The Maltese Falcon (27 page)

Cairo took his hands from his face and his eyes bulged. He
stammered: “You are—?” Amazement coming with full comprehension made him speechless.

Gutman patted his fat hands together. His eyes twinkled. His voice was a complacent throaty purring: “For seventeen years I have wanted that little item and have been trying to get it. If I must spend another year on the quest—well, sir—that will be an additional expenditure in time of only”—his lips moved silently as he calculated—“five and fifteen-seventeenths per cent.”

The Levantine giggled and cried: “I go with you!”

Spade suddenly released the girl’s wrist and looked around the room. The boy was not there. Spade went into the passageway. The corridor-door stood open. Spade made a dissatisfied mouth, shut the door, and returned to the living-room. He leaned against the door-frame and looked at Gutman and Cairo. He looked at Gutman for a long time, sourly. Then he spoke, mimicking the fat man’s throaty purr: “Well, sir, I must say you’re a swell lot of thieves!”

Gutman chuckled. “We’ve little enough to boast about, and that’s a fact, sir,” he said. “But, well, we’re none of us dead yet and there’s not a bit of use thinking the world’s come to an end just because we’ve run into a little setback.” He brought his left hand from behind him and held it out towards Spade, pink smooth hilly palm up. “I’ll have to ask you for that envelope, sir.”

Spade did not move. His face was wooden. He said: “I held up my end. You got your dingus. It’s your hard luck, not mine, that it wasn’t what you wanted.”

“Now come, sir,” Gutman said persuasively, “we’ve all failed and there’s no reason for expecting any one of us to bear the brunt of it, and—” He brought his right hand from behind him. In the hand was a small pistol, an ornately engraved and inlaid affair of silver and gold and mother-of-pearl. “In short, sir, I must ask you to return my ten thousand dollars.”

Spade’s face did not change. He shrugged and took the envelope from his pocket. He started to hold it out to Gutman, hesitated opened the envelope, and took out one thousand-dollar bill. He put that bill into his trousers-pocket. He tucked the envelope’s flap in
over the other bills and held them out to Gutman. “That’ll take care of my time and expenses,” he said.

Gutman, after a little pause, imitated Spade’s shrug and accepted the envelope. He said: “Now, sir, we will say good-bye to you, unless”—the fat puffs around his eyes crinkled—“you care to undertake the Constantinople expedition with us. You don’t? Well, sir, frankly I’d like to have you along. You’re a man to my liking, a man of many resources and nice judgment. Because we know you’re a man of nice judgment we know we can say good-bye with every assurance that you’ll hold the details of our little enterprise in confidence. We know we can count on you to appreciate the fact that, as the situation now stands, any legal difficulties that come to us in connection with these last few days would likewise and equally come to you and the charming Miss O’Shaughnessy. You’re too shrewd not to recognize that, sir, I’m sure.”

“I understand that,” Spade replied.

“I was sure you would. I’m also sure that, now there’s no alternative, you’ll somehow manage the police without a fall-guy.”

“I’ll make out all right,” Spade replied.

“I was sure you would. Well, sir, the shortest farewells are the best. Adieu.” He made a portly bow. “And to you, Miss O’Shaughnessy, adieu. I leave you the
rara avis
on the table as a little memento.”

For all of five minutes after the outer door had closed behind Casper Gutman and Joel Cairo, Spade, motionless, stood staring at the knob of the open living-room-door. His eyes were gloomy under a forehead drawn down. The clefts at the root of his nose were deep and red. His lips protruded loosely, pouting. He drew them in to make a hard v and went to the telephone. He had not looked at Brigid O’Shaughnessy, who stood by the table looking with uneasy eyes at him.

He picked up the telephone, set it on its shelf again, and bent to look into the telephone-directory hanging from a corner of the shelf. He turned the pages rapidly until he found the one he wanted, ran his finger down a column, straightened up, and lifted the telephone from the shelf again. He called a number and said:

“Hello, is Sergeant Polhaus there? … Will you call him, please? This is Samuel Spade….” He stared into space, waiting. “Hello, Tom, I’ve got something for you…. Yes, plenty. Here it is: Thursby and Jacobi were shot by a kid named Wilmer Cook.” He described the boy minutely. “He’s working for a man named Casper Gutman.” He described Gutman. “That fellow Cairo you
met here is in with them too…. Yes, that’s it…. Gutman’s staying at the Alexandria, suite twelve C, or was. They’ve just left here and they’re blowing town, so you’ll have to move fast, but I don’t think they’re expecting a pinch…. There’s a girl in it too—Gutman’s daughter.” He described Rhea Gutman. “Watch yourself when you go up against the kid. He’s supposed to be pretty good with the gun…. That’s right, Tom, and I’ve got some stuff here for you. I’ve got the guns he used…. That’s right. Step on it—and luck to you!”

Spade slowly replaced receiver on prong, telephone on shelf. He wet his lips and looked down at his hands. Their palms were wet. He filled his deep chest with air. His eyes were glittering between straightened lids. He turned and took three long swift steps into the living room.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy, startled by the suddenness of his approach, let her breath out in a little laughing gasp.

Spade, face to face with her, very close to her, tall, big-boned and thick-muscled, coldly smiling, hard of jaw and eye, said: “They’ll talk when they’re nailed—about us. We’re sitting on dynamite, and we’ve only got minutes to get set for the police. Give me all of it—fast. Gutman sent you and Cairo to Constantinople?”

She started to speak, hesitated, and bit her lip.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “God damn you, talk!” he said. “I’m in this with you and you’re not going to gum it. Talk. He sent you to Constantinople?”

“Y-yes, he sent me. I met Joe there and—and asked him to help me. Then we—”

“Wait. You asked Cairo to help you get it from Kemidov?”

“Yes.”

“For Gutman?”

She hesitated again, squirmed under the hard angry glare of his eyes, swallowed, and said: “No, not then. We thought we would get it for ourselves.”

“All right. Then?”

“Oh, then I began to be afraid that Joe wouldn’t play fair with me, so—so I asked Floyd Thursby to help me.”

“And he did. Well?”

“Well, we got it and went to Hongkong.”

“With Cairo? Or had you ditched him before that?”

“Yes. We left him in Constantinople, in jail—something about a check.”

“Something you fixed up to hold him there?”

She looked shamefacedly at Spade and whispered: “Yes.”

“Right. Now you and Thursby are in Hongkong with the bird.”

“Yes, and then—I didn’t know him very well—I didn’t know whether I could trust him. I thought it would be safer—anyway, I met Captain Jacobi and I knew his boat was coming here, so I asked him to bring a package for me—and that was the bird. I wasn’t sure I could trust Thursby, or that Joe or—or somebody working for Gutman might not be on the boat we came on—and that seemed the safest plan.”

“All right. Then you and Thursby caught one of the fast boats over. Then what?”

“Then—then I was afraid of Gutman. I knew he had people-connections—everywhere, and he’d soon know what we had done. And I was afraid he’d have learned that we had left Hongkong for San Francisco. He was in New York and I knew if he heard that by cable he would have plenty of time to get here by the time we did, or before. He did. I didn’t know that then, but I was afraid of it, and I had to wait here until Captain Jacobi’s boat arrived. And I was afraid Gutman would find me—or find Floyd and buy. him over. That’s why I came to you and asked you to watch him for—”

“That’s a lie,” Spade said. “You had Thursby hooked and you knew it. He was a sucker for women. His record shows that—the only falls he took were over women. And once a chump, always a chump. Maybe you didn’t know his record, but you’d know you had him safe.”

She blushed and looked timidly at him.

He said: “You wanted to get him out of the way before Jacobi came with the loot. What was your scheme?”

“I—I knew he’d left the States with a gambler after some trouble. I didn’t know what it was, but I thought that if it was anything serious and he saw a detective watching him he’d think it was on account of the old trouble, and would be frightened into going away. I didn’t think—”

“You told him he was being shadowed,” Spade said confidently. “Miles hadn’t many brains, but he wasn’t clumsy enough to be spotted the first night.”

“I told him, yes. When we went out for a walk that night I pretended to discover Mr. Archer following us and pointed him out to Floyd.” She sobbed. “But please believe, Sam, that I wouldn’t have done it if I had thought Floyd would kill him. I thought he’d be frightened into leaving the city. I didn’t for a minute think he’d shoot him like that.”

Spade smiled wolfishly with his lips, but not at all with his eyes. He said: “If you thought he wouldn’t you were right, angel.”

The girl’s upraised face held utter astonishment.

Spade said: “Thursby didn’t shoot him.”

Incredulity joined astonishment in the girl’s face.

Spade said: “Miles hadn’t many brains, but, Christ! he had too many years’ experience as a detective to be caught like that by the man he was shadowing. Up a blind alley with his gun tucked away on his hip and his overcoat buttoned? Not a chance. He was as dumb as any man ought to be, but he wasn’t quite that dumb. The only two ways out of the alley could be watched from the edge of Bush Street over the tunnel. You’d told us Thursby was a bad actor. He couldn’t have tricked Miles into the alley like that, and he couldn’t have driven him in. He was dumb, but not dumb enough for that.”

He ran his tongue over the inside of his lips and smiled affectionately at the girl. He said: “But he’d’ve gone up there with you, angel, if he was sure nobody else was up there. You were his client,
so he would have had no reason for not dropping the shadow on your say-so, and if you caught up with him and asked him to go up there he’d’ve gone. He was just dumb enough for that. He’d’ve looked you up and down and licked his lips and gone grinning from ear to ear—and then you could’ve stood as close to him as you liked in the dark and put a hole through him with the gun you had got from Thursby that evening.”

Brigid O’Shaughnessy shrank back from him until the edge of the table stopped her. She looked at him with terrified eyes and cried: “Don’t—don’t talk to me like that, Sam! You know I didn’t! You know—”

“Stop it.” He looked at the watch on his wrist. “The police will be blowing in any minute now and we’re sitting on dynamite. Talk!”

She put the back of a hand on her forehead. “Oh, why do you accuse me of such a terrible—?”

“Will you stop it?” he demanded in a low impatient voice. “This isn’t the spot for the schoolgirl-act. Listen to me. The pair of us are sitting under the gallows.” He took hold of her wrists and made her stand up straight in front of him. “Talk!”

“I—I— How did you know he—he licked his lips and looked—?”

Spade laughed harshly. “I knew Miles. But never mind that. Why did you shoot him?”

She twisted her wrists out of Spade’s fingers and put her hands up around the back of his neck, pulling his head down until his mouth all but touched hers. Her body was flat against his from knees to chest. He put his arms around her, holding her tight to him. Her dark-lashed lids were half down over velvet eyes. Her voice was hushed, throbbing: “I didn’t mean to, at first. I didn’t, really. I meant what I told you, but when I saw Floyd couldn’t be frightened I—”

Spade slapped her shoulder. He said: “That’s a lie. You asked Miles and me to handle it ourselves. You wanted to be sure the shadower was somebody you knew and who knew you, so they’d go with you. You got the gun from Thursby that day—that night.
You had already rented the apartment at the Coronet. You had trunks there and none at the hotel and when I looked the apartment over I found a rent-receipt dated five or six days before the time you told me you rented it.”

She swallowed with difficulty and her voice was humble. “Yes, that’s a lie, Sam. I did intend to if Floyd— I—I can’t look at you and tell you this, Sam.” She pulled his head farther down until her cheek was against his cheek, her mouth by his ear, and whispered: “I knew Floyd wouldn’t be easily frightened, but I thought that if he knew somebody was shadowing him either he’d— Oh, I can’t say it, Sam!” She clung to him, sobbing.

Spade said: “You thought Floyd would tackle him and one or the other of them would go down. If Thursby was the one then you were rid of him. If Miles was, then you could see that Floyd was caught and you’d be rid of him. That it?”

“S-something like that.”

“And when you found that Thursby didn’t mean to tackle him you borrowed the gun and did it yourself. Right?”