightly under the frankness of his
scrutiny, but she seemed more sure of herself than before, though a
becoming shyness had not left her eyes. He stood there until it seemed
plain that he meant to ignore her invitation to sit beside her, and then
crossed to the settee.

“You aren’t,” he asked as he sat down, “exactly the sort of person you
pretend to be, are you?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said in her hushed voice,
looking at him with puzzled eyes.

“Schoolgirl manner,” he explained, “stammering and blushing and all
that.”

She blushed and replied hurriedly, not looking at him: “I told you this
afternoon that I’ve been bad—worse than you could know.”

“That’s what I mean,” he said. “You told me that this afternoon in the
same words, same tone. It’s a speech you’ve practiced.”

After a moment in which she seemed confused almost to the point of tears
she laughed and said: “Very well, then, Mr. Spade, I’m not at all the
sort of person I pretend to be. I’m eighty years old, incredibly wicked,
and an iron-molder by trade. But if it’s a pose it’s one I’ve grown
into, so you won’t expect me to drop it entirely, will you?”

“Oh, it’s all right,” he assured her. “Only it wouldn’t be all right if
you were actually that innocent. We’d never get anywhere.”

“I won’t be innocent,” she promised with a hand on her heart.

“I saw Joel Cairo tonight,” he said in the manner of one making polite
conversation.

Gaiety went out of her face. Her eyes, focused on his profile, became
frightened, then cautious. He had stretched his legs out and was looking
at his crossed feet. His face did not indicate that he was thinking
about anything.

There was a long pause before she asked uneasily:

“You—you know him?”

“I saw him tonight.” Spade did not look up and he maintained his light
conversational tone. “He was going to see George Arliss.”

“You mean you talked to him?”

“Only for a minute or two, till the curtain-bell rang.”

She got up from the settee and went to the fireplace to poke the fire.
She changed slightly the position of an ornament on the mantelpiece,
crossed the room to get a box of cigarettes from a table in a corner,
straightened a curtain, and returned to her seat. Her face now was
smooth and unworried.

Spade grinned sidewise at her and said: “You’re good. You’re very good.”

Her face did not change. She asked quietly: “What did he say?”

“About what?”

She hesitated. “About me.”

“Nothing.” Spade turned to hold his lighter under the end of her
cigarette. His eyes were shiny in a wooden satan’s face.

“Well, what did he say?” she asked with half-playful petulance.

“He offered me five thousand dollars for the black bird.”

She started, her teeth tore the end of her cigarette, and her eyes,
after a swift alarmed glance at Spade, turned away from him.

“You’re not going to go around poking at the fire and straightening up
the room again, are you?” he asked lazily.

She laughed a clear merry laugh, dropped the mangled cigarette into a
tray, and looked at him with clear merry eyes. “I won’t,” she promised.
“And what did you say?”

“Five thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

She smiled, but when, instead of smiling, he looked gravely at her, her
smile became faint, confused, and presently vanished. In its place came
a hurt, bewildered look. “Surely you’re not really considering it,” she
said.

“Why not? Five thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

“But, Mr. Spade, you promised to help me.” Her hands were on his arm. “I
trusted you. You can’t—” She broke off, took her hands from his sleeve
and worked them together.

Spade smiled gently into her troubled eyes. “Don’t let’s try to figure
out how much you’ve trusted me,” he said. “I promised to help
you—sure—but you didn’t say anything about any black birds.”

“But you must’ve known or—or you wouldn’t have mentioned it to me. You
do know now. You won’t—you can’t—treat me like that.” Her eyes were
cobalt-blue prayers.

“Five thousand dollars is,” he said for the third time, “a lot of
money.”

She lifted her shoulders and hands and let them fall in a gesture that
accepted defeat. “It is,” she agreed in a small dull voice. “It is far
more than I could ever offer you, if I must bid for your loyalty.”

Spade laughed. His laughter was brief and somewhat bitter. “That is
good,” he said, “coming from you. What have you given me besides money?
Have you given me any of your confidence? any of the truth? any help in
helping you? Haven’t you tried to buy my loyalty with money and nothing
else? Well, if I’m peddling it, why shouldn’t I let it go to the highest
bidder?”

“I’ve given you all the money I have.” Tears glistened in her
white-ringed eyes. Her voice was hoarse, vibrant. “I’ve thrown myself on
your mercy, told you that without your help I’m utterly lost. What else
is there?” She suddenly moved close to him on the settee and cried
angrily: “Can I buy you with my body?”

Their faces were a few inches apart. Spade took her face between his
hands and he kissed her mouth roughly and contemptuously. Then he sat
back and said: “I’ll think it over.” His face was hard and furious.

She sat still holding her numbed face where his hands had left it.

He stood up and said: “Christ! there’s no sense to this.” He took two
steps towards the fireplace and stopped, glowering at the burning logs,
grinding his teeth together.

She did not move.

He turned to face her. The two vertical lines above his nose were deep
clefts between red wales. “I don’t give a damn about your honesty,” he
told her, trying to make himself speak calmly. “I don’t care what kind
of tricks you’re up to, what your secrets are, but I’ve got to have
something to show that you know what you’re doing.”

“I do know. Please believe that I do, and that it’s all for the best,
and—”

“Show me,” he ordered. “I’m willing to help you. I’ve done what I could
so far. If necessary I’ll go ahead blindfolded, but I can’t do it
without more confidence in you than I’ve got now. You’ve got to convince
me that you know what it’s all about, that you’re not simply fiddling
around by guess and by God, hoping it’ll come out all right somehow in
the end.”

“Can’t you trust me just a little longer?”

“How much is a little? And what are you waiting for?”

She bit her lip and looked down. “I must talk to Joel Cairo,” she said
almost inaudibly.

“You can see him tonight,” Spade said, looking at his watch. “His show
will be out soon. We can get him on the phone at his hotel.”

She raised her eyes, alarmed. “But he can’t come here. I can’t let him
know where I am. I’m afraid.”

“My place,” Spade suggested.

She hesitated, working her lips together, then asked: “Do you think he’d
go there?”

Spade nodded.

“All right,” she exclaimed, jumping up, her eyes large and bright.
“Shall we go now?”

She went into the next room. Spade went to the table in the corner and
silently pulled the drawer out. The drawer held two packs of
playing-cards, a pad of score-cards for bridge, a brass screw, a piece
of red string, and a gold pencil. He had shut the drawer and was
lighting a cigarette when she returned wearing a small dark hat and a
grey kidskin coat, carrying his hat and coat.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Their taxicab drew up behind a dark sedan that stood directly in front
of Spade’s street-door. Iva Archer was alone in the sedan, sitting at
the wheel. Spade lifted his hat to her and went indoors with Brigid
O’Shaughnessy. In the lobby he halted beside one of the benches and
asked: “Do you mind waiting here a moment? I won’t be long.”

“That’s perfectly all right,” Brigid O’Shaughnessy said, sitting down.
“You needn’t hurry.”

Spade went out to the sedan. When he had opened the sedan’s door Iva
spoke quickly: “I’ve got to talk to you, Sam. Can’t I come in?” Her face
was pale and nervous.

“Not now.”

Iva clicked her teeth together and asked sharply: “Who is she?”

“I’ve only a minute, Iva,” Spade said patiently. “What is it?”

“Who is she?” she repeated, nodding at the street-door.

He looked away from her, down the street. In front of a garage on the
next corner an undersized youth of twenty or twenty-one in neat grey cap
and overcoat loafed with his back against a wall. Spade frowned and
returned his gaze to Iva’s insistent face. “What is the matter?” he
asked. “Has anything happened? You oughtn’t to be here at this time of
night.”

“I’m beginning to believe that,” she complained. “You told me I oughtn’t
to come to the office, and now I oughtn’t to come here. Do you mean I
oughtn’t to chase after you? If that’s what you mean why don’t you say
it right out?”

“Now, Iva, you’ve got no right to take that attitude.”

“I know I haven’t. I haven’t any rights at all, it seems, where you’re
concerned. I thought I did. I thought your pretending to love me gave
me—”

Spade said wearily: “This is no time to be arguing about that, precious.
What was it you wanted to see me about?”

“I can’t talk to you here, Sam. Can’t I come in?”

“Not now.”

“Why can’t I?”

Spade said nothing.

She made a thin line of her mouth, squirmed around straight behind the
wheel, and started the sedan’s engine, staring angrily ahead.

When the sedan began to move Spade said, “Good night, Iva,” shut the
door, and stood at the curb with his hat in his hand until it had been
driven away. Then he went indoors again.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy rose smiling cheerfully from the bench and they
went up to his apartment.




                                   7


                              G IN THE AIR

IN HIS bedroom that was a living-room now the wall-bed was up, Spade
took Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s hat and coat, made her comfortable in a
padded rocking chair, and telephoned the Hotel Belvedere. Cairo had not
returned from the theatre. Spade left his telephone-number with the
request that Cairo call him as soon as he came in.

Spade sat down in the armchair beside the table and without any
preliminary, without an introductory remark of any sort, began to tell
the girl about a thing that had happened some years before in the
Northwest. He talked in a steady matter-of-fact voice that was devoid of
emphasis or pauses, though now and then he repeated a sentence slightly
rearranged, as if it were important that each detail be related exactly
as it had happened.

At the beginning Brigid O’Shaughnessy listened with only partial
attentiveness, obviously more surprised by his telling the story than
interested in it, her curiosity more engaged with his purpose in telling
the story than with the story he told; but presently, as the story went
on, it caught her more and more fully and she became still and
receptive.

A man named Flitcraft had left his real-estate-office, in Tacoma, to go
to luncheon one day and had never returned. He did not keep an
engagement to play golf after four that afternoon, though he had taken
the initiative in making the engagement less than half an hour before he
went out to luncheon. His wife and children never saw him again. His
wife and he were supposed to be on the best of terms. He had two
children, boys, one five and the other three. He owned his house in a
Tacoma suburb, a new Packard, and the rest of the appurtenances of
successful American living.

Flitcraft had inherited seventy thousand dollars from his father, and,
with his success in real estate, was worth something in the neighborhood
of two hundred thousand dollars at the time he vanished. His affairs
were in order, though there were enough loose ends to indicate that he
had not been setting them in order preparatory to vanishing. A deal that
would have brought him an attractive profit, for instance, was to have
been concluded the day after the one on which he disappeared. There was
nothing to suggest that he had more than fifty or sixty dollars in his
immediate possession at the time of his going. His habits for months
past could be accounted for too thoroughly to justify any suspicion of
secret vices, or even of another woman in his life, though either was
barely possible.

“He went like that,” Spade said, “like a fist when you open your hand.”

When he had reached this point in his story the telephone-bell rang.

“Hello,” Spade said into the instrument. “Mr. Cairo? . . . This is
Spade. Can you come up to my place—Post Street—now? . . . Yes, I think
it is.” He looked at the girl, pursed his lips, and then said rapidly:
“Miss O’Shaughnessy is here and wants to see you.”

Brigid O’Shaughnessy frowned and stirred in her chair, but did not say
anything.

Spade put the telephone down and told her: “He’ll be up in a few
minutes. Well, that was in 1922. In 1927 I was with one of the big
detective agencies in Seattle. Mrs. Flitcraft came in and told us
somebody had seen a man in Spokane who looked a lot like her husband. I
went over there. It was Flitcraft, all right. He had been living in
Spokane for a couple of years as Charles—that was his first
name—Pierce. He had an automobile-business that was netting him twenty
or twenty-five thousand a year, a wife, a baby son, owned his home in a
Spokane suburb, and usually got away to play golf after four in the
afternoon during the season.”

Spade had not been told very definitely what to do when he found
Flitcraft. They talked in Spade’s room at the Davenport. Flitcraft had
no feeling of guilt. He had left his first family well provided for, and
what he had done seemed to him perfectly reasonable. The only thing that
bothered him was a doubt that he could make that reasonableness clear to
Spade. He had never told anybody his story before, and thus had not had
to attempt to make its reasonableness explicit. He tried now.

“I got it all right,” Spade told Brigid O’Shaughnessy, “but Mrs.
Flitcraft never did. She thought it was silly. Maybe it was. Anyway, it
came out all right. She didn’t want any scandal, and, after the trick he
had played on her—the way she looked at it—she didn’t want him. So
they were divorced on the quiet and everything was swell all around.

“Here’s what had happened to him. Going to lunch he passed an
office-building that was being put up—just the skeleton. A beam or
something fell eight or ten stories down and smacked the sidewalk
alongside him. It brushed pretty close to him, but didn’t touch him,
though a piece of the sidewalk was chipped off and flew up and hit his
cheek. It only took a piece of skin off, but he still had the scar when
I saw him. He rubbed it with his finger—well, affectionately—when he
told me about it. He was scared stiff of course, he said, but he was
more shocked than really frightened. He felt like somebody had taken the
lid off life and let him look at the works.”

Flitcraft had been a good citizen and a good husband and father, not by
any outer compulsion, but simply because he was a man who was most
comfortable in step with his surroundings. He had been raised that way.
The people he knew were like that. The life he knew was a clean orderly
sane responsible affair. Now a falling beam had shown him that life was
fundamentally none of these things. He, the good citizen-husband-father,
could be wiped out between office and restaurant by the accident of a
falling beam. He knew then that men died at haphazard like that, and
lived only while blind chance spared them.

It was not, primarily, the injustice of it that disturbed him: he
accepted that after the first shock. What disturbed him was the
discovery that in sensibly ordering his affairs he had got out of step,
and not into step, with life. He said he knew before he had gone twenty
feet from the fallen beam that he would never know peace again until he
had adjusted himself to this new glimpse of life. By the time he had
eaten his luncheon he had found his means of adjustment. Life could be
ended for him at random by a falling beam: he would change his life at
random by simply going away. He loved his family, he said, as much as he
supposed was usual, but he knew he was leaving them adequately provided
for, and his love for them was not of the sort that would make absence
painful.

“He went to Seattle that afternoon,” Spade said, “and from there by boat
to San Francisco. For a couple of years he wandered around and then
drifted back to the Northwest, and settled in Spokane and got married.
His second wife didn’t look like the first, but they were more alike
than they were different. You know, the kind of women that play fair
games of golf and bridge and like new salad-recipes. He wasn’t sorry for
what he had done. It seemed reasonable enough to him. I don’t think he
even knew he had settled back naturally into the same groove he had
jumped out of in Tacoma. But that’s the part of it I always liked. He
adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he
adjusted himself to them not falling.”

“How perfectly fascinating,” Brigid O’Shaughnessy said. She left her
chair and stood in front of him, close. Her eyes were wide and deep. “I
don’t have to tell you how utterly at a disadvantage you’ll have me,
with him here, if you choose.”

Spade smiled slightly without separating his lips. “No, you don’t have
to tell me,” he agreed.

“And you know I’d never have placed myself in this position if I hadn’t
trusted you completely.” Her thumb and forefinger twisted a black button
on his blue coat.

Spade said, “That again!” with mock resignation.

“But you know it’s so,” she insisted.

“No, I don’t know it.” He patted the hand that was twisting the button.
“My asking for reasons why I should trust you brought us here. Don’t
let’s confuse things. You don’t have to trust me, anyhow, as long as you
can persuade me to trust you.”

She studied his face. Her nostrils quivered.

Spade laughed. He patted her hand again and said: “Don’t worry about
that now. He’ll be here in a moment. Get your business with him over,
and then we’ll see how we’ll stand.”

“And you’ll let me go about it—with him—in my own way?”

“Sure.”

She turned her hand under his so that her fingers pressed his. She said
softly: “You’re a God-send.”

Spade said: “Don’t overdo it.”

She looked reproachfully at him, though smiling, and returned to the
padded rocker.

Joel Cairo was excited. His dark eyes seemed all irises and his
high-pitched thin-voiced words were tumbling out before Spade had the
door half-open.

“That boy is out there watching the house, Mr. Spade, that boy you
showed me, or to whom you showed me, in front of the theatre. What am I
to understand from that, Mr. Spade? I came here in good faith, with no
thought of tricks or traps.”

“You were asked in good faith.” Spade frowned thoughtfully. “But I ought
to’ve guessed he might show up. He saw you come in?”

“Naturally. I could have gone on, but that seemed useless, since you had
already let him see us together.”

Brigid O’Shaughnessy came into the passageway behind Spade and asked
anxiously: “What boy? What is it?”

Cairo removed his black hat from his head, bowed stiffly, and said in a
prim voice: “If you do not know, ask Mr. Spade. I know nothing about it
except through him.”

“A kid who’s been trying to tail me around town all evening,” Spade said
carelessly over his shoulder, not turning to face the girl. “Come on in,
Cairo. There’s no use standing here talking for all the neighbors.”

Brigid O’Shaughnessy grasped Spade’s arm above the elbow and demanded:
“Did he follow you to my apartment?”

“No. I shook him before that. Then I suppose he came back here to try to
pick me up again.”

Cairo, holding his black hat to his belly with both hands, had come into
the passageway. Spade shut the corridor-door behind him and they went
into the living-room. There Cairo bowed stiffly over his hat once more
and said: “I am delighted to see you again, Miss O’Shaughnessy.”

“I was sure you would be, Joe,” she replied, giving him her hand.

He made a formal bow over her hand and released it quickly.

She sat in the padded rocker she had occupied before. Cairo sat in the
armchair by the table. Spade, when he had hung Cairo’s hat and coat in
the closet, sat on an end of the sofa in front of the windows and began
to roll a cigarette.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy said to Cairo: “Sam told me about your offer for
the falcon. How soon can you have the money ready?”

Cairo’s eyebrows twitched. He smiled. “It is ready.” He continued to
smile at the girl for a little while after he had spoken, and then
looked at Spade.

Spade was lighting his cigarette. His face was tranquil.

“In cash?” the girl asked.

“Oh, yes,” Cairo replied.

She frowned, put her tongue between her lips, withdrew it, and asked:
“You are ready to give us five thousand dollars, now, if we give you the
falcon?”

Cairo held up a wriggling hand. “Excuse me,” he said. “I expressed
myself badly. I did not mean to say that I have the money in my pockets,
but that I am prepared to get it on a very few minutes’ notice at any
time during banking hours.”

“Oh!” She looked at Spade.

Spade blew cigarette-smoke down the front of his vest and said: “That’s
probably right. He had only a few hundred in his pockets when I frisked
him this afternoon.”

When her eyes opened round and wide he grinned.

The Levantine bent forward in his chair. He failed to keep eagerness
from showing in his eyes and voice. “I can be quite prepared to give you
the money at, say, half-past ten in the morning. Eh?”

Brigid O’Shaughnessy smiled at him and said: “But I haven’t got the
falcon.”

Cairo’s face was darkened by a flush of annoyance. He put an ugly hand
on either arm of his chair, holding his small-boned body erect and stiff
between them. His dark eyes were angry. He did not say anything.

The girl made a mock-placatory face at him. “I’ll have it in a week at
the most, though,” she said.

“Where is it?” Cairo used politeness of mien to express skepticism.

“Where Floyd hid it.”

“Floyd? Thursby?”

She nodded.

“And you know where that is?” he asked.

“I think I do.”

“Then why must we wait a week?”

“Perhaps not a whole week. Whom are you buying it for, Joe?”

Cairo raised his eyebrows. “I told Mr. Spade. For its owner.”

Surprise illuminated the girl’s face. “So you went back to him?”

“Naturally I did.”

She laughed softly in her throat and said: “I should have liked to have
seen that.”

Cairo shrugged. “That was the logical development.” He rubbed the back
of one hand with the palm of the other. His upper lids came down to
shade his eyes. “Why, if I in turn may ask a question, are you willing
to sell to me?”

“I’m afraid,” she said simply, “after what happened to Floyd. That’s why
I haven’t it now. I’m afraid to touch it except to turn it over to
somebody else right away.”

Spade, propped on an elbow on the sofa, looked at and listened to them
impartially. In the comfortable slackness of his body, in the easy
stillness of his features, there was no indication of either curiosity
or impatience.

“Exactly what,” Cairo asked in a low voice, “happened to Floyd?”

The tip of Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s right forefinger traced a swift G in
the air.

Cairo said, “I see,” but there was something doubting in his smile. “Is
he here?”

“I don’t know.” She spoke impatiently. “What difference does it make?”

The doubt in Cairo’s smile deepened. “It might make a world of
difference,” he said, and rearranged his hands in his lap so that,
intentionally or not, a blunt forefinger pointed at Spade.

The girl glanced at the pointing finger and made an impatient motion
with her head. “Or me,” she said, “or you.”

“Exactly, and shall we add more certainly the boy outside?”

“Yes,” she agreed and laughed. “Yes, unless he’s the one you had in
Constantinople.”

Sudden blood mottled Cairo’s face. In a shrill enraged voice he cried:
“The one you couldn’t make?”

Brigid O’Shaughnessy jumped up from her chair. Her lower lip was between
her teeth. Her eyes were dark and wide in a tense white face. She took
two quick steps towards Cairo. He started to rise. Her right hand went
out and cracked sharply against his cheek, leaving the imprint of
fingers there.

Cairo grunted and slapped her cheek, staggering her sidewise, bringing
from her mouth a brief muffled scream.

Spade, wooden of face, was up from the sofa and close to them by then.
He caught Cairo by the throat and shook him. Cairo gurgled and put a
hand inside his coat. Spade grasped the Levantine’s wrist, wrenched it
away from the coat, forced it straight out to the side, and twisted it
until the clumsy flaccid fingers opened to let the black pistol fall
down on the rug.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy quickly picked up the pistol.

Cairo, speaking with difficulty because of the fingers on his throat,
said: “This is the second time you’ve put your hands on me.” His eyes,
though the throttling pressure on his throat made them bulge, were cold
and menacing.

“Yes,” Spade growled. “And when you’re slapped you’ll take it and like
it.” He released Cairo’s wrist and with a thick open hand struck the
side of his face three times, savagely.

Cairo tried to spit in Spade’s face, but the dryness of the Levantine’s
mouth made it only an angry gesture. Spade slapped the mouth, cutting
the lower lip.

The door-bell rang.

Cairo’s eyes jerked into focus on the passageway that led to the
corridor-door. His eyes had become unangry and wary. The girl had gasped
and turned to face the passageway. Her face was frightened. Spade stared
gloomily for a moment at the blood trickling from Cairo’s lip, and then
stepped back, taking his hand from the Levantine’s throat.

“Who is it?” the girl whispered, coming close to Spade; and Cairo’s eyes
jerked back to ask the same question.

Spade gave his answer irritably: “I don’t know.”

The bell rang again, more insistently.

“Well, keep quiet,” Spade said, and went out of the room, shutting the
door behind him.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Spade turned on the light in the passageway and opened the door to the
corridor. Lieutenant Dundy and Tom Polhaus were there.

“Hello, Sam,” Tom said. “We thought maybe you wouldn’t’ve gone to bed
yet.”

Dundy nodded, but said nothing.

Spade said good-naturedly: “Hello. You guys pick swell hours to do your
visiting in. What is it this time?”

Dundy spoke then, quietly: “We want to talk to you, Spade.”

“Well?” Spade stood in the doorway, blocking it. “Go ahead and talk.”

Tom Polhaus advanced saying: “We don’t have to do it standing here, do
we?”

Spade stood in the doorway and said: “You can’t come in.” His tone was
very slightly apologetic.

Tom’s thick-featured face, even in height with Spade’s, took on an
expression of friendly scorn, though there was a bright gleam in his
small shrewd eyes. “What the hell, Sam?” he protested and put a big hand
playfully on Spade’s chest.

Spade leaned against the pushing hand, grinned wolfishly, and asked:
“Going to strong-arm me, Tom?”

Tom grumbled, “Aw, for God’s sake,” and took his hand away.

Dundy clicked his teeth together and said through them: “Let us in.”

Spade’s lip twitched over his eyetooth. He said: “You’re not coming in.
What do you want to do about it? Try to get in? Or do your talking here?
Or go to hell?”

Tom groaned.

Dundy, still speaking through his teeth, said: “It’d pay you to play
along with us a little, Spade. You’ve got away with this and you’ve got
away with that, but you can’t keep it up forever.”

“Stop me when you can,” Spade replied arrogantly.

“That’s what I’ll do.” Dundy put his hands behind him and thrust his
hard face up towards the private detective’s. “There’s talk going around
that you and Archer’s wife were cheating on him.”

Spade laughed. “That sounds like something you thought up yourself.”

“Then there’s not anything to it?”

“Not anything.”

“The talk is,” Dundy said, “that she tried to get a divorce out of him
so’s she could put in with you, but he wouldn’t give it to her. Anything
to that?”

“No.”

“There’s even talk,” Dundy went on stolidly, “that that’s why he was put
on the spot.”

Spade seemed mildly amused. “Don’t be a hog,” he said. “You oughtn’t try
to pin more than one murder at a time on me. Your first idea that I
knocked Thursby off because he’d killed Miles falls apart if you blame
me for killing Miles too.”

“You haven’t heard me say you killed anybody,” Dundy replied. “You’re
the one that keeps bringing that up. But suppose I did. You could have
blipped them both. There’s a way of figuring it.”

“Uh-huh. I could’ve butchered Miles to get his wife, and then Thursby so
I could hang Miles’s killing on him. That’s a hell of a swell system, or
will be when I can give somebody else the bump and hang Thursby’s on
them. How long am I supposed to keep that up? Are you going to put your
hand on my shoulder for all the killings in San Francisco from now on?”

Tom said: “Aw, cut the comedy, Sam. You know damned well we don’t like
this any more than you do, but we got our work to do.”

“I hope you’ve got something to do besides pop in here early every
morning with a lot of damned fool questions.”

“And get damned lying answers,” Dundy added deliberately.

“Take it easy,” Spade cautioned him.

Dundy looked him up and down and then looked him straight in the eyes.
“If you say there was nothing between you and Archer’s wife,” he said,
“you’re a liar, and I’m telling you so.”

A startled look came into Tom’s small eyes.

Spade moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue and asked: “Is that
the hot tip that brought you here at this ungodly time of night?”

“That’s one of them.”

“And the others?”

Dundy pulled down the corners of his mouth. “Let us in.” He nodded
significantly at the doorway in which Spade stood.

Spade frowned and shook his head.

Dundy’s mouth-corners lifted in a smile of grim satisfaction. “There
must’ve been something to it,” he told Tom.

Tom shifted his feet and, not looking at either man, mumbled: “God
knows.”

“What’s this?” Spade asked. “Charades?”

“All right, Spade, we’re going.” Dundy buttoned his overcoat. “We’ll be
in to see you now and then. Maybe you’re right in bucking us. Think it
over.”

“Uh-huh,” Spade said, grinning. “Glad to see you any time, Lieutenant,
and whenever I’m not busy I’ll let you in.”

A voice in Spade’s living-room screamed: “Help! Help! Police! Help!” The
voice, high and thin and shrill, was Joel Cairo’s.

Lieutenant Dundy stopped turning away from the door, confronted Spade
again, and said decisively: “I guess we’re going in.”

The sounds of a brief struggle, of a blow, of a subdued cry, came to
them.

Spade’s face twisted into a smile that held little joy. He said, “I
guess you are,” and stood out of the way.

When the police-detectives had entered he shut the corridor-door and
followed them back to the living-room.




                                   8


                             HORSE FEATHERS

BRIGID O’SHAUGHNESSY was huddled in the armchair by the table. Her
forearms were up over her cheeks, her knees drawn up until they hid the
lower part of her face. Her eyes were white-circled and terrified.

Joel Cairo stood in front of her, bending over her, holding in one hand
the pistol Spade had twisted out of his hand. His other hand was clapped
to his forehead. Blood ran through the fingers of that hand and down
under them to his eyes. A smaller trickle from his cut lip made three
wavy lines across his chin.

Cairo did not heed the detectives. He was glaring at the girl huddled in
front of him. His lips were working spasmodically, but no coherent sound
came from between them.

Dundy, the first of the three into the living-room, moved swiftly to
Cairo’s side, put a hand on his own hip under his overcoat, a hand on
the Levantine’s wrist, and growled: “What are you up to here?”

Cairo took the red-smeared hand from his head and flourished it close to
the Lieutenant’s face. Uncovered by the hand, his forehead showed a
three-inch ragged tear. “This is what she has done,” he cried. “Look at
it.”

The girl put her feet down on the floor and looked warily from Dundy,
holding Cairo’s wrist, to Tom Polhaus, standing a little behind them, to
Spade, leaning against the door-frame. Spade’s face was placid. When his
gaze met hers his yellow-grey eyes glinted for an instant with malicious
humor and then became expressionless again.

“Did you do that?” Dundy asked the girl, nodding at Cairo’s cut head.

She looked at Spade again. He did not in any way respond to the appeal
in her eyes. He leaned against the door-frame and observed the occupants
of the room with the polite detached air of a disinterested spectator.

The girl turned her eyes up to Dundy’s. Her eyes were wide and dark and
earnest. “I had to,” she said in a low throbbing voice. “I was all alone
in here with him when he attacked me. I couldn’t—I tried to keep him
off. I—I couldn’t make myself shoot him.”

“Oh, you liar!” Cairo cried, trying unsuccessfully to pull the arm that
held his pistol out of Dundy’s grip. “Oh, you dirty filthy liar!” He
twisted himself around to face Dundy. “She’s lying awfully. I came here
in good faith and was attacked by both of them, and when you came he
went out to talk to you, leaving her here with this pistol, and then she
said they were going to kill me after you left, and I called for help,
so you wouldn’t leave me here to be murdered, and then she struck me
with the pistol.”

“Here, give me this thing,” Dundy said, and took the pistol from Cairo’s
hand. “Now let’s get this straight. What’d you come here for?”

“He sent for me.” Cairo twisted his head around to stare defiantly at
Spade. “He called me up on the phone and asked me to come here.”

Spade blinked sleepily at the Levantine and said nothing.

Dundy asked: “What’d he want you for?”

Cairo withheld his reply until he had mopped his bloody forehead and
chin with a lavender-barred silk handkerchief. By then some of the
indignation in his manner had been replaced by caution. “He said he
wanted—they wanted—to see me. I didn’t know what about.”

Tom Polhaus lowered his head, sniffed the odor of _chypre_ that the
mopping handkerchief had released in the air, and turned his head to
scowl interrogatively at Spade. Spade winked at him and went on rolling
a cigarette.

Dundy asked: “Well, what happened then?”

“Then they attacked me. She struck me first, and then he choked me and
took the pistol out of my pocket. I don’t know what they would have done
next if you hadn’t arrived at that moment. I dare say they would have
murdered me then and there. When he went out to answer the bell he left
her here with the pistol to watch over me.”

Brigid O’Shaughnessy jumped out of the armchair crying, “Why don’t you
make him tell the truth?” and slapped Cairo on the cheek.

Cairo yelled inarticulately.

Dundy pushed the girl back into the chair with the hand that was not
holding the Levantine’s arm and growled: “None of that now.”

Spade, lighting his cigarette, grinned softly through smoke and told
Tom: “She’s impulsive.”

“Yeah,” Tom agreed.

Dundy scowled down at the girl and asked: “What do you want us to think
the truth is?”

“Not what he said,” she replied. “Not anything he said.” She turned to
Spade. “Is it?”

“How do I know?” Spade responded. “I was out in the kitchen mixing an
omelette when it all happened, wasn’t I?”

She wrinkled her forehead, studying him with eyes that perplexity
clouded.

Tom grunted in disgust.

Dundy, still scowling at the girl, ignored Spade’s speech and asked her:
“If he’s not telling the truth, how come he did the squawking for help,
and not you?”

“Oh, he was frightened to death when I struck him,” she replied, looking
contemptuously at the Levantine.

Cairo’s face flushed where it was not blood-smeared. He exclaimed:
“Pfoo! Another lie!”

She kicked his leg, the high heel of her blue slipper striking him just
below the knee. Dundy pulled him away from her while big Tom came to
stand close to her, rumbling: “Behave, sister. That’s no way to act.”

“Then make him tell the truth,” she said defiantly.

“We’ll do that all right,” he promised. “Just don’t get rough.”

Dundy, looking at Spade with green eyes hard and bright and satisfied,
addressed his subordinate: “Well, Tom, I don’t guess we’ll go wrong
pulling the lot of them in.”

Tom nodded gloomily.

Spade left the door and advanced to the center of the room, dropping his
cigarette into a tray on the table as he passed it. His smile and manner
were amiably composed. “Don’t be in a hurry,” he said. “Everything can
be explained.”

“I bet you,” Dundy agreed, sneering.

Spade bowed to the girl. “Miss O’Shaughnessy,” he said, “may I present
Lieutenant Dundy and Detective-sergeant Polhaus.” He bowed to Dundy.
“Miss O’Shaughnessy is an operative in my employ.”

Joel Cairo said indignantly: “That isn’t so. She—”

Spade interrupted him in a quite loud, but still genial, voice: “I hired
her just recently, yesterday. This is Mr. Joel Cairo, a friend—an
acquaintance, at any rate—of Thursby’s. He came to me this afternoon
and tried to hire me to find something Thursby was supposed to have on
him when he was bumped off. It looked funny, the way he put it to me, so
I wouldn’t touch it. Then he pulled a gun—well, never mind that unless
it comes to a point of laying charges against each other. Anyway, after
talking it over with Miss O’Shaughnessy, I thought maybe I could get
something out of him about Miles’s and Thursby’s killings, so I asked
him to come up here. Maybe we put the questions to him a little rough,
but he wasn’t hurt any, not enough to have to cry for help. I’d already
had to take his gun away from him again.”

As Spade talked anxiety came into Cairo’s reddened face. His eyes moved
jerkily up and down, shifting their focus uneasily between the floor and
Spade’s bland face.

Dundy confronted Cairo and bruskly demanded: “Well, what’ve you got to
say to that?”

Cairo had nothing to say for nearly a minute while he stared at the
Lieutenant’s chest. When he lifted his eyes they were shy and wary. “I
don’t know what I should say,” he murmured. His embarrassment seemed
genuine.

“Try telling the facts,” Dundy suggested.

“The facts?” Cairo’s eyes fidgeted, though their gaze did not actually
leave the Lieutenant’s. “What assurance have I that the facts will be
believed?”

“Quit stalling. All you’ve got to do is swear to a complaint that they
took a poke at you and the warrant-clerk will believe you enough to
issue a warrant that’ll let us throw them in the can.”

Spade spoke in an amused tone: “Go ahead, Cairo. Make him happy. Tell
him you’ll do it, and then we’ll swear to one against you, and he’ll
have the lot of us.”

Cairo cleared his throat and looked nervously around the room, not into
the eyes of anyone there.

Dundy blew breath through his nose in a puff that was not quite a snort
and said: “Get your hats.”

Cairo’s eyes, holding worry and a question, met Spade’s mocking gaze.
Spade winked at him and sat on the arm of the padded rocker. “Well, boys
and girls,” he said, grinning at the Levantine and at the girl with
nothing but delight in his voice and grin, “we put it over nicely.”

Dundy’s hard square face darkened the least of shades. He repeated
peremptorily: “Get your hats.”

Spade turned his grin on the Lieutenant, squirmed into a more
comfortable position on the chair-arm, and asked lazily: “Don’t you know
when you’re being kidded?”

Tom Polhaus’s face became red and shiny.

Dundy’s face, still darkening, was immobile except for lips moving
stiffly to say: “No, but we’ll let that wait till we get down to the
Hall.”

Spade rose and put his hands in his trousers-pockets. He stood erect so
he might look that much farther down at the Lieutenant. His grin was a
taunt and self-certainty spoke in every line of his posture.

“I dare you to take us in, Dundy,” he said. “We’ll laugh at you in every
newspaper in San Francisco. You don’t think any of us is going to swear
to any complaints against the others, do you? Wake up. You’ve been
kidded. When the bell rang I said to Miss O’Shaughnessy and Cairo: ‘It’s
those damned bulls again. They’re getting to be nuisances. Let’s play a
joke on them. When you hear them going one of you scream, and then we’ll
see how far we can string them along before they tumble.’ And—”

Brigid O’Shaughnessy bent forward in her chair and began to laugh
hysterically.

Cairo started and smiled. There was no vitality in his smile, but he
held it fixed on his face.

Tom, glowering, grumbled: “Cut it out, Sam.”

Spade chuckled and said: “But that’s the way it was. We—”

“And the cut on his head and mouth?” Dundy asked scornfully. “Where’d
they come from?”

“Ask him,” Spade suggested. “Maybe he cut himself shaving.”

Cairo spoke quickly, before he could be questioned, and the muscles of
his face quivered under the strain of holding his smile in place while
he spoke. “I fell. We intended to be struggling for the pistol when you
came in, but I fell. I tripped on the end of the rug and fell while we
were pretending to struggle.”

Dundy said: “Horse feathers.”

Spade said: “That’s all right, Dundy, believe it or not. The point is
that that’s our story and we’ll stick to it. The newspapers will print
it whether they believe it or not, and it’ll be just as funny one way as
the other, or more so. What are you going to do about it? It’s no crime
to kid a copper, is it? You haven’t got anything on anybody here.
Everything we told you was part of the joke. What are you going to do
about it?”

Dundy put his back to Spade and gripped Cairo by the shoulders. “You
can’t get away with that,” he snarled, shaking the Levantine. “You
belched for help and you’ve got to take it.”

“No, sir,” Cairo sputtered. “It was a joke. He said you were friends of
his and would understand.”

Spade laughed.

Dundy pulled Cairo roughly around, holding him now by one wrist and the
nape of his neck. “I’ll take you along for packing the gun, anyway,” he
said. “And I’ll take the rest of you along to see who laughs at the
joke.”

Cairo’s alarmed eyes jerked sidewise to focus on Spade’s face.

Spade said: “Don’t be a sap, Dundy. The gun was part of the plant. It’s
one of mine.” He laughed. “Too bad it’s only a thirty-two, or maybe you
could find it was the one Thursby and Miles were shot with.”

Dundy released Cairo, spun on his heel, and his right fist clicked on
Spade’s chin.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy uttered a short cry.

Spade’s smile flickered out at the instant of the impact, but returned
immediately with a dreamy quality added. He steadied himself with a
short backward step and his thick sloping shoulders writhed under his
coat. Before his fist could come up Tom Polhaus had pushed himself
between the two men, facing Spade, encumbering Spade’s arms with the
closeness of his barrel-like belly and his own arms.

“No, no, for Christ’s sake!” Tom begged.

After a long moment of motionlessness Spade’s muscles relaxed. “Then get
him out of here quick,” he said. His smile had gone away again, leaving
his face sullen and somewhat pale.

Tom, staying close to Spade, keeping his arms on Spade’s arms, turned
his head to look over his shoulder at Lieutenant Dundy. Tom’s small eyes
were reproachful.

Dundy’s fists were clenched in front of his body and his feet were
planted firm and a little apart on the floor, but the truculence in his
face was modified by thin rims of white showing between green irises and
upper eyelids.

“Get their names and addresses,” he ordered.

Tom looked at Cairo, who said quickly: “Joel Cairo, Hotel Belvedere.”

Spade spoke before Tom could question the girl. “You can always get in
touch with Miss O’Shaughnessy through me.”

Tom looked at Dundy. Dundy growled: “Get her address.”

Spade said: “Her address is in care of my office.”

Dundy took a step forward, halting in front of the girl. “Where do you
live?” he asked.

Spade addressed Tom: “Get him out of here. I’ve had enough of this.”

Tom looked at Spade’s eyes—hard and glittering—and mumbled: “Take it
easy, Sam.” He buttoned his coat and turned to Dundy, asking, in a voice
that aped casualness, “Well, is that all?” and taking a step towards the
door.

Dundy’s scowl failed to conceal indecision.

Cairo moved suddenly towards the door, saying: “I’m going too, if Mr.
Spade will be kind enough to give me my hat and coat.”

Spade asked: “What’s the hurry?”

Dundy said angrily: “It was all in fun, but just the same you’re afraid
to be left here with them.”

“Not at all,” the Levantine replied, fidgeting, looking at neither of
them, “but it’s quite late and—and I’m going. I’ll go out with you if
you don’t mind.”

Dundy put his lips together firmly and said nothing. A light was
glinting in his green eyes.

Spade went to the closet in the passageway and fetched Cairo’s hat and
coat. Spade’s face was blank. His voice held the same blankness when he
stepped back from helping the Levantine into his coat and said to Tom:
“Tell him to leave the gun.”

Dundy took Cairo’s pistol from his overcoat-pocket and put it on the
table. He went out first, with Cairo at his heels. Tom halted in front
of Spade, muttering, “I hope to God you know what you’re doing,” got no
response, sighed, and followed the others out. Spade went after them as
far as the bend in the passageway, where he stood until Tom had closed
the corridor-door.




                                   9


                                 BRIGID

SPADE returned to the living-room and sat on an end of the sofa, elbows
on knees, cheeks in hands, looking at the floor and not at Brigid
O’Shaughnessy smiling weakly at him from the armchair. His eyes were
sultry. The creases between brows over his nose were deep. His nostrils
moved in and out with his breathing.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy, when it became apparent that he was not going to
look up at her, stopped smiling and regarded him with growing
uneasiness.

Red rage came suddenly into his face and he began to talk in a harsh
guttural voice. Holding his maddened face in his hands, glaring at the
floor, he cursed Dundy for five minutes without break, cursed him
obscenely, blasphemously, repetitiously, in a harsh guttural voice.

Then he took his face out of his hands, looked at the girl, grinned
sheepishly, and said: “Childish, huh? I know, but, by God, I do hate
being hit without hitting back.” He touched his chin with careful
fingers. “Not that it was so much of a sock at that.” He laughed and
lounged back on the sofa, crossing his legs. “A cheap enough price to
pay for winning.” His brows came together in a fleeting scowl. “Though
I’ll remember it.”

The girl, smiling again, left her chair and sat on the sofa beside him.
“You’re absolutely the wildest person I’ve ever known,” she said. “Do
you always carry on so high-handed?”

“I let him hit me, didn’t I?”

“Oh, yes, but a police official.”

“It wasn’t that,” Spade explained. “It was that in losing his head and
slugging me he overplayed his hand. If I’d mixed it with him then he
couldn’t’ve backed down. He’d’ve had to go through with it, and we’d’ve
had to tell that goofy story at headquarters.” He stared thoughtfully at
the girl, and asked: “What did you do to Cairo?”

“Nothing.” Her face became flushed. “I tried to frighten him into
keeping still until they had gone and he either got too frightened or
stubborn and yelled.”

“And then you smacked him with the gun?”

“I had to. He attacked me.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing.” Spade’s smile did not hide his
annoyance. “It’s just what I told you: you’re fumbling along by guess
and by God.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, face and voice soft with contrition, “Sam.”

“Sure you are.” He took tobacco and papers from his pockets and began to
make a cigarette. “Now you’ve had your talk with Cairo. Now you can talk
to me.”

She put a fingertip to her mouth, staring across the room at nothing
with widened eyes, and then, with narrower eyes, glanced quickly at
Spade. He was engrossed in the making of his cigarette. “Oh, yes,” she
began, “of course—” She took the finger away from her mouth and
smoothed her blue dress over her knees. She frowned at her knees.

Spade licked his cigarette, sealed it, and asked, “Well?” while he felt
for his lighter.

“But I didn’t,” she said, pausing between words as if she were selecting
them with great care, “have time to finish talking to him.” She stopped
frowning at her knees and looked at Spade with clear candid eyes. “We
were interrupted almost before we had begun.”

Spade lighted his cigarette and laughed his mouth empty of smoke. “Want
me to phone him and ask him to come back?”

She shook her head, not smiling. Her eyes moved back and forth between
her lids as she shook her head, maintaining their focus on Spade’s eyes.
Her eyes were inquisitive.

Spade put an arm across her back, cupping his hand over the smooth bare
white shoulder farthest from him. She leaned back into the bend of his
arm. He said: “Well, I’m listening.”

She twisted her head around to smile up at him with playful insolence,
asking: “Do you need your arm there for that?”

“No.” He removed his hand from her shoulder and let his arm drop down
behind her.

“You’re altogether unpredictable,” she murmured.

He nodded and said amiably: “I’m still listening.”

“Look at the time!” she exclaimed, wriggling a finger at the alarm-clock
perched atop the book saying two-fifty with its clumsily shaped hands.

“Uh-huh, it’s been a busy evening.”

“I must go.” She rose from the sofa. “This is terrible.”

Spade did not rise. He shook his head and said: “Not until you’ve told
me about it.”

“But look at the time,” she protested, “and it would take hours to tell
you.”

“It’ll have to take them then.”

“Am I a prisoner?” she asked gaily.

“Besides, there’s the kid outside. Maybe he hasn’t gone home to sleep
yet.”

Her gaiety vanished. “Do you think he’s still there?”

“It’s likely.”

She shivered. “Could you find out?”

“I could go down and see.”

“Oh, that’s—will you?”

Spade studied her anxious face for a moment and then got up from the
sofa saying: “Sure.” He got a hat and overcoat from the closet. “I’ll be
gone about ten minutes.”

“Do be careful,” she begged as she followed him to the corridor-door.

He said, “I will,” and went out.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Post Street was empty when Spade issued into it. He walked east a block,
crossed the street, walked west two blocks on the other side, recrossed
it, and returned to his building without having seen anyone except two
mechanics working on a car in a garage.

When he opened his apartment-door Brigid O’Shaughnessy was standing at
the bend in the passageway, holding Cairo’s pistol straight down at her
side.

“He’s still there,” Spade said.

She bit the inside of her lip and turned slowly, going back into the
living-room. Spade followed her in, put his hat and overcoat on a chair,
said, “So we’ll have time to talk,” and went into the kitchen.

He had put the coffee-pot on the stove when she came to the door, and
was slicing a slender loaf of French bread. She stood in the doorway and
watched him with preoccupied eyes. The fingers of her left hand idly
caressed the body and barrel of the pistol her right hand still held.

“The table-cloth’s in there,” he said, pointing the bread-knife at a
cupboard that was one breakfast-nook partition.

She set the table while he spread liverwurst on, or put cold corned beef
between, the small ovals of bread he had sliced. Then he poured the
coffee, added brandy to it from a squat bottle, and they sat at the
table. They sat side by side on one of the benches. She put the pistol
down on the end of the bench nearer her.

“You can start now, between bites,” he said.

She made a face at him, complained, “You’re the most insistent person,”
and bit a sandwich.

“Yes, and wild and unpredictable. What’s this bird, this falcon, that
everybody’s all steamed up about?”

She chewed the beef and bread in her mouth, swallowed it, looked
attentively at the small crescent its removal had made in the sandwich’s
rim, and asked: “Suppose I wouldn’t tell you? Suppose I wouldn’t tell
you anything at all about it? What would you do?”

“You mean about the bird?”

“I mean about the whole thing.”

“I wouldn’t be too surprised,” he told her, grinning so that the edges
of his jaw-teeth were visible, “to know what to do next.”

“And that would be?” She transferred her attention from the sandwich to
his face. “That’s what I wanted to know: what would you do next?”

He shook his head.

Mockery rippled in a smile on her face. “Something wild and
unpredictable?”

“Maybe. But I don’t see what you’ve got to gain by covering up now. It’s
coming out bit by bit anyhow. There’s a lot of it I don’t know, but
there’s some of it I do, and some more that I can guess at, and, give me
another day like this, I’ll soon be knowing things about it that you
don’t know.”

“I suppose you do now,” she said, looking at her sandwich again, her
face serious. “But—oh!—I’m so tired of it, and I do so hate having to
talk about it. Wouldn’t it—wouldn’t it be just as well to wait and let
you learn about it as you say you will?”

Spade laughed. “I don’t know. You’ll have to figure that out for
yourself. My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable
monkey-wrench into the machinery. It’s all right with me, if you’re sure
none of the flying pieces will hurt you.”

She moved her bare shoulders uneasily, but said nothing. For several
minutes they ate in silence, he phlegmatically, she thoughtfully. Then
she said in a hushed voice: “I’m afraid of you, and that’s the truth.”

He said: “That’s not the truth.”

“It is,” she insisted in the same low voice. “I know two men I’m afraid
of and I’ve seen both of them tonight.”

“I can understand your being afraid of Cairo,” Spade said. “He’s out of
your reach.”

“And you aren’t?”

“Not that way,” he said and grinned.

She blushed. She picked up a slice of bread encrusted with grey
liverwurst. She put it down on her plate. She wrinkled her white
forehead and she said: “It’s a black figure, as you know, smooth and
shiny, of a bird, a hawk or falcon, about that high.” She held her hands
a foot apart.

“What makes it important?”

She sipped coffee and brandy before she shook her head. “I don’t know,”
she said. “They’d never tell me. They promised me five hundred pounds if
I helped them get it. Then Floyd said afterward, after we’d left Joe,
that he’d give me seven hundred and fifty.”

“So it must be worth more than seventy-five hundred dollars?”

“Oh, much more than that,” she said. “They didn’t pretend that they were
sharing equally with me. They were simply hiring me to help them.”

“To help them how?”

She lifted her cup to her lips again. Spade, not moving the domineering
stare of his yellow-grey eyes from her face, began to make a cigarette.
Behind them the percolator bubbled on the stove.

“To help them get it from the man who had it,” she said slowly when she
had lowered her cup, “a Russian named Kemidov.”

“How?”

“Oh, but that’s not important,” she objected, “and wouldn’t help
you”—she smiled impudently—“and is certainly none of your business.”

“This was in Constantinople?”

She hesitated, nodded, and said: “Marmora.”

He waved his cigarette at her, saying: “Go ahead, what happened then?”

“But that’s all. I’ve told you. They promised me five hundred pounds to
help them and I did and then we found that Joe Cairo meant to desert us,
taking the falcon with him and leaving us nothing. So we did exactly
that to him, first. But then I wasn’t any better off than I had been
before, because Floyd hadn’t any intention at all of paying me the seven
hundred and fifty pounds he had promised me. I had learned that by the
time we got here. He said we would go to New York, where he would sell
it and give me my share, but I could see he wasn’t telling me the
truth.” Indignation had darkened her eyes to violet. “And that’s why I
came to you to get you to help me learn where the falcon was.”

“And suppose you’d got it? What then?”

“Then I’d have been in a position to talk terms with Mr. Floyd Thursby.”

Spade squinted at her and suggested: “But you wouldn’t have known where
to take it to get more money than he’d give you, the larger sum that you
knew he expected to sell it for?”

“I did not know,” she said.

Spade scowled at the ashes he had dumped on his plate. “What makes it
worth all that money?” he demanded. “You must have some idea, at least
be able to guess.”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

He directed the scowl at her. “What’s it made of?”

“Porcelain or black stone. I don’t know. I’ve never touched it. I’ve
only seen it once, for a few minutes. Floyd showed it to me when we’d
first got hold of it.”

Spade mashed the end of his cigarette in his plate and made one draught
of the coffee and brandy in his cup. His scowl had gone away. He wiped
his lips with his napkin, dropped it crumpled on the table, and spoke
casually: “You _are_ a liar.”

She got up and stood at the end of the table, looking down at him with
dark abashed eyes in a pinkening face. “I am a liar,” she said. “I have
always been a liar.”

“Don’t brag about it. It’s childish.” His voice was good-humored. He
came out from between table and bench. “Was there any truth at all in
that yarn?”

She hung her head. Dampness glistened on her dark lashes. “Some,” she
whispered.

“How much?”

“Not—not very much.”

Spade put a hand under her chin and lifted her head. He laughed into her
wet eyes and said: “We’ve got all night before us. I’ll put some more
brandy in some more coffee and we’ll try again.”

Her eyelids drooped. “Oh, I’m so tired,” she said tremulously, “so tired
of it all, of myself, of lying and thinking up lies, and of not knowing
what is a lie and what is the truth. I wish I—”

She put her hands up to Spade’s cheeks, put her open mouth hard against
his mouth, her body flat against his body.

Spade’s arms went around her, holding her to him, muscles bulging his
blue sleeves, a hand cradling her head, its fingers half lost among red
hair, a hand moving groping fingers over her slim back. His eyes burned
yellowly.




                                   10


                          THE BELVEDERE DIVAN

BEGINNING day had reduced night to a thin smokiness when Spade sat up.
At his side Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s soft breathing had the regularity of
utter sleep. Spade was quiet leaving bed and bedroom and shutting the
bedroom-door. He dressed in the bathroom. Then he examined the sleeping
girl’s clothes, took a flat brass key from the pocket of her coat, and
went out.

He went to the Coronet, letting himself into the building and into her
apartment with the key. To the eye there was nothing furtive about his
going in: he entered boldly and directly. To the ear his going in was
almost unnoticeable: he made as little sound as might be.

In the girl’s apartment he switched on all the lights. He searched the
place from wall to wall. His eyes and thick fingers moved without
apparent haste, and without ever lingering or fumbling or going back,
from one inch of their fields to the next, probing, scrutinizing,
testing with expert certainty. Every drawer, cupboard, cubbyhole, box,
bag, trunk—locked or unlocked—was opened and its contents subjected to
examination by eyes and fingers. Every piece of clothing was tested by
hands that felt for telltale bulges and ears that listened for the
crinkle of paper between pressing fingers. He stripped the bed of
bedclothes. He looked under rugs and at the under side of each piece of
furniture. He pulled down blinds to see that nothing had been rolled up
in them for concealment. He leaned through windows to see that nothing
hung below them on the outside. He poked with a fork into powder and
cream-jars on the dressing-table. He held atomizers and bottles up
against the light. He examined dishes and pans and food and
food-containers. He emptied the garbage-can on spread sheets of
newspaper. He opened the top of the flush-box in the bathroom, drained
the box, and peered down into it. He examined and tested the metal
screens over the drains of bathtub, wash-bowl, sink, and laundry-tub.

He did not find the black bird. He found nothing that seemed to have any
connection with a black bird. The only piece of writing he found was a
week-old receipt for the month’s apartment-rent Brigid O’Shaughnessy had
paid. The only thing he found that interested him enough to delay his
search while he looked at it was a double-handful of rather fine jewelry
in a polychrome box in a locked dressing-table-drawer.

When he had finished he made and drank a cup of coffee. Then he unlocked
the kitchen-window, scarred the edge of its lock a little with his
pocket-knife, opened the window—over a fire-escape—got his hat and
overcoat from the settee in the living-room, and left the apartment as
he had come.

On his way home he stopped at a store that was being opened by a
puffy-eyed shivering plump grocer and bought oranges, eggs, rolls,
butter, and cream.

Spade went quietly into his apartment, but before he had shut the
corridor-door behind him Brigid O’Shaughnessy cried: “Who is that?”

“Young Spade bearing breakfast.”

“Oh, you frightened me!”

The bedroom-door he had shut was open. The girl sat on the side of the
bed, trembling, with her right hand out of sight under a pillow.

Spade put his packages on the kitchen-table and went into the bedroom.
He sat on the bed beside the girl, kissed her smooth shoulder, and said:
“I wanted to see if that kid was still on the job, and to get stuff for
breakfast.”

“Is he?”

“No.”

She sighed and leaned against him. “I awakened and you weren’t here and
then I heard someone coming in. I was terrified.”

Spade combed her red hair back from her face with his fingers and said:
“I’m sorry, angel. I thought you’d sleep through it. Did you have that
gun under your pillow all night?”

“No. You know I didn’t. I jumped up and got it when I was frightened.”

He cooked breakfast—and slipped the flat brass key into her coat-pocket
again—while she bathed and dressed.

She came out of the bathroom whistling _En Cuba_. “Shall I make the
bed?” she asked.

“That’d be swell. The eggs need a couple of minutes more.”

Their breakfast was on the table when she returned to the kitchen. They
sat where they had sat the night before and ate heartily.

“Now about the bird?” Spade suggested presently as they ate.

She put her fork down and looked at him. She drew her eyebrows together
and made her mouth small and tight. “You can’t ask me to talk about that
this morning of all mornings,” she protested. “I don’t want to and I
won’t.”

“It’s a stubborn damned hussy,” he said sadly and put a piece of roll
into his mouth.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The youth who had shadowed Spade was not in sight when Spade and Brigid
O’Shaughnessy crossed the sidewalk to the waiting taxicab. The taxicab
was not followed. Neither the youth nor another loiterer was visible in
the vicinity of the Coronet when the taxicab arrived there.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy would not let Spade go in with her. “It’s bad
enough to be coming home in evening dress at this hour without bringing
company. I hope I don’t meet anybody.”

“Dinner tonight?”

“Yes.”

They kissed. She went into the Coronet. He told the chauffeur: “Hotel
Belvedere.”

When he reached the Belvedere he saw the youth who had shadowed him
sitting in the lobby on a divan from which the elevators could be seen.
Apparently the youth was reading a newspaper.

At the desk Spade learned that Cairo was not in. He frowned and pinched
his lower lip. Points of yellow light began to dance in his eyes.
“Thanks,” he said softly to the clerk and turned away.

Sauntering, he crossed the lobby to the divan from which the elevators
could be seen and sat down beside—not more than a foot from—the young
man who was apparently reading a newspaper.

The young man did not look up from his newspaper. Seen at this scant
distance, he seemed certainly less than twenty years old. His features
were small, in keeping with his stature, and regular. His skin was very
fair. The whiteness of his cheeks was as little blurred by any
considerable growth of beard as by the glow of blood. His clothing was
neither new nor of more than ordinary quality, but it, and his manner of
wearing it, was marked by a hard masculine neatness.

Spade asked casually, “Where is he?” while shaking tobacco down into a
brown paper curved to catch it.

The boy lowered his paper and looked around, moving with a purposeful
sort of slowness, as of a more natural swiftness restrained. He looked
with small hazel eyes under somewhat long curling lashes at Spade’s
chest. He said, in a voice as colorless and composed and cold as his
young face: “What?”

“Where is he?” Spade was busy with his cigarette.

“Who?”

“The fairy.”

The hazel eyes’ gaze went up Spade’s chest to the knot of his maroon tie
and rested there. “What do you think you’re doing, Jack?” the boy
demanded. “Kidding me?”

“I’ll tell you when I am.” Spade licked his cigarette and smiled amiably
at the boy. “New York, aren’t you?”

The boy stared at Spade’s tie and did not speak. Spade nodded as if the
boy had said yes and asked: “Baumes rush?”

The boy stared at Spade’s tie for a moment longer, then raised his
newspaper and returned his attention to it. “Shove off,” he said from
the side of his mouth.

Spade lighted his cigarette, leaned back comfortably on the divan, and
spoke with good-natured carelessness: “You’ll have to talk to me before
you’re through, sonny—some of you will—and you can tell G. I said so.”

The boy put his paper down quickly and faced Spade, staring at his
necktie with bleak hazel eyes. The boy’s small hands were spread flat
over his belly. “Keep asking for it and you’re going to get it,” he
said, “plenty.” His voice was low and flat and menacing. “I told you to
shove off. Shove off.”

Spade waited until a bespectacled pudgy man and a thin-legged blonde
girl had passed out of hearing. Then he chuckled and said: “That would
go over big back on Seventh Avenue. But you’re not in Romeville now.
You’re in my burg.” He inhaled cigarette-smoke and blew it out in a long
pale cloud. “Well, where is he?”

The boy spoke two words, the first a short guttural verb, the second
“you.”

“People lose teeth talking like that.” Spade’s voice was still amiable
though his face had become wooden. “If you want to hang around you’ll be
polite.”

The boy repeated his two words.

Spade dropped his cigarette into a tall stone jar beside the divan and
with a lifted hand caught the attention of a man who had been standing
at an end of the cigar-stand for several minutes. The man nodded and
came towards them. He was a middle-aged man of medium height, round and
sallow of face, compactly built, tidily dressed in dark clothes.

“Hello, Sam,” he said as he came up.

“Hello, Luke.”

They shook hands and Luke said: “Say, that’s too bad about Miles.”

“Uh-huh, a bad break.” Spade jerked his head to indicate the boy on the
divan beside him. “What do you let these cheap gunmen hang out in your
lobby for, with their tools bulging their clothes?”

“Yes?” Luke examined the boy with crafty brown eyes set in a suddenly
hard face. “What do you want here?” he asked.

The boy stood up. Spade stood up. The boy looked at the two men, at
their neckties, from one to the other. Luke’s necktie was black. The boy
looked like a schoolboy standing in front of them.

Luke said: “Well, if you don’t want anything, beat it, and don’t come
back.”

The boy said, “I won’t forget you guys,” and went out.

They watched him go out. Spade took off his hat and wiped his damp
forehead with a handkerchief.

The hotel-detective asked: “What is it?”

“Damned if I know,” Spade replied. “I just happened to spot him. Know
anything about Joel Cairo—six-thirty-five?”

“Oh, that one!” The hotel-detective leered.

“How long’s he been here?”

“Four days. This is the fifth.”

“What about him?”

“Search me, Sam. I got nothing against him but his looks.”

“Find out if he came in last night?”

“Try to,” the hotel-detective promised and went away. Spade sat on the
divan until he returned. “No,” Luke reported, “he didn’t sleep in his
room. What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Come clean. You know I’ll keep my clam shut, but if there’s anything
wrong we ought to know about it so’s we can collect our bill.”

“Nothing like that,” Spade assured him. “As a matter of fact, I’m doing
a little work for him. I’d tell you if he was wrong.”

“You’d better. Want me to kind of keep an eye on him?”

“Thanks, Luke. It wouldn’t hurt. You can’t know too much about the men
you’re working for these days.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

It was twenty-one minutes past eleven by the clock over the
elevator-doors when Joel Cairo came in from the street. His forehead was
bandaged. His clothes had the limp unfreshness of too many hours’
consecutive wear. His face was pasty, with sagging mouth and eyelids.

Spade met him in front of the desk. “Good morning,” Spade said easily.

Cairo drew his tired body up straight and the drooping lines of his face
tightened. “Good morning,” he responded without enthusiasm.

There was a pause.

Spade said: “Let’s go some place where we can talk.”

Cairo raised his chin. “Please excuse me,” he said. “Our conversations
in private have not been such that I am anxious to continue them. Pardon
my speaking bluntly, but it is the truth.”

“You mean last night?” Spade made an impatient gesture with head and
hands. “What in hell else could I do? I thought you’d see that. If you
pick a fight with her, or let her pick one with you, I’ve got to throw
in with her. I don’t know where that damned bird is. You don’t. She
does. How in hell are we going to get it if I don’t play along with
her?”

Cairo hesitated, said dubiously: “You have always, I must say, a smooth
explanation ready.”

Spade scowled. “What do you want me to do? Learn to stutter? Well, we
can talk over here.” He led the way to the divan. When they were seated
he asked: “Dundy take you down to the Hall?”

“Yes.”

“How long did they work on you?”

“Until a very little while ago, and very much against my will.” Pain and
indignation were mixed in Cairo’s face and voice. “I shall certainly
take the matter up with the Consulate General of Greece and with an
attorney.”

“Go ahead, and see what it gets you. What did you let the police shake
out of you?”

There was prim satisfaction in Cairo’s smile. “Not a single thing. I
adhered to the course you indicated earlier in your rooms.” His smile
went away. “Though I certainly wished you had devised a more reasonable
story. I felt decidedly ridiculous repeating it.”

Spade grinned mockingly. “Sure,” he said, “but its goofiness is what
makes it good. You sure you didn’t give them anything?”

“You may rely upon it, Mr. Spade, I did not.”

Spade drummed with his fingers on the leather seat between them. “You’ll
be hearing from Dundy again. Stay dummied-up on him and you’ll be all
right. Don’t worry about the story’s goofiness. A sensible one would’ve
had us all in the cooler.” He rose to his feet. “You’ll want sleep if
you’ve been standing up under a police-storm all night. See you later.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Effie Perine was saying, “No, not yet,” into the telephone when Spade
entered his outer office. She looked around at him and her lips shaped a
silent word: “Iva.” He shook his head. “Yes, I’ll have him call you as
soon as he comes in,” she said aloud and replaced the receiver on its
prong. “That’s the third time she’s called up this morning,” she told
Spade.

He made an impatient growling noise.

The girl moved her brown eyes to indicate the inner office. “Your Miss
O’Shaughnessy’s in there. She’s been waiting since a few minutes after
nine.”

Spade nodded as if he had expected that and asked: “What else?”

“Sergeant Polhaus called up. He didn’t leave any message.”

“Get him for me.”

“And G. called up.”

Spade’s eyes brightened. He asked: “Who?”

“G. That’s what he said.” Her air of personal indifference to the
subject was flawless. “When I told him you weren’t in he said: ‘When he
comes in, will you please tell him that G., who got his message, phoned
and will phone again?’.”

Spade worked his lips together as if tasting something he liked.
“Thanks, darling,” he said. “See if you can get Tom Polhaus.” He opened
the inner door and went into his private office, pulling the door to
behind him.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy, dressed as on her first visit to the office, rose
from a chair beside his desk and came quickly towards him. “Somebody has
been in my apartment,” she explained. “It is all upside-down, every
which way.”

He seemed moderately surprised. “Anything taken?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know. I was afraid to stay. I changed as fast
as I could and came down here. Oh, you must’ve let that boy follow you
there!”

Spade shook his head. “No, angel.” He took an early copy of an afternoon
paper from his pocket, opened it, and showed her a quarter-column headed
SCREAM ROUTS BURGLAR.

A young woman named Caroline Beale, who lived alone in a Sutter Street
apartment, had been awakened at four that morning by the sound of
somebody moving in her bedroom. She had screamed. The mover had run
away. Two other women who lived alone in the same building had
discovered, later in the morning, signs of the burglar’s having visited
their apartments. Nothing had been taken from any of the three.

“That’s where I shook him,” Spade explained. “I went into that building
and ducked out the back door. That’s why all three were women who lived
alone. He tried the apartments that had women’s names in the
vestibule-register, hunting for you under an alias.”

“But he was watching your place when we were there,” she objected.

Spade shrugged. “There’s no reason to think he’s working alone. Or maybe
he went to Sutter Street after he had begun to think you were going to
stay all night in my place. There are a lot of maybes, but I didn’t lead
him to the Coronet.”

She was not satisfied. “But he found it, or somebody did.”

“Sure.” He frowned at her feet. “I wonder if it could have been Cairo.
He wasn’t at his hotel all night, didn’t get in till a few minutes ago.
He told me he had been standing up under a police-grilling all night. I
wonder.” He turned, opened the door, and asked Effie Perine: “Got Tom
yet?”

“He’s not in. I’ll try again in a few minutes.”

“Thanks.” Spade shut the door and faced Brigid O’Shaughnessy.

She looked at him with cloudy eyes. “You went to see Joe this morning?”
she asked.

“Yes.”

She hesitated. “Why?”

“Why?” He smiled down at her. “Because, my own true love, I’ve got to
keep in some sort of touch with all the loose ends of this dizzy affair
if I’m ever going to make heads or tails of it.” He put an arm around
her shoulders and led her over to his swivel-chair. He kissed the tip of
her nose lightly and set her down in the chair. He sat on the desk in
front of her. He said: “Now we’ve got to find a new home for you,
haven’t we?”

She nodded with emphasis. “I won’t go back there.”

He patted the desk beside his thighs and made a thoughtful face. “I
think I’ve got it,” he said presently. “Wait a minute.” He went into the
outer office, shutting the door.

Effie Perine reached for the telephone, saying: “I’ll try again.”

“Afterwards. Does your woman’s intuition still tell you that she’s a
madonna or something?”

She looked sharply up at him. “I still believe that no matter what kind
of trouble she’s gotten into she’s all right, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s what I mean,” he said. “Are you strong enough for her to give
her a lift?”

“How?”

“Could you put her up for a few days?”

“You mean at home?”

“Yes. Her joint’s been broken into. That’s the second burglary she’s had
this week. It’d be better for her if she wasn’t alone. It would help a
lot if you could take her in.”

Effie Perine leaned forward, asking earnestly: “Is she really in danger,
Sam?”

“I think she is.”

She scratched her lip with a fingernail. “That would scare Ma into a
green hemorrhage. I’ll have to tell her she’s a surprise-witness or
something that you’re keeping under cover till the last minute.”

“You’re a darling,” Spade said. “Better take her out there now. I’ll get
her key from her and bring whatever she needs over from her apartment.
Let’s see. You oughtn’t to be seen leaving here together. You go home
now. Take a taxi, but make sure you aren’t followed. You probably won’t
be, but make sure. I’ll send her out in another in a little while,
making sure she isn’t followed.”




                                   11


                              THE FAT MAN

THE telephone-bell was ringing when Spade returned to his office after
sending Brigid O’Shaughnessy off to Effie Perine’s house. He went to the
telephone.

“Hello. . . . Yes, this is Spade. . . . Yes, I got it. I’ve been waiting
to hear from you. . . . Who? . . . Mr. Gutman? Oh, yes, sure! . . .
Now—the sooner the better. . . . Twelve C. . . . Right. Say fifteen
minutes. . . . Right.”

Spade sat on the corner of his desk beside the telephone and rolled a
cigarette. His mouth was a hard complacent v. His eyes, watching his
fingers make the cigarette, smoldered over lower lids drawn up straight.

The door opened and Iva Archer came in.

Spade said, “Hello, honey,” in a voice as lightly amiable as his face
had suddenly become.

“Oh, Sam, forgive me! forgive me!” she cried in a choked voice. She
stood just inside the door, wadding a black-bordered handkerchief in her
small gloved hands, peering into his face with frightened red and
swollen eyes.

He did not get up from his seat on the desk-corner. He said: “Sure.
That’s all right. Forget it.”

“But, Sam,” she wailed, “I sent those policemen there. I was mad, crazy
with jealousy, and I phoned them that if they’d go there they’d learn
something about Miles’s murder.”

“What made you think that?”

“Oh, I didn’t! But I was mad, Sam, and I wanted to hurt you.”

“It made things damned awkward.” He put his arm around her and drew her
nearer. “But it’s all right now, only don’t get any more crazy notions
like that.”

“I won’t,” she promised, “ever. But you weren’t nice to me last night.
You were cold and distant and wanted to get rid of me, when I had come
down there and waited so long to warn you, and you—”

“Warn me about what?”

“About Phil. He’s found out about—about you being in love with me, and
Miles had told him about my wanting a divorce, though of course _he_
never knew what for, and now Phil thinks we—you killed his brother
because he wouldn’t give me the divorce so we could get married. He told
me he believed that, and yesterday he went and told the police.”

“That’s nice,” Spade said softly. “And you came to warn me, and because
I was busy you got up on your ear and helped this damned Phil Archer
stir things up.”

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered, “I know you won’t forgive me. I—I’m sorry,
sorry, sorry.”

“You ought to be,” he agreed, “on your own account as well as mine. Has
Dundy been to see you since Phil did his talking? Or anybody from the
bureau?”

“No.” Alarm opened her eyes and mouth.

“They will,” he said, “and it’d be just as well to not let them find you
here. Did you tell them who you were when you phoned?”

“Oh, no! I simply told them that if they’d go to your apartment right
away they’d learn something about the murder and hung up.”

“Where’d you phone from?”

“The drug-store up above your place. Oh, Sam, dearest, I—”

He patted her shoulder and said pleasantly: “It was a dumb trick, all
right, but it’s done now. You’d better run along home and think up
things to tell the police. You’ll be hearing from them. Maybe it’d be
best to say ‘no’ right across the board.” He frowned at something
distant. “Or maybe you’d better see Sid Wise first.” He removed his arm
from around her, took a card out of his pocket, scribbled three lines on
its back, and gave it to her. “You can tell Sid everything.” He frowned.
“Or almost everything. Where were you the night Miles was shot?”

“Home,” she replied without hesitating.

He shook his head, grinning at her.

“I was,” she insisted.

“No,” he said, “but if that’s your story it’s all right with me. Go see
Sid. It’s up on the next corner, the pinkish building, room
eight-twenty-seven.”

Her blue eyes tried to probe his yellow-grey ones. “What makes you think
I wasn’t home?” she asked slowly.

“Nothing except that I know you weren’t.”

“But I was, I was.” Her lips twisted and anger darkened her eyes. “Effie
Perine told you that,” she said indignantly. “I saw her looking at my
clothes and snooping around. You know she doesn’t like me, Sam. Why do
you believe things she tells you when you know she’d do anything to make
trouble for me?”

“Jesus, you women,” Spade said mildly. He looked at the watch on his
wrist. “You’ll have to trot along, precious. I’m late for an appointment
now. You do what you want, but if I were you I’d tell Sid the truth or
nothing. I mean leave out the parts you don’t want to tell him, but
don’t make up anything to take its place.”

“I’m not lying to you, Sam,” she protested.

“Like hell you’re not,” he said and stood up.

She strained on tiptoe to hold her face nearer his. “You don’t believe
me?” she whispered.

“I don’t believe you.”

“And you won’t forgive me for—for what I did?”

“Sure I do.” He bent his head and kissed her mouth. “That’s all right.
Now run along.”

She put her arms around him. “Won’t you go with me to see Mr. Wise?”

“I can’t, and I’d only be in the way.” He patted her arms, took them
from around his body, and kissed her left wrist between glove and
sleeve. He put his hands on her shoulders, turned her to face the door,
and released her with a little push. “Beat it,” he ordered.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The mahogany door of suite 12–C at the Alexandria Hotel was opened by
the boy Spade had talked to in the Belvedere lobby. Spade said, “Hello,”
good-naturedly. The boy did not say anything. He stood aside holding the
door open.

Spade went in. A fat man came to meet him.

The fat man was flabbily fat with bulbous pink cheeks and lips and chins
and neck, with a great soft egg of a belly that was all his torso, and
pendant cones for arms and legs. As he advanced to meet Spade all his
bulbs rose and shook and fell separately with each step, in the manner
of clustered soap-bubbles not yet released from the pipe through which
they had been blown. His eyes, made small by fat puffs around them, were
dark and sleek. Dark ringlets thinly covered his broad scalp. He wore a
black cutaway coat, black vest, black satin Ascot tie holding a pinkish
pearl, striped grey worsted trousers, and patent-leather shoes.

His voice was a throaty purr. “Ah, Mr. Spade,” he said with enthusiasm
and held out a hand like a fat pink star.

Spade took the hand and smiled and said: “How do you do, Mr. Gutman?”

Holding Spade’s hand, the fat man turned beside him, put his other hand
to Spade’s elbow, and guided him across a green rug to a green plush
chair beside a table that held a siphon, some glasses, and a bottle of
Johnnie Walker whiskey on a tray, a box of cigars—Coronas del Ritz—two
newspapers, and a small and plain yellow soapstone box.

Spade sat in the green chair. The fat man began to fill two glasses from
bottle and siphon. The boy had disappeared. Doors set in three of the
room’s walls were shut. The fourth wall, behind Spade, was pierced by
two windows looking out over Geary Street.

“We begin well, sir,” the fat man purred, turning with a proffered glass
in his hand. “I distrust a man that says when. If he’s got to be careful
not to drink too much it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does.”

Spade took the glass and, smiling, made the beginning of a bow over it.

The fat man raised his glass and held it against a window’s light. He
nodded approvingly at the bubbles running up in it. He said: “Well, sir,
here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding.”

They drank and lowered their glasses.

The fat man looked shrewdly at Spade and asked: “You’re a close-mouthed
man?”

Spade shook his head. “I like to talk.”

“Better and better!” the fat man exclaimed. “I distrust a close-mouthed
man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong
things. Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in
practice.” He beamed over his glass. “We’ll get along, sir, that we
will.” He set his glass on the table and held the box of Coronas del
Ritz out to Spade. “A cigar, sir.”

Spade took a cigar, trimmed the end of it, and lighted it. Meanwhile the
fat man pulled another green plush chair around to face Spade’s within
convenient distance and placed a smoking-stand within reach of both
chairs. Then he took his glass from the table, took a cigar from the
box, and lowered himself into his chair. His bulbs stopped jouncing and
settled into flabby rest. He sighed comfortably and said: “Now, sir,
we’ll talk if you like. And I’ll tell you right out that I’m a man who
likes talking to a man that likes to talk.”

“Swell. Will we talk about the black bird?”

The fat man laughed and his bulbs rode up and down on his laughter.
“Will we?” he asked and, “We will,” he replied. His pink face was shiny
with delight. “You’re the man for me, sir, a man cut along my own lines.
No beating about the bush, but right to the point. ‘Will we talk about
the black bird?’ We will. I like that, sir. I like that way of doing
business. Let us talk about the black bird by all means, but first, sir,
answer me a question, please, though maybe it’s an unnecessary one, so
we’ll understand each other from the beginning. You’re here as Miss
O’Shaughnessy’s representative?”

Spade blew smoke above the fat man’s head in a long slanting plume. He
frowned thoughtfully at the ash-tipped end of his cigar. He replied
deliberately: “I can’t say yes or no. There’s nothing certain about it
either way, yet.” He looked up at the fat man and stopped frowning. “It
depends.”

“It depends on—?”

Spade shook his head. “If I knew what it depends on I could say yes or
no.”

The fat man took a mouthful from his glass, swallowed it, and suggested:
“Maybe it depends on Joel Cairo?”

Spade’s prompt “Maybe” was noncommittal. He drank.

The fat man leaned forward until his belly stopped him. His smile was
ingratiating and so was his purring voice. “You could say, then, that
the question is which one of them you’ll represent?”

“You could put it that way.”

“It will be one or the other?”

“I didn’t say that.”

The fat man’s eyes glistened. His voice sank to a throaty whisper
asking: “Who else is there?”

Spade pointed his cigar at his own chest. “There’s me,” he said.

The fat man sank back in his chair and let his body go flaccid. He blew
his breath out in a long contented gust. “That’s wonderful, sir,” he
purred. “That’s wonderful. I do like a man that tells you right out he’s
looking out for himself. Don’t we all? I don’t trust a man that says
he’s not. And the man that’s telling the truth when he says he’s not I
distrust most of all, because he’s an ass and an ass that’s going
contrary to the laws of nature.”

Spade exhaled smoke. His face was politely attentive. He said: “Uh-huh.
Now let’s talk about the black bird.”

The fat man smiled benevolently. “Let’s,” he said. He squinted so that
fat puffs crowding together left nothing of his eyes but a dark gleam
visible. “Mr. Spade, have you any conception of how much money can be
made out of that black bird?”

“No.”

The fat man leaned forward again and put a bloated pink hand on the arm
of Spade’s chair. “Well, sir, if I told you—by Gad, if I told you
half!—you’d call me a liar.”

Spade smiled. “No,” he said, “not even if I thought it. But if you won’t
take the risk just tell me what it is and I’ll figure out the profits.”

The fat man laughed. “You couldn’t do it, sir. Nobody could do it that
hadn’t had a world of experience with things of that sort, and”—he
paused impressively—“there aren’t any other things of that sort.” His
bulbs jostled one another as he laughed again. He stopped laughing,
abruptly. His fleshy lips hung open as laughter had left them. He stared
at Spade with an intentness that suggested myopia. He asked: “You mean
you don’t know what it is?” Amazement took the throatiness out of his
voice.

Spade made a careless gesture with his cigar. “Oh, hell,” he said
lightly, “I know what it’s supposed to look like. I know the value in
life you people put on it. I don’t know what it is.”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“Miss O’Shaughnessy?”

“Yes. A lovely girl, sir.”

“Uh-huh. No.”

The fat man’s eyes were dark gleams in ambush behind pink puffs of
flesh. He said indistinctly, “She must know,” and then, “And Cairo
didn’t either?”

“Cairo is cagey. He’s willing to buy it, but he won’t risk telling me
anything I don’t know already.”

The fat man moistened his lips with his tongue. “How much is he willing
to buy it for?” he asked.

“Ten thousand dollars.”

The fat man laughed scornfully. “Ten thousand, and dollars, mind you,
not even pounds. That’s the Greek for you. Humph! And what did you say
to that?”

“I said if I turned it over to him I’d expect the ten thousand.”

“Ah, yes, _if_! Nicely put, sir.” The fat man’s forehead squirmed in a
flesh-blurred frown. “They must know,” he said only partly aloud, then:
“Do they? Do they know what the bird is, sir? What was your impression?”

“I can’t help you there,” Spade confessed. “There’s not much to go by.
Cairo didn’t say he did and he didn’t say he didn’t. She said she
didn’t, but I took it for granted that she was lying.”

“That was not an injudicious thing to do,” the fat man said, but his
mind was obviously not on his words. He scratched his head. He frowned
until his forehead was marked by raw red creases. He fidgeted in his
chair as much as his size and the size of the chair permitted fidgeting.
He shut his eyes, opened them suddenly—wide—and said to Spade: “Maybe
they don’t.” His bulbous pink face slowly lost its worried frown and
then, more quickly, took on an expression of ineffable happiness. “If
they don’t,” he cried, and again: “If they don’t I’m the only one in the
whole wide sweet world who does!”

Spade drew his lips back in a tight smile. “I’m glad I came to the right
place,” he said.

The fat man smiled too, but somewhat vaguely. Happiness had gone out of
his face, though he continued to smile, and caution had come into his
eyes. His face was a watchful-eyed smiling mask held up between his
thoughts and Spade. His eyes, avoiding Spade’s, shifted to the glass at
Spade’s elbow. His face brightened. “By Gad, sir,” he said, “your glass
is empty.” He got up and went to the table and clattered glasses and
siphon and bottle mixing two drinks.

Spade was immobile in his chair until the fat man, with a flourish and a
bow and a jocular “Ah, sir, this kind of medicine will never hurt you!”
had handed him his refilled glass. Then Spade rose and stood close to
the fat man, looking down at him, and Spade’s eyes were hard and bright.
He raised his glass. His voice was deliberate, challenging: “Here’s to
plain speaking and clear understanding.”

The fat man chuckled and they drank. The fat man sat down. He held his
glass against his belly with both hands and smiled up at Spade. He said:
“Well, sir, it’s surprising, but it well may be a fact that neither of
them does know exactly what that bird is, and that nobody in all this
whole wide sweet world knows what it is, saving and excepting only your
humble servant, Casper Gutman, Esquire.”

“Swell.” Spade stood with legs apart, one hand in his trousers-pocket,
the other holding his glass. “When you’ve told me there’ll only be two
of us who know.”

“Mathematically correct, sir”—the fat man’s eyes twinkled—“but”—his
smile spread—“I don’t know for certain that I’m going to tell you.”

“Don’t be a damned fool,” Spade said patiently. “You know what it is. I
know where it is. That’s why we’re here.”

“Well, sir, where is it?”

Spade ignored the question.

The fat man bunched his lips, raised his eyebrows, and cocked his head a
little to the left. “You see,” he said blandly, “I must tell you what I
know, but you will not tell me what you know. That is hardly equitable,
sir. No, no, I do not think we can do business along those lines.”

Spade’s face became pale and hard. He spoke rapidly in a low furious
voice: “Think again and think fast. I told that punk of yours that you’d
have to talk to me before you got through. I’ll tell you now that you’ll
do your talking today or you are through. What are you wasting my time
for? You and your lousy secret! Christ! I know exactly what that stuff
is that they keep in the sub-treasury vaults, but what good does that do
me? I can get along without you. God damn you! Maybe you could have got
along without me if you’d kept clear of me. You can’t now. Not in San
Francisco. You’ll come in or you’ll get out—and you’ll do it today.”

He turned and with angry heedlessness tossed his glass at the table. The
glass struck the wood, burst apart, and splashed its contents and
glittering fragments over table and floor. Spade, deaf and blind to the
crash, wheeled to confront the fat man again.

The fat man paid no more attention to the glass’s fate than Spade did:
lips pursed, eyebrows raised, head cocked a little to the left, he had
maintained his pink-faced blandness throughout Spade’s angry speech, and
he maintained it now.

Spade, still furious, said: “And another thing, I don’t want—”

The door to Spade’s left opened. The boy who had admitted Spade came in.
He shut the door, stood in front of it with his hands flat against his
flanks, and looked at Spade. The boy’s eyes were wide open and dark with
wide pupils. Their gaze ran over Spade’s body from shoulders to knees,
and up again to settle on the handkerchief whose maroon border peeped
from the breast-pocket of Spade’s brown coat.

“Another thing,” Spade repeated, glaring at the boy: “Keep that gunsel
away from me while you’re making up your mind. I’ll kill him. I don’t
like him. He makes me nervous. I’ll kill him the first time he gets in
my way. I won’t give him an even break. I won’t give him a chance. I’ll
kill him.”

The boy’s lips twitched in a shadowy smile. He neither raised his eyes
nor spoke.

The fat man said tolerantly: “Well, sir, I must say you have a most
violent temper.”

“Temper?” Spade laughed crazily. He crossed to the chair on which he had
dropped his hat, picked up the hat, and set it on his head. He held out
a long arm that ended in a thick forefinger pointing at the fat man’s
belly. His angry voice filled the room. “Think it over and think like
hell. You’ve got till five-thirty to do it in. Then you’re either in or
out, for keeps.” He let his arm drop, scowled at the bland fat man for a
moment, scowled at the boy, and went to the door through which he had
entered. When he opened the door he turned and said harshly:
“Five-thirty—then the curtain.”

The boy, staring at Spade’s chest, repeated the two words he had twice
spoken in the Belvedere lobby. His voice was not loud. It was bitter.

Spade went out and slammed the door.




                                   12


                             MERRY-GO-ROUND

SPADE rode down from Gutman’s floor in an elevator. His lips were dry
and rough in a face otherwise pale and damp. When he took out his
handkerchief to wipe his face he saw his hand trembling. He grinned at
it and said, “Whew!” so loudly that the elevator-operator turned his
head over his shoulder and asked: “Sir?”

Spade walked down Geary Street to the Palace Hotel, where he ate
luncheon. His face had lost its pallor, his lips their dryness, and his
hand its trembling by the time he had sat down. He ate hungrily without
haste, and then went to Sid Wise’s office.

When Spade entered, Wise was biting a fingernail and staring at the
window. He took his hand from his mouth, screwed his chair around to
face Spade, and said: “’Lo. Push a chair up.”

Spade moved a chair to the side of the big paper-laden desk and sat
down. “Mrs. Archer come in?” he asked.

“Yes.” The faintest of lights flickered in Wise’s eyes. “Going to marry
the lady, Sammy?”

Spade sighed irritably through his nose. “Christ, now you start that!”
he grumbled.

A brief tired smile lifted the corners of the lawyer’s mouth. “If you
don’t,” he said, “you’re going to have a job on your hands.”

Spade looked up from the cigarette he was making and spoke sourly: “You
mean you are? Well, that’s what you’re for. What did she tell you?”

“About you?”

“About anything I ought to know.”

Wise ran fingers through his hair, sprinkling dandruff down on his
shoulders. “She told me she had tried to get a divorce from Miles so she
could—”

“I know all that,” Spade interrupted him. “You can skip it. Get to the
part I don’t know.”

“How do I know how much she—?”

“Quit stalling, Sid.” Spade held the flame of his lighter to the end of
his cigarette. “What did she tell you that she wanted kept from me?”

Wise looked reprovingly at Spade. “Now, Sammy,” he began, “that’s not—”

Spade looked heavenward at the ceiling and groaned: “Dear God, he’s my
own lawyer that’s got rich off me and I have to get down on my knees and
beg him to tell me things!” He lowered at Wise. “What in hell do you
think I sent her to you for?”

Wise made a weary grimace. “Just one more client like you,” he
complained, “and I’d be in a sanitarium—or San Quentin.”

“You’d be with most of your clients. Did she tell you where she was the
night he was killed?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Following him.”

Spade sat up straight and blinked. He exclaimed incredulously: “Jesus,
these women!” Then he laughed, relaxed, and asked: “Well, what did she
see?”

Wise shook his head. “Nothing much. When he came home for dinner that
evening he told her he had a date with a girl at the St. Mark, ragging
her, telling her that was her chance to get the divorce she wanted. She
thought at first he was just trying to get under her skin. He knew—”

“I know the family history,” Spade said. “Skip it. Tell me what she
did.”

“I will if you’ll give me a chance. After he had gone out she began to
think that maybe he might have had that date. You know Miles. It would
have been like him to—”

“You can skip Miles’s character too.”

“I oughtn’t to tell you a damned thing,” the lawyer said. “So she got
their car from the garage and drove down to the St. Mark, sitting in the
car across the street. She saw him come out of the hotel and she saw
that he was shadowing a man and a girl—she says she saw the same girl
with you last night—who had come out just ahead of him. She knew then
that he was working, had been kidding her. I suppose she was
disappointed, and mad—she sounded that way when she told me about it.
She followed Miles long enough to make sure he was shadowing the pair,
and then she went up to your apartment. You weren’t home.”

“What time was that?” Spade asked.

“When she got to your place? Between half-past nine and ten the first
time.”

“The first time?”

“Yes. She drove around for half an hour or so and then tried again. That
would make it, say, ten-thirty. You were still out, so she drove back
downtown and went to a movie to kill time until after midnight, when she
thought she’d be more likely to find you in.”

Spade frowned. “She went to a movie at ten-thirty?”

“So she says—the one on Powell Street that stays open till one in the
morning. She didn’t want to go home, she said, because she didn’t want
to be there when Miles came. That always made him mad, it seems,
especially if it was around midnight. She stayed in the movie till it
closed.” Wise’s words came out slower now and there was a sardonic glint
in his eye. “She says she had decided by then not to go back to your
place again. She says she didn’t know whether you’d like having her drop
in that late. So she went to Tait’s—the one on Ellis Street—had
something to eat and then went home—alone.” Wise rocked back in his
chair and waited for Spade to speak.

Spade’s face was expressionless. He asked: “You believe her?”

“Don’t you?” Wise replied.

“How do I know? How do I know it isn’t something you fixed up between
you to tell me?”

Wise smiled. “You don’t cash many checks for strangers, do you, Sammy?”

“Not basketfuls. Well, what then? Miles wasn’t home. It was at least two
o’clock by then—must’ve been—and he was dead.”

“Miles wasn’t home,” Wise said. “That seems to have made her mad
again—his not being home first to be made mad by her not being home. So
she took the car out of the garage again and went back to your place.”

“And I wasn’t home. I was down looking at Miles’s corpse. Jesus, what a
swell lot of merry-go-round riding. Then what?”

“She went home, and her husband still wasn’t there, and while she was
undressing your messenger came with the news of his death.”

Spade didn’t speak until he had with great care rolled and lighted
another cigarette. Then he said: “I think that’s an all right spread. It
seems to click with most of the known facts. It ought to hold.”

Wise’s fingers, running through his hair again, combed more dandruff
down on his shoulders. He studied Spade’s face with curious eyes and
asked: “But you don’t believe it?”

Spade plucked his cigarette from between his lips. “I don’t believe it
or disbelieve it, Sid. I don’t know a damned thing about it.”

A wry smile twisted the lawyer’s mouth. He moved his shoulders wearily
and said: “That’s right—I’m selling you out. Why don’t you get an
honest lawyer—one you can trust?”

“That fellow’s dead.” Spade stood up. He sneered at Wise. “Getting
touchy, huh? I haven’t got enough to think about: now I’ve got to
remember to be polite to you. What did I do? Forget to genuflect when I
came in?”

Sid Wise smiled sheepishly. “You’re a son of a gun, Sammy,” he said.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Effie Perine was standing in the center of Spade’s outer office when he
entered. She looked at him with worried brown eyes and asked: “What
happened?”

Spade’s face grew stiff. “What happened where?” he demanded.

“Why didn’t she come?”

Spade took two long steps and caught Effie Perine by the shoulders. “She
didn’t get there?” he bawled into her frightened face.

She shook her head violently from side to side. “I waited and waited and
she didn’t come, and I couldn’t get you on the phone, so I came down.”

Spade jerked his hands away from her shoulders, thrust them far down in
his trousers-pockets, said, “Another merry-go-round,” in a loud enraged
voice, and strode into his private office. He came out again. “Phone
your mother,” he commanded. “See if she’s come yet.”

He walked up and down the office while the girl used the telephone.
“No,” she said when she had finished. “Did—did you send her out in a
taxi?”

His grunt probably meant yes.

“Are you sure she—Somebody must have followed her!”

Spade stopped pacing the floor. He put his hands on his hips and glared
at the girl. He addressed her in a loud savage voice: “Nobody followed
her. Do you think I’m a God-damned schoolboy? I made sure of it before I
put her in the cab, I rode a dozen blocks with her to be more sure, and
I checked her another half-dozen blocks after I got out.”

“Well, but—”

“But she didn’t get there. You’ve told me that. I believe it. Do you
think I think she did get there?”

Effie Perine sniffed. “You certainly act like a God-damned schoolboy,”
she said.

Spade made a harsh noise in his throat and went to the corridor-door.
“I’m going out and find her if I have to dig up sewers,” he said. “Stay
here till I’m back or you hear from me. For Christ’s sake let’s do
something right.”

He went out, walked half the distance to the elevators, and retraced his
steps. Effie Perine was sitting at her desk when he opened the door. He
said: “You ought to know better than to pay any attention to me when I
talk like that.”

“If you think I pay any attention to you you’re crazy,” she replied,
“only”—she crossed her arms and felt her shoulders, and her mouth
twitched uncertainly—“I won’t be able to wear an evening gown for two
weeks, you big brute.”

He grinned humbly, said, “I’m no damned good, darling,” made an
exaggerated bow, and went out again.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Two yellow taxicabs were at the corner-stand to which Spade went. Their
chauffeurs were standing together talking. Spade asked: “Where’s the
red-faced blond driver that was here at noon?”

“Got a load,” one of the chauffeurs said.

“Will he be back here?”

“I guess so.”

The other chauffeur ducked his head to the east. “Here he comes now.”

Spade walked down to the corner and stood by the curb until the
red-faced blond chauffeur had parked his cab and got out. Then Spade
went up to him and said: “I got into your cab with a lady at noontime.
We went out Stockton Street and up Sacramento to Jones, where I got
out.”

“Sure,” the red-faced man said, “I remember that.”

“I told you to take her to a Ninth-Avenue-number. You didn’t take her
there. Where did you take her?”

The chauffeur rubbed his cheek with a grimy hand and looked doubtfully
at Spade. “I don’t know about this.”

“It’s all right,” Spade assured him, giving him one of his cards. “If
you want to play safe, though, we can ride up to your office and get
your superintendent’s O K.”

“I guess it’s all right. I took her to the Ferry Building.”

“By herself?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Didn’t take her anywhere else first?”

“No. It was like this: after we dropped you I went on out Sacramento,
and when we got to Polk she rapped on the glass and said she wanted to
get a newspaper, so I stopped at the corner and whistled for a kid, and
she got her paper.”

“Which paper?”

“The _Call_. Then I went on out Sacramento some more, and just after
we’d crossed Van Ness she knocked on the glass again and said take her
to the Ferry Building.”

“Was she excited or anything?”

“Not so’s I noticed.”

“And when you got to the Ferry Building?”

“She paid me off, and that was all.”

“Anybody waiting for her there?”

“I didn’t see them if they was.”

“Which way did she go?”

“At the Ferry? I don’t know. Maybe upstairs, or towards the stairs.”

“Take the newspaper with her?”

“Yeah, she had it tucked under her arm when she paid me.”

“With the pink sheet outside, or one of the white?”

“Hell, Cap, I don’t remember that.”

Spade thanked the chauffeur, said, “Get yourself a smoke,” and gave him
a silver dollar.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Spade bought a copy of the _Call_ and carried it into an
office-building-vestibule to examine it out of the wind.

His eyes ran swiftly over the front-page-headlines and over those on the
second and third pages. They paused for a moment under SUSPECT ARRESTED
AS COUNTERFEITER on the fourth page, and again on page five under BAY
YOUTH SEEKS DEATH WITH BULLET. Pages six and seven held nothing to
interest him. On eight 3 BOYS ARRESTED AS S. F. BURGLARS AFTER SHOOTING
held his attention for a moment, and after that nothing until he reached
the thirty-fifth page, which held news of the weather, shipping,
produce, finance, divorce, births, marriages, and deaths. He read the
list of dead, passed over pages thirty-six and thirty-seven—financial
news—found nothing to stop his eyes on the thirty-eighth and last page,
sighed, folded the newspaper, put it in his coat-pocket, and rolled a
cigarette.

For five minutes he stood there in the office-building-vestibule smoking
and staring sulkily at nothing. Then he walked up to Stockton Street,
hailed a taxicab, and had himself driven to the Coronet.

He let himself into the building and into Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s
apartment with the key she had given him. The blue gown she had worn the
previous night was hanging across the foot of her bed. Her blue
stockings and slippers were on the bedroom floor. The polychrome box
that had held jewelry in her dressing-table-drawer now stood empty on
the dressing-table-top. Spade frowned at it, ran his tongue across his
lips, strolled through the rooms, looking around but not touching
anything, then left the Coronet and went downtown again.

In the doorway of Spade’s office-building he came face to face with the
boy he had left at Gutman’s. The boy put himself in Spade’s path,
blocking the entrance, and said: “Come on. He wants to see you.”

The boy’s hands were in his overcoat-pockets. His pockets bulged more
than his hands need have made them bulge.

Spade grinned and said mockingly: “I didn’t expect you till
five-twenty-five. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

The boy raised his eyes to Spade’s mouth and spoke in the strained voice
of one in physical pain: “Keep on riding me and you’re going to be
picking iron out of your navel.”

Spade chuckled. “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter,” he said
cheerfully. “Well, let’s go.”

They walked up Sutter Street side by side. The boy kept his hands in his
overcoat-pockets. They walked a little more than a block in silence.
Then Spade asked pleasantly: “How long have you been off the goose-berry
lay, son?”

The boy did not show that he had heard the question.

“Did you ever—?” Spade began, and stopped. A soft light began to glow
in his yellowish eyes. He did not address the boy again.

They went into the Alexandria, rode up to the twelfth floor, and walked
down the corridor towards Gutman’s suite. Nobody else was in the
corridor.

Spade lagged a little, so that, when they were within fifteen feet of
Gutman’s door, he was perhaps a foot and a half behind the boy. He
leaned sidewise suddenly and grasped the boy from behind by both arms,
just beneath the boy’s elbows. He forced the boy’s arms forward so that
the boy’s hands, in his overcoat-pockets, lifted the overcoat up before
him. The boy struggled and squirmed, but he was impotent in the big
man’s grip. The boy kicked back, but his feet went between Spade’s
spread legs.

Spade lifted the boy straight up from the floor and brought him down
hard on his feet again. The impact made little noise on the thick
carpet. At the moment of impact Spade’s hands slid down and got a fresh
grip on the boy’s wrists. The boy, teeth set hard together, did not stop
straining against the man’s big hands, but he could not tear himself
loose, could not keep the man’s hands from crawling down over his own
hands. The boy’s teeth ground together audibly, making a noise that
mingled with the noise of Spade’s breathing as Spade crushed the boy’s
hands.

They were tense and motionless for a long moment. Then the boy’s arms
became limp. Spade released the boy and stepped back. In each of Spade’s
hands, when they came out of the boy’s overcoat-pockets, there was a
heavy automatic pistol.

The boy turned and faced Spade. The boy’s face was a ghastly white
blank. He kept his hands in his overcoat-pockets. He looked at Spade’s
chest and did not say anything.

Spade put the pistols in his own pockets and grinned derisively. “Come
on,” he said. “This will put you in solid with your boss.”

They went to Gutman’s door and Spade knocked.




                                   13


                           THE EMPEROR’S GIFT

GUTMAN opened the door. A glad smile lighted his fat face. He held out a
hand and said: “Ah, come in, sir! Thank you for coming. Come in.”

Spade shook the hand and entered. The boy went in behind him. The fat
man shut the door. Spade took the boy’s pistols from his pockets and
held them out to Gutman. “Here. You shouldn’t let him run around with
these. He’ll get himself hurt.”

The fat man laughed merrily and took the pistols. “Well, well,” he said,
“what’s this?” He looked from Spade to the boy.

Spade said: “A crippled newsie took them away from him, but I made him
give them back.”

The white-faced boy took the pistols out of Gutman’s hands and pocketed
them. The boy did not speak.

Gutman laughed again. “By Gad, sir,” he told Spade, “you’re a chap worth
knowing, an amazing character. Come in. Sit down. Give me your hat.”

The boy left the room by the door to the right of the entrance.

The fat man installed Spade in a green plush chair by the table, pressed
a cigar upon him, held a light to it, mixed whiskey and carbonated
water, put one glass in Spade’s hand, and, holding the other, sat down
facing Spade.

“Now, sir,” he said, “I hope you’ll let me apologize for—”

“Never mind that,” Spade said. “Let’s talk about the black bird.”

The fat man cocked his head to the left and regarded Spade with fond
eyes. “All right, sir,” he agreed. “Let’s.” He took a sip from the glass
in his hand. “This is going to be the most astounding thing you’ve ever
heard of, sir, and I say that knowing that a man of your caliber in your
profession must have known some astounding things in his time.”

Spade nodded politely.

The fat man screwed up his eyes and asked: “What do you know, sir, about
the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, later called the
Knights of Rhodes and other things?”

Spade waved his cigar. “Not much—only what I remember from history in
school—Crusaders or something.”

“Very good. Now you don’t remember that Suleiman the Magnificent chased
them out of Rhodes in 1523?”

“No.”

“Well, sir, he did, and they settled in Crete. And they stayed there for
seven years, until 1530 when they persuaded the Emperor Charles V to
give them”—Gutman held up three puffy fingers and counted them—“Malta,
Gozo, and Tripoli.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, sir, but with these conditions: they were to pay the Emperor each
year the tribute of one”—he held up a finger—“falcon in acknowledgment
that Malta was still under Spain, and if they ever left the island it
was to revert to Spain. Understand? He was giving it to them, but not
unless they used it, and they couldn’t give or sell it to anybody else.”

“Yes.”

The fat man looked over his shoulders at the three closed doors, hunched
his chair a few inches nearer Spade’s, and reduced his voice to a husky
whisper: “Have you any conception of the extreme, the immeasurable,
wealth of the Order at that time?”

“If I remember,” Spade said, “they were pretty well fixed.”

Gutman smiled indulgently. “Pretty well, sir, is putting it mildly.” His
whisper became lower and more purring. “They were rolling in wealth,
sir. You’ve no idea. None of us has any idea. For years they had preyed
on the Saracens, had taken nobody knows what spoils of gems, precious
metals, silks, ivories—the cream of the cream of the East. That is
history, sir. We all know that the Holy Wars to them, as to the
Templars, were largely a matter of loot.

“Well, now, the Emperor Charles has given them Malta, and all the rent
he asks is one insignificant bird per annum, just as a matter of form.
What could be more natural than for these immeasurably wealthy Knights
to look around for some way of expressing their gratitude? Well, sir,
that’s exactly what they did, and they hit on the happy thought of
sending Charles for the first year’s tribute, not an insignificant live
bird, but a glorious golden falcon encrusted from head to foot with the
finest jewels in their coffers. And—remember, sir—they had fine ones,
the finest out of Asia.” Gutman stopped whispering. His sleek dark eyes
examined Spade’s face, which was placid. The fat man asked: “Well, sir,
what do you think of that?”

“I don’t know.”

The fat man smiled complacently. “These are facts, historical facts, not
schoolbook history, not Mr. Wells’s history, but history nevertheless.”
He leaned forward. “The archives of the Order from the twelfth century
on are still at Malta. They are not intact, but what is there holds no
less than three”—he held up three fingers—“references that can’t be to
anything else but this jeweled falcon. In J. Delaville Le Roulx’s _Les
Archives de l’Ordre de Saint-Jean_ there is a reference to it—oblique
to be sure, but a reference still. And the unpublished—because
unfinished at the time of his death—supplement to Paoli’s _Dell’
origine ed instituto del sacro militar ordine_ has a clear and
unmistakable statement of the facts I am telling you.”

“All right,” Spade said.

“All right, sir. Grand Master Villiers de l’Isle d’Adam had this
foot-high jeweled bird made by Turkish slaves in the castle of St.
Angelo and sent it to Charles, who was in Spain. He sent it in a galley
commanded by a French knight named Cormier or Corvere, a member of the
Order.” His voice dropped to a whisper again. “It never reached Spain.”
He smiled with compressed lips and asked: “You know of Barbarossa,
Redbeard, Khair-ed-Din? No? A famous admiral of buccaneers sailing out
of Algiers then. Well, sir, he took the Knights’ galley and he took the
bird. The bird went to Algiers. That’s a fact. That’s a fact that the
French historian Pierre Dan put in one of his letters from Algiers. He
wrote that the bird had been there for more than a hundred years, until
it was carried away by Sir Francis Verney, the English adventurer who
was with the Algerian buccaneers for a while. Maybe it wasn’t, but
Pierre Dan believed it was, and that’s good enough for me.

“There’s nothing said about the bird in Lady Francis Verney’s _Memoirs
of the Verney Family during the Seventeenth Century_, to be sure. I
looked. And it’s pretty certain that Sir Francis didn’t have the bird
when he died in a Messina hospital in 1615. He was stony broke. But,
sir, there’s no denying that the bird _did_ go to Sicily. It was there
and it came into the possession there of Victor Amadeus II some time
after he became king in 1713, and it was one of his gifts to his wife
when he married in Chambéry after abdicating. That is a fact, sir.
Carutti, the author of _Storia del Regno di Vittorio Amadeo II_, himself
vouched for it.

“Maybe they—Amadeo and his wife—took it along with them to Turin when
he tried to revoke his abdication. Be that as it may, it turned up next
in the possession of a Spaniard who had been with the army that took
Naples in 1734—the father of Don José Monino y Redondo, Count of
Floridablanca, who was Charles III’s chief minister. There’s nothing to
show that it didn’t stay in that family until at least the end of the
Carlist War in ’40. Then it appeared in Paris at just about the time
that Paris was full of Carlists who had had to get out of Spain. One of
them must have brought it with him, but, whoever he was, it’s likely he
knew nothing about its real value. It had been—no doubt as a precaution
during the Carlist trouble in Spain—painted or enameled over to look
like nothing more than a fairly interesting black statuette. And in that
disguise, sir, it was, you might say, kicked around Paris for seventy
years by private owners and dealers too stupid to see what it was under
the skin.”

The fat man paused to smile and shake his head regretfully. Then he went
on: “For seventy years, sir, this marvelous item was, as you might say,
a football in the gutters of Paris—until 1911 when a Greek dealer named
Charilaos Konstantinides found it in an obscure shop. It didn’t take
Charilaos long to learn what it was and to acquire it. No thickness of
enamel could conceal value from his eyes and nose. Well, sir, Charilaos
was the man who traced most of its history and who identified it as what
it actually was. I got wind of it and finally forced most of the history
out of him, though I’ve been able to add a few details since.

“Charilaos was in no hurry to convert his find into money at once. He
knew that—enormous as its intrinsic value was—a far higher, a
terrific, price could be obtained for it once its authenticity was
established beyond doubt. Possibly he planned to do business with one of
the modern descendents of the old Order—the English Order of St. John
of Jerusalem, the Prussian Johanniterorden, or the Italian or German
_langues_ of the Sovereign Order of Malta—all wealthy orders.”

The fat man raised his glass, smiled at its emptiness, and rose to fill
it and Spade’s. “You begin to believe me a little?” he asked as he
worked the siphon.

“I haven’t said I didn’t.”

“No,” Gutman chuckled. “But how you looked.” He sat down, drank
generously, and patted his mouth with a white handkerchief. “Well, sir,
to hold it safe while pursuing his researches into its history,
Charilaos had re-enameled the bird, apparently just as it is now. One
year to the very day after he had acquired it—that was possibly three
months after I’d made him confess to me—I picked up the _Times_ in
London and read that his establishment had been burglarized and him
murdered. I was in Paris the next day.” He shook his head sadly. “The
bird was gone. By Gad, sir, I was wild. I didn’t believe anybody else
knew what it was. I didn’t believe he had told anybody but me. A great
quantity of stuff had been stolen. That made me think that the thief had
simply taken the bird along with the rest of his plunder, not knowing
what it was. Because I assure you that a thief who knew its value would
not burden himself with anything else—no, sir—at least not anything
less than crown jewels.”

He shut his eyes and smiled complacently at an inner thought. He opened
his eyes and said: “That was seventeen years ago. Well, sir, it took me
seventeen years to locate that bird, but I did it. I wanted it, and I’m
not a man that’s easily discouraged when he wants something.” His smile
grew broad. “I wanted it and I found it. I want it and I’m going to have
it.” He drained his glass, dried his lips again, and returned his
handkerchief to his pocket. “I traced it to the home of a Russian
general—one Kemidov—in a Constantinople suburb. He didn’t know a thing
about it. It was nothing but a black enameled figure to him, but his
natural contrariness—the natural contrariness of a Russian
general—kept him from selling it to me when I made him an offer.
Perhaps in my eagerness I was a little unskillful, though not very. I
don’t know about that. But I did know I wanted it and I was afraid this
stupid soldier might begin to investigate his property, might chip off
some of the enamel. So I sent some—ah—agents to get it. Well, sir,
they got it and I haven’t got it.” He stood up and carried his empty
glass to the table. “But I’m going to get it. Your glass, sir.”

“Then the bird doesn’t belong to any of you?” Spade asked, “but to a
General Kemidov?”

“Belong?” the fat man said jovially. “Well, sir, you might say it
belonged to the King of Spain, but I don’t see how you can honestly
grant anybody else clear title to it—except by right of possession.” He
clucked. “An article of that value that has passed from hand to hand by
such means is clearly the property of whoever can get hold of it.”

“Then it’s Miss O’Shaughnessy’s now?”

“No, sir, except as my agent.”

Spade said, “Oh,” ironically.

Gutman, looking thoughtfully at the stopper of the whiskey-bottle in his
hand, asked: “There’s no doubt that she’s got it now?”

“Not much.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

The fat man set the bottle on the table with a bang. “But you said you
did,” he protested.

Spade made a careless gesture with one hand. “I meant to say I know
where to get it when the time comes.”

The pink bulbs of Gutman’s face arranged themselves more happily. “And
you do?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

Spade grinned and said: “Leave that to me. That’s my end.”

“When?”

“When I’m ready.”

The fat man pursed his lips and, smiling with only slight uneasiness,
asked: “Mr. Spade, where is Miss O’Shaughnessy now?”

“In my hands, safely tucked away.”

Gutman smiled with approval. “Trust you for that, sir,” he said. “Well
now, sir, before we sit down to talk prices, answer me this: how soon
can you—or how soon are you willing to—produce the falcon?”

“A couple of days.”

The fat man nodded. “That is satisfactory. We—But I forgot our
nourishment.” He turned to the table, poured whiskey, squirted charged
water into it, set a glass at Spade’s elbow and held his own aloft.
“Well, sir, here’s to a fair bargain and profits large enough for both
of us.”

They drank. The fat man sat down. Spade asked: “What’s your idea of a
fair bargain?”

Gutman held his glass up to the light, looked affectionately at it, took
another long drink, and said: “I have two proposals to make, sir, and
either is fair. Take your choice. I will give you twenty-five thousand
dollars when you deliver the falcon to me, and another twenty-five
thousand as soon as I get to New York; or I will give you one
quarter—twenty-five per cent—of what I realize on the falcon. There
you are, sir: an almost immediate fifty thousand dollars or a vastly
greater sum within, say, a couple of months.”

Spade drank and asked: “How much greater?”

“Vastly,” the fat man repeated. “Who knows how much greater? Shall I say
a hundred thousand, or a quarter of a million? Will you believe me if I
name the sum that seems the probable minimum?”

“Why not?”

The fat man smacked his lips and lowered his voice to a purring murmur.
“What would you say, sir, to half a million?”

Spade narrowed his eyes. “Then you think the dingus is worth two
million?”

Gutman smiled serenely. “In your own words, why not?” he asked.

Spade emptied his glass and set it on the table. He put his cigar in his
mouth, took it out, looked at it, and put it back in. His yellow-grey
eyes were faintly muddy. He said: “That’s a hell of a lot of dough.”

The fat man agreed: “That’s a hell of a lot of dough.” He leaned forward
and patted Spade’s knee. “That is the absolute rock-bottom minimum—or
Charilaos Konstantinides was a blithering idiot—and he wasn’t.”

Spade removed the cigar from his mouth again, frowned at it with
distaste, and put it on the smoking-stand. He shut his eyes hard, opened
them again. Their muddiness had thickened. He said: “The—the minimum,
huh? And the maximum?” An unmistakable _sh_ followed the x in maximum as
he said it.

“The maximum?” Gutman held his empty hand out, palm up. “I refuse to
guess. You’d think me crazy. I don’t know. There’s no telling how high
it could go, sir, and that’s the one and only truth about it.”

Spade pulled his sagging lower lip tight against the upper. He shook his
head impatiently. A sharp frightened gleam awoke in his eyes—and was
smothered by the deepening muddiness. He stood up, helping himself up
with his hands on the arms of his chair. He shook his head again and
took an uncertain step forward. He laughed thickly and muttered: “God
damn you.”

Gutman jumped up and pushed his chair back. His fat globes jiggled. His
eyes were dark holes in an oily pink face.

Spade swung his head from side to side until his dull eyes were pointed
at—if not focused on—the door. He took another uncertain step.

The fat man called sharply: “Wilmer!”

A door opened and the boy came in.

Spade took a third step. His face was grey now, with jaw-muscles
standing out like tumors under his ears. His legs did not straighten
again after his fourth step and his muddy eyes were almost covered by
their lids. He took his fifth step.

The boy walked over and stood close to Spade, a little in front of him,
but not directly between Spade and the door. The boy’s right hand was
inside his coat over his heart. The corners of his mouth twitched.

Spade essayed his sixth step.

The boy’s leg darted out across Spade’s leg, in front. Spade tripped
over the interfering leg and crashed face-down on the floor. The boy,
keeping his right hand under his coat, looked down at Spade. Spade tried
to get up. The boy drew his right foot far back and kicked Spade’s
temple. The kick rolled Spade over on his side. Once more he tried to
get up, could not, and went to sleep.




                                   14


                               LA PALOMA

SPADE, coming around the corner from the elevator at a few minutes past
six in the morning, saw yellow light glowing through the frosted glass
of his office-door. He halted abruptly, set his lips together, looked up
and down the corridor, and advanced to the door with swift quiet
strides.

He put his hand on the knob and turned it with care that permitted
neither rattle nor click. He turned the knob until it would turn no
farther: the door was locked. Holding the knob still, he changed hands,
taking it now in his left hand. With his right hand he brought his keys
out of his pocket, carefully, so they could not jingle against one
another. He separated the office-key from the others and, smothering the
others together in his palm, inserted the office-key in the lock. The
insertion was soundless. He balanced himself on the balls of his feet,
filled his lungs, clicked the door open, and went in.

Effie Perine sat sleeping with her head on her forearms, her forearms on
her desk. She wore her coat and had one of Spade’s overcoats wrapped
cape-fashion around her.

Spade blew his breath out in a muffled laugh, shut the door behind him,
and crossed to the inner door. The inner office was empty. He went over
to the girl and put a hand on her shoulder.

She stirred, raised her head drowsily, and her eyelids fluttered.
Suddenly she sat up straight, opening her eyes wide. She saw Spade,
smiled, leaned back in her chair, and rubbed her eyes with her fingers.
“So you finally got back?” she said. “What time is it?”

“Six o’clock. What are you doing here?”

She shivered, drew Spade’s overcoat closer around her, and yawned. “You
told me to stay till you got back or phoned.”

“Oh, you’re the sister of the boy who stood on the burning deck?”

“I wasn’t going to—” She broke off and stood up, letting his coat slide
down on the chair behind her. She looked with dark excited eyes at his
temple under the brim of his hat and exclaimed: “Oh, your head! What
happened?”

His right temple was dark and swollen.

“I don’t know whether I fell or was slugged. I don’t think it amounts to
much, but it hurts like hell.” He barely touched it with his fingers,
flinched, turned his grimace into a grim smile, and explained: “I went
visiting, was fed knockout-drops, and came to twelve hours later all
spread out on a man’s floor.”

She reached up and removed his hat from his head. “It’s terrible,” she
said. “You’ll have to get a doctor. You can’t walk around with a head
like that.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks, except for the headache, and that might be
mostly from the drops.” He went to the cabinet in the corner of the
office and ran cold water on a handkerchief. “Anything turn up after I
left?”

“Did you find Miss O’Shaughnessy, Sam?”

“Not yet. Anything turn up after I left?”

“The District Attorney’s office phoned. He wants to see you.”

“Himself?”

“Yes, that’s the way I understood it. And a boy came in with a
message—that Mr. Gutman would be delighted to talk to you before
five-thirty.”

Spade turned off the water, squeezed the handkerchief, and came away
from the cabinet holding the handkerchief to his temple. “I got that,”
he said. “I met the boy downstairs, and talking to Mr. Gutman got me
this.”

“Is that the G. who phoned, Sam?”

“Yes.”

“And what—?”

Spade stared through the girl and spoke as if using speech to arrange
his thoughts: “He wants something he thinks I can get. I persuaded him I
could keep him from getting it if he didn’t make the deal with me before
five-thirty. Then—uh-huh—sure—it was after I’d told him he’d have to
wait a couple of days that he fed me the junk. It’s not likely he
thought I’d die. He’d know I’d be up and around in ten or twelve hours.
So maybe the answer’s that he figured he could get it without my help in
that time if I was fixed so I couldn’t butt in.” He scowled. “I hope to
Christ he was wrong.” His stare became less distant. “You didn’t get any
word from the O’Shaughnessy?”

The girl shook her head no and asked: “Has this got anything to do with
her?”

“Something.”

“This thing he wants belongs to her?”

“Or to the King of Spain. Sweetheart, you’ve got an uncle who teaches
history or something over at the University?”

“A cousin. Why?”

“If we brightened his life with an alleged historical secret four
centuries old could we trust him to keep it dark awhile?”

“Oh, yes, he’s good people.”

“Fine. Get your pencil and book.”

She got them and sat in her chair. Spade ran more cold water on his
handkerchief and, holding it to his temple, stood in front of her and
dictated the story of the falcon as he had heard it from Gutman, from
Charles V’s grant to the Hospitallers up to—but no further than—the
enameled bird’s arrival in Paris at the time of the Carlist influx. He
stumbled over the names of authors and their works that Gutman had
mentioned, but managed to achieve some sort of phonetic likeness. The
rest of the history he repeated with the accuracy of a trained
interviewer.

When he had finished the girl shut her notebook and raised a flushed
smiling face to him. “Oh, isn’t this thrilling?” she said. “It’s—”

“Yes, or ridiculous. Now will you take it over and read it to your
cousin and ask him what he thinks of it? Has he ever run across anything
that might have some connection with it? Is it probable? Is it
possible—even barely possible? Or is it the bunk? If he wants more time
to look it up, O K, but get some sort of opinion out of him now. And for
God’s sake make him keep it under his hat.”

“I’ll go right now,” she said, “and you go see a doctor about that
head.”

“We’ll have breakfast first.”

“No, I’ll eat over in Berkeley. I can’t wait to hear what Ted thinks of
this.”

“Well,” Spade said, “don’t start boo-hooing if he laughs at you.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

After a leisurely breakfast at the Palace, during which he read both
morning papers, Spade went home, shaved, bathed, rubbed ice on his
bruised temple, and put on fresh clothes.

He went to Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s apartment at the Coronet. Nobody was
in the apartment. Nothing had been changed in it since his last visit.

He went to the Alexandria Hotel. Gutman was not in. None of the other
occupants of Gutman’s suite was in. Spade learned that these other
occupants were the fat man’s secretary, Wilmer Cook, and his daughter
Rhea, a brown-eyed fair-haired smallish girl of seventeen whom the
hotel-staff said was beautiful. Spade was told that the Gutman party had
arrived at the hotel, from New York, ten days before, and had not
checked out.

Spade went to the Belvedere and found the hotel-detective eating in the
hotel-café.

“Morning, Sam. Set down and bite an egg.” The hotel-detective stared at
Spade’s temple. “By God, somebody maced you plenty!”

“Thanks, I’ve had mine,” Spade said as he sat down, and then, referring
to his temple: “It looks worse than it is. How’s my Cairo’s conduct?”

“He went out not more than half an hour behind you yesterday and I ain’t
seen him since. He didn’t sleep here again last night.”

“He’s getting bad habits.”

“Well, a fellow like that alone in a big city. Who put the slug to you,
Sam?”

“It wasn’t Cairo.” Spade looked attentively at the small silver dome
covering Luke’s toast. “How’s chances of giving his room a casing while
he’s out?”

“Can do. You know I’m willing to go all the way with you all the time.”
Luke pushed his coffee back, put his elbows on the table, and screwed up
his eyes at Spade. “But I got a hunch you ain’t going all the way with
me. What’s the honest-to-God on this guy, Sam? You don’t have to kick
back on me. You know I’m regular.”

Spade lifted his eyes from the silver dome. They were clear and candid.
“Sure, you are,” he said. “I’m not holding out. I gave you it straight.
I’m doing a job for him, but he’s got some friends that look wrong to me
and I’m a little leery of him.”

“The kid we chased out yesterday was one of his friends.”

“Yes, Luke, he was.”

“And it was one of them that shoved Miles across.”

Spade shook his head. “Thursby killed Miles.”

“And who killed him?”

Spade smiled. “That’s supposed to be a secret, but, confidentially, I
did,” he said, “according to the police.”

Luke grunted and stood up saying: “You’re a tough one to figure out,
Sam. Come on, we’ll have that look-see.”

They stopped at the desk long enough for Luke to “fix it so we’ll get a
ring if he comes in,” and went up to Cairo’s room. Cairo’s bed was
smooth and trim, but paper in the wastebasket, unevenly drawn blinds,
and a couple of rumpled towels in the bathroom showed that the
chambermaid had not yet been in that morning.

Cairo’s luggage consisted of a square trunk, a valise, and a gladstone
bag. His bathroom-cabinet was stocked with cosmetics—boxes, cans, jars,
and bottles of powders, creams, unguents, perfumes, lotions, and tonics.
Two suits and an overcoat hung in the closet over three pairs of
carefully treed shoes.

The valise and smaller bag were unlocked. Luke had the trunk unlocked by
the time Spade had finished searching elsewhere.

“Blank so far,” Spade said as they dug down into the trunk.

They found nothing there to interest them.

“Any particular thing we’re supposed to be looking for?” Luke asked as
he locked the trunk again.

“No. He’s supposed to have come here from Constantinople. I’d like to
know if he did. I haven’t seen anything that says he didn’t.”

“What’s his racket?”

Spade shook his head. “That’s something else I’d like to know.” He
crossed the room and bent down over the wastebasket. “Well, this is our
last shot.”

He took a newspaper from the basket. His eyes brightened when
he saw it was the previous day’s _Call_. It was folded with the
classified-advertising-page outside. He opened it, examined that page,
and nothing there stopped his eyes.

He turned the paper over and looked at the page that had been folded
inside, the page that held financial and shipping news, the weather,
births, marriages, divorces, and deaths. From the lower left-hand
corner, a little more than two inches of the bottom of the second column
had been torn out.

Immediately above the tear was a small caption _Arrived Today_ followed
by:

   12:20 A. M.—Capac from Astoria.
    5:05 A. M.—Helen P. Drew from Greenwood.
    5:06 A. M.—Albarado from Bandon.

The tear passed through the next line, leaving only enough of its
letters to make _from Sydney_ inferable.

Spade put the _Call_ down on the desk and looked into the wastebasket
again. He found a small piece of wrapping-paper, a piece of string, two
hosiery tags, a haberdasher’s sale-ticket for half a dozen pairs of
socks, and, in the bottom of the basket, a piece of newspaper rolled
into a tiny ball.

He opened the ball carefully, smoothed it out on the desk, and fitted it
into the torn part of the _Call_. The fit at the sides was exact, but
between the top of the crumpled fragment and the inferable _from Sydney_
half an inch was missing, sufficient space to have held announcement of
six or seven boats’ arrival. He turned the sheet over and saw that the
other side of the missing portion could have held only a meaningless
corner of a stock-broker’s advertisement.

Luke, leaning over his shoulder, asked: “What’s this all about?”

“Looks like the gent’s interested in a boat.”

“Well, there’s no law against that, or is there?” Luke said while Spade
was folding the torn page and the crumpled fragment together and putting
them into his coat-pocket. “You all through here now?”

“Yes. Thanks a lot, Luke. Will you give me a ring as soon as he comes
in?”

“Sure.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Spade went to the Business Office of the _Call_, bought a copy of the
previous day’s issue, opened it to the shipping-news-page, and compared
it with the page taken from Cairo’s wastebasket. The missing portion had
read:

    5:17 A. M.—Tahiti from Sydney and Papeete.
    6:05 A. M.—Admiral Peoples from Astoria.
    8:07 A. M.—Caddopeak from San Pedro.
    8:17 A. M.—Silverado from San Pedro.
    8:05 A. M.—La Paloma from Hongkong.
    9:03 A. M.—Daisy Gray from Seattle.

He read the list slowly and when he had finished he underscored
_Hongkong_ with a fingernail, cut the list of arrivals from the paper
with his pocket-knife, put the rest of the paper and Cairo’s sheet into
the wastebasket, and returned to his office.

He sat down at his desk, looked up a number in the telephone-book, and
used the telephone.

“Kearny one four o one, please. . . . Where is the _Paloma_, in from
Hongkong yesterday morning, docked?” He repeated the question. “Thanks.”

He held the receiver-hook down with his thumb for a moment, released it,
and said: “Davenport two o two o, please. . . . Detective bureau,
please. . . . Is Sergeant Polhaus there? . . . Thanks. . . . Hello, Tom,
this is Sam Spade. . . . Yes, I tried to get you yesterday
afternoon. . . . Sure, suppose you go to lunch with me. . . . Right.”

He kept the receiver to his ear while his thumb worked the hook again.

“Davenport o one seven o, please. . . . Hello, this is Samuel Spade. My
secretary got a phone-message yesterday that Mr. Bryan wanted to see me.
Will you ask him what time’s the most convenient for him? . . . Yes,
Spade, S-p-a-d-e.” A long pause. “Yes. . . . Two-thirty? All right.
Thanks.”

He called a fifth number and said: “Hello, darling, let me talk to Sid?
. . . Hello, Sid—Sam. I’ve got a date with the District Attorney at
half-past two this afternoon. Will you give me a ring—here or
there—around four, just to see that I’m not in trouble? . . . Hell with
your Saturday afternoon golf: your job’s to keep me out of jail. . . .
Right, Sid. ’Bye.”

He pushed the telephone away, yawned, stretched, felt his bruised
temple, looked at his watch, and rolled and lighted a cigarette. He
smoked sleepily until Effie Perine came in.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Effie Perine came in smiling, bright-eyed and rosy-faced. “Ted says it
could be,” she reported, “and he hopes it is. He says he’s not a
specialist in that field, but the names and dates are all right, and at
least none of your authorities or their works are out-and-out fakes.
He’s all excited over it.”

“That’s swell, as long as he doesn’t get too enthusiastic to see through
it if it’s phoney.”

“Oh, he wouldn’t—not Ted! He’s too good at his stuff for that.”

“Uh-huh, the whole damned Perine family’s wonderful,” Spade said,
“including you and the smudge of soot on your nose.”

“He’s not a Perine, he’s a Christy.” She bent her head to look at her
nose in her vanity-case-mirror. “I must’ve got that from the fire.” She
scrubbed the smudge with the corner of a handkerchief.

“The Perine-Christy enthusiasm ignite Berkeley?” he asked.

She made a face at him while patting her nose with a powdered pink disc.
“There was a boat on fire when I came back. They were towing it out from
the pier and the smoke blew all over our ferry-boat.”

Spade put his hands on the arms of his chair. “Were you near enough to
see the name of the boat?” he asked.

“Yes. _La Paloma._ Why?”

Spade smiled ruefully. “I’m damned if I know why, sister,” he said.




                                   15


                             EVERY CRACKPOT

SPADE and Detective-sergeant Polhaus ate pickled pigs’ feet at one of
big John’s tables at the States Hof Brau.

Polhaus, balancing pale bright jelly on a fork half-way between plate
and mouth, said: “Hey, listen, Sam! Forget about the other night. He was
dead wrong, but you know anybody’s liable to lose their head if you ride
them thataway.”

Spade looked thoughtfully at the police-detective. “Was that what you
wanted to see me about?” he asked.

Polhaus nodded, put the forkful of jelly into his mouth, swallowed it,
and qualified his nod: “Mostly.”

“Dundy send you?”

Polhaus made a disgusted mouth. “You know he didn’t. He’s as bullheaded
as you are.”

Spade smiled and shook his head. “No, he’s not, Tom,” he said. “He just
thinks he is.”

Tom scowled and chopped at his pig’s foot with a knife. “Ain’t you ever
going to grow up?” he grumbled. “What’ve you got to beef about? He
didn’t hurt you. You came out on top. What’s the sense of making a
grudge of it? You’re just making a lot of grief for yourself.”

Spade placed his knife and fork carefully together on his plate, and put
his hands on the table beside his plate. His smile was faint and devoid
of warmth. “With every bull in town working overtime trying to pile up
grief for me a little more won’t hurt. I won’t even know it’s there.”

Polhaus’s ruddiness deepened. He said: “That’s a swell thing to say to
me.”

Spade picked up his knife and fork and began to eat. Polhaus ate.

Presently Spade asked: “See the boat on fire in the bay?”

“I saw the smoke. Be reasonable, Sam. Dundy was wrong and he knows it.
Why don’t you let it go at that?”

“Think I ought to go around and tell him I hope my chin didn’t hurt his
fist?”

Polhaus cut savagely into his pig’s foot.

Spade said: “Phil Archer been in with any more hot tips?”

“Aw, hell! Dundy didn’t think you shot Miles, but what else could he do
except run the lead down? You’d’ve done the same thing in his place, and
you know it.”

“Yes?” Malice glittered in Spade’s eyes. “What made him think I didn’t
do it? What makes you think I didn’t? Or don’t you?”

Polhaus’s ruddy face flushed again. He said: “Thursby shot Miles.”

“You think he did.”

“He did. That Webley was his, and the slug in Miles came out of it.”

“Sure?” Spade demanded.

“Dead sure,” the police-detective replied. “We got hold of a kid—a
bellhop at Thursby’s hotel—that had seen it in his room just that
morning. He noticed it particular because he’d never saw one just like
it before. I never saw one. You say they don’t make them any more. It
ain’t likely there’d be another around and—anyway—if that wasn’t
Thursby’s what happened to his? And that’s the gun the slug in Miles
come out of.” He started to put a piece of bread into his mouth,
withdrew it, and asked:

“You say you’ve seen them before: where was that at?” He put the bread
into his mouth.

“In England before the war.”

“Sure, there you are.”

Spade nodded and said: “Then that leaves Thursby the only one I killed.”

Polhaus squirmed in his chair and his face was red and shiny. “Christ’s
sake, ain’t you never going to forget that?” he complained earnestly.
“That’s out. You know it as well as I do. You’d think you wasn’t a dick
yourself the way you bellyache over things. I suppose you don’t never
pull the same stuff on anybody that we pulled on you?”

“You mean that you tried to pull on me, Tom—just tried.”

Polhaus swore under his breath and attacked the remainder of his pig’s
foot.

Spade said: “All right. You know it’s out and I know it’s out. What does
Dundy know?”

“He knows it’s out.”

“What woke him up?”

“Aw, Sam, he never really thought you’d—” Spade’s smile checked
Polhaus. He left the sentence incomplete and said: “We dug up a record
on Thursby.”

“Yes? Who was he?”

Polhaus’s shrewd small brown eyes studied Spade’s face. Spade exclaimed
irritably: “I wish to God I knew half as much about this business as you
smart guys think I do!”

“I wish we all did,” Polhaus grumbled. “Well, he was a St. Louis gunman
the first we hear of him. He was picked up a lot of times back there for
this and that, but he belonged to the Egan mob, so nothing much was ever
done about any of it. I don’t know how come he left that shelter, but
they got him once in New York for knocking over a row of
stuss-games—his twist turned him up—and he was in a year before Fallon
got him sprung. A couple of years later he did a short hitch in Joliet
for pistol-whipping another twist that had given him the needle, but
after that he took up with Dixie Monahan and didn’t have any trouble
getting out whenever he happened to get in. That was when Dixie was
almost as big a shot as Nick the Greek in Chicago gambling. This Thursby
was Dixie’s bodyguard and he took the run-out with him when Dixie got in
wrong with the rest of the boys over some debts he couldn’t or wouldn’t
pay off. That was a couple of years back—about the time the Newport
Beach Boating Club was shut up. I don’t know if Dixie had any part in
that. Anyways, this is the first time him or Thursby’s been seen since.”

“Dixie’s been seen?” Spade asked.

Polhaus shook his head. “No.” His small eyes became sharp, prying. “Not
unless you’ve seen him or know somebody’s seen him.”

Spade lounged back in his chair and began to make a cigarette. “I
haven’t,” he said mildly. “This is all new stuff to me.”

“I guess it is,” Polhaus snorted.

Spade grinned at him and asked: “Where’d you pick up all this news about
Thursby?”

“Some of it’s on the records. The rest—well—we got it here and there.”

“From Cairo, for instance?” Now Spade’s eyes held the prying gleam.

Polhaus put down his coffee-cup and shook his head. “Not a word of it.
You poisoned that guy for us.”

Spade laughed. “You mean a couple of high-class sleuths like you and
Dundy worked on that lily-of-the-valley all night and couldn’t crack
him?”

“What do you mean—all night?” Polhaus protested. “We worked on him for
less than a couple of hours. We saw we wasn’t getting nowhere, and let
him go.”

Spade laughed again and looked at his watch. He caught John’s eye and
asked for the check. “I’ve got a date with the D. A. this afternoon,” he
told Polhaus while they waited for his change.

“He send for you?”

“Yes.”

Polhaus pushed his chair back and stood up, a barrel-bellied tall man,
solid and phlegmatic. “You won’t be doing me any favor,” he said, “by
telling him I’ve talked to you like this.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

A lathy youth with salient ears ushered Spade into the District
Attorney’s office. Spade went in smiling easily, saying easily: “Hello,
Bryan!”

District Attorney Bryan stood up and held his hand out across his desk.
He was a blond man of medium stature, perhaps forty-five years old, with
aggressive blue eyes behind black-ribboned nose-glasses, the over-large
mouth of an orator, and a wide dimpled chin. When he said, “How do you
do, Spade?” his voice was resonant with latent power.

They shook hands and sat down.

The District Attorney put his finger on one of the pearl buttons in a
battery of four on his desk, said to the lathy youth who opened the door
again, “Ask Mr. Thomas and Healy to come in,” and then, rocking back in
his chair, addressed Spade pleasantly: “You and the police haven’t been
hitting it off so well, have you?”

Spade made a negligent gesture with the fingers of his right hand.
“Nothing serious,” he said lightly. “Dundy gets too enthusiastic.”

The door opened to admit two men. The one to whom Spade said, “Hello,
Thomas!” was a sunburned stocky man of thirty in clothing and hair of a
kindred unruliness. He clapped Spade on the shoulder with a freckled
hand, asked, “How’s tricks?” and sat down beside him. The second man was
younger and colorless. He took a seat a little apart from the others and
balanced a stenographer’s notebook on his knee, holding a green pencil
over it.

Spade glanced his way, chuckled, and asked Bryan: “Anything I say will
be used against me?”

The District Attorney smiled. “That always holds good.” He took his
glasses off, looked at them, and set them on his nose again. He looked
through them at Spade and asked: “Who killed Thursby?”

Spade said: “I don’t know.”

Bryan rubbed his black eyeglass-ribbon between thumb and fingers and
said knowingly: “Perhaps you don’t, but you certainly could make an
excellent guess.”

“Maybe, but I wouldn’t.”

The District Attorney raised his eyebrows.

“I wouldn’t,” Spade repeated. He was serene. “My guess might be
excellent, or it might be crummy, but Mrs. Spade didn’t raise any
children dippy enough to make guesses in front of a district attorney,
an assistant district attorney, and a stenographer.”

“Why shouldn’t you, if you’ve nothing to conceal?”

“Everybody,” Spade responded mildly, “has something to conceal.”

“And you have—?”

“My guesses, for one thing.”

The District Attorney looked down at his desk and then up at Spade. He
settled his glasses more firmly on his nose. He said: “If you’d prefer
not having the stenographer here we can dismiss him. It was simply as a
matter of convenience that I brought him in.”

“I don’t mind him a damned bit,” Spade replied. “I’m willing to have
anything I say put down and I’m willing to sign it.”

“We don’t intend asking you to sign anything,” Bryan assured him. “I
wish you wouldn’t regard this as a formal inquiry at all. And please
don’t think I’ve any belief—much less confidence—in those theories the
police seem to have formed.”

“No?”

“Not a particle.”

Spade sighed and crossed his legs. “I’m glad of that.” He felt in his
pockets for tobacco and papers. “What’s your theory?”

Bryan leaned forward in his chair and his eyes were hard and shiny as
the lenses over them. “Tell me who Archer was shadowing Thursby for and
I’ll tell you who killed Thursby.”

Spade’s laugh was brief and scornful. “You’re as wrong as Dundy,” he
said.

“Don’t misunderstand me, Spade,” Bryan said, knocking on the desk with
his knuckles. “I don’t say your client killed Thursby or had him killed,
but I do say that, knowing who your client is, or was, I’ll mighty soon
know who killed Thursby.”

Spade lighted his cigarette, removed it from his lips, emptied his lungs
of smoke, and spoke as if puzzled: “I don’t exactly get that.”

“You don’t? Then suppose I put it this way: where is Dixie Monahan?”

Spade’s face retained its puzzled look. “Putting it that way doesn’t
help much,” he said. “I still don’t get it.”

The District Attorney took his glasses off and shook them for emphasis.
He said: “We know Thursby was Monahan’s bodyguard and went with him when
Monahan found it wise to vanish from Chicago. We know Monahan welshed on
something like two-hundred-thousand-dollars’ worth of bets when he
vanished. We don’t know—not yet—who his creditors were.” He put the
glasses on again and smiled grimly. “But we all know what’s likely to
happen to a gambler who welshes, and to his bodyguard, when his
creditors find him. It’s happened before.”

Spade ran his tongue over his lips and pulled his lips back over his
teeth in an ugly grin. His eyes glittered under pulled-down brows. His
reddening neck bulged over the rim of his collar. His voice was low and
hoarse and passionate. “Well, what do you think? Did I kill him for his
creditors? Or just find him and let them do their own killing?”

“No, no!” the District Attorney protested. “You misunderstand me.”

“I hope to Christ I do,” Spade said.

“He didn’t mean that,” Thomas said.

“Then what did he mean?”

Bryan waved a hand. “I only mean that you might have been involved in it
without knowing what it was. That could—”

“I see,” Spade sneered. “You don’t think I’m naughty. You just think I’m
dumb.”

“Nonsense,” Bryan insisted: “Suppose someone came to you and engaged you
to find Monahan, telling you they had reasons for thinking he was in the
city. The someone might give you a completely false story—any one of a
dozen or more would do—or might say he was a debtor who had run away,
without giving you any of the details. How could you tell what was
behind it? How would you know it wasn’t an ordinary piece of detective
work? And under those circumstances you certainly couldn’t be held
responsible for your part in it unless”—his voice sank to a more
impressive key and his words came out spaced and distinct—“you made
yourself an accomplice by concealing your knowledge of the murderer’s
identity or information that would lead to his apprehension.”

Anger was leaving Spade’s face. No anger remained in his voice when he
asked: “That’s what you meant?”

“Precisely.”

“All right. Then there’s no hard feelings. But you’re wrong.”

“Prove it.”

Spade shook his head. “I can’t prove it to you now. I can tell you.”

“Then tell me.”

“Nobody ever hired me to do anything about Dixie Monahan.”

Bryan and Thomas exchanged glances. Bryan’s eyes came back to Spade and
he said: “But, by your own admission, somebody did hire you to do
something about his bodyguard Thursby.”

“Yes, about his ex-bodyguard Thursby.”

“Ex?”

“Yes, ex.”

“You know that Thursby was no longer associated with Monahan? You know
that positively?”

Spade stretched out his hand and dropped the stub of his cigarette into
an ashtray on the desk. He spoke carelessly: “I don’t know anything
positively except that my client wasn’t interested in Monahan, had never
been interested in Monahan. I heard that Thursby took Monahan out to the
Orient and lost him.”

Again the District Attorney and his assistant exchanged glances.

Thomas, in a tone whose matter-of-factness did not quite hide
excitement, said: “That opens another angle. Monahan’s friends could
have knocked Thursby off for ditching Monahan.”

“Dead gamblers don’t have any friends,” Spade said.

“It opens up two new lines,” Bryan said. He leaned back and stared at
the ceiling for several seconds, then sat upright quickly. His orator’s
face was alight. “It narrows down to three things. Number one: Thursby
was killed by the gamblers Monahan had welshed on in Chicago. Not
knowing Thursby had sloughed Monahan—or not believing it—they killed
him because he had been Monahan’s associate, or to get him out of the
way so they could get to Monahan, or because he had refused to lead them
to Monahan. Number two: he was killed by friends of Monahan. Or number
three: he sold Monahan out to his enemies and then fell out with them
and they killed him.”

“Or number four,” Spade suggested with a cheerful smile: “he died of old
age. You folks aren’t serious, are you?”

The two men stared at Spade, but neither of them spoke. Spade turned his
smile from one to the other of them and shook his head in mock pity.
“You’ve got Arnold Rothstein on the brain,” he said.

Bryan smacked the back of his left hand down into the palm of his right.
“In one of those three categories lies the solution.” The power in his
voice was no longer latent. His right hand, a fist except for protruding
forefinger, went up and then down to stop with a jerk when the finger
was leveled at Spade’s chest. “And you can give us the information that
will enable us to determine the category.”

Spade said, “Yes?” very lazily. His face was somber. He touched his
lower lip with a finger, looked at the finger, and then scratched the
back of his neck with it. Little irritable lines had appeared in his
forehead. He blew his breath out heavily through his nose and his voice
was an ill-humored growl. “You wouldn’t want the kind of information I
could give you, Bryan. You couldn’t use it. It’d poop this
gambler’s-revenge-scenario for you.”

Bryan sat up straight and squared his shoulders. His voice was stern
without blustering. “You are not the judge of that. Right or wrong, I am
nonetheless the District Attorney.”

Spade’s lifted lip showed his eyetooth. “I thought this was an informal
talk.”

“I am a sworn officer of the law twenty-four hours a day,” Bryan said,
“and neither formality nor informality justifies your withholding from
me evidence of crime, except of course”—he nodded meaningly—“on
certain constitutional grounds.”

“You mean if it might incriminate me?” Spade asked. His voice was
placid, almost amused, but his face was not. “Well, I’ve got better
grounds than that, or grounds that suit me better. My clients are
entitled to a decent amount of secrecy. Maybe I can be made to talk to a
Grand Jury or even a Coroner’s Jury, but I haven’t been called before
either yet, and it’s a cinch I’m not going to advertise my clients’
business until I have to. Then again, you and the police have both
accused me of being mixed up in the other night’s murders. I’ve had
trouble with both of you before. As far as I can see, my best chance of
clearing myself of the trouble you’re trying to make for me is by
bringing in the murderers—all tied up. And my only chance of ever
catching them and tying them up and bringing them in is by keeping away
from you and the police, because neither of you show any signs of
knowing what in hell it’s all about.” He rose and turned his head over
his shoulder to address the stenographer: “Getting this all right, son?
Or am I going too fast for you?”

The stenographer looked at him with startled eyes and replied: “No, sir,
I’m getting it all right.”

“Good work,” Spade said and turned to Bryan again. “Now if you want to
go to the Board and tell them I’m obstructing justice and ask them to
revoke my license, hop to it. You’ve tried it before and it didn’t get
you anything but a good laugh all around.” He picked up his hat.

Bryan began: “But look here—”

Spade said: “And I don’t want any more of these informal talks. I’ve got
nothing to tell you or the police and I’m God-damned tired of being
called things by every crackpot on the city payroll. If you want to see
me, pinch me or subpœna me or something and I’ll come down with my
lawyer.” He put his hat on his head, said, “See you at the inquest,
maybe,” and stalked out.




                                   16


                            THE THIRD MURDER

SPADE went into the Hotel Sutter and telephoned the Alexandria. Gutman
was not in. No member of Gutman’s party was in. Spade telephoned the
Belvedere. Cairo was not in, had not been in that day.

Spade went to his office.

A swart greasy man in notable clothes was waiting in the outer room.
Effie Perine, indicating the swart man, said: “This gentleman wishes to
see you, Mr. Spade.”

Spade smiled and bowed and opened the inner door. “Come in.” Before
following the man in Spade asked Effie Perine: “Any news on that other
matter?”

“No, sir.”

The swart man was the proprietor of a moving-picture-theater in Market
Street. He suspected one of his cashiers and a doorman of colluding to
defraud him. Spade hurried him through the story, promised to “take care
of it,” asked for and received fifty dollars, and got rid of him in less
than half an hour.

When the corridor-door had closed behind the showman Effie Perine came
into the inner office. Her sunburned face was worried and questioning.
“You haven’t found her yet?” she asked.

He shook his head and went on stroking his bruised temple lightly in
circles with his fingertips.

“How is it?” she asked.

“All right, but I’ve got plenty of headache.”

She went around behind him, put his hand down, and stroked his temple
with her slender fingers. He leaned back until the back of his head over
the chair-top rested against her breast. He said: “You’re an angel.”

She bent her head forward over his and looked down into his face.
“You’ve got to find her, Sam. It’s more than a day and she—”

He stirred and impatiently interrupted her: “I haven’t got to do
anything, but if you’ll let me rest this damned head a minute or two
I’ll go out and find her.”

She murmured, “Poor head,” and stroked it in silence awhile. Then she
asked: “You know where she is? Have you any idea?”

The telephone-bell rang. Spade picked up the telephone and said:
“Hello. . . . Yes, Sid, it came out all right, thanks. . . . No. . . .
Sure. He got snotty, but so did I. . . . He’s nursing a gambler’s-war
pipe-dream. . . . Well, we didn’t kiss when we parted. I declared my
weight and walked out on him. . . . That’s something for you to worry
about. . . . Right. ’Bye.” He put the telephone down and leaned back in
his chair again.

Effie Perine came from behind him and stood at his side. She demanded:
“Do you think you know where she is, Sam?”

“I know where she went,” he replied in a grudging tone.

“Where?” She was excited.

“Down to the boat you saw burning.”

Her eyes opened until their brown was surrounded by white. “You went
down there.” It was not a question.

“I did not,” Spade said.

“Sam,” she cried angrily, “she may be—”

“She went down there,” he said in a surly voice. “She wasn’t taken. She
went down there instead of to your house when she learned the boat was
in. Well, what the hell? Am I supposed to run around after my clients
begging them to let me help them?”

“But, Sam, when I told you the boat was on fire!”

“That was at noon and I had a date with Polhaus and another with Bryan.”

She glared at him between tightened lids. “Sam Spade,” she said, “you’re
the most contemptible man God ever made when you want to be. Because she
did something without confiding in you you’d sit here and do nothing
when you know she’s in danger, when you know she might be—”

Spade’s face flushed. He said stubbornly: “She’s pretty capable of
taking care of herself and she knows where to come for help when she
thinks she needs it, and when it suits her.”

“That’s spite,” the girl cried, “and that’s all it is! You’re sore
because she did something on her own hook, without telling you. Why
shouldn’t she? You’re not so damned honest, and you haven’t been so much
on the level with her, that she should trust you completely.”

Spade said: “That’s enough of that.”

His tone brought a brief uneasy glint into her hot eyes, but she tossed
her head and the glint vanished. Her mouth was drawn taut and small. She
said: “If you don’t go down there this very minute, Sam, I will and I’ll
take the police down there.” Her voice trembled, broke, and was thin and
wailing. “Oh, Sam, go!”

He stood up cursing her. Then he said: “Christ! It’ll be easier on my
head than sitting here listening to you squawk.” He looked at his watch.
“You might as well lock up and go home.”

She said: “I won’t. I’m going to wait right here till you come back.”

He said, “Do as you damned please,” put his hat on, flinched, took it
off, and went out carrying it in his hand.

                 *        *        *        *        *

An hour and a half later, at twenty minutes past five, Spade returned.
He was cheerful. He came in asking: “What makes you so hard to get along
with, sweetheart?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.” He put a finger on the tip of Effie Perine’s nose and
flattened it. He put his hands under her elbows, lifted her straight up,
and kissed her chin. He set her down on the floor again and asked:
“Anything doing while I was gone?”

“Luke—what’s his name?—at the Belvedere called up to tell you Cairo
has returned. That was about half an hour ago.”

Spade snapped his mouth shut, turned with a long step, and started for
the door.

“Did you find her?” the girl called.

“Tell you about it when I’m back,” he replied without pausing and
hurried out.

A taxicab brought Spade to the Belvedere within ten minutes of his
departure from his office. He found Luke in the lobby. The
hotel-detective came grinning and shaking his head to meet Spade.
“Fifteen minutes late,” he said. “Your bird has fluttered.”

Spade cursed his luck.

“Checked out—gone bag and baggage,” Luke said. He took a battered
memorandum-book from a vest-pocket, licked his thumb, thumbed pages, and
held the book out open to Spade. “There’s the number of the taxi that
hauled him. I got that much for you.”

“Thanks.” Spade copied the number on the back of an envelope. “Any
forwarding address?”

“No. He just come in carrying a big suitcase and went upstairs and
packed and come down with his stuff and paid his bill and got a taxi and
went without anybody being able to hear what he told the driver.”

“How about his trunk?”

Luke’s lower lip sagged. “By God,” he said, “I forgot that! Come on.”

They went up to Cairo’s room. The trunk was there. It was closed, but
not locked. They raised the lid. The trunk was empty.

Luke said: “What do you know about that!”

Spade did not say anything.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Spade went back to his office. Effie Perine looked up at him,
inquisitively.

“Missed him,” Spade grumbled and passed into his private room.

She followed him in. He sat in his chair and began to roll a cigarette.
She sat on the desk in front of him and put her toes on a corner of his
chair-seat.

“What about Miss O’Shaughnessy?” she demanded.

“I missed her too,” he replied, “but she had been there.”

“On the _La Paloma_?”

“_The La_ is a lousy combination,” he said.

“Stop it. Be nice, Sam. Tell me.”

He set fire to his cigarette, pocketed his lighter, patted her shins,
and said: “Yes, _La Paloma_. She got down there at a little after noon
yesterday.” He pulled his brows down. “That means she went straight
thereafter leaving the cab at the Ferry Building. It’s only a few piers
away. The Captain wasn’t aboard. His name’s Jacobi and she asked for him
by name. He was uptown on business. That would mean he didn’t expect
her, or not at that time anyway. She waited there till he came back at
four o’clock. They spent the time from then till meal-time in his cabin
and she ate with him.”

He inhaled and exhaled smoke, turned his head aside to spit a yellow
tobacco-flake off his lip, and went on: “After the meal Captain Jacobi
had three more visitors. One of them was Gutman and one was Cairo and
one was the kid who delivered Gutman’s message to you yesterday. Those
three came together while Brigid was there and the five of them did a
lot of talking in the Captain’s cabin. It’s hard to get anything out of
the crew, but they had a row and somewhere around eleven o’clock that
night a gun went off there, in the Captain’s cabin. The watchman beat it
down there, but the Captain met him outside and told him everything was
all right. There’s a fresh bullet-hole in one corner of the cabin, up
high enough to make it likely that the bullet didn’t go through anybody
to get there. As far as I could learn there was only the one shot. But
as far as I could learn wasn’t very far.”

He scowled and inhaled smoke again. “Well, they left around
midnight—the Captain and his four visitors all together—and all of
them seem to have been walking all right. I got that from the watchman.
I haven’t been able to get hold of the Custom-House-men who were on duty
there then. That’s all of it. The Captain hasn’t been back since. He
didn’t keep a date he had this noon with some shipping-agents, and they
haven’t found him to tell him about the fire.”

“And the fire?” she asked.

Spade shrugged. “I don’t know. It was discovered in the hold, aft—in
the rear basement—late this morning. The chances are it got started
some time yesterday. They got it out all right, though it did damage
enough. Nobody liked to talk about it much while the Captain’s away.
It’s the—”

The corridor-door opened. Spade shut his mouth. Effie Perine jumped down
from the desk, but a man opened the connecting door before she could
reach it.

“Where’s Spade?” the man asked.

His voice brought Spade up erect and alert in his chair. It was a voice
harsh and rasping with agony and with the strain of keeping two words
from being smothered by the liquid bubbling that ran under and behind
them.

Effie Perine, frightened, stepped out of the man’s way.

He stood in the doorway with his soft hat crushed between his head
and the top of the door-frame: he was nearly seven feet tall. A black
overcoat cut long and straight and like a sheath, buttoned from
throat to knees, exaggerated his leanness. His shoulders stuck out,
high, thin, angular. His bony face—weather-coarsened, age-lined—was
the color of wet sand and was wet with sweat on cheeks and chin. His
eyes were dark and bloodshot and mad above lower lids that hung down
to show pink inner membrane. Held tight against the left side of his
chest by a black-sleeved arm that ended in a yellowish claw was a
brown-paper-wrapped parcel bound with thin rope—an ellipsoid somewhat
larger than an American football.

The tall man stood in the doorway and there was nothing to show that he
saw Spade. He said, “You know—” and then the liquid bubbling came up in
his throat and submerged whatever else he said. He put his other hand
over the hand that held the ellipsoid. Holding himself stiffly straight,
not putting his hands out to break his fall, he fell forward as a tree
falls.

Spade, wooden-faced and nimble, sprang from his chair and caught the
falling man. When Spade caught him the man’s mouth opened and a little
blood spurted out, and the brown-wrapped parcel dropped from the man’s
hands and rolled across the floor until a foot of the desk stopped it.
Then the man’s knees bent and he bent at the waist and his thin body
became limber inside the sheathlike overcoat, sagging in Spade’s arms so
that Spade could not hold it up from the floor.

Spade lowered the man carefully until he lay on the floor on his left
side. The man’s eyes—dark and bloodshot, but not now mad—were wide
open and still. His mouth was open as when blood had spurted from it,
but no more blood came from it, and all his long body was as still as
the floor it lay on.

Spade said: “Lock the door.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

While Effie Perine, her teeth chattering, fumbled with the
corridor-door’s lock Spade knelt beside the thin man, turned him over on
his back, and ran a hand down inside his overcoat. When he withdrew the
hand presently it came out smeared with blood. The sight of his bloody
hand brought not the least nor briefest of changes to Spade’s face.
Holding that hand up where it would touch nothing, he took his lighter
out of his pocket with his other hand. He snapped on the flame and held
the flame close to first one and then the other of the thin man’s eyes.
The eyes—lids, balls, irises, and pupils—remained frozen, immobile.

Spade extinguished the flame and returned the lighter to his pocket. He
moved on his knees around to the dead man’s side and, using his one
clean hand, unbuttoned and opened the tubular overcoat. The inside of
the overcoat was wet with blood and the double-breasted blue jacket
beneath it was sodden. The jacket’s lapels, where they crossed over the
man’s chest, and both sides of his coat immediately below that point,
were pierced by soggy ragged holes.

Spade rose and went to the wash-bowl in the outer office.

Effie Perine, wan and trembling and holding herself upright by means of
a hand on the corridor-door’s knob and her back against its glass,
whispered: “Is—is he—?”

“Yes. Shot through the chest, maybe half a dozen times.” Spade began to
wash his hands.

“Oughtn’t we—?” she began, but he cut her short: “It’s too late for a
doctor now and I’ve got to think before we do anything.” He finished
washing his hands and began to rinse the bowl. “He couldn’t have come
far with those in him. If he—Why in hell couldn’t he have stood up long
enough to say something?” He frowned at the girl, rinsed his hands
again, and picked up a towel. “Pull yourself together. For Christ’s sake
don’t get sick on me now!” He threw the towel down and ran fingers
through his hair. “We’ll have a look at that bundle.”

He went into the inner office again, stepped over the dead man’s legs,
and picked up the brown-paper-wrapped parcel. When he felt its weight
his eyes glowed. He put it on his desk, turning it over so that the
knotted part of the rope was uppermost. The knot was hard and tight. He
took out his pocket-knife and cut the rope.

The girl had left the door and, edging around the dead man with her face
turned away, had come to Spade’s side. As she stood there—hands on a
corner of the desk—watching him pull the rope loose and push aside
brown paper, excitement began to supplant nausea in her face. “Do you
think it is?” she whispered.

“We’ll soon know,” Spade said, his big fingers busy with the inner husk
of coarse grey paper, three sheets thick, that the brown paper’s removal
had revealed. His face was hard and dull. His eyes were shining. When he
had put the grey paper out of the way he had an egg-shaped mass of pale
excelsior, wadded tight. His fingers tore the wad apart and then he had
the foot-high figure of a bird, black as coal and shiny where its polish
was not dulled by wood-dust and fragments of excelsior.

Spade laughed. He put a hand down on the bird. His wide-spread fingers
had ownership in their curving. He put his other arm around Effie Perine
and crushed her body against his. “We’ve got the damned thing, angel,”
he said.

“Ouch!” she said, “you’re hurting me.”

He took his arm away from her, picked the black bird up in both hands,
and shook it to dislodge clinging excelsior. Then he stepped back
holding it up in front of him and blew dust off it, regarding it
triumphantly.

Effie Perine made a horrified face and screamed, pointing at his feet.

He looked down at his feet. His last backward step had brought his left
heel into contact with the dead man’s hand, pinching a quarter-inch of
flesh at a side of the palm between heel and floor. Spade jerked his
foot away from the hand.

The telephone-bell rang.

He nodded at the girl. She turned to the desk and put the receiver to
her ear. She said: “Hello. . . . Yes. . . . Who? . . . Oh, yes!” Her
eyes became large. “Yes. . . . Yes. . . . Hold the line. . . .” Her
mouth suddenly stretched wide and fearful. She cried: “Hello! Hello!
Hello!” She rattled the prong up and down and cried, “Hello!” twice.
Then she sobbed and spun around to face Spade, who was close beside her
by now. “It was Miss O’Shaughnessy,” she said wildly. “She wants you.
She’s at the Alexandria—in danger. Her voice was—oh, it was awful,
Sam!—and something happened to her before she could finish. Go help
her, Sam!”

Spade put the falcon down on the desk and scowled gloomily. “I’ve got to
take care of this fellow first,” he said, pointing his thumb at the thin
corpse on the floor.

She beat his chest with her fists, crying: “No, no—you’ve got to go to
her. Don’t you see, Sam? He had the thing that was hers and he came to
you with it. Don’t you see? He was helping her and they killed him and
now she’s—Oh, you’ve got to go!”

“All right.” Spade pushed her away and bent over his desk, putting the
black bird back into its nest of excelsior, bending the paper around it,
working rapidly, making a larger and clumsy package. “As soon as I’ve
gone phone the police. Tell them how it happened, but don’t drag any
names in. You don’t know. I got the phone-call and I told you I had to
go out, but I didn’t say where.” He cursed the rope for being tangled,
yanked it into straightness, and began to bind the package. “Forget this
thing. Tell it as it happened, but forget he had a bundle.” He chewed
his lower lip. “Unless they pin you down. If they seem to know about it
you’ll have to admit it. But that’s not likely. If they do then I took
the bundle away with me, unopened.” He finished tying the knot and
straightened up with the parcel under his left arm. “Get it straight,
now. Everything happened the way it did happen, but without this dingus
unless they already know about it. Don’t deny it—just don’t mention it.
And I got the phone-call—not you. And you don’t know anything about
anybody else having any connection with this fellow. You don’t know
anything about him and you can’t talk about my business until you see
me. Got it?”

“Yes, Sam. Who—do you know who he is?”

He grinned wolfishly. “Uh-huh,” he said, “but I’d guess he was Captain
Jacobi, master of _La Paloma_.” He picked up his hat and put it on. He
looked thoughtfully at the dead man and then around the room.

“Hurry, Sam,” the girl begged.

“Sure,” he said absent-mindedly, “I’ll hurry. Might not hurt to get
those few scraps of excelsior off the floor before the police come. And
maybe you ought to try to get hold of Sid. No.” He rubbed his chin.
“We’ll leave him out of it awhile. It’ll look better. I’d keep the door
locked till they come.” He took his hand from his chin and rubbed her
cheek. “You’re a damned good man, sister,” he said and went out.




                                   17


                             SATURDAY NIGHT

CARRYING the parcel lightly under his arm, walking briskly, with only
the ceaseless shifting of his eyes to denote wariness, Spade went,
partly by way of an alley and a narrow court, from his office-building
to Kearny and Post Streets, where he hailed a passing taxicab.

The taxicab carried him to the Pickwick Stage terminal in Fifth Street.
He checked the bird at the Parcel Room there, put the check into a
stamped envelope, wrote _M. F. Holland_ and a San Francisco Post Office
box-number on the envelope, sealed it, and dropped it into a mail-box.
From the stage-terminal another taxicab carried him to the Alexandria
Hotel.

Spade went up to suite 12–C and knocked on the door. The door was
opened, when he had knocked a second time, by a small fair-haired girl
in a shimmering yellow dressing-gown—a small girl whose face was white
and dim and who clung desperately to the inner doorknob with both hands
and gasped: “Mr. Spade?”

Spade said, “Yes,” and caught her as she swayed.

Her body arched back over his arm and her head dropped straight back so
that her short fair hair hung down her scalp and her slender throat was
a firm curve from chin to chest.

Spade slid his supporting arm higher up her back and bent to get his
other arm under her knees, but she stirred then, resisting, and between
parted lips that barely moved blurred words came: “No! Ma’ me wa’!”

Spade made her walk. He kicked the door shut and he walked her up and
down the green-carpeted room from wall to wall. One of his arms around
her small body, that hand under her armpit, his other hand gripping her
other arm, held her erect when she stumbled, checked her swaying, kept
urging her forward, but made her tottering legs bear all her weight they
could bear. They walked across and across the floor, the girl
falteringly, with incoördinate steps, Spade surely on the balls of his
feet with balance unaffected by her staggering. Her face was chalk-white
and eyeless, his sullen, with eyes hardened to watch everywhere at once.

He talked to her monotonously: “That’s the stuff. Left, right, left,
right. That’s the stuff. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, now we
turn.” He shook her as they turned from the wall. “Now back again. One,
two, three, four. Hold your head up. That’s the stuff. Good girl. Left,
right, left, right. Now we turn again.” He shook her again. “That’s the
girl. Walk, walk, walk, walk. One, two, three, four. Now we go around.”
He shook her, more roughly, and increased their pace. “That’s the trick.
Left, right, left, right. We’re in a hurry. One, two, three. . . .”

She shuddered and swallowed audibly. Spade began to chafe her arm and
side and he put his mouth nearer her ear. “That’s fine. You’re doing
fine. One, two, three, four. Faster, faster, faster, faster. That’s it.
Step, step, step, step. Pick them up and lay them down. That’s the
stuff. Now we turn. Left, right, left, right. What’d they do—dope you?
The same stuff they gave me?”

Her eyelids twitched up then for an instant over dulled golden-brown
eyes and she managed to say all of “Yes” except the final consonant.

They walked the floor, the girl almost trotting now to keep up with
Spade, Spade slapping and kneading her flesh through yellow silk with
both hands, talking and talking while his eyes remained hard and aloof
and watchful. “Left, right, left, right, left, right, turn. That’s the
girl. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Keep the chin up.
That’s the stuff. One, two . . .”

Her lids lifted again a bare fraction of an inch and under them her eyes
moved weakly from side to side.

“That’s fine,” he said in a crisp voice, dropping his monotone. “Keep
them open. Open them wide—wide!” He shook her.

She moaned in protest, but her lids went farther up, though her eyes
were without inner light. He raised his hand and slapped her cheek half
a dozen times in quick succession. She moaned again and tried to break
away from him. His arm held her and swept her along beside him from wall
to wall.

“Keep walking,” he ordered in a harsh voice, and then: “Who are you?”

Her “Rhea Gutman” was thick but intelligible.

“The daughter?”

“Yes.” Now she was no farther from the final consonant than _sh_.

“Where’s Brigid?”

She twisted convulsively around in his arms and caught at one of his
hands with both of hers. He pulled his hand away quickly and looked at
it. Across its back was a thin red scratch an inch and a half or more in
length.

“What the hell?” he growled and examined her hands. Her left hand was
empty. In her right hand, when he forced it open, lay a three-inch
jade-headed steel bouquet-pin. “What the hell?” he growled again and
held the pin up in front of her eyes.

When she saw the pin she whimpered and opened her dressing-gown. She
pushed aside the cream-colored pajama-coat under it and showed him her
body below her left breast—white flesh criss-crossed with thin red
lines, dotted with tiny red dots, where the pin had scratched and
punctured it. “To stay awake . . . walk . . . till you came. . . . She
said you’d come . . . were so long.” She swayed.

Spade tightened his arm around her and said: “Walk.”

She fought against his arm, squirming around to face him again. “No
. . . tell you . . . sleep . . . save her . . .”

“Brigid?” he demanded.

“Yes . . . took her . . . Bur-Burlingame . . . twenty-six Ancho . . .
hurry . . . too late . . .” Her head fell over on her shoulder.

Spade pushed her head up roughly. “Who took her there? Your father?”

“Yes . . . Wilmer . . . Cairo.” She writhed and her eyelids twitched but
did not open. “. . . kill her.” Her head fell over again, and again he
pushed it up.

“Who shot Jacobi?”

She did not seem to hear the question. She tried pitifully to hold her
head up, to open her eyes. She mumbled: “Go . . . she . . .”

He shook her brutally. “Stay awake till the doctor comes.”

Fear opened her eyes and pushed for a moment the cloudiness from her
face. “No, no,” she cried thickly, “father . . . kill me . . . swear you
won’t . . . he’d know . . . I did . . . for her . . . promise . . .
won’t. . . sleep . . . all right . . . morning . . .”

He shook her again. “You’re sure you can sleep the stuff off all right?”

“Ye’.” Her head fell down again.

“Where’s your bed?”

She tried to raise a hand, but the effort had become too much for her
before the hand pointed at anything except the carpet. With the sigh of
a tired child she let her whole body relax and crumple.

Spade caught her up in his arms—scooped her up as she sank—and,
holding her easily against his chest, went to the nearest of the three
doors. He turned the knob far enough to release the catch, pushed the
door open with his foot, and went into a passageway that ran past an
open bathroom-door to a bedroom. He looked into the bathroom, saw it was
empty, and carried the girl into the bedroom. Nobody was there. The
clothing that was in sight and things on the chiffonier said it was a
man’s room.

Spade carried the girl back to the green-carpeted room and tried the
opposite door. Through it he passed into another passageway, past
another empty bathroom, and into a bedroom that was feminine in its
accessories. He turned back the bedclothes and laid the girl on the bed,
removed her slippers, raised her a little to slide the yellow
dressing-gown off, fixed a pillow under her head, and put the covers up
over her.

Then he opened the room’s two windows and stood with his back to them
staring at the sleeping girl. Her breathing was heavy but not troubled.
He frowned and looked around, working his lips together. Twilight was
dimming the room. He stood there in the weakening light for perhaps five
minutes. Finally he shook his thick sloping shoulders impatiently and
went out, leaving the suite’s outer door unlocked.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Spade went to the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company’s station in
Powell Street and called Davenport 2020. “Emergency Hospital,
please. . . . Hello, there’s a girl in suite twelve C at the Alexandria
Hotel who has been drugged. . . . Yes, you’d better send somebody to
take a look at her. . . . This is Mr. Hooper of the Alexandria.”

He put the receiver on its prong and laughed. He called another number
and said: “Hello, Frank. This is Sam Spade. . . . Can you let me have a
car with a driver who’ll keep his mouth shut? . . . To go down the
peninsula right away. . . . Just a couple of hours. . . . Right. Have
him pick me up at John’s, Ellis Street, as soon as he can make it.”

He called another number—his office’s—held the receiver to his ear for
a little while without saying anything, and replaced it on its hook.

He went to John’s Grill, asked the waiter to hurry his order of chops,
baked potato, and sliced tomatoes, ate hurriedly, and was smoking a
cigarette with his coffee when a thick-set youngish man with a plaid cap
set askew above pale eyes and a tough cheery face came into the Grill
and to his table.

“All set, Mr. Spade. She’s full of gas and rearing to go.”

“Swell.” Spade emptied his cup and went out with the thick-set man.
“Know where Ancho Avenue, or Road, or Boulevard, is in Burlingame?”

“Nope, but if she’s there we can find her.”

“Let’s do that,” Spade said as he sat beside the chauffeur in the dark
Cadillac sedan. “Twenty-six is the number we want, and the sooner the
better, but we don’t want to pull up at the front door.”

“Correct.”

They rode half a dozen blocks in silence. The chauffeur said: “Your
partner got knocked off, didn’t he, Mr. Spade?”

“Uh-huh.”

The chauffeur clucked. “She’s a tough racket. You can have it for mine.”

“Well, hack-drivers don’t live forever.”

“Maybe that’s right,” the thick-set man conceded, “but, just the same,
it’ll always be a surprise to me if I don’t.”

Spade stared ahead at nothing and thereafter, until the chauffeur tired
of making conversation, replied with uninterested yeses and noes.

                 *        *        *        *        *

At a drug-store in Burlingame the chauffeur learned how to reach Ancho
Avenue. Ten minutes later he stopped the sedan near a dark corner,
turned off the lights, and waved his hand at the block ahead. “There she
is,” he said. “She ought to be on the other side, maybe the third or
fourth house.”

Spade said, “Right,” and got out of the car. “Keep the engine going. We
may have to leave in a hurry.”

He crossed the street and went up the other side. Far ahead a lone
street-light burned. Warmer lights dotted the night on either side where
houses were spaced half a dozen to a block. A high thin moon was cold
and feeble as the distant street-light. A radio droned through the open
windows of a house on the other side of the street.

In front of the second house from the corner Spade halted. On one of the
gateposts that were massive out of all proportion to the fence flanking
them a 2 and a 6 of pale metal caught what light there was. A square
white card was nailed over them. Putting his face close to the card,
Spade could see that it was a _For Sale or Rent_ sign. There was no gate
between the posts. Spade went up the cement walk to the house. He stood
still on the walk at the foot of the porch-steps for a long moment. No
sound came from the house. The house was dark except for another pale
square card nailed on its door.

Spade went up to the door and listened. He could hear nothing. He tried
to look through the glass of the door. There was no curtain to keep his
gaze out, but inner darkness. He tiptoed to a window and then to
another. They, like the door, were uncurtained except by inner darkness.
He tried both windows. They were locked. He tried the door. It was
locked.

He left the porch and, stepping carefully over dark unfamiliar ground,
walked through weeds around the house. The side-windows were too high to
be reached from the ground. The back door and the one back window he
could reach were locked.

Spade went back to the gatepost and, cupping the flame between his
hands, held his lighter up to the _For Sale or Rent_ sign. It bore the
printed name and address of a San Mateo real-estate-dealer and a line
penciled in blue: _Key at 31_.

Spade returned to the sedan and asked the chauffeur: “Got a flashlight?”

“Sure.” He gave it to Spade. “Can I give you a hand at anything?”

“Maybe.” Spade got into the sedan. “We’ll ride up to number thirty-one.
You can use your lights.”

Number 31 was a square grey house across the street from, but a little
farther up than, 26. Lights glowed in its downstairs-windows. Spade went
up on the porch and rang the bell. A dark-haired girl of fourteen or
fifteen opened the door. Spade, bowing and smiling, said: “I’d like to
get the key to number twenty-six.”

“I’ll call Papa,” she said and went back into the house calling: “Papa!”

A plump red-faced man, bald-headed and heavily mustached, appeared,
carrying a newspaper.

Spade said: “I’d like to get the key to twenty-six.”

The plump man looked doubtful. He said: “The juice is not on. You
couldn’t see anything.”

Spade patted his pocket. “I’ve a flashlight.”

The plump man looked more doubtful. He cleared his throat uneasily and
crumpled the newspaper in his hand.

Spade showed him one of his business-cards, put it back in his pocket,
and said in a low voice: “We got a tip that there might be something
hidden there.”

The plump man’s face and voice were eager. “Wait a minute,” he said.
“I’ll go over with you.”

A moment later he came back carrying a brass key attached to a black and
red tag. Spade beckoned to the chauffeur as they passed the car and the
chauffeur joined them.

“Anybody been looking at the house lately?” Spade asked.

“Not that I know of,” the plump man replied. “Nobody’s been to me for
the key in a couple of months.”

The plump man marched ahead with the key until they had gone up on the
porch. Then he thrust the key into Spade’s hand, mumbled, “Here you
are,” and stepped aside.

Spade unlocked the door and pushed it open. There was silence and
darkness. Holding the flashlight—dark—in his left hand, Spade entered.
The chauffeur came close behind him and then, at a little distance, the
plump man followed them. They searched the house from bottom to top,
cautiously at first, then, finding nothing, boldly. The house was
empty—unmistakably—and there was nothing to indicate that it had been
visited in weeks.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Saying, “Thanks, that’s all,” Spade left the sedan in front of the
Alexandria. He went into the hotel, to the desk, where a tall young man
with a dark grave face said: “Good evening, Mr. Spade.”

“Good evening.” Spade drew the young man to one end of the desk. “These
Gutmans—up in twelve C—are they in?”

The young man replied, “No,” darting a quick glance at Spade. Then he
looked away, hesitated, looked at Spade again, and murmured: “A funny
thing happened in connection with them this evening, Mr. Spade. Somebody
called the Emergency Hospital and told them there was a sick girl up
there.”

“And there wasn’t?”

“Oh, no, there was nobody up there. They went out earlier in the
evening.”

Spade said: “Well, these practical-jokers have to have their fun.
Thanks.”

He went to a telephone-booth, called a number, and said: “Hello. . . .
Mrs. Perine? . . . Is Effie there? . . . Yes, please. . . . Thanks.

“Hello, angel! What’s the good word? . . . Fine, fine! Hold it. I’ll be
out in twenty minutes. . . . Right.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Half an hour later Spade rang the doorbell of a two-story brick building
in Ninth Avenue. Effie Perine opened the door. Her boyish face was tired
and smiling. “Hello, boss,” she said. “Enter.” She said in a low voice:
“If Ma says anything to you, Sam, be nice to her. She’s all up in the
air.”

Spade grinned reassuringly and patted her shoulder.

She put her hands on his arm. “Miss O’Shaughnessy?”

“No,” he growled. “I ran into a plant. Are you sure it was her voice?”

“Yes.”

He made an unpleasant face. “Well, it was hooey.”

She took him into a bright living-room, sighed, and slumped down on one
end of a Chesterfield, smiling cheerfully up at him through her
weariness.

He sat beside her and asked: “Everything went O K? Nothing said about
the bundle?”

“Nothing. I told them what you told me to tell them, and they seemed to
take it for granted that the phone-call had something to do with it, and
that you were out running it down.”

“Dundy there?”

“No. Hoff and O’Gar and some others I didn’t know. I talked to the
Captain too.”

“They took you down to the Hall?”

“Oh, yes, and they asked me loads of questions, but it was all—you
know—routine.”

Spade rubbed his palms together. “Swell,” he said and then frowned,
“though I guess they’ll think up plenty to put to me when we meet. That
damned Dundy will, anyway, and Bryan.” He moved his shoulders. “Anybody
you know, outside of the police, come around?”

“Yes.” She sat up straight. “That boy—the one who brought the message
from Gutman—was there. He didn’t come in, but the police left the
corridor-door open while they were there and I saw him standing there.”

“You didn’t say anything?”

“Oh, no. You had said not to. So I didn’t pay any attention to him and
the next time I looked he was gone.”

Spade grinned at her. “Damned lucky for you, sister, that the coppers
got there first.”

“Why?”

“He’s a bad egg, that lad—poison. Was the dead man Jacobi?”

“Yes.”

He pressed her hands and stood up. “I’m going to run along. You’d better
hit the hay. You’re all in.”

She rose. “Sam, what is—?”

He stopped her words with his hand on her mouth. “Save it till Monday,”
he said. “I want to sneak out before your mother catches me and gives me
hell for dragging her lamb through gutters.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Midnight was a few minutes away when Spade reached his home. He put his
key into the street-door’s lock. Heels clicked rapidly on the sidewalk
behind him. He let go the key and wheeled. Brigid O’Shaughnessy ran up
the steps to him. She put her arms around him and hung on him, panting:
“Oh, I thought you’d never come!” Her face was haggard, distraught,
shaken by the tremors that shook her from head to foot.

With the hand not supporting her he felt for the key again, opened the
door, and half lifted her inside. “You’ve been waiting?” he asked.

“Yes.” Panting spaced her words. “In a—doorway—up the—street.”

“Can you make it all right?” he asked. “Or shall I carry you?”

She shook her head against his shoulder. “I’ll be—all right—when
I—get where—I can—sit down.”

They rode up to Spade’s floor in the elevator and went around to his
apartment. She left his arm and stood beside him—panting, both hands to
her breast—while he unlocked his door. He switched on the passageway
light. They went in. He shut the door and, with his arm around her
again, took her back towards the living-room. When they were within a
step of the living-room-door the light in the living-room went on.

The girl cried out and clung to Spade.

Just inside the living-room-door fat Gutman stood smiling benevolently
at them. The boy Wilmer came out of the kitchen behind them. Black
pistols were gigantic in his small hands. Cairo came from the bathroom.
He too had a pistol.

Gutman said: “Well, sir, we’re all here, as you can see for yourself.
Now let’s come in and sit down and be comfortable and talk.”




                                   18


                              THE FALL-GUY

SPADE, with his arms around Brigid O’Shaughnessy, smiled meagerly over
her head and said: “Sure, we’ll talk.”

Gutman’s bulbs jounced as he took three waddling backward steps away
from the door.

Spade and the girl went in together. The boy and Cairo followed them in.
Cairo stopped in the doorway. The boy put away one of his pistols and
came up close behind Spade.

Spade turned his head far around to look down over his shoulder at the
boy and said: “Get away. You’re not going to frisk me.”

The boy said: “Stand still. Shut up.”

Spade’s nostrils went in and out with his breathing. His voice was
level. “Get away. Put your paw on me and I’m going to make you use the
gun. Ask your boss if he wants me shot up before we talk.”

“Never mind, Wilmer,” the fat man said. He frowned indulgently at Spade.
“You are certainly a most headstrong individual. Well, let’s be seated.”

Spade said, “I told you I didn’t like that punk,” and took Brigid
O’Shaughnessy to the sofa by the windows. They sat close together, her
head against his left shoulder, his left arm around her shoulders. She
had stopped trembling, had stopped panting. The appearance of Gutman and
his companions seemed to have robbed her of that freedom of personal
movement and emotion that is animal, leaving her alive, conscious, but
quiescent as a plant.

Gutman lowered himself into the padded rocking chair. Cairo chose the
armchair by the table. The boy Wilmer did not sit down. He stood in the
doorway where Cairo had stood, letting his one visible pistol hang down
at his side, looking under curling lashes at Spade’s body. Cairo put his
pistol on the table beside him.

Spade took off his hat and tossed it to the other end of the sofa. He
grinned at Gutman. The looseness of his lower lip and the droop of his
upper eyelids combined with the v’s in his face to make his grin lewd as
a satyr’s. “That daughter of yours has a nice belly,” he said, “too nice
to be scratched up with pins.”

Gutman’s smile was affable if a bit oily.

The boy in the doorway took a short step forward, raising his pistol as
far as his hip. Everybody in the room looked at him. In the dissimilar
eyes with which Brigid O’Shaughnessy and Joel Cairo looked at him there
was, oddly, something identically reproving. The boy blushed, drew back
his advanced foot, straightened his legs, lowered the pistol and stood
as he had stood before, looking under lashes that hid his eyes at
Spade’s chest. The blush was pale enough and lasted for only an instant,
but it was startling on his face that habitually was so cold and
composed.

Gutman turned his sleek-eyed fat smile on Spade again. His voice was a
suave purring. “Yes, sir, that was a shame, but you must admit that it
served its purpose.”

Spade’s brows twitched together. “Anything would’ve,” he said.
“Naturally I wanted to see you as soon as I had the falcon. Cash
customers—why not? I went to Burlingame expecting to run into this sort
of a meeting. I didn’t know you were blundering around, half an hour
late, trying to get me out of the way so you could find Jacobi again
before he found me.”

Gutman chuckled. His chuckle seemed to hold nothing but satisfaction.
“Well, sir,” he said, “in any case, here we are having our little
meeting, if that’s what you wanted.”

“That’s what I wanted. How soon are you ready to make the first payment
and take the falcon off my hands?”

Brigid O’Shaughnessy sat up straight and looked at Spade with surprised
blue eyes. He patted her shoulder inattentively. His eyes were steady on
Gutman’s. Gutman’s twinkled merrily between sheltering fat-puffs. He
said: “Well, sir, as to that,” and put a hand inside the breast of his
coat.

Cairo, hands on thighs, leaned forward in his chair, breathing between
parted soft lips. His dark eyes had the surface-shine of lacquer. They
shifted their focus warily from Spade’s face to Gutman’s, from Gutman’s
to Spade’s.

Gutman repeated, “Well, sir, as to that,” and took a white envelope from
his pocket. Ten eyes—the boy’s now only half obscured by his
lashes—looked at the envelope. Turning the envelope over in his swollen
hands, Gutman studied for a moment its blank white front and then its
back, unsealed, with the flap tucked in. He raised his head, smiled
amiably, and scaled the envelope at Spade’s lap.

The envelope, though not bulky, was heavy enough to fly true. It struck
the lower part of Spade’s chest and dropped down on his thighs. He
picked it up deliberately and opened it deliberately, using both hands,
having taken his left arm from around the girl. The contents of the
envelope were thousand-dollar bills, smooth and stiff and new. Spade
took them out and counted them. There were ten of them. Spade looked up
smiling. He said mildly: “We were talking about more money than this.”

“Yes, sir, we were,” Gutman agreed, “but we were talking then. This is
actual money, genuine coin of the realm, sir. With a dollar of this you
can buy more than with ten dollars of talk.” Silent laughter shook his
bulbs. When their commotion stopped he said more seriously, yet not
altogether seriously: “There are more of us to be taken care of now.” He
moved his twinkling eyes and his fat head to indicate Cairo. “And—well,
sir, in short—the situation has changed.”

While Gutman talked Spade had tapped the edges of the ten bills into
alignment and returned them to their envelope, tucking the flap in over
them. Now, with forearms on knees, he sat hunched forward, dangling the
envelope from a corner held lightly by finger and thumb down between his
legs. His reply to the fat man was careless: “Sure. You’re together now,
but I’ve got the falcon.”

Joel Cairo spoke. Ugly hands grasping the arms of his chair, he leaned
forward and said primly in his high-pitched thin voice: “I shouldn’t
think it would be necessary to remind you, Mr. Spade, that though you
may have the falcon yet we certainly have you.”

Spade grinned. “I’m trying to not let that worry me,” he said. He sat up
straight, put the envelope aside—on the sofa—and addressed Gutman:
“We’ll come back to the money later. There’s another thing that’s got to
be taken care of first. We’ve got to have a fall-guy.”

The fat man frowned without comprehension, but before he could speak
Spade was explaining: “The police have got to have a victim—somebody
they can stick for those three murders. We—”

Cairo, speaking in a brittle excited voice, interrupted Spade.
“Two—only two—murders, Mr. Spade. Thursby undoubtedly killed your
partner.”

“All right, two,” Spade growled. “What difference does that make? The
point is we’ve got to feed the police some—”

Now Gutman broke in, smiling confidently, talking with good-natured
assurance: “Well, sir, from what we’ve seen and heard of you I don’t
think we’ll have to bother ourselves about that. We can leave the
handling of the police to you, all right. You won’t need any of our
inexpert help.”

“If that’s what you think,” Spade said, “you haven’t seen or heard
enough.”

“Now come, Mr. Spade. You can’t expect us to believe at this late date
that you are the least bit afraid of the police, or that you are not
quite able to handle—”

Spade snorted with throat and nose. He bent forward, resting forearms on
knees again, and interrupted Gutman irritably: “I’m not a damned bit
afraid of them and I know how to handle them. That’s what I’m trying to
tell you. The way to handle them is to toss them a victim, somebody they
can hang the works on.”

“Well, sir, I grant you that’s one way of doing it, but—”

“‘But’ hell!” Spade said. “It’s the only way.” His eyes were hot and
earnest under a reddening forehead. The bruise on his temple was
liver-colored. “I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been through it all
before and expect to go through it again. At one time or another I’ve
had to tell everybody from the Supreme Court down to go to hell, and
I’ve got away with it. I got away with it because I never let myself
forget that a day of reckoning was coming. I never forget that when the
day of reckoning comes I want to be all set to march into headquarters
pushing a victim in front of me, saying: ‘Here, you chumps, is your
criminal.’ As long as I can do that I can put my thumb to my nose and
wriggle my fingers at all the laws in the book. The first time I can’t
do it my name’s Mud. There hasn’t been a first time yet. This isn’t
going to be it. That’s flat.”

Gutman’s eyes flickered and their sleekness became dubious, but he held
his other features in their bulbous pink smiling complacent cast and
there was nothing of uneasiness in his voice. He said: “That’s a system
that’s got a lot to recommend it, sir—by Gad, it has! And if it was
anyway practical this time I’d be the first to say: ‘Stick to it by all
means, sir.’ But this just happens to be a case where it’s not possible.
That’s the way it is with the best of systems. There comes a time when
you’ve got to make exceptions, and a wise man just goes ahead and makes
them. Well, sir, that’s just the way it is in this case and I don’t mind
telling you that I think you’re being very well paid for making an
exception. Now maybe it will be a little more trouble to you than if you
had your victim to hand over to the police, but”—he laughed and spread
his hands—“you’re not a man that’s afraid of a little bit of trouble.
You know how to do things and you know you’ll land on your feet in the
end, no matter what happens.” He pursed his lips and partly closed one
eye. “You’ll manage that, sir.”

Spade’s eyes had lost their warmth. His face was dull and lumpy. “I know
what I’m talking about,” he said in a low, consciously patient, tone.
“This is my city and my game. I could manage to land on my
feet—sure—this time, but the next time I tried to put over a fast one
they’d stop me so fast I’d swallow my teeth. Hell with that. You
birds’ll be in New York or Constantinople or some place else. I’m in
business here.”

“But surely,” Gutman began, “you can—”

“I can’t,” Spade said earnestly. “I won’t. I mean it.” He sat up
straight. A pleasant smile illuminated his face, erasing its dull
lumpishness. He spoke rapidly in an agreeable, persuasive tone: “Listen
to me, Gutman. I’m telling you what’s best for all of us. If we don’t
give the police a fall-guy it’s ten to one they’ll sooner or later
stumble on information about the falcon. Then you’ll have to duck for
cover with it—no matter where you are—and that’s not going to help you
make a fortune off it. Give them a fall-guy and they’ll stop right
there.”

“Well, sir, that’s just the point,” Gutman replied, and still only in
his eyes was uneasiness faintly apparent. “Will they stop right there?
Or won’t the fall-guy be a fresh clue that as likely as not will lead
them to information about the falcon? And, on the other hand, wouldn’t
you say they were stopped right now, and that the best thing for us to
do is leave well enough alone?”

A forked vein began to swell in Spade’s forehead. “Jesus! you don’t know
what it’s all about either,” he said in a restrained tone. “They’re not
asleep, Gutman. They’re lying low, waiting. Try to get that. I’m in it
up to my neck and they know it. That’s all right as long as I do
something when the time comes. But it won’t be all right if I don’t.”
His voice became persuasive again. “Listen, Gutman, we’ve absolutely got
to give them a victim. There’s no way out of it. Let’s give them the
punk.” He nodded pleasantly at the boy in the doorway. “He actually did
shoot both of them—Thursby and Jacobi—didn’t he? Anyway, he’s made to
order for the part. Let’s pin the necessary evidence on him and turn him
over to them.”

The boy in the doorway tightened the corners of his mouth in what may
have been a minute smile. Spade’s proposal seemed to have no other
effect on him. Joel Cairo’s dark face was open-mouthed, open-eyed,
yellowish, and amazed. He breathed through his mouth, his round
effeminate chest rising and falling, while he gaped at Spade. Brigid
O’Shaughnessy had moved away from Spade and had twisted herself around
on the sofa to stare at him. There was a suggestion of hysterical
laughter behind the startled confusion in her face.

Gutman remained still and expressionless for a long moment. Then he
decided to laugh. He laughed heartily and lengthily, not stopping until
his sleek eyes had borrowed merriment from his laughter. When he stopped
laughing he said: “By Gad, sir, you’re a character, that you are!” He
took a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. “Yes, sir,
there’s never any telling what you’ll do or say next, except that it’s
bound to be something astonishing.”

“There’s nothing funny about it.” Spade did not seem offended by the fat
man’s laughter, nor in any way impressed. He spoke in the manner of one
reasoning with a recalcitrant, but not altogether unreasonable, friend.
“It’s our best bet. With him in their hands, the police will—”

“But, my dear man,” Gutman objected, “can’t you see? If I even for a
moment thought of doing it—But that’s ridiculous too. I feel towards
Wilmer just exactly as if he were my own son. I really do. But if I even
for a moment thought of doing what you propose, what in the world do you
think would keep Wilmer from telling the police every last detail about
the falcon and all of us?”

Spade grinned with stiff lips. “If we had to,” he said softly, “we could
have him killed resisting arrest. But we won’t have to go that far. Let
him talk his head off. I promise you nobody’ll do anything about it.
That’s easy enough to fix.”

The pink flesh on Gutman’s forehead crawled in a frown. He lowered his
head, mashing his chins together over his collar, and asked: “How?”
Then, with an abruptness that set all his fat bulbs to quivering and
tumbling against one another, he raised his head, squirmed around to
look at the boy, and laughed uproariously. “What do you think of this,
Wilmer? It’s funny, eh?”

The boy’s eyes were cold hazel gleams under his lashes. He said in a low
distinct voice: “Yes, it’s funny—the son of a bitch.”

Spade was talking to Brigid O’Shaughnessy: “How do you feel now, angel?
Any better?”

“Yes, much better, only”—she reduced her voice until the last words
would have been unintelligible two feet away—“I’m frightened.”

“Don’t be,” he said carelessly and put a hand on her grey-stockinged
knee. “Nothing very bad’s going to happen. Want a drink?”

“Not now, thanks.” Her voice sank again. “Be careful, Sam.”

Spade grinned and looked at Gutman, who was looking at him. The fat man
smiled genially, saying nothing for a moment, and then asked: “How?”

Spade was stupid. “How what?”

The fat man considered more laughter necessary then, and an explanation:
“Well, sir, if you’re really serious about this—this suggestion of
yours, the least we can do in common politeness is to hear you out. Now
how are you going about fixing it so that Wilmer”—he paused here to
laugh again—“won’t be able to do us any harm?”

Spade shook his head. “No,” he said, “I wouldn’t want to take advantage
of anybody’s politeness, no matter how common, like that. Forget it.”

The fat man puckered up his facial bulbs. “Now come, come,” he
protested, “you make me decidedly uncomfortable. I shouldn’t have
laughed, and I apologize most humbly and sincerely. I wouldn’t want to
seem to ridicule anything you’d suggest, Mr. Spade, regardless of how
much I disagreed with you, for you must know that I have the greatest
respect and admiration for your astuteness. Now mind you, I don’t see
how this suggestion of yours can be in any way practical—even leaving
out the fact that I couldn’t feel any different towards Wilmer if he was
my own flesh and blood—but I’ll consider it a personal favor as well as
a sign that you’ve accepted my apologies, sir, if you’ll go ahead and
outline the rest of it.”

“Fair enough,” Spade said. “Bryan is like most district attorneys. He’s
more interested in how his record will look on paper than in anything
else. He’d rather drop a doubtful case than try it and have it go
against him. I don’t know that he ever deliberately framed anybody he
believed innocent, but I can’t imagine him letting himself believe them
innocent if he could scrape up, or twist into shape, proof of their
guilt. To be sure of convicting one man he’ll let half a dozen equally
guilty accomplices go free—if trying to convict them all might confuse
his case.

“That’s the choice we’ll give him and he’ll gobble it up. He wouldn’t
want to know about the falcon. He’ll be tickled pink to persuade himself
that anything the punk tells him about it is a lot of chewing-gum, an
attempt to muddle things up. Leave that end to me. I can show him that
if he starts fooling around trying to gather up everybody he’s going to
have a tangled case that no jury will be able to make heads or tails of,
while if he sticks to the punk he can get a conviction standing on his
head.”

Gutman wagged his head sidewise in a slow smiling gesture of benign
disapproval. “No, sir,” he said, “I’m afraid that won’t do, won’t do at
all. I don’t see how even this District Attorney of yours can link
Thursby and Jacobi and Wilmer together without having to—”

“You don’t know district attorneys,” Spade told him. “The Thursby angle
is easy. He was a gunman and so’s your punk. Bryan’s already got a
theory about that. There’ll be no catch there. Well, Christ! they can
only hang the punk once. Why try him for Jacobi’s murder after he’s been
convicted of Thursby’s? They simply close the record by writing it up
against him and let it go at that. If, as is likely enough, he used the
same gun on both, the bullets will match up. Everybody will be
satisfied.”

“Yes, but—” Gutman began, and stopped to look at the boy.

The boy advanced from the doorway, walking stiff-legged, with his legs
apart, until he was between Gutman and Cairo, almost in the center of
the floor. He halted there, leaning forward slightly from the waist, his
shoulders raised towards the front. The pistol in his hand still hung at
his side, but his knuckles were white over its grip. His other hand was
a small hard fist down at his other side. The indelible youngness of his
face gave an indescribably vicious—and inhuman—turn to the white-hot
hatred and the cold white malevolence in his face. He said to Spade in a
voice cramped by passion: “You bastard, get up on your feet and go for
your heater!”

Spade smiled at the boy. His smile was not broad, but the amusement in
it seemed genuine and unalloyed.

The boy said: “You bastard, get up and shoot it out if you’ve got the
guts. I’ve taken all the riding from you I’m going to take.”

The amusement in Spade’s smile deepened. He looked at Gutman and said:
“Young Wild West.” His voice matched his smile. “Maybe you ought to tell
him that shooting me before you get your hands on the falcon would be
bad for business.”

Gutman’s attempt at a smile was not successful, but he kept the
resultant grimace on his mottled face. He licked dry lips with a dry
tongue. His voice was too hoarse and gritty for the paternally
admonishing tone it tried to achieve. “Now, now, Wilmer,” he said, “we
can’t have any of that. You shouldn’t let yourself attach so much
importance to these things. You—”

The boy, not taking his eyes from Spade, spoke in a choked voice out the
side of his mouth: “Make him lay off me then. I’m going to fog him if he
keeps it up and there won’t be anything that’ll stop me from doing it.”

“Now, Wilmer,” Gutman said and turned to Spade. His face and voice were
under control now. “Your plan is, sir, as I said in the first place, not
at all practical. Let’s not say anything more about it.”

Spade looked from one of them to the other. He had stopped smiling. His
face held no expression at all. “I say what I please,” he told them.

“You certainly do,” Gutman said quickly, “and that’s one of the things
I’ve always admired in you. But this matter is, as I say, not at all
practical, so there’s not the least bit of use of discussing it any
further, as you can see for yourself.”

“I can’t see it for myself,” Spade said, “and you haven’t made me see
it, and I don’t think you can.” He frowned at Gutman. “Let’s get this
straight. Am I wasting time talking to you? I thought this was your
show. Should I do my talking to the punk? I know how to do that.”

“No, sir,” Gutman replied, “you’re quite right in dealing with me.”

Spade said: “All right. Now I’ve got another suggestion. It’s not as
good as the first, but it’s better than nothing. Want to hear it?”

“Most assuredly.”

“Give them Cairo.”

Cairo hastily picked up his pistol from the table beside him. He held it
tight in his lap with both hands. Its muzzle pointed at the floor a
little to one side of the sofa. His face had become yellowish again. His
black eyes darted their gaze from face to face. The opaqueness of his
eyes made them seem flat, two-dimensional.

Gutman, looking as if he could not believe he had heard what he had
heard, asked: “Do what?”

“Give the police Cairo.”

Gutman seemed about to laugh, but he did not laugh. Finally he
exclaimed: “Well, by Gad, sir!” in an uncertain tone.

“It’s not as good as giving them the punk,” Spade said. “Cairo’s not a
gunman and he carries a smaller gun than Thursby and Jacobi were shot
with. We’ll have to go to more trouble framing him, but that’s better
than not giving the police anybody.”

Cairo cried in a voice shrill with indignation: “Suppose we give them
you, Mr. Spade, or Miss O’Shaughnessy? How about that if you’re so set
on giving them somebody?”

Spade smiled at the Levantine and answered him evenly: “You people want
the falcon. I’ve got it. A fall-guy is part of the price I’m asking. As
for Miss O’Shaughnessy”—his dispassionate glance moved to her white
perplexed face and then back to Cairo and his shoulders rose and fell a
fraction of an inch—“if you think she can be rigged for the part I’m
perfectly willing to discuss it with you.”

The girl put her hands to her throat, uttered a short strangled cry, and
moved farther away from him.

Cairo, his face and body twitching with excitement, exclaimed: “You seem
to forget that you are not in a position to insist on anything.”

Spade laughed, a harsh derisive snort.

Gutman said, in a voice that tried to make firmness ingratiating: “Come
now, gentlemen, let’s keep our discussion on a friendly basis; but there
certainly is”—he was addressing Spade—“something in what Mr. Cairo
says. You must take into consideration the—”

“Like hell I must.” Spade flung his words out with a brutal sort of
carelessness that gave them more weight than they could have got from
dramatic emphasis or from loudness. “If you kill me, how are you going
to get the bird? If I know you can’t afford to kill me till you have it,
how are you going to scare me into giving it to you?”

Gutman cocked his head to the left and considered these questions. His
eyes twinkled between puckered lids. Presently he gave his genial
answer: “Well, sir, there are other means of persuasion besides killing
and threatening to kill.”

“Sure,” Spade agreed, “but they’re not much good unless the threat of
death is behind them to hold the victim down. See what I mean? If you
try anything I don’t like I won’t stand for it. I’ll make it a matter of
your having to call it off or kill me, knowing you can’t afford to kill
me.”

“I see what you mean.” Gutman chuckled. “That is an attitude, sir, that
calls for the most delicate judgment on both sides, because, as you
know, sir, men are likely to forget in the heat of action where their
best interest lies and let their emotions carry them away.”

Spade too was all smiling blandness. “That’s the trick, from my side,”
he said, “to make my play strong enough that it ties you up, but yet not
make you mad enough to bump me off against your better judgment.”

Gutman said fondly: “By Gad, sir, you are a character!”

Joel Cairo jumped up from his chair and went around behind the boy and
behind Gutman’s chair. He bent over the back of Gutman’s chair and,
screening his mouth and the fat man’s ear with his empty hand,
whispered. Gutman listened attentively, shutting his eyes.

Spade grinned at Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Her lips smiled feebly in
response, but there was no change in her eyes; they did not lose their
numb stare. Spade turned to the boy: “Two to one they’re selling you
out, son.”

The boy did not say anything. A trembling in his knees began to shake
the knees of his trousers.

Spade addressed Gutman: “I hope you’re not letting yourself be
influenced by the guns these pocket-edition desperadoes are waving.”

Gutman opened his eyes. Cairo stopped whispering and stood erect behind
the fat man’s chair.

Spade said: “I’ve practiced taking them away from both of them, so
there’ll be no trouble there. The punk is—”

In a voice choked horribly by emotion the boy cried, “All right!” and
jerked his pistol up in front of his chest.

Gutman flung a fat hand out at the boy’s wrist, caught the wrist, and
bore it and the gun down while Gutman’s fat body was rising in haste
from the rocking chair. Joel Cairo scurried around to the boy’s other
side and grasped his other arm. They wrestled with the boy, forcing his
arms down, holding them down, while he struggled futilely against them.
Words came out of the struggling group: fragments of the boy’s
incoherent speech—“right . . . go . . . bastard . . . smoke”—Gutman’s
“Now, now, Wilmer!” repeated many times; Cairo’s “No, please, don’t” and
“Don’t do that, Wilmer.”

Wooden-faced, dreamy-eyed, Spade got up from the sofa and went over to
the group. The boy, unable to cope with the weight against him, had
stopped struggling. Cairo, still holding the boy’s arm, stood partly in
front of him, talking to him soothingly. Spade pushed Cairo aside gently
and drove his left fist against the boy’s chin. The boy’s head snapped
back as far as it could while his arms were held, and then came forward.
Gutman began a desperate “Here, what—?” Spade drove his right fist
against the boy’s chin.

Cairo dropped the boy’s arm, letting him collapse against Gutman’s great
round belly. Cairo sprang at Spade, clawing at his face with the curved
stiff fingers of both hands. Spade blew his breath out and pushed the
Levantine away. Cairo sprang at him again. Tears were in Cairo’s eyes
and his red lips worked angrily, forming words, but no sound came from
between them.

Spade laughed, grunted, “Jesus, you’re a pip!” and cuffed the side of
Cairo’s face with an open hand, knocking him over against the table.
Cairo regained his balance and sprang at Spade the third time. Spade
stopped him with both palms held out on long rigid arms against his
face. Cairo, failing to reach Spade’s face with his shorter arms,
thumped Spade’s arms.

“Stop it,” Spade growled. “I’ll hurt you.”

Cairo cried, “Oh, you big coward!” and backed away from him.

Spade stooped to pick up Cairo’s pistol from the floor, and then the
boy’s. He straightened up holding them in his left hand, dangling them
upside-down by their trigger-guards from his forefinger.

Gutman had put the boy in the rocking chair and stood looking at him
with troubled eyes in an uncertainly puckered face. Cairo went down on
his knees beside the chair and began to chafe one of the boy’s limp
hands.

Spade felt the boy’s chin with his fingers. “Nothing cracked,” he said.
“We’ll spread him on the sofa.” He put his right arm under the boy’s arm
and around his back, put his left forearm under the boy’s knees, lifted
him without apparent effort, and carried him to the sofa.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy got up quickly and Spade laid the boy there. With
his right hand Spade patted the boy’s clothes, found his second pistol,
added it to the others in his left hand, and turned his back on the
sofa. Cairo was already sitting beside the boy’s head.

Spade clinked the pistols together in his hand and smiled cheerfully at
Gutman. “Well,” he said, “there’s our fall-guy.”

Gutman’s face was grey and his eyes were clouded. He did not look at
Spade. He looked at the floor and did not say anything.

Spade said: “Don’t be a damned fool again. You let Cairo whisper to you
and you held the kid while I pasted him. You can’t laugh that off and
you’re likely to get yourself shot trying to.”

Gutman moved his feet on the rug and said nothing.

Spade said: “And the other side of it is that you’ll either say yes
right now or I’ll turn the falcon and the whole God-damned lot of you
in.”

Gutman raised his head and muttered through his teeth: “I don’t like
that, sir.”

“You won’t like it,” Spade said. “Well?”

The fat man sighed and made a wry face and replied sadly: “You can have
him.”

Spade said: “That’s swell.”




                                   19


                           THE RUSSIAN’S HAND

THE boy lay on his back on the sofa, a small figure that was—except for
its breathing—altogether corpselike to the eye. Joel Cairo sat beside
the boy, bending over him, rubbing his cheeks and wrists, smoothing his
hair back from his forehead, whispering to him, and peering anxiously
down at his white still face.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy stood in an angle made by table and wall. One of
her hands was flat on the table, the other to her breast. She pinched
her lower lip between her teeth and glanced furtively at Spade whenever
he was not looking at her. When he looked at her she looked at Cairo and
the boy.

Gutman’s face had lost its troubled cast and was becoming rosy again. He
had put his hands in his trousers-pockets. He stood facing Spade,
watching him without curiosity.

Spade, idly jingling his handful of pistols, nodded at Cairo’s rounded
back and asked Gutman: “It’ll be all right with him?”

“I don’t know,” the fat man replied placidly. “That part will have to be
strictly up to you, sir.”

Spade’s smile made his v-shaped chin more salient. He said: “Cairo.”

The Levantine screwed his dark anxious face around over his shoulder.

Spade said: “Let him rest awhile. We’re going to give him to the police.
We ought to get the details fixed before he comes to.”

Cairo asked bitterly: “Don’t you think you’ve done enough to him without
that?”

Spade said: “No.”

Cairo left the sofa and went close to the fat man. “Please don’t do this
thing, Mr. Gutman,” he begged. “You must realize that—”

Spade interrupted him: “That’s settled. The question is, what are you
going to do about it? Coming in? Or getting out?”

Though Gutman’s smile was a bit sad, even wistful in its way, he nodded
his head. “I don’t like it either,” he told the Levantine, “but we can’t
help ourselves now. We really can’t.”

Spade asked: “What are you doing, Cairo? In or out?”

Cairo wet his lips and turned slowly to face Spade. “Suppose,” he said,
and swallowed. “Have I—? Can I choose?”

“You can,” Spade assured him seriously, “but you ought to know that if
the answer is _out_ we’ll give you to the police with your boy-friend.”

“Oh, come, Mr. Spade,” Gutman protested, “that is not—”

“Like hell we’ll let him walk out on us,” Spade said. “He’ll either come
in or he’ll go in. We can’t have a lot of loose ends hanging around.” He
scowled at Gutman and burst out irritably: “Jesus God! is this the first
thing you guys ever stole? You’re a fine lot of lollipops! What are you
going to do next—get down and pray?” He directed his scowl at Cairo.
“Well? Which?”

“You give me no choice.” Cairo’s narrow shoulders moved in a hopeless
shrug. “I come in.”

“Good,” Spade said and looked at Gutman and at Brigid O’Shaughnessy.
“Sit down.”

The girl sat down gingerly on the end of the sofa by the unconscious
boy’s feet. Gutman returned to the padded rocking chair, and Cairo to
the armchair. Spade put his handful of pistols on the table and sat on
the table-corner beside them. He looked at the watch on his wrist and
said: “Two o’clock. I can’t get the falcon till daylight, or maybe eight
o’clock. We’ve got plenty of time to arrange everything.”

Gutman cleared his throat. “Where is it?” he asked and then added in
haste: “I don’t really care, sir. What I had in mind was that it would
be best for all concerned if we did not get out of each other’s sight
until our business has been transacted.” He looked at the sofa and at
Spade again, sharply. “You have the envelope?”

Spade shook his head, looking at the sofa and then at the girl. He
smiled with his eyes and said: “Miss O’Shaughnessy has it.”

“Yes, I have it,” she murmured, putting a hand inside her coat. “I
picked it up. . . .”

“That’s all right,” Spade told her. “Hang on to it.” He addressed
Gutman: “We won’t have to lose sight of each other. I can have the
falcon brought here.”

“That will be excellent,” Gutman purred. “Then, sir, in exchange for the
ten thousand dollars and Wilmer you will give us the falcon and an hour
or two of grace—so we won’t be in the city when you surrender him to
the authorities.”

“You don’t have to duck,” Spade said. “It’ll be air-tight.”

“That may be, sir, but nevertheless we’ll feel safer well out of the
city when Wilmer is being questioned by your District Attorney.”

“Suit yourself,” Spade replied. “I can hold him here all day if you
want.” He began to roll a cigarette. “Let’s get the details fixed. Why
did he shoot Thursby? And why and where and how did he shoot Jacobi?”

Gutman smiled indulgently, shaking his head and purring: “Now come, sir,
you can’t expect that. We’ve given you the money and Wilmer. That is our
part of the agreement.”

“I do expect it,” Spade said. He held his lighter to his cigarette. “A
fall-guy is what I asked for, and he’s not a fall-guy unless he’s a
cinch to take the fall. Well, to cinch that I’ve got to know what’s
what.” He pulled his brows together. “What are you bellyaching about?
You’re not going to be sitting so damned pretty if you leave him with an
out.”

Gutman leaned forward and wagged a fat finger at the pistols on the
table beside Spade’s legs. “There’s ample evidence of his guilt, sir.
Both men were shot with those weapons. It’s a very simple matter for the
police-department-experts to determine that the bullets that killed the
men were fired from those weapons. You know that; you’ve mentioned it
yourself. And that, it seems to me, is ample proof of his guilt.”

“Maybe,” Spade agreed, “but the thing’s more complicated than that and
I’ve got to know what happened so I can be sure the parts that won’t fit
in are covered up.”

Cairo’s eyes were round and hot. “Apparently you’ve forgotten that you
assured us it would be a very simple affair,” Cairo said. He turned his
excited dark face to Gutman. “You see! I advised you not to do this. I
don’t think—”

“It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference what either of you think,”
Spade said bluntly. “It’s too late for that now and you’re in too deep.
Why did he kill Thursby?”

Gutman interlaced his fingers over his belly and rocked his chair. His
voice, like his smile, was frankly rueful. “You are an uncommonly
difficult person to get the best of,” he said. “I begin to think that we
made a mistake in not letting you alone from the very first. By Gad, I
do, sir!”

Spade moved his hand carelessly. “You haven’t done so bad. You’re
staying out of jail and you’re getting the falcon. What do you want?” He
put his cigarette in a corner of his mouth and said around it: “Anyhow
you know where you stand now. Why did he kill Thursby?”

Gutman stopped rocking. “Thursby was a notorious killer and Miss
O’Shaughnessy’s ally. We knew that removing him in just that manner
would make her stop and think that perhaps it would be best to patch up
her differences with us after all, besides leaving her without so
violent a protector. You see, sir, I am being candid with you?”

“Yes. Keep it up. You didn’t think he might have the falcon?”

Gutman shook his head so that his round cheeks wobbled. “We didn’t think
that for a minute,” he replied. He smiled benevolently. “We had the
advantage of knowing Miss O’Shaughnessy far too well for that and, while
we didn’t know then that she had given the falcon to Captain Jacobi in
Hongkong to be brought over on the _Paloma_ while they took a faster
boat, still we didn’t for a minute think that, if only one of them knew
where it was, Thursby was the one.”

Spade nodded thoughtfully and asked: “You didn’t try to make a deal with
him before you gave him the works?”

“Yes, sir, we certainly did. I talked to him myself that night. Wilmer
had located him two days before and had been trying to follow him to
wherever he was meeting Miss O’Shaughnessy, but Thursby was too crafty
for that even if he didn’t know he was being watched. So that night
Wilmer went to his hotel, learned he wasn’t in, and waited outside for
him. I suppose Thursby returned immediately after killing your partner.
Be that as it may, Wilmer brought him to see me. We could do nothing
with him. He was quite determinedly loyal to Miss O’Shaughnessy. Well,
sir, Wilmer followed him back to his hotel and did what he did.”

Spade thought for a moment. “That sounds all right. Now Jacobi.”

Gutman looked at Spade with grave eyes and said: “Captain Jacobi’s death
was entirely Miss O’Shaughnessy’s fault.”

The girl gasped, “Oh!” and put a hand to her mouth.

Spade’s voice was heavy and even. “Never mind that now. Tell me what
happened.”

After a shrewd look at Spade, Gutman smiled. “Just as you say, sir,” he
said. “Well, Cairo, as you know, got in touch with me—I sent for
him—after he left police headquarters the night—or morning—he was up
here. We recognized the mutual advantage of pooling forces.” He directed
his smile at the Levantine. “Mr. Cairo is a man of nice judgment. The
_Paloma_ was his thought. He saw the notice of its arrival in the papers
that morning and remembered that he had heard in Hongkong that Jacobi
and Miss O’Shaughnessy had been seen together. That was when he had been
trying to find her there, and he thought at first that she had left on
the _Paloma_, though later he learned that she hadn’t. Well, sir, when
he saw the notice of arrival in the paper he guessed just what had
happened: she had given the bird to Jacobi to bring here for her. Jacobi
did not know what it was, of course. Miss O’Shaughnessy is too discreet
for that.”

He beamed at the girl, rocked his chair twice, and went on: “Mr. Cairo
and Wilmer and I went to call on Captain Jacobi and were fortunate
enough to arrive while Miss O’Shaughnessy was there. In many ways it was
a difficult conference, but finally, by midnight we had persuaded Miss
O’Shaughnessy to come to terms, or so we thought. We then left the boat
and set out for my hotel, where I was to pay Miss O’Shaughnessy and
receive the bird. Well, sir, we mere men should have known better than
to suppose ourselves capable of coping with her. _En route_, she and
Captain Jacobi and the falcon slipped completely through our fingers.”
He laughed merrily. “By Gad, sir, it was neatly done.”

Spade looked at the girl. Her eyes, large and dark with pleading, met
his. He asked Gutman: “You touched off the boat before you left?”

“Not intentionally, no, sir,” the fat man replied, “though I dare say
we—or Wilmer at least—were responsible for the fire. He had been out
trying to find the falcon while the rest of us were talking in the cabin
and no doubt was careless with matches.”

“That’s fine,” Spade said. “If any slip-up makes it necessary for us to
try him for Jacobi’s murder we can also hang an arson-rap on him. All
right. Now about the shooting.”

“Well, sir, we dashed around town all day trying to find them and we
found them late this afternoon. We weren’t sure at first that we’d found
them. All we were sure of was that we’d found Miss O’Shaughnessy’s
apartment. But when we listened at the door we heard them moving around
inside, so we were pretty confident we had them and rang the bell. When
she asked us who we were and we told her—through the door—we heard a
window going up.

“We knew what that meant, of course; so Wilmer hurried downstairs as
fast as he could and around to the rear of the building to cover the
fire-escape. And when he turned into the alley he ran right plumb smack
into Captain Jacobi running away with the falcon under his arm. That was
a difficult situation to handle, but Wilmer did every bit as well as he
could. He shot Jacobi—more than once—but Jacobi was too tough to
either fall or drop the falcon, and he was too close for Wilmer to keep
out of his way. He knocked Wilmer down and ran on. And this was in broad
daylight, you understand, in the afternoon. When Wilmer got up he could
see a policeman coming up from the block below. So he had to give it up.
He dodged into the open back door of the building next the Coronet,
through into the street, and then up to join us—and very fortunate he
was, sir, to make it without being seen.

“Well, sir, there we were—stumped again. Miss O’Shaughnessy had opened
the door for Mr. Cairo and me after she had shut the window behind
Jacobi, and she—” He broke off to smile at a memory. “We
persuaded—that is the word, sir—her to tell us that she had told
Jacobi to take the falcon to you. It seemed very unlikely that he’d live
to go that far, even if the police didn’t pick him up, but that was the
only chance we had, sir. And so, once more, we persuaded Miss
O’Shaughnessy to give us a little assistance. We—well—persuaded her to
phone your office in an attempt to draw you away before Jacobi got
there, and we sent Wilmer after him. Unfortunately it had taken us too
long to decide and to persuade Miss O’Shaughnessy to—”

The boy on the sofa groaned and rolled over on his side. His eyes opened
and closed several times. The girl stood up and moved into the angle of
table and wall again.

“—coöperate with us,” Gutman concluded hurriedly, “and so you had the
falcon before we could reach you.”

The boy put one foot on the floor, raised himself on an elbow, opened
his eyes wide, put the other foot down, sat up, and looked around. When
his eyes focused on Spade bewilderment went out of them.

Cairo left his armchair and went over to the boy. He put his arm on the
boy’s shoulders and started to say something. The boy rose quickly to
his feet, shaking Cairo’s arm off. He glanced around the room once and
then fixed his eyes on Spade again. His face was set hard and he held
his body so tense that it seemed drawn in and shrunken.

Spade, sitting on the corner of the table, swinging his legs carelessly,
said: “Now listen, kid. If you come over here and start cutting up I’m
going to kick you in the face. Sit down and shut up and behave and
you’ll last longer.”

The boy looked at Gutman.

Gutman smiled benignly at him and said: “Well, Wilmer, I’m sorry indeed
to lose you, and I want you to know that I couldn’t be any fonder of you
if you were my own son; but—well, by Gad!—if you lose a son it’s
possible to get another—and there’s only one Maltese falcon.”

Spade laughed.

Cairo moved over and whispered in the boy’s ear. The boy, keeping his
cold hazel eyes on Gutman’s face, sat down on the sofa again. The
Levantine sat beside him.

Gutman’s sigh did not affect the benignity of his smile. He said to
Spade: “When you’re young you simply don’t understand things.”

Cairo had an arm around the boy’s shoulders again and was whispering to
him. Spade grinned at Gutman and addressed Brigid O’Shaughnessy: “I
think it’d be swell if you’d see what you can find us to eat in the
kitchen, with plenty of coffee. Will you? I don’t like to leave my
guests.”

“Surely,” she said and started towards the door.

Gutman stopped rocking. “Just a moment, my dear.” He held up a thick
hand. “Hadn’t you better leave the envelope in here? You don’t want to
get grease-spots on it.”

The girl’s eyes questioned Spade. He said in an indifferent tone: “It’s
still his.”

She put her hand inside her coat, took out the envelope, and gave it to
Spade. Spade tossed it into Gutman’s lap, saying: “Sit on it if you’re
afraid of losing it.”

“You misunderstand me,” Gutman replied suavely. “It’s not that at all,
but business should be transacted in a business-like manner.” He opened
the flap of the envelope, took out the thousand-dollar bills, counted
them, and chuckled so that his belly bounced. “For instance there are
only nine bills here now.” He spread them out on his fat knees and
thighs. “There were ten when I handed it to you, as you very well know.”
His smile was broad and jovial and triumphant.

Spade looked at Brigid O’Shaughnessy and asked: “Well?”

She shook her head sidewise with emphasis. She did not say anything,
though her lips moved slightly, as if she had tried to. Her face was
frightened.

Spade held his hand out to Gutman and the fat man put the money into it.
Spade counted the money—nine thousand-dollar bills—and returned it to
Gutman. Then Spade stood up and his face was dull and placid. He picked
up the three pistols on the table. He spoke in a matter-of-fact voice.
“I want to know about this. We”—he nodded at the girl, but without
looking at her—“are going in the bathroom. The door will be open and
I’ll be facing it. Unless you want a three-story drop there’s no way out
of here except past the bathroom door. Don’t try to make it.”

“Really, sir,” Gutman protested, “it’s not necessary, and certainly not
very courteous of you, to threaten us in this manner. You must know that
we’ve not the least desire to leave.”

“I’ll know a lot when I’m through.” Spade was patient but resolute.
“This trick upsets things. I’ve got to find the answer. It won’t take
long.” He touched the girl’s elbow. “Come on.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

In the bathroom Brigid O’Shaughnessy found words. She put her hands up
flat on Spade’s chest and her face up close to his and whispered: “I did
not take that bill, Sam.”

“I don’t think you did,” he said, “but I’ve got to know. Take your
clothes off.”

“You won’t take my word for it?”

“No. Take your clothes off.”

“I won’t.”

“All right. We’ll go back to the other room and I’ll have them taken
off.”

She stepped back with a hand to her mouth. Her eyes were round and
horrified. “You would?” she asked through her fingers.

“I will,” he said. “I’ve got to know what happened to that bill and I’m
not going to be held up by anybody’s maidenly modesty.”

“Oh, it isn’t that.” She came close to him and put her hands on his
chest again. “I’m not ashamed to be naked before you, but—can’t you
see?—not like this. Can’t you see that if you make me you’ll—you’ll be
killing something?”

He did not raise his voice. “I don’t know anything about that. I’ve got
to know what happened to the bill. Take them off.”

She looked at his unblinking yellow-grey eyes and her face became pink
and then white again. She drew herself up tall and began to undress. He
sat on the side of the bathtub watching her and the open door. No sound
came from the living-room. She removed her clothes swiftly, without
fumbling, letting them fall down on the floor around her feet. When she
was naked she stepped back from her clothing and stood looking at him.
In her mien was pride without defiance or embarrassment.

He put his pistols on the toilet-seat and, facing the door, went down on
one knee in front of her garments. He picked up each piece and examined
it with fingers as well as eyes. He did not find the thousand-dollar
bill. When he had finished he stood up holding her clothes out in his
hands to her. “Thanks,” he said. “Now I know.”

She took the clothing from him. She did not say anything. He picked up
his pistols. He shut the bathroom door behind him and went into the
living-room.

Gutman smiled amiably at him from the rocking chair. “Find it?” he
asked.

Cairo, sitting beside the boy on the sofa, looked at Spade with
questioning opaque eyes. The boy did not look up. He was leaning
forward, head between hands, elbows on knees, staring at the floor
between his feet.

Spade told Gutman: “No, I didn’t find it. You palmed it.”

The fat man chuckled. “I palmed it?”

“Yes,” Spade said, jingling the pistols in his hand. “Do you want to say
so or do you want to stand for a frisk?”

“Stand for—?”

“You’re going to admit it,” Spade said, “or I’m going to search you.
There’s no third way.”

Gutman looked up at Spade’s hard face and laughed outright. “By Gad,
sir, I believe you would. I really do. You’re a character, sir, if you
don’t mind my saying so.”

“You palmed it,” Spade said.

“Yes, sir, that I did.” The fat man took a crumpled bill from his
vest-pocket, smoothed it on a wide thigh, took the envelope holding the
nine bills from his coat-pocket, and put the smoothed bill in with the
others. “I must have my little joke every now and then and I was curious
to know what you’d do in a situation of that sort. I must say that you
passed the test with flying colors, sir. It never occurred to me that
you’d hit on such a simple and direct way of getting at the truth.”

Spade sneered at him without bitterness. “That’s the kind of thing I’d
expect from somebody the punk’s age.”

Gutman chuckled.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy, dressed again except for coat and hat, came out of
the bathroom, took a step towards the living-room, turned around, went
to the kitchen, and turned on the light.

Cairo edged closer to the boy on the sofa and began whispering in his
ear again. The boy shrugged irritably.

Spade, looking at the pistols in his hand and then at Gutman, went out
into the passageway, to the closet there. He opened the door, put the
pistols inside on the top of a trunk, shut the door, locked it, put the
key in his trousers-pocket, and went to the kitchen door.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy was filling an aluminum percolator.

“Find everything?” Spade asked.

“Yes,” she replied in a cool voice, not raising her head. Then she set
the percolator aside and came to the door. She blushed and her eyes were
large and moist and chiding. “You shouldn’t have done that to me, Sam,”
she said softly.

“I had to find out, angel.” He bent down, kissed her mouth lightly, and
returned to the living-room.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Gutman smiled at Spade and offered him the white envelope, saying: “This
will soon be yours; you might as well take it now.”

Spade did not take it. He sat in the armchair and said: “There’s plenty
of time for that. We haven’t done enough talking about the money-end. I
ought to have more than ten thousand.”

Gutman said: “Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

Spade said: “You’re quoting me, but it’s not all the money in the
world.”

“No, sir, it’s not. I grant you that. But it’s a lot of money to be
picked up in as few days and as easily as you’re getting it.”

“You think it’s been so damned easy?” Spade asked, and shrugged. “Well,
maybe, but that’s my business.”

“It certainly is,” the fat man agreed. He screwed up his eyes, moved his
head to indicate the kitchen, and lowered his voice. “Are you sharing
with her?”

Spade said: “That’s my business too.”

“It certainly is,” the fat man agreed once more, “but”—he
hesitated—“I’d like to give you a word of advice.”

“Go ahead.”

“If you don’t—I dare say you’ll give her some money in any event,
but—if you don’t give her as much as she thinks she ought to have, my
word of advice is—be careful.”

Spade’s eyes held a mocking light. He asked: “Bad?”

“Bad,” the fat man replied.

Spade grinned and began to roll a cigarette.

Cairo, still muttering in the boy’s ear, had put his arm around the
boy’s shoulders again. Suddenly the boy pushed his arm away and turned
on the sofa to face the Levantine. The boy’s face held disgust and
anger. He made a fist of one small hand and struck Cairo’s mouth with
it. Cairo cried out as a woman might have cried and drew back to the
very end of the sofa. He took a silk handkerchief from his pocket and
put it to his mouth. It came away daubed with blood. He put it to his
mouth once more and looked reproachfully at the boy. The boy snarled,
“Keep away from me,” and put his face between his hands again. Cairo’s
handkerchief released the fragrance of _chypre_ in the room.

Cairo’s cry had brought Brigid O’Shaughnessy to the door. Spade,
grinning, jerked a thumb at the sofa and told her: “The course of true
love. How’s the food coming along?”

“It’s coming,” she said and went back to the kitchen.

Spade lighted his cigarette and addressed Gutman: “Let’s talk about
money.”

“Willingly, sir, with all my heart,” the fat man replied, “but I might
as well tell you frankly right now that ten thousand is every cent I can
raise.”

Spade exhaled smoke. “I ought to have twenty.”

“I wish you could. I’d give it to you gladly if I had it, but ten
thousand dollars is every cent I can manage, on my word of honor. Of
course, sir, you understand that is simply the first payment. Later—”

Spade laughed. “I know you’ll give me millions later,” he said, “but
let’s stick to this first payment now. Fifteen thousand?”

Gutman smiled and frowned and shook his head. “Mr. Spade, I’ve told you
frankly and candidly and on my word of honor as a gentleman that ten
thousand dollars is all the money I’ve got—every penny—and all I can
raise.”

“But you didn’t say positively.”

Gutman laughed and said: “Positively.”

Spade said gloomily: “That’s not any too good, but if it’s the best you
can do—give it to me.”

Gutman handed him the envelope. Spade counted the bills and was putting
them in his pocket when Brigid O’Shaughnessy came in carrying a tray.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The boy would not eat. Cairo took a cup of coffee. The girl, Gutman, and
Spade ate the scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and marmalade she had
prepared, and drank two cups of coffee apiece. Then they settled down to
wait the rest of the night through.

Gutman smoked a cigar and read _Celebrated Criminal Cases of America_,
now and then chuckling over or commenting on the parts of its contents
that amused him. Cairo nursed his mouth and sulked on his end of the
sofa. The boy sat with his head in his hands until a little after four
o’clock. Then he lay down with his feet towards Cairo, turned his face
to the window, and went to sleep. Brigid O’Shaughnessy, in the armchair,
dozed, listened to the fat man’s comments, and carried on wide-spaced
desultory conversations with Spade.

Spade rolled and smoked cigarettes and moved, without fidgeting or
nervousness, around the room. He sat sometimes on an arm of the girl’s
chair, on the table-corner, on the floor at her feet, on a
straight-backed chair. He was wide-awake, cheerful, and full of vigor.

At half-past five he went into the kitchen and made more coffee. Half an
hour later the boy stirred, awakened, and sat up yawning. Gutman looked
at his watch and questioned Spade: “Can you get it now?”

“Give me another hour.”

Gutman nodded and went back to his book.

At seven o’clock Spade went to the telephone and called Effie Perine’s
number. “Hello, Mrs. Perine? . . . This is Mr. Spade. Will you let me
talk to Effie, please? . . . Yes, it is. . . . Thanks.” He whistled two
lines of _En Cuba_, softly. “Hello, angel. Sorry to get you up. . . .
Yes, very. Here’s the plot: in our Holland box at the Post Office you’ll
find an envelope addressed in my scribble. There’s a Pickwick Stage
parcel-room-check in it—for the bundle we got yesterday. Will you get
the bundle and bring it to me—p. d. q.? . . . Yes, I’m home. . . .
That’s the girl—hustle. . . . ’Bye.”

The street-door-bell rang at ten minutes of eight. Spade went to the
telephone-box and pressed the button that released the lock. Gutman put
down his book and rose smiling. “You don’t mind if I go to the door with
you?” he asked.

“O K,” Spade told him.

Gutman followed him to the corridor-door. Spade opened it. Presently
Effie Perine, carrying the brown-wrapped parcel, came from the elevator.
Her boyish face was gay and bright and she came forward quickly, almost
trotting. After one glance she did not look at Gutman. She smiled at
Spade and gave him the parcel.

He took it saying: “Thanks a lot, lady. I’m sorry to spoil your day of
rest, but this—”

“It’s not the first one you’ve spoiled,” she replied, laughing, and
then, when it was apparent that he was not going to invite her in,
asked: “Anything else?”

He shook his head. “No, thanks.”

She said, “Bye-bye,” and went back to the elevator.

Spade shut the door and carried the parcel into the living-room.
Gutman’s face was red and his cheeks quivered. Cairo and Brigid
O’Shaughnessy came to the table as Spade put the parcel there. They were
excited. The boy rose, pale and tense, but he remained by the sofa,
staring under curling lashes at the others.

Spade stepped back from the table saying: “There you are.”

Gutman’s fat fingers made short work of cord and paper and excelsior,
and he had the black bird in his hands. “Ah,” he said huskily, “now,
after seventeen years!” His eyes were moist.

Cairo licked his red lips and worked his hands together. The girl’s
lower lip was between her teeth. She and Cairo, like Gutman, and like
Spade and the boy, were breathing heavily. The air in the room was
chilly and stale, and thick with tobacco smoke.

Gutman set the bird down on the table again and fumbled at a pocket.
“It’s it,” he said, “but we’ll make sure.” Sweat glistened on his round
cheeks. His fingers twitched as he took out a gold pocket-knife and
opened it.

Cairo and the girl stood close to him, one on either side. Spade stood
back a little where he could watch the boy as well as the group at the
table.

Gutman turned the bird upside-down and scraped an edge of its base with
his knife. Black enamel came off in tiny curls, exposing blackened metal
beneath. Gutman’s knife-blade bit into the metal, turning back a thin
curved shaving. The inside of the shaving, and the narrow plane its
removal had left, had the soft grey sheen of lead.

Gutman’s breath hissed between his teeth. His face became turgid with
hot blood. He twisted the bird around and hacked at its head. There too
the edge of his knife bared lead. He let knife and bird bang down on the
table where he wheeled to confront Spade. “It’s a fake,” he said
hoarsely.

Spade’s face had become somber. His nod was slow, but there was no
slowness in his hand’s going out to catch Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s wrist.
He pulled her to him and grasped her chin with his other hand, raising
her face roughly. “All right,” he growled into her face. “You’ve had
_your_ little joke. Now tell us about it.”

She cried: “No, Sam, no! That is the one I got from Kemidov. I swear—”

Joel Cairo thrust himself between Spade and Gutman and began to emit
words in a shrill spluttering stream: “That’s it! That’s it! It was the
Russian! I should have known! What a fool we thought him, and what fools
he made of us!” Tears ran down the Levantine’s cheeks and he danced up
and down. “You bungled it!” he screamed at Gutman. “You and your stupid
attempt to buy it from him! You fat fool! You let him know it was
valuable and he found out how valuable and made a duplicate for us! No
wonder we had so little trouble stealing it! No wonder he was so willing
to send me off around the world looking for it! You imbecile! You
bloated idiot!” He put his hands to his face and blubbered.

Gutman’s jaw sagged. He blinked vacant eyes. Then he shook himself and
was—by the time his bulbs had stopped jouncing—again a jovial fat man.
“Come, sir,” he said good-naturedly, “there’s no need of going on like
that. Everybody errs at times and you may be sure this is every bit as
severe a blow to me as to anyone else. Yes, that is the Russian’s hand,
there’s no doubt of it. Well, sir, what do you suggest? Shall we stand
here and shed tears and call each other names? Or shall we”—he paused
and his smile was a cherub’s—“go to Constantinople?”

Cairo took his hands from his face and his eyes bulged. He stammered:
“You are—?” Amazement coming with full comprehension made him
speechless.

Gutman patted his fat hands together. His eyes twinkled. His voice was a
complacent throaty purring: “For seventeen years I have wanted that
little item and have been trying to get it. If I must spend another year
on the quest—well, sir—that will be an additional expenditure in time
of only”—his lips moved silently as he calculated—“five and
fifteen-seventeenths per cent.”

The Levantine giggled and cried: “I go with you!”

Spade suddenly released the girl’s wrist and looked around the room. The
boy was not there. Spade went into the passageway. The corridor-door
stood open. Spade made a dissatisfied mouth, shut the door, and returned
to the living-room. He leaned against the door-frame and looked at
Gutman and Cairo. He looked at Gutman for a long time, sourly. Then he
spoke, mimicking the fat man’s throaty purr: “Well, sir, I must say
you’re a swell lot of thieves!”

Gutman chuckled. “We’ve little enough to boast about, and that’s a fact,
sir,” he said. “But, well, we’re none of us dead yet and there’s not a
bit of use thinking the world’s come to an end just because we’ve run
into a little setback.” He brought his left hand from behind him and
held it out towards Spade, pink smooth hilly palm up. “I’ll have to ask
you for that envelope, sir.”

Spade did not move. His face was wooden. He said: “I held up my end. You
got your dingus. It’s your hard luck, not mine, that it wasn’t what you
wanted.”

“Now come, sir,” Gutman said persuasively, “we’ve all failed and there’s
no reason for expecting any one of us to bear the brunt of it, and—” He
brought his right hand from behind him. In the hand was a small pistol,
an ornately engraved and inlaid affair of silver and gold and
mother-of-pearl. “In short, sir, I must ask you to return my ten
thousand dollars.”

Spade’s face did not change. He shrugged and took the envelope from his
pocket. He started to hold it out to Gutman, hesitated, opened the
envelope, and took out one thousand-dollar bill. He put that bill into
his trousers-pocket. He tucked the envelope’s flap in over the other
bills and held them out to Gutman. “That’ll take care of my time and
expenses,” he said.

Gutman, after a little pause, imitated Spade’s shrug and accepted the
envelope. He said: “Now, sir, we will say good-bye to you, unless”—the
fat puffs around his eyes crinkled—“you care to undertake the
Constantinople expedition with us. You don’t? Well, sir, frankly I’d
like to have you along. You’re a man to my liking, a man of many
resources and nice judgment. Because we know you’re a man of nice
judgment we know we can say good-bye with every assurance that you’ll
hold the details of our little enterprise in confidence. We know we can
count on you to appreciate the fact that, as the situation now stands,
any legal difficulties that come to us in connection with these last few
days would likewise and equally come to you and the charming Miss
O’Shaughnessy. You’re too shrewd not to recognize that, sir, I’m sure.”

“I understand that,” Spade replied.

“I was sure you would. I’m also sure that, now there’s no alternative,
you’ll somehow manage the police without a fall-guy.”

“I’ll make out all right,” Spade replied.

“I was sure you would. Well, sir, the shortest farewells are the best.
Adieu.” He made a portly bow. “And to you, Miss O’Shaughnessy, adieu. I
leave you the _rara avis_ on the table as a little memento.”




                                   20


                            IF THEY HANG YOU

FOR all of five minutes after the outer door had closed behind Casper
Gutman and Joel Cairo, Spade, motionless, stood staring at the knob of
the open living-room-door. His eyes were gloomy under a forehead drawn
down. The clefts at the root of his nose were deep and red. His lips
protruded loosely, pouting. He drew them in to make a hard v and went to
the telephone. He had not looked at Brigid O’Shaughnessy, who stood by
the table looking with uneasy eyes at him.

He picked up the telephone, set it on its shelf again, and bent to look
into the telephone-directory hanging from a corner of the shelf. He
turned the pages rapidly until he found the one he wanted, ran his
finger down a column, straightened up, and lifted the telephone from the
shelf again. He called a number and said:

“Hello, is Sergeant Polhaus there? . . . Will you call him, please? This
is Samuel Spade. . . .” He stared into space, waiting. “Hello, Tom, I’ve
got something for you. . . . Yes, plenty. Here it is: Thursby and Jacobi
were shot by a kid named Wilmer Cook.” He described the boy minutely.
“He’s working for a man named Casper Gutman.” He described Gutman. “That
fellow Cairo you met here is in with them too. . . . Yes, that’s
it. . . . Gutman’s staying at the Alexandria, suite twelve C, or was.
They’ve just left here and they’re blowing town, so you’ll have to move
fast, but I don’t think they’re expecting a pinch. . . . There’s a girl
in it too—Gutman’s daughter.” He described Rhea Gutman. “Watch yourself
when you go up against the kid. He’s supposed to be pretty good with the
gun. . . . That’s right, Tom, and I’ve got some stuff here for you. I
think I’ve got the guns he used. . . . That’s right. Step on it—and
luck to you!”

Spade slowly replaced receiver on prong, telephone on shelf. He wet his
lips and looked down at his hands. Their palms were wet. He filled his
deep chest with air. His eyes were glittering between straightened lids.
He turned and took three long swift steps into the living-room.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy, startled by the suddenness of his approach, let
her breath out in a little laughing gasp.

Spade, face to face with her, very close to her, tall, big-boned and
thick-muscled, coldly smiling, hard of jaw and eye, said: “They’ll talk
when they’re nailed—about us. We’re sitting on dynamite, and we’ve only
got minutes to get set for the police. Give me all of it—fast. Gutman
sent you and Cairo to Constantinople?”

She started to speak, hesitated, and bit her lip.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “God damn you, talk!” he said. “I’m in
this with you and you’re not going to gum it. Talk. He sent you to
Constantinople?”

“Y-yes, he sent me. I met Joe there and—and asked him to help me. Then
we—”

“Wait. You asked Cairo to help you get it from Kemidov?”

“Yes.”

“For Gutman?”

She hesitated again, squirmed under the hard angry glare of his eyes,
swallowed, and said: “No, not then. We thought we would get it for
ourselves.”

“All right. Then?”

“Oh, then I began to be afraid that Joe wouldn’t play fair with me,
so—so I asked Floyd Thursby to help me.”

“And he did. Well?”

“Well, we got it and went to Hongkong.”

“With Cairo? Or had you ditched him before that?”

“Yes. We left him in Constantinople, in jail—something about a check.”

“Something you fixed up to hold him there?”

She looked shamefacedly at Spade and whispered: “Yes.”

“Right. Now you and Thursby are in Hongkong with the bird.”

“Yes, and then—I didn’t know him very well—I didn’t know whether I
could trust him. I thought it would be safer—anyway, I met Captain
Jacobi and I knew his boat was coming here, so I asked him to bring a
package for me—and that was the bird. I wasn’t sure I could trust
Thursby, or that Joe or—or somebody working for Gutman might not be on
the boat we came on—and that seemed the safest plan.”

“All right. Then you and Thursby caught one of the fast boats over. Then
what?”

“Then—then I was afraid of Gutman. I knew he had
people—connections—everywhere, and he’d soon know what we had done.
And I was afraid he’d have learned that we had left Hongkong for San
Francisco. He was in New York and I knew if he heard that by cable he
would have plenty of time to get here by the time we did, or before. He
did. I didn’t know that then, but I was afraid of it, and I had to wait
here until Captain Jacobi’s boat arrived. And I was afraid Gutman would
find me—or find Floyd and buy him over. That’s why I came to you and
asked you to watch him for—”

“That’s a lie,” Spade said. “You had Thursby hooked and you knew it. He
was a sucker for women. His record shows that—the only falls he took
were over women. And once a chump, always a chump. Maybe you didn’t know
his record, but you’d know you had him safe.”

She blushed and looked timidly at him.

He said: “You wanted to get him out of the way before Jacobi came with
the loot. What was your scheme?”

“I—I knew he’d left the States with a gambler after some trouble. I
didn’t know what it was, but I thought that if it was anything serious
and he saw a detective watching him he’d think it was on account of the
old trouble, and would be frightened into going away. I didn’t think—”

“You told him he was being shadowed,” Spade said confidently. “Miles
hadn’t many brains, but he wasn’t clumsy enough to be spotted the first
night.”

“I told him, yes. When we went out for a walk that night I pretended to
discover Mr. Archer following us and pointed him out to Floyd.” She
sobbed. “But please believe, Sam, that I wouldn’t have done it if I had
thought Floyd would kill him. I thought he’d be frightened into leaving
the city. I didn’t for a minute think he’d shoot him like that.”

Spade smiled wolfishly with his lips, but not at all with his eyes. He
said: “If you thought he wouldn’t you were right, angel.”

The girl’s upraised face held utter astonishment.

Spade said: “Thursby didn’t shoot him.”

Incredulity joined astonishment in the girl’s face.

Spade said: “Miles hadn’t many brains, but, Christ! he had too many
years’ experience as a detective to be caught like that by the man he
was shadowing. Up a blind alley with his gun tucked away on his hip and
his overcoat buttoned? Not a chance. He was as dumb as any man ought to
be, but he wasn’t quite that dumb. The only two ways out of the alley
could be watched from the edge of Bush Street over the tunnel. You’d
told us Thursby was a bad actor. He couldn’t have tricked Miles into the
alley like that, and he couldn’t have driven him in. He was dumb, but
not dumb enough for that.”

He ran his tongue over the inside of his lips and smiled affectionately
at the girl. He said: “But he’d’ve gone up there with you, angel, if he
was sure nobody else was up there. You were his client, so he would have
had no reason for not dropping the shadow on your say-so, and if you
caught up with him and asked him to go up there he’d’ve gone. He was
just dumb enough for that. He’d’ve looked you up and down and licked his
lips and gone grinning from ear to ear—and then you could’ve stood as
close to him as you liked in the dark and put a hole through him with
the gun you had got from Thursby that evening.”

Brigid O’Shaughnessy shrank back from him until the edge of the table
stopped her. She looked at him with terrified eyes and cried:
“Don’t—don’t talk to me like that, Sam! You know I didn’t! You know—”

“Stop it.” He looked at the watch on his wrist. “The police will be
blowing in any minute now and we’re sitting on dynamite. Talk!”

She put the back of a hand on her forehead. “Oh, why do you accuse me of
such a terrible—?”

“Will you stop it?” he demanded in a low impatient voice. “This isn’t
the spot for the schoolgirl-act. Listen to me. The pair of us are
sitting under the gallows.” He took hold of her wrists and made her
stand up straight in front of him. “Talk!”

“I—I—How did you know he—he licked his lips and looked—?”

Spade laughed harshly. “I knew Miles. But never mind that. Why did you
shoot him?”

She twisted her wrists out of Spade’s fingers and put her hands up
around the back of his neck, pulling his head down until his mouth all
but touched hers. Her body was flat against his from knees to chest. He
put his arms around her, holding her tight to him. Her dark-lashed lids
were half down over velvet eyes. Her voice was hushed, throbbing: “I
didn’t mean to, at first. I didn’t, really. I meant what I told you, but
when I saw Floyd couldn’t be frightened I—”

Spade slapped her shoulder. He said: “That’s a lie. You asked Miles and
me to handle it ourselves. You wanted to be sure the shadower was
somebody you knew and who knew you, so they’d go with you. You got the
gun from Thursby that day—that night. You had already rented the
apartment at the Coronet. You had trunks there and none at the hotel and
when I looked the apartment over I found a rent-receipt dated five or
six days before the time you told me you rented it.”

She swallowed with difficulty and her voice was humble. “Yes, that’s a
lie, Sam. I did intend to if Floyd—I—I can’t look at you and tell you
this, Sam.” She pulled his head farther down until her cheek was against
his cheek, her mouth by his ear, and whispered: “I knew Floyd wouldn’t
be easily frightened, but I thought that if he knew somebody was
shadowing him either he’d—Oh, I can’t say it, Sam!” She clung to him,
sobbing.

Spade said: “You thought Floyd would tackle him and one or the other of
them would go down. If Thursby was the one then you were rid of him. If
Miles was, then you could see that Floyd was caught and you’d be rid of
him. That it?”

“S-something like that.”

“And when you found that Thursby didn’t mean to tackle him you borrowed
the gun and did it yourself. Right?”

“Yes—though not exactly.”

“But exact enough. And you had that plan up your sleeve from the first.
You thought Floyd would be nailed for the killing.”

“I—I thought they’d hold him at least until after Captain Jacobi had
arrived with the falcon and—”

“And you didn’t know then that Gutman was here hunting for you. You
didn’t suspect that or you wouldn’t have shaken your gunman. You knew
Gutman was here as soon as you heard Thursby had been shot. Then you
knew you needed another protector, so you came back to me. Right?”

“Yes, but—oh, sweetheart!—it wasn’t only that. I would have come back
to you sooner or later. From the first instant I saw you I knew—”

Spade said tenderly: “You angel! Well, if you get a good break you’ll be
out of San Quentin in twenty years and you can come back to me then.”

She took her cheek away from his, drawing her head far back to stare up
without comprehension at him.

He was pale. He said tenderly: “I hope to Christ they don’t hang you,
precious, by that sweet neck.” He slid his hands up to caress her
throat.

In an instant she was out of his arms, back against the table,
crouching, both hands spread over her throat. Her face was wild-eyed,
haggard. Her dry mouth opened and closed. She said in a small parched
voice: “You’re not—” She could get no other words out.

Spade’s face was yellow-white now. His mouth smiled and there were
smile-wrinkles around his glittering eyes. His voice was soft, gentle.
He said: “I’m going to send you over. The chances are you’ll get off
with life. That means you’ll be out again in twenty years. You’re an
angel. I’ll wait for you.” He cleared his throat. “If they hang you I’ll
always remember you.”

She dropped her hands and stood erect. Her face became smooth and
untroubled except for the faintest of dubious glints in her eyes. She
smiled back at him, gently. “Don’t, Sam, don’t say that even in fun. Oh,
you frightened me for a moment! I really thought you—You know you do
such wild and unpredictable things that—” She broke off. She thrust her
face forward and stared deep into his eyes. Her cheeks and the flesh
around her mouth shivered and fear came back into her eyes. “What—?
Sam!” She put her hands to her throat again and lost her erectness.

Spade laughed. His yellow-white face was damp with sweat and though he
held his smile he could not hold softness in his voice. He croaked:
“Don’t be silly. You’re taking the fall. One of us has got to take it,
after the talking those birds will do. They’d hang me sure. You’re
likely to get a better break. Well?”

“But—but, Sam, you can’t! Not after what we’ve been to each other. You
can’t—”

“Like hell I can’t.”

She took a long trembling breath. “You’ve been playing with me? Only
pretending you cared—to trap me like this? You didn’t—care at all? You
didn’t—don’t—l-love me?”

“I think I do,” Spade said. “What of it?” The muscles holding his smile
in place stood out like wales. “I’m not Thursby. I’m not Jacobi. I won’t
play the sap for you.”

“That is not just,” she cried. Tears came to her eyes. “It’s unfair.
It’s contemptible of you. You know it was not that. You can’t say that.”

“Like hell I can’t,” Spade said. “You came into my bed to stop me asking
questions. You led me out yesterday for Gutman with that phoney call for
help. Last night you came here with them and waited outside for me and
came in with me. You were in my arms when the trap was sprung—I
couldn’t have gone for a gun if I’d had one on me and couldn’t have made
a fight of it if I had wanted to. And if they didn’t take you away with
them it was only because Gutman’s got too much sense to trust you except
for short stretches when he has to and because he thought I’d play the
sap for you and—not wanting to hurt you—wouldn’t be able to hurt him.”

Brigid O’Shaughnessy blinked her tears away. She took a step towards him
and stood looking him in the eyes, straight and proud. “You called me a
liar,” she said. “Now you are lying. You’re lying if you say you don’t
know down in your heart that, in spite of anything I’ve done, I love
you.”

Spade made a short abrupt bow. His eyes were becoming bloodshot, but
there was no other change in his damp and yellowish fixedly smiling
face. “Maybe I do,” he said. “What of it? I should trust you? You who
arranged that nice little trick for—for my predecessor, Thursby? You
who knocked off Miles, a man you had nothing against, in cold blood,
just like swatting a fly, for the sake of double-crossing Thursby? You
who double-crossed Gutman, Cairo, Thursby—one, two, three? You who’ve
never played square with me for half an hour at a stretch since I’ve
known you? I should trust you? No, no, darling. I wouldn’t do it even if
I could. Why should I?”

Her eyes were steady under his and her hushed voice was steady when she
replied: “Why should you? If you’ve been playing with me, if you do not
love me, there is no answer to that. If you did, no answer would be
needed.”

Blood streaked Spade’s eyeballs now and his long-held smile had become a
frightful grimace. He cleared his throat huskily and said: “Making
speeches is no damned good now.” He put a hand on her shoulder. The hand
shook and jerked. “I don’t care who loves who I’m not going to play the
sap for you. I won’t walk in Thursby’s and Christ knows who else’s
footsteps. You killed Miles and you’re going over for it. I could have
helped you by letting the others go and standing off the police the best
way I could. It’s too late for that now. I can’t help you now. And I
wouldn’t if I could.”

She put a hand on his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t help me then,” she
whispered, “but don’t hurt me. Let me go away now.”

“No,” he said. “I’m sunk if I haven’t got you to hand over to the police
when they come. That’s the only thing that can keep me from going down
with the others.”

“You won’t do that for me?”

“I won’t play the sap for you.”

“Don’t say that, please.” She took his hand from her shoulder and held
it to her face. “Why must you do this to me, Sam? Surely Mr. Archer
wasn’t as much to you as—”

“Miles,” Spade said hoarsely, “was a son of a bitch. I found that out
the first week we were in business together and I meant to kick him out
as soon as the year was up. You didn’t do me a damned bit of harm by
killing him.”

“Then what?”

Spade pulled his hand out of hers. He no longer either smiled or
grimaced. His wet yellow face was set hard and deeply lined. His eyes
burned madly. He said: “Listen. This isn’t a damned bit of good. You’ll
never understand me, but I’ll try once more and then we’ll give it up.
Listen. When a man’s partner is killed he’s supposed to do something
about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was
your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. Then it
happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your
organization gets killed it’s bad business to let the killer get away
with it. It’s bad all around—bad for that one organization, bad for
every detective everywhere. Third, I’m a detective and expecting me to
run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to
catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes
it is done, but it’s not the natural thing. The only way I could have
let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. That’s—”

“You’re not serious,” she said. “You don’t expect me to think that these
things you’re saying are sufficient reason for sending me to the—”

“Wait till I’m through and then you can talk. Fourth, no matter what I
wanted to do now it would be absolutely impossible for me to let you go
without having myself dragged to the gallows with the others. Next, I’ve
no reason in God’s world to think I can trust you and if I did this and
got away with it you’d have something on me that you could use whenever
you happened to want to. That’s five of them. The sixth would be that,
since I’ve also got something on you, I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t
decide to shoot a hole in _me_ some day. Seventh, I don’t even like the
idea of thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you’d
played me for a sucker. And eighth—but that’s enough. All those on one
side. Maybe some of them are unimportant. I won’t argue about that. But
look at the number of them. Now on the other side we’ve got what? All
we’ve got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you.”

“You know,” she whispered, “whether you do or not.”

“I don’t. It’s easy enough to be nuts about you.” He looked hungrily
from her hair to her feet and up to her eyes again. “But I don’t know
what that amounts to. Does anybody ever? But suppose I do? What of it?
Maybe next month I won’t. I’ve been through it before—when it lasted
that long. Then what? Then I’ll think I played the sap. And if I did it
and got sent over then I’d be sure I was the sap. Well, if I send you
over I’ll be sorry as hell—I’ll have some rotten nights—but that’ll
pass. Listen.” He took her by the shoulders and bent her back, leaning
over her. “If that doesn’t mean anything to you forget it and we’ll make
it this: I won’t because all of me wants to—wants to say to hell with
the consequences and do it—and because—God damn you—you’ve counted on
that with me the same as you counted on that with the others.” He took
his hands from her shoulders and let them fall to his sides.

She put her hands up to his cheeks and drew his face down again. “Look
at me,” she said, “and tell me the truth. Would you have done this to me
if the falcon had been real and you had been paid your money?”

“What difference does that make now? Don’t be too sure I’m as crooked as
I’m supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good
business—bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with
the enemy.”

She looked at him, saying nothing.

He moved his shoulders a little and said: “Well, a lot of money would
have been at least one more item on the other side of the scales.”

She put her face up to his face. Her mouth was slightly open with lips a
little thrust out. She whispered: “If you loved me you’d need nothing
more on that side.”

Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them: “I
won’t play the sap for you.”

She put her mouth to his, slowly, her arms around him, and came into his
arms. She was in his arms when the door-bell rang.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Spade, left arm around Brigid O’Shaughnessy, opened the corridor-door.
Lieutenant Dundy, Detective-sergeant Tom Polhaus, and two other
detectives were there.

Spade said: “Hello, Tom. Get them?”

Polhaus said: “Got them.”

“Swell. Come in. Here’s another one for you.” Spade pressed the girl
forward. “She killed Miles. And I’ve got some exhibits—the boy’s guns,
one of Cairo’s, a black statuette that all the hell was about, and a
thousand-dollar bill that I was supposed to be bribed with.” He looked
at Dundy, drew his brows together, leaned forward to peer into the
Lieutenant’s face, and burst out laughing. “What in hell’s the matter
with your little playmate, Tom? He looks heartbroken.” He laughed again.
“I bet, by God! when he heard Gutman’s story he thought he had me at
last.”

“Cut it out, Sam,” Tom grumbled. “We didn’t think—”

“Like hell he didn’t,” Spade said merrily. “He came up here with his
mouth watering, though you’d have sense enough to know I’d been
stringing Gutman.”

“Cut it out,” Tom grumbled again, looking uneasily sidewise at his
superior. “Anyways we got it from Cairo. Gutman’s dead. The kid had just
finished shooting him up when we got there.”

Spade nodded. “He ought to have expected that,” he said.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Effie Perine put down her newspaper and jumped out of Spade’s chair when
he came into the office at a little after nine o’clock Monday morning.

He said: “Morning, angel.”

“Is that—what the papers have—right?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.” He dropped his hat on the desk and sat down. His face was
pasty in color, but its lines were strong and cheerful and his eyes,
though still somewhat red-veined, were clear.

The girl’s brown eyes were peculiarly enlarged and there was a queer
twist to her mouth. She stood beside him, staring down at him.

He raised his head, grinned, and said mockingly: “So much for your
woman’s intuition.”

Her voice was queer as the expression on her face. “You did that, Sam,
to her?”

He nodded. “Your Sam’s a detective.” He looked sharply at her. He put
his arm around her waist, his hand on her hip. “She did kill Miles,
angel,” he said gently, “offhand, like that.” He snapped the fingers of
his other hand.

She escaped from his arm as if it had hurt her. “Don’t, please, don’t
touch me,” she said brokenly. “I know—I know you’re right. You’re
right. But don’t touch me now—not now.”

Spade’s face became pale as his collar.

The corridor-door’s knob rattled. Effie Perine turned quickly and went
into the outer office, shutting the door behind her. When she came in
again she shut it behind her.

She said in a small flat voice: “Iva is here.”

Spade, looking down at his desk, nodded almost imperceptibly. “Yes,” he
said, and shivered. “Well, send her in.”

                                THE END




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