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