Chapter 2

“What’s the use of us
having a row? If you want to know why we didn’t talk turkey it’s because
when I asked you who this Thursby was you as good as told me it was none
of my business. You can’t treat us that way, Sam. It ain’t right and it
won’t get you anywheres. We got our work to do.”

Lieutenant Dundy jumped up, stood close to Spade, and thrust his square
face up at the taller man’s.

“I’ve warned you your foot was going to slip one of these days,” he
said.

Spade made a depreciative mouth, raising his eyebrows. “Everybody’s foot
slips sometime,” he replied with derisive mildness.

“And this is yours.”

Spade smiled and shook his head. “No, I’ll do nicely, thank you.” He
stopped smiling. His upper lip, on the left side, twitched over his
eyetooth. His eyes became narrow and sultry. His voice came out deep as
the Lieutenant’s. “I don’t like this. What are you sucking around for?
Tell me, or get out and let me go to bed.”

“Who’s Thursby?” Dundy demanded.

“I told Tom what I knew about him.”

“You told Tom damned little.”

“I knew damned little.”

“Why were you tailing him?”

“I wasn’t. Miles was—for the swell reason that we had a client who was
paying good United States money to have him tailed.”

“Who’s the client?”

Placidity came back to Spade’s face and voice. He said reprovingly: “You
know I can’t tell you that until I’ve talked it over with the client.”

“You’ll tell it to me or you’ll tell it in court,” Dundy said hotly.
“This is murder and don’t you forget it.”

“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.”

Tom left the sofa and sat on the foot of the bed. His carelessly shaven
mud-smeared face was tired and lined.

“Be reasonable, Sam,” he pleaded. “Give us a chance. How can we turn up
anything on Miles’s killing if you won’t give us what you’ve got?”

“You needn’t get a headache over that,” Spade told him. “I’ll bury my
dead.”

Lieutenant Dundy sat down and put his hands on his knees again. His eyes
were warm green discs.

“I thought you would,” he said. He smiled with grim content. “That’s
just exactly why we came to see you. Isn’t it, Tom?”

Tom groaned, but said nothing articulate.

Spade watched Dundy warily.

“That’s just exactly what I said to Tom,” the Lieutenant went on. “I
said: ‘Tom, I’ve got a hunch that Sam Spade’s a man to keep the
family-troubles in the family.’ That’s just what I said to him.”

The wariness went out of Spade’s eyes. He made his eyes dull with
boredom. He turned his face around to Tom and asked with great
carelessness: “What’s itching your boy-friend now?”

Dundy jumped up and tapped Spade’s chest with the ends of two bent
fingers.

“Just this,” he said, taking pains to make each word distinct,
emphasizing them with his tapping finger-ends: “Thursby was shot down in
front of his hotel just thirty-five minutes after you left Burritt
Street.”

Spade spoke, taking equal pains with his words: “Keep your God-damned
paws off me.”

Dundy withdrew the tapping fingers, but there was no change in his
voice: “Tom says you were in too much of a hurry to even stop for a look
at your partner.”

Tom growled apologetically: “Well, damn it, Sam, you did run off like
that.”

“And you didn’t go to Archer’s house to tell his wife,” the Lieutenant
said. “We called up and that girl in your office was there, and she said
you sent her.”

Spade nodded. His face was stupid in its calmness.

Lieutenant Dundy raised his two bent fingers towards Spade’s chest,
quickly lowered them, and said: “I give you ten minutes to get to a
phone and do your talking to the girl. I give you ten minutes to get to
Thursby’s joint—Geary near Leavenworth—you could do it easy in that
time, or fifteen at the most. And that gives you ten or fifteen minutes
of waiting before he showed up.”

“I knew where he lived?” Spade asked. “And I knew he hadn’t gone
straight home from killing Miles?”

“You knew what you knew,” Dundy replied stubbornly. “What time did you
get home?”

“Twenty minutes to four. I walked around thinking things over.”

The Lieutenant wagged his round head up and down. “We knew you weren’t
home at three-thirty. We tried to get you on the phone. Where’d you do
your walking?”

“Out Bush Street a way and back.”

“Did you see anybody that—?”

“No, no witnesses,” Spade said and laughed pleasantly. “Sit down, Dundy.
You haven’t finished your drink. Get your glass, Tom.”

Tom said: “No, thanks, Sam.”

Dundy sat down, but paid no attention to his glass of rum.

Spade filled his own glass, drank, set the empty glass on the table, and
returned to his bedside-seat.

“I know where I stand now,” he said, looking with friendly eyes from one
of the police-detectives to the other. “I’m sorry I got up on my hind
legs, but you birds coming in and trying to put the work on me made me
nervous. Having Miles knocked off bothered me, and then you birds
cracking foxy. That’s all right now, though, now that I know what you’re
up to.”

Tom said: “Forget it.”

The Lieutenant said nothing.

Spade asked: “Thursby die?”

While the Lieutenant hesitated Tom said: “Yes.”

Then the Lieutenant said angrily: “And you might just as well know
it—if you don’t—that he died before he could tell anybody anything.”

Spade was rolling a cigarette. He asked, not looking up: “What do you
mean by that? You think I did know it?”

“I meant what I said,” Dundy replied bluntly.

Spade looked up at him and smiled, holding the finished cigarette in one
hand, his lighter in the other.

“You’re not ready to pinch me yet, are you, Dundy?” he asked.

Dundy looked with hard green eyes at Spade and did not answer him.

“Then,” said Spade, “there’s no particular reason why I should give a
damn what you think, is there, Dundy?”

Tom said: “Aw, be reasonable, Sam.”

Spade put the cigarette in his mouth, set fire to it, and laughed smoke
out.

“I’ll be reasonable, Tom,” he promised. “How did I kill this Thursby?
I’ve forgotten.”

Tom grunted disgust. Lieutenant Dundy said: “He was shot four times in
the back, with a forty-four or forty-five, from across the street, when
he started to go in the hotel. Nobody saw it, but that’s the way it
figures.”

“And he was wearing a Luger in a shoulder-holster,” Tom added. “It
hadn’t been fired.”

“What do the hotel-people know about him?” Spade asked.

“Nothing except that he’d been there a week.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

“What did you find on him? or in his room?”

Dundy drew his lips in and asked: “What’d you think we’d find?”

Spade made a careless circle with his limp cigarette. “Something to tell
you who he was, what his story was. Did you?”

“We thought you could tell us that.”

Spade looked at the Lieutenant with yellow-grey eyes that held an almost
exaggerated amount of candor. “I’ve never seen Thursby, dead or alive.”

Lieutenant Dundy stood up looking dissatisfied. Tom rose yawning and
stretching.

“We’ve asked what we came to ask,” Dundy said, frowning over eyes hard
as green pebbles. He held his mustached upper lip tight to his teeth,
letting his lower lip push the words out. “We’ve told you more than
you’ve told us. That’s fair enough. You know me, Spade. If you did or
you didn’t you’ll get a square deal out of me, and most of the breaks. I
don’t know that I’d blame you a hell of a lot—but that wouldn’t keep me
from nailing you.”

“Fair enough,” Spade replied evenly. “But I’d feel better about it if
you’d drink your drink.”

Lieutenant Dundy turned to the table, picked up his glass, and slowly
emptied it. Then he said, “Good night,” and held out his hand. They
shook hands ceremoniously. Tom and Spade shook hands ceremoniously.
Spade let them out. Then he undressed, turned off the lights, and went
to bed.

3

THREE WOMEN

WHEN Spade reached his office at ten o’clock the following morning Effie
Perine was at her desk opening the morning’s mail. Her boyish face was
pale under its sunburn. She put down the handful of envelopes and the
brass paper-knife she held and said: “She’s in there.” Her voice was low
and warning.

“I asked you to keep her away,” Spade complained. He too kept his voice
low.

Effie Perine’s brown eyes opened wide and her voice was irritable as
his: “Yes, but you didn’t tell me how.” Her eyelids went together a
little and her shoulders drooped. “Don’t be cranky, Sam,” she said
wearily. “I had her all night.”

Spade stood beside the girl, put a hand on her head, and smoothed her
hair away from its parting. “Sorry, angel, I haven’t—” He broke off as
the inner door opened. “Hello, Iva,” he said to the woman who had opened
it.

“Oh, Sam!” she said.

She was a blonde woman of a few more years than thirty. Her facial
prettiness was perhaps five years past its best moment. Her body for all
its sturdiness was finely modeled and exquisite. She wore black clothes
from hat to shoes. They had as mourning an impromptu air. Having spoken,
she stepped back from the door and stood waiting for Spade.

He took his hand from Effie Perine’s head and entered the inner office,
shutting the door. Iva came quickly to him, raising her sad face for his
kiss. Her arms were around him before his held her. When they had kissed
he made a little movement as if to release her, but she pressed her face
to his chest and began sobbing.

He stroked her round back, saying: “Poor darling.” His voice was tender.
His eyes, squinting at the desk that had been his partner’s, across the
room from his own, were angry. He drew his lips back over his teeth in
an impatient grimace and turned his chin aside to avoid contact with the
crown of her hat. “Did you send for Miles’s brother?” he asked.

“Yes, he came over this morning.” The words were blurred by her sobbing
and his coat against her mouth.

He grimaced again and bent his head for a surreptitious look at the
watch on his wrist. His left arm was around her, the hand on her left
shoulder. His cuff was pulled back far enough to leave the watch
uncovered. It showed ten-ten.

The woman stirred in his arms and raised her face again. Her blue eyes
were wet, round, and white-ringed. Her mouth was moist.

“Oh, Sam,” she moaned, “did you kill him?”

Spade stared at her with bulging eyes. His bony jaw fell down. He took
his arms from her and stepped back out of her arms. He scowled at her
and cleared his throat.

She held her arms up as he had left them. Anguish clouded her eyes,
partly closed them under eyebrows pulled up at the inner ends. Her soft
damp red lips trembled.

Spade laughed a harsh syllable, “Ha!” and went to the buff-curtained
window. He stood there with his back to her looking through the curtain
into the court until she started towards him. Then he turned quickly and
went to his desk. He sat down, put his elbows on the desk, his chin
between his fists, and looked at her. His yellowish eyes glittered
between narrowed lids.

“Who,” he asked coldly, “put that bright idea in your head?”

“I thought—” She lifted a hand to her mouth and fresh tears came to her
eyes. She came to stand beside the desk, moving with easy sure-footed
grace in black slippers whose smallness and heel-height were extreme.
“Be kind to me, Sam,” she said humbly.

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.”

She began to cry audibly, holding a white handkerchief to her face.

He got up and stood close behind her. He put his arms around her. He
kissed her neck between ear and coat-collar. He said: “Now, Iva, don’t.”
His face was expressionless. When she had stopped crying he put his
mouth to her ear and murmured: “You shouldn’t have come here today,
precious. It wasn’t wise. You can’t stay. You ought to be home.”

She turned around in his arms to face him and asked: “You’ll come
tonight?”

He shook his head gently. “Not tonight.”

“Soon?”

“Yes.”

“How soon?”

“As soon as I can.”

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.

* * * * *

Effie Perine opened the door and came in. Her brown eyes were uneasy.
Her voice was careless. She asked: “Well?”

Spade said nothing. His brooding gaze did not move from his partner’s
desk.

The girl frowned and came around to his side. “Well,” she asked in a
louder voice, “how did you and the widow make out?”

“She thinks I shot Miles,” he said. Only his lips moved.

“So you could marry her?”

Spade made no reply to that.

The girl took his hat from his head and put it on the desk. Then she
leaned over and took the tobacco-sack and the papers from his inert
fingers.

“The police think I shot Thursby,” he said.

“Who is he?” she asked, separating a cigarette-paper from the packet,
sifting tobacco into it.

“Who do you think I shot?” he asked.

When she ignored that question he said: “Thursby’s the guy Miles was
supposed to be tailing for the Wonderly girl.”

Her thin fingers finished shaping the cigarette. She licked it, smoothed
it, twisted its ends, and placed it between Spade’s lips. He said,
“Thanks, honey,” put an arm around her slim waist, and rested his cheek
wearily against her hip, shutting his eyes.

“Are you going to marry Iva?” she asked, looking down at his pale brown
hair.

“Don’t be silly,” he muttered. The unlighted cigarette bobbed up and
down with the movement of his lips.

“She doesn’t think it’s silly. Why should she—the way you’ve played
around with her?”

He sighed and said: “I wish to Christ I’d never seen her.”

“Maybe you do now.” A trace of spitefulness came into the girl’s voice.
“But there was a time.”

“I never know what to do or say to women except that way,” he grumbled,
“and then I didn’t like Miles.”

“That’s a lie, Sam,” the girl said. “You know I think she’s a louse, but
I’d be a louse too if it would give me a body like hers.”

Spade rubbed his face impatiently against her hip, but said nothing.

Effie Perine bit her lip, wrinkled her forehead, and, bending over for a
better view of his face, asked: “Do you suppose she could have killed
him?”

Spade sat up straight and took his arm from her waist. He smiled at her.
His smile held nothing but amusement. He took out his lighter, snapped
on the flame, and applied it to the end of his cigarette. “You’re an
angel,” he said tenderly through smoke, “a nice rattle-brained angel.”

She smiled a bit wryly. “Oh, am I? Suppose I told you that your Iva
hadn’t been home many minutes when I arrived to break the news at three
o’clock this morning?”

“Are you telling me?” he asked. His eyes had become alert though his
mouth continued to smile.

“She kept me waiting at the door while she undressed or finished
undressing. I saw her clothes where she had dumped them on a chair. Her
hat and coat were underneath. Her singlet, on top, was still warm. She
said she had been asleep, but she hadn’t. She had wrinkled up the bed,
but the wrinkles weren’t mashed down.”

Spade took the girl’s hand and patted it. “You’re a detective, darling,
but”—he shook his head—“she didn’t kill him.”

Effie Perine snatched her hand away. “That louse wants to marry you,
Sam,” she said bitterly.

He made an impatient gesture with his head and one hand.

She frowned at him and demanded: “Did you see her last night?”

“No.”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly. Don’t act like Dundy, sweetheart. It ill becomes you.”

“Has Dundy been after you?”

“Uh-huh. He and Tom Polhaus dropped in for a drink at four o’clock.”

“Do they really think you shot this what’s-his-name?”

“Thursby.” He dropped what was left of his cigarette into the brass tray
and began to roll another.

“Do they?” she insisted.

“God knows.” His eyes were on the cigarette he was making. “They did
have some such notion. I don’t know how far I talked them out of it.”

“Look at me, Sam.”

He looked at her and laughed so that for the moment merriment mingled
with the anxiety in her face.

“You worry me,” she said, seriousness returning to her face as she
talked. “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.”

He sighed mockingly and rubbed his cheek against her arm. “That’s what
Dundy says, but you keep Iva away from me, sweet, and I’ll manage to
survive the rest of my troubles.” He stood up and put on his hat. “Have
the _Spade & Archer_ taken off the door and _Samuel Spade_ put on. I’ll
be back in an hour, or phone you.”

* * * * *

Spade went through the St. Mark’s long purplish lobby to the desk and
asked a red-haired dandy whether Miss Wonderly was in. The red-haired
dandy turned away, and then back shaking his head. “She checked out this
morning, Mr. Spade.”

“Thanks.”

Spade walked past the desk to an alcove off the lobby where a plump
young-middle-aged man in dark clothes sat at a flat-topped mahogany
desk. On the edge of the desk facing the lobby was a triangular prism of
mahogany and brass inscribed _Mr. Freed_.

The plump man got up and came around the desk holding out his hand.

“I was awfully sorry to hear about Archer, Spade,” he said in the tone
of one trained to sympathize readily without intrusiveness. “I’ve just
seen it in the _Call_. He was in here last night, you know.”

“Thanks, Freed. Were you talking to him?”

“No. He was sitting in the lobby when I came in early in the evening. I
didn’t stop. I thought he was probably working and I know you fellows
like to be left alone when you’re busy. Did that have anything to do
with his—?”

“I don’t think so, but we don’t know yet. Anyway, we won’t mix the house
up in it if it can be helped.”

“Thanks.”

“That’s all right. Can you give me some dope on an ex-guest, and then
forget that I asked for it?”

“Surely.”

“A Miss Wonderly checked out this morning. I’d like to know the
details.”

“Come along,” Freed said, “and we’ll see what we can learn.”

Spade stood still, shaking his head. “I don’t want to show in it.”

Freed nodded and went out of the alcove. In the lobby he halted suddenly
and came back to Spade.

“Harriman was the house-detective on duty last night,” he said. “He’s
sure to have seen Archer. Shall I caution him not to mention it?”

Spade looked at Freed from the corners of his eyes. “Better not. That
won’t make any difference as long as there’s no connection shown with
this Wonderly. Harriman’s all right, but he likes to talk, and I’d as
lief not have him think there’s anything to be kept quiet.”

Freed nodded again and went away. Fifteen minutes later he returned.

“She arrived last Tuesday, registering from New York. She hadn’t a
trunk, only some bags. There were no phone-calls charged to her room,
and she doesn’t seem to have received much, if any, mail. The only one
anybody remembers having seen her with was a tall dark man of thirty-six
or so. She went out at half-past nine this morning, came back an hour
later, paid her bill, and had her bags carried out to a car. The boy who
carried them says it was a Nash touring car, probably a hired one. She
left a forwarding address—the Ambassador, Los Angeles.”

Spade said, “Thanks a lot, Freed,” and left the St. Mark.

When Spade returned to his office Effie Perine stopped typing a letter
to tell him: “Your friend Dundy was in. He wanted to look at your guns.”

“And?”

“I told him to come back when you were here.”

“Good girl. If he comes back again let him look at them.”

“And Miss Wonderly called up.”

“It’s about time. What did she say?”

“She wants to see you.” The girl picked up a slip of paper from her desk
and read the memorandum penciled on it: “She’s at the Coronet, on
California Street, apartment one thousand and one. You’re to ask for
Miss Leblanc.”

Spade said, “Give me,” and held out his hand. When she had given him the
memorandum he took out his lighter, snapped on the flame, set it to the
slip of paper, held the paper until all but one corner was curling black
ash, dropped it on the linoleum floor, and mashed it under his shoesole.

The girl watched him with disapproving eyes.

He grinned at her, said, “That’s just the way it is, dear,” and went out
again.

4

THE BLACK BIRD

MISS WONDERLY, in a belted green crêpe silk dress, opened the door of
apartment 1001 at the Coronet. Her face was flushed. Her dark red hair,
parted on the left side, swept back in loose waves over her right
temple, was somewhat tousled.

Spade took off his hat and said: “Good morning.”

His smile brought a fainter smile to her face. Her eyes, of blue that
was almost violet, did not lose their troubled look. She lowered her
head and said in a hushed, timid voice: “Come in, Mr. Spade.”

She led him past open kitchen-, bathroom-, and bedroom-doors into a
cream and red living-room, apologizing for its confusion: “Everything is
upside-down. I haven’t even finished unpacking.”

She laid his hat on a table and sat down on a walnut settee. He sat on a
brocaded oval-backed chair facing her.

She looked at her fingers, working them together, and said: “Mr. Spade,
I’ve a terrible, terrible confession to make.”

Spade smiled a polite smile, which she did not lift her eyes to see, and
said nothing.

“That—that story I told you yesterday was all—a story,” she stammered,
and looked up at him now with miserable frightened eyes.

“Oh, that,” Spade said lightly. “We didn’t exactly believe your story.”

“Then—?” Perplexity was added to the misery and fright in her eyes.

“We believed your two hundred dollars.”

“You mean—?” She seemed to not know what he meant.

“I mean that you paid us more than if you’d been telling the truth,” he
explained blandly, “and enough more to make it all right.”

Her eyes suddenly lighted up. She lifted herself a few inches from the
settee, settled down again, smoothed her skirt, leaned forward, and
spoke eagerly: “And even now you’d be willing to—?”

Spade stopped her with a palm-up motion of one hand. The upper part of
his face frowned. The lower part smiled. “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.”

“The hell of it is, Miss O’Shaughnessy, that a couple of murders”—she
winced—“coming together like this get everybody stirred up, make the
police think they can go the limit, make everybody hard to handle and
expensive. It’s not—”

He stopped talking because she had stopped listening and was waiting for
him to finish.

“Mr. Spade, tell me the truth.” Her voice quivered on the verge of
hysteria. Her face had become haggard around desperate eyes. “Am I to
blame for—for last night?”

Spade shook his head. “Not unless there are things I don’t know about,”
he said. “You warned us that Thursby was dangerous. Of course you lied
to us about your sister and all, but that doesn’t count: we didn’t
believe you.” He shrugged his sloping shoulders. “I wouldn’t say it was
your fault.”

She said, “Thank you,” very softly, and then moved her head from side to
side. “But I’ll always blame myself.” She put a hand to her throat. “Mr.
Archer was so—so alive yesterday afternoon, so solid and hearty and—”

“Stop it,” Spade commanded. “He knew what he was doing. They’re the
chances we take.”

“Was—was he married?”

“Yes, with ten thousand insurance, no children, and a wife who didn’t
like him.”

“Oh, please don’t!” she whispered.

Spade shrugged again. “That’s the way it was.” He glanced at his watch
and moved from his chair to the settee beside her. “There’s no time for
worrying about that now.” His voice was pleasant but firm. “Out there a
flock of policemen and assistant district attorneys and reporters are
running around with their noses to the ground. What do you want to do?”

“I want you to save me from—from it all,” she replied in a thin
tremulous voice. She put a timid hand on his sleeve. “Mr. Spade, do they
know about me?”

“Not yet. I wanted to see you first.”

“What—what would they think if they knew about the way I came to
you—with those lies?”

“It would make them suspicious. That’s why I’ve been stalling them till
I could see you. I thought maybe we wouldn’t have to let them know all
of it. We ought to be able to fake a story that will rock them to sleep,
if necessary.”

“You don’t think I had anything to do with the—the murders—do you?”

Spade grinned at her and said: “I forgot to ask you that. Did you?”

“No.”

“That’s good. Now what are we going to tell the police?”

She squirmed on her end of the settee and her eyes wavered between heavy
lashes, as if trying and failing to free their gaze from his. She seemed
smaller, and very young and oppressed.

“Must they know about me at all?” she asked. “I think I’d rather die
than that, Mr. Spade. I can’t explain now, but can’t you somehow manage
so that you can shield me from them, so I won’t have to answer their
questions? I don’t think I could stand being questioned now. I think I
would rather die. Can’t you, Mr. Spade?”

“Maybe,” he said, “but I’ll have to know what it’s all about.”

She went down on her knees at his knees. She held her face up to him.
Her face was wan, taut, and fearful over tight-clasped hands.

“I haven’t lived a good life,” she cried. “I’ve been bad—worse than you
could know—but I’m not all bad. Look at me, Mr. Spade. You know I’m not
all bad, don’t you? You can see that, can’t you? Then can’t you trust me
a little? Oh, I’m so alone and afraid, and I’ve got nobody to help me if
you won’t help me. I know I’ve no right to ask you to trust me if I
won’t trust you. I do trust you, but I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you
now. Later I will, when I can. I’m afraid, Mr. Spade. I’m afraid of
trusting you. I don’t mean that. I do trust you, but—I trusted Floyd
and—I’ve nobody else, nobody else, Mr. Spade. You can help me. You’ve
said you can help me. If I hadn’t believed you could save me I would
have run away today instead of sending for you. If I thought anybody
else could save me would I be down on my knees like this? I know this
isn’t fair of me. But be generous, Mr. Spade, don’t ask me to be fair.
You’re strong, you’re resourceful, you’re brave. You can spare me some
of that strength and resourcefulness and courage, surely.