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