The Maltese Falcon (22 page)

“All set, Mr. Spade. She’s full of gas and rearing to go.”

“Swell.” Spade emptied his cup and went out with the thickset man. “Know where Ancho Avenue, or Road, or Boulevard, is in Burlingame?”

“Nope, but if she’s there we can find her.”

“Let’s do that,” Spade said as he sat beside the chauffeur in the dark Cadillac sedan. “Twenty-six is the number we want, and the sooner the better, but we don’t want to pull up at the front door.”

“Correct.”

They rode half a dozen blocks in silence. The chauffeur said: “Your partner got knocked off, didn’t he, Mr. Spade?”

“Uh-huh.”

The chauffeur clucked. “She’s a tough racket. You can have it for mine.”

“Well, hack-drivers don’t live forever.”

“Maybe that’s right,” the thick-set man conceded, “but, just the same, it’ll always be a surprise to me if I don’t.”

Spade stared ahead at nothing and thereafter, until the chauffeur tired of making conversation, replied with uninterested yeses and noes.

At a drug-store in Burlingame the chauffeur learned how to reach Ancho Avenue. Ten minutes later he stopped the sedan near a dark corner, turned off the lights, and waved his hand at the block ahead. “There she is,” he said. “She ought to be on the other side, maybe the third or fourth house.”

Spade said, “Right,” and got out of the car. “Keep the engine going. We may have to leave in a hurry.”

He crossed the street and went up the other side. Far ahead a lone street-light burned. Warmer lights dotted the night on either side where houses were spaced half a dozen to a block. A high thin moon was cold and feeble as the distant street-light. A radio droned through the open windows of a house on the other side of the street.

In front of the second house from the corner Spade halted. On one of the gateposts that were massive out of all proportion to the
fence flanking them a 2 and a 6 of pale metal caught what light there was. A square white card was nailed over them. Putting his face close to the card, Spade could see that it was a
For Sale or Rent
sign. There was no gate between the posts. Spade went up the cement walk to the house. He stood still on the walk at the foot of the porch-steps for a long moment. No sound came from the house. The house was dark except for another pale square card nailed on its door.

Spade went up to the door and listened. He could hear nothing. He tried to look through the glass of the door. There was no curtain to keep his gaze out, but inner darkness. He tiptoed to a window and then to another. They, like the door, were uncurtained except by inner darkness. He tried both windows. They were locked. He tried the door. It was locked.

He left the porch and, stepping carefully over dark unfamiliar ground, walked through weeds around the house. The side-windows were too high to be reached from the ground. The back door and the one back window he could reach were locked.

Spade went back to the gatepost and, cupping the flame between his hands, held his lighter up to the
For Sale or Rent
sign. It bore the printed name and address of a San Mateo real-estate-dealer and a line penciled in blue:
Key at 31.

Spade returned to the sedan and asked the chauffeur: “Got a flashlight?”

“Sure.” He gave it to Spade. “Can I give you a hand at anything?”

“Maybe.” Spade got into the sedan. “We’ll ride up to number thirty-one. You can use your lights.”

Number 31 was a square grey house across the street from, but a little farther up than, 26. Lights glowed in its downstairs-windows. Spade went up on the porch and rang the bell. A dark-haired girl of fourteen or fifteen opened the door. Spade, bowing and smiling, said: “I’d like to get the key to number twenty-six.”

“I’ll call Papa,” she said and went back into the house calling: “Papa!”

A plump red-faced man, bald-headed and heavily mustached, appeared, carrying a newspaper.

Spade said: “I’d like to get the key to twenty-six.”

The plump man looked doubtful. He said: “The juice is not on. You couldn’t see anything.”

Spade patted his pocket. “I’ve a flashlight.”

The plump man looked more doubtful. He cleared his throat uneasily and crumpled the newspaper in his hand.

Spade showed him one of his business-cards, put it back in his pocket, and said in a low voice: “We got a tip that there might be something hidden there.”

The plump man’s face and voice were eager. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ll go over with you.”

A moment later he came back carrying a brass key attached to a black and red tag. Spade beckoned to the chauffeur as they passed the car and the chauffeur joined them.

“Anybody been looking at the house lately?” Spade asked.

“Not that I know of,” the plump man replied. “Nobody’s been to me for the key in a couple of months.”

The plump man marched ahead with the key until they had gone up on the porch. Then he thrust the key into Spade’s hand, mumbled, “Here you are,” and stepped aside.

Spade unlocked the door and pushed it open. There was silence and darkness. Holding the flashlight—dark—in his left hand, Spade entered. The chauffeur came close behind him and then, at a little distance, the plump man followed them. They searched the house from bottom to top, cautiously at first, then, finding nothing, boldly. The house was empty—unmistakably—and there was nothing to indicate that it had been visited in weeks.

Saying, “Thanks, that’s all,” Spade left the sedan in front of the Alexandria. He went into the hotel, to the desk, where a tall young man with a dark grave face said: “Good evening, Mr. Spade.”

“Good evening.” Spade drew the young man to one end of the desk. “These Gutmans—up in twelve C—are they in?”

The young man replied, “No,” darting a quick glance at Spade. Then he looked away, hesitated, looked at Spade again, and murmured: “A funny thing happened in connection with them this evening, Mr. Spade. Somebody called the Emergency Hospital and told them there was a sick girl up there.”

“And there wasn’t?”

“Oh, no, there was nobody up there. They went out earlier in the evening.”

Spade said: “Well, these practical-jokers have to have their fun. Thanks.”

He went to a telephone-booth, called a number, and said: “Hello…. Mrs. Perine? … Is Effie there? … Yes, please…. Thanks.

“Hello, angel! What’s the good word? … Fine, fine! Hold it. I’ll be out in twenty minutes…. Right.”

Half an hour later Spade rang the doorbell of a two-story brick building in Ninth Avenue. Effie Perine opened the door. Her boyish face was tired and smiling. “Hello, boss,” she said. “Enter.” She said in a low voice: “If Ma says anything to you, Sam, be nice to her. She’s all up in the air.”

Spade grinned reassuringly and patted her shoulder.

She put her hands on his arm. “Miss O’Shaughnessy?”

“No,” he growled. “I ran into a plant. Are you sure it was her voice?”

“Yes.”

He made an unpleasant face. “Well, it was hooey.”

She took him into a bright living-room, sighed, and slumped down on one end of a Chesterfield, smiling cheerfully up at him through her weariness.

He sat beside her and asked: “Everything went O K? Nothing said about the bundle?”

“Nothing. I told them what you told me to tell them, and they seemed to take it for granted that the phone call had something to do with it, and that you were out running it down.”

“Dundy there?”

“No. Hoff and O’Gar and some others I didn’t know. I talked to the Captain too.”

“They took you down to the Hall?”

“Oh, yes, and they asked me loads of questions, but it was all—you know—routine.”

Spade rubbed his palms together. “Swell,” he said and then frowned, “though I guess they’ll think up plenty to put to me when we meet. That damned Dundy will, anyway, and Bryan.” He moved his shoulders. “Anybody you know, outside of the police, come around?”

“Yes.” She sat up straight. “That boy—the one who brought the message from Gutman—was there. He didn’t come in, but the police left the corridor-door open while they were there and I saw him standing there.”

“You didn’t say anything?”

“Oh, no. You had said not to. So I didn’t pay any attention to him and the next time I looked he was gone.”

Spade grinned at her. “Damned lucky for you, sister, that the coppers got there first.”

“Why?”

“He’s a bad egg, that lad—poison. Was the dead man Jacobi?”

“Yes.”

He pressed her hands and stood up. “I’m going to run along. You’d better hit the hay. You’re all in.”

She rose. “Sam, what is—?”

He stopped her words with his hand on her mouth. “Save it till Monday,” he said. “I want to sneak out before your mother catches me and gives me hell for dragging her lamb through gutters.”

Midnight was a few minutes away when Spade reached his home. He put his key into the street-door’s lock. Heels clicked rapidly on the sidewalk behind him. He let go the key and wheeled. Brigid O’Shaughnessy ran up the steps to him. She put her arms around
him and hung on him, panting: “Oh, I thought you’d never come!” Her face was haggard, distraught, shaken by the tremors that shook her from head to foot.

With the hand not supporting her he felt for the key again, opened the door, and half lifted her inside. “You’ve been waiting?” he asked.

“Yes.” Panting spaced her words. “In a—doorway—up the—street.”

“Can you make it all right?” he asked. “Or shall I carry you?”

She shook her head against his shoulder. “I’ll be—all right-when I—get where—I can—sit down.”

They rode up to Spade’s floor in the elevator and went around to his apartment. She left his arm and
stood
beside him—panting, both hands to her breast—while he unlocked his door. He switched on the passageway light. They went in. He shut the door and, with his arm around her again, took her back towards the living-room. When they were within a step of the living-room-door the light in the living-room went on.

The girl cried out and clung to Spade.

Just inside the living-room-door fat Gutman stood smiling benevolently at them. The boy Wilmer came out of the kitchen behind them. Black pistols were gigantic in his small hands. Cairo came from the bathroom. He too had a pistol.

Gutman said: “Well, sir, we’re all here, as you can see for yourself. Now let’s come in and sit down and be comfortable and talk.”

Spade, with his arms around Brigid O’Shaughnessy, smiled meagerly over her head and said: “Sure, we’ll talk.”

Gutman’s bulbs jounced as he took three waddling backward steps away from the door.

Spade and the girl went in together. The boy and Cairo followed them in. Cairo stopped in the doorway. The boy put away one of his pistols and came up close behind Spade.

Spade turned his head far around to look down over his shoulder at the boy and said: “Get away. You’re not going to frisk me.”

The boy said: “Stand still. Shut up.”

Spade’s nostrils went in and out with his breathing. His voice was level. “Get away. Put your paw on me and I’m going to make you use the gun. Ask your boss if he wants me shot up before we talk.”

“Never mind, Wilmer,” the fat man said. He frowned indulgently at Spade. “You are certainly a most headstrong individual. Well, let’s be seated.”

Spade said, “I told you I didn’t like that punk,” and took Brigid O’Shaughnessy to the sofa by the windows. They sat close
together, her head against his left shoulder, his left arm around her shoulders. She had stopped trembling, had stopped panting. The appearance of Gutman and his companions seemed to have robbed her of that freedom of personal movement and emotion that is animal, leaving her alive, conscious, but quiescent as a plant.

Gutman lowered himself into the padded rocking chair. Cairo chose the armchair by the table. The boy Wilmer did not sit down. He stood in the doorway where Cairo had stood, letting his one visible pistol hang down at his side, looking under curling lashes at Spade’s body. Cairo put his pistol on the table beside him.

Spade took off his hat and tossed it to the other end of the sofa. He grinned at Gutman. The looseness of his lower lip and the droop of his upper eyelids combined with the v’s in his face to make his grin lewd as a satyr’s. “That daughter of yours has a nice belly,” he said, “too nice to be scratched up with pins.”

Gutman’s smile was affable if a bit oily.

The boy in the doorway took a short step forward, raising his pistol as far as his hip. Everybody in the room looked at him. In the dissimilar eyes with which Brigid O’Shaughnessy and Joel Cairo looked at him there was, oddly, something identically reproving. The boy blushed, drew back his advanced foot, straightened his legs, lowered the pistol and stood as he had stood before, looking under lashes that hid his eyes at Spade’s chest. The blush was pale enough and lasted for only an instant, but it was startling on his face that habitually was so cold and composed.

Gutman turned his sleek-eyed fat smile on Spade again. His voice was a suave purring. “Yes, sir, that was a shame, but you must admit that it served its purpose.”