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She was a lanky sunburned girl whose tan dress of thin woolen stuff clung to her with an effect of dampness.
Then she tortured her lower lip with glistening teeth and said nothing.
“Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver.
“You always think you know what you’re doing, but you’re too slick for your own good, and some day you’re going to find it out.”
Her dark red hair, parted on the left side, swept back in loose waves over her right temple, was somewhat tousled.
The upper part of his face frowned. The lower part smiled.
You’re very good. It’s chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get into your voice when you say things like ‘Be generous, Mr. Spade.’”
Spade’s yellow-grey eyes were somber. His face was wooden, with a trace of sullenness around the mouth.
“Most things in San Francisco can be bought, or taken.”
He stood beside the fireplace and looked at her with eyes that studied, weighed, judged her without pretense that they were not studying, weighing, judging her.
The life he knew was a clean orderly sane responsible affair. Now a falling beam had shown him that life was fundamentally none of these things.
“Yes,” Spade growled. “And when you’re slapped you’ll take it and like it.”
“You’re not coming in. What do you want to do about it? Try to get in? Or do your talking here? Or go to hell?”
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.
He frowned until his forehead was marked by raw red creases.
His face was a watchful-eyed smiling mask held up between his thoughts and Spade.
