Chapter V: Part 5

“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—”