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