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“Miss Wonderly’s sister ran away from New York with a fellow named Floyd Thursby. They’re here. Miss Wonderly has seen Thursby and has a date with him tonight. Maybe he’ll bring the sister with him. The chances are he won’t. Miss Wonderly wants us to find the sister and get her away from him and back home.”
“Maybe. And here’s something for you to not forget, sweetheart. I’ll tell it or not as I damned please. It’s a long while since I burst out crying because policemen didn’t like me.”
Having Miles knocked off bothered me, and then you birds cracking foxy.
He laughed at her, his eyes still glittering. “You killed my husband, Sam, be kind to me.” He clapped his palms together and said: “Jesus Christ.”
He kissed her mouth, led her to the door, opened it, said, “Good-bye, Iva,” bowed her out, shut the door, and returned to his desk. He took tobacco and cigarette-papers from his vest-pockets, but did not roll a cigarette. He sat holding the papers in one hand, the tobacco in the other, and looked with brooding eyes at his dead partner’s desk.
Spade took the girl’s hand and patted it. “You’re a detective, darling, but”—he shook his head—“she didn’t kill him.”
“That depends,” he said. “The hell of it is, Miss—Is your name Wonderly or Leblanc?” She blushed and murmured: “It’s really O’Shaughnessy—Brigid O’Shaughnessy.”
“Go to them!” he exclaimed, his voice loud with rage. “They’ve been running me ragged since four o’clock this morning. I’ve made myself God knows how much trouble standing them off. For what? For some crazy notion that I could help you. I can’t. I won’t try.”
“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.”
The boy spoke two words, the first a short guttural verb, the second “you.”
The fat man was flabbily fat with bulbous pink cheeks and lips and chins and neck, with a great soft egg of a belly that was all his torso, and pendant cones for arms and legs.
His voice was a throaty purr. “Ah, Mr. Spade,” he said with enthusiasm and held out a hand like a fat pink star.
“You could say, then, that the question is which one of them you’ll represent?”
The rest of the history he repeated with the accuracy of a trained interviewer.
“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 ferryboat.” 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.
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.”
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.”
“Now listen, kid. If you come over here and start cutting up I’m going to kick you in the face. Sit down and shut up and behave and you’ll last longer.”
“Yes, sir, that I did.” The fat man took a crumpled bill from his vest-pocket, smoothed it on a wide thigh, took the envelope holding the nine bills from his coat-pocket, and put the smoothed bill in with the others.
“I hope to Christ they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck.” He slid his hands up to caress her throat.
