Chapter 3

Help me, Mr.
Spade. Help me because I need help so badly, and because if you don’t
where will I find anyone who can, no matter how willing? Help me. I’ve
no right to ask you to help me blindly, but I do ask you. Be generous,
Mr. Spade. You can help me. Help me.”

Spade, who had held his breath through much of this speech, now emptied
his lungs with a long sighing exhalation between pursed lips and said:
“You won’t need much of anybody’s help. You’re good. 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.’”

She jumped up on her feet. Her face crimsoned painfully, but she held
her head erect and she looked Spade straight in the eyes.

“I deserve that,” she said. “I deserve it, but—oh!—I did want your
help so much. I do want it, and need it, so much. And the lie was in the
way I said it, and not at all in what I said.” She turned away, no
longer holding herself erect. “It is my own fault that you can’t believe
me now.”

Spade’s face reddened and he looked down at the floor, muttering: “Now
you are dangerous.”

Brigid O’Shaughnessy went to the table and picked up his hat. She came
back and stood in front of him holding the hat, not offering it to him,
but holding it for him to take if he wished. Her face was white and
thin.

Spade looked at his hat and asked: “What happened last night?”

“Floyd came to the hotel at nine o’clock, and we went out for a walk. I
suggested that so Mr. Archer could see him. We stopped at a restaurant
in Geary Street, I think it was, for supper and to dance, and came back
to the hotel at about half-past twelve. Floyd left me at the door and I
stood inside and watched Mr. Archer follow him down the street, on the
other side.”

“Down? You mean towards Market Street?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what they’d be doing in the neighborhood of Bush and
Stockton, where Archer was shot?”

“Isn’t that near where Floyd lived?”

“No. It would be nearly a dozen blocks out of his way if he was going
from your hotel to his. Well, what did you do after they had gone?”

“I went to bed. And this morning when I went out for breakfast I saw the
headlines in the papers and read about—you know. Then I went up to
Union Square, where I had seen automobiles for hire, and got one and
went to the hotel for my luggage. After I found my room had been
searched yesterday I knew I would have to move, and I had found this
place yesterday afternoon. So I came up here and then telephoned your
office.”

“Your room at the St. Mark was searched?” he asked.

“Yes, while I was at your office.” She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean to
tell you that.”

“That means I’m not supposed to question you about it?”

She nodded shyly.

He frowned.

She moved his hat a little in her hands.

He laughed impatiently and said: “Stop waving the hat in my face.
Haven’t I offered to do what I can?”

She smiled contritely, returned the hat to the table, and sat beside him
on the settee again.

He said: “I’ve got nothing against trusting you blindly except that I
won’t be able to do you much good if I haven’t some idea of what it’s
all about. For instance, I’ve got to have some sort of a line on your
Floyd Thursby.”

“I met him in the Orient.” She spoke slowly, looking down at a pointed
finger tracing eights on the settee between them. “We came here from
Hongkong last week. He was—he had promised to help me. He took
advantage of my helplessness and dependence on him to betray me.”

“Betray you how?”

She shook her head and said nothing.

Spade, frowning with impatience, asked: “Why did you want him shadowed?”

“I wanted to learn how far he had gone. He wouldn’t even let me know
where he was staying. I wanted to find out what he was doing, whom he
was meeting, things like that.”

“Did he kill Archer?”

She looked up at him, surprised. “Yes, certainly,” she said.

“He had a Luger in a shoulder-holster. Archer wasn’t shot with a Luger.”

“He had a revolver in his overcoat-pocket,” she said.

“You saw it?”

“Oh, I’ve seen it often. I know he always carries one there. I didn’t
see it last night, but I know he never wears an overcoat without it.”

“Why all the guns?”

“He lived by them. There was a story in Hongkong that he had come out
there, to the Orient, as bodyguard to a gambler who had had to leave the
States, and that the gambler had since disappeared. They said Floyd knew
about his disappearing. I don’t know. I do know that he always went
heavily armed and that he never went to sleep without covering the floor
around his bed with crumpled newspaper so nobody could come silently
into his room.”

“You picked a nice sort of playmate.”

“Only that sort could have helped me,” she said simply, “if he had been
loyal.”

“Yes, if.” Spade pinched his lower lip between finger and thumb and
looked gloomily at her. The vertical creases over his nose deepened,
drawing his brows together. “How bad a hole are you actually in?”

“As bad,” she said, “as could be.”

“Physical danger?”

“I’m not heroic. I don’t think there’s anything worse than death.”

“Then it’s that?”

“It’s that as surely as we’re sitting here”—she shivered—“unless you
help me.”

He took his fingers away from his mouth and ran them through his hair.
“I’m not Christ,” he said irritably. “I can’t work miracles out of thin
air.” He looked at his watch. “The day’s going and you’re giving me
nothing to work with. Who killed Thursby?”

She put a crumpled handkerchief to her mouth and said, “I don’t know,”
through it.

“Your enemies or his?”

“I don’t know. His, I hope, but I’m afraid—I don’t know.”

“How was he supposed to be helping you? Why did you bring him here from
Hongkong?”

She looked at him with frightened eyes and shook her head in silence.
Her face was haggard and pitifully stubborn.

Spade stood up, thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and
scowled down at her. “This is hopeless,” he said savagely. “I can’t do
anything for you. I don’t know what you want done. I don’t even know if
you know what you want.”

She hung her head and wept.

He made a growling animal noise in his throat and went to the table for
his hat.

“You won’t,” she begged in a small choked voice, not looking up, “go to
the police?”

“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.” He put his hat on
his head and pulled it down tight. “Go to them? All I’ve got to do is
stand still and they’ll be swarming all over me. Well, I’ll tell them
what I know and you’ll have to take your chances.”

She rose from the settee and held herself straight in front of him
though her knees were trembling, and she held her white panic-stricken
face up high though she couldn’t hold the twitching muscles of mouth and
chin still. She said: “You’ve been patient. You’ve tried to help me. It
is hopeless, and useless, I suppose.” She stretched out her right hand.
“I thank you for what you have done. I—I’ll have to take my chances.”

Spade made the growling animal noise in his throat again and sat down on
the settee. “How much money have you got?” he asked.

The question startled her. Then she pinched her lower lip between her
teeth and answered reluctantly: “I’ve about five hundred dollars left.”

“Give it to me.”

She hesitated, looking timidly at him. He made angry gestures with
mouth, eyebrows, hands, and shoulders. She went into her bedroom,
returning almost immediately with a sheaf of paper money in one hand.

He took the money from her, counted it, and said: “There’s only four
hundred here.”

“I had to keep some to live on,” she explained meekly, putting a hand to
her breast.

“Can’t you get any more?”

“No.”

“You must have something you can raise money on,” he insisted.

“I’ve some rings, a little jewelry.”

“You’ll have to hock them,” he said, and held out his hand. “The
Remedial’s the best place—Mission and Fifth.”

She looked pleadingly at him. His yellow-grey eyes were hard and
implacable. Slowly she put her hand inside the neck of her dress,
brought out a slender roll of bills, and put them in his waiting hand.

He smoothed the bills out and counted them—four twenties, four tens,
and a five. He returned two of the tens and the five to her. The others
he put in his pocket. Then he stood up and said: “I’m going out and see
what I can do for you. I’ll be back as soon as I can with the best news
I can manage. I’ll ring four times—long, short, long, short—so you’ll
know it’s me. You needn’t go to the door with me. I can let myself out.”

He left her standing in the center of the floor looking after him with
dazed blue eyes.

* * * * *

Spade went into a reception-room whose door bore the legend _Wise,
Merican & Wise_. The red-haired girl at the switchboard said: “Oh,
hello, Mr. Spade.”

“Hello, darling,” he replied. “Is Sid in?”

He stood beside her with a hand on her plump shoulder while she
manipulated a plug and spoke into the mouthpiece: “Mr. Spade to see you,
Mr. Wise.” She looked up at Spade. “Go right in.”

He squeezed her shoulder by way of acknowledgment, crossed the
reception-room to a dully lighted inner corridor, and passed down the
corridor to a frosted glass door at its far end. He opened the frosted
glass door and went into an office where a small olive-skinned man with
a tired oval face under thin dark hair dotted with dandruff sat behind
an immense desk on which bales of paper were heaped.

The small man flourished a cold cigar-stub at Spade and said: “Pull a
chair around. So Miles got the big one last night?” Neither his tired
face nor his rather shrill voice held any emotion.

“Uh-huh, that’s what I came in about.” Spade frowned and cleared his
throat. “I think I’m going to have to tell a coroner to go to hell, Sid.
Can I hide behind the sanctity of my clients’ secrets and identities and
what-not, all the same priest or lawyer?”

Sid Wise lifted his shoulders and lowered the ends of his mouth. “Why
not? An inquest is not a court-trial. You can try, anyway. You’ve gotten
away with more than that before this.”

“I know, but Dundy’s getting snotty, and maybe it is a little bit thick
this time. Get your hat, Sid, and we’ll go see the right people. I want
to be safe.”

Sid Wise looked at the papers massed on his desk and groaned, but he got
up from his chair and went to the closet by the window. “You’re a son of
a gun, Sammy,” he said as he took his hat from its hook.

* * * * *

Spade returned to his office at ten minutes past five that evening.
Effie Perine was sitting at his desk reading _Time_. Spade sat on the
desk and asked: “Anything stirring?”

“Not here. You look like you’d swallowed the canary.”

He grinned contentedly. “I think we’ve got a future. I always had an
idea that if Miles would go off and die somewhere we’d stand a better
chance of thriving. Will you take care of sending flowers for me?”

“I did.”

“You’re an invaluable angel. How’s your woman’s intuition today?”

“Why?”

“What do you think of Wonderly?”

“I’m for her,” the girl replied without hesitation.

“She’s got too many names,” Spade mused, “Wonderly, Leblanc, and she
says the right one’s O’Shaughnessy.”

“I don’t care if she’s got all the names in the phone-book. That girl is
all right, and you know it.”

“I wonder.” Spade blinked sleepily at Effie Perine. He chuckled. “Anyway
she’s given up seven hundred smacks in two days, and that’s all right.”

Effie Perine sat up straight and said: “Sam, if that girl’s in trouble
and you let her down, or take advantage of it to bleed her, I’ll never
forgive you, never have any respect for you, as long as I live.”

Spade smiled unnaturally. Then he frowned. The frown was unnatural. He
opened his mouth to speak, but the sound of someone’s entrance through
the corridor-door stopped him.

Effie Perine rose and went into the outer office. Spade took off his hat
and sat in his chair. The girl returned with an engraved card—_Mr. Joel
Cairo_.

“This guy is queer,” she said.

“In with him, then, darling,” said Spade.

Mr. Joel Cairo was a small-boned dark man of medium height. His hair was
black and smooth and very glossy. His features were Levantine. A
square-cut ruby, its sides paralleled by four baguette diamonds, gleamed
against the deep green of his cravat. His black coat, cut tight to
narrow shoulders, flared a little over slightly plump hips. His trousers
fitted his round legs more snugly than was the current fashion. The
uppers of his patent-leather shoes were hidden by fawn spats. He held a
black derby hat in a chamois-gloved hand and came towards Spade with
short, mincing, bobbing steps. The fragrance of _chypre_ came with him.

Spade inclined his head at his visitor and then at a chair, saying: “Sit
down, Mr. Cairo.”

Cairo bowed elaborately over his hat, said, “I thank you,” in a
high-pitched thin voice and sat down. He sat down primly, crossing his
ankles, placing his hat on his knees, and began to draw off his yellow
gloves.

Spade rocked back in his chair and asked: “Now what can I do for you,
Mr. Cairo?” The amiable negligence of his tone, his motion in the chair,
were precisely as they had been when he had addressed the same question
to Brigid O’Shaughnessy on the previous day.

Cairo turned his hat over, dropping his gloves into it, and placed it
bottom-up on the corner of the desk nearest him. Diamonds twinkled on
the second and fourth fingers of his left hand, a ruby that matched the
one in his tie even to the surrounding diamonds on the third finger of
his right hand. His hands were soft and well cared for. Though they were
not large their flaccid bluntness made them seem clumsy. He rubbed his
palms together and said over the whispering sound they made: “May a
stranger offer condolences for your partner’s unfortunate death?”

“Thanks.”

“May I ask, Mr. Spade, if there was, as the newspapers inferred, a
certain—ah—relationship between that unfortunate happening and the
death a little later of the man Thursby?”

Spade said nothing in a blank-faced definite way.

Cairo rose and bowed. “I beg your pardon.” He sat down and placed his
hands side by side, palms down, on the corner of the desk. “More than
idle curiosity made me ask that, Mr. Spade. I am trying to recover
an—ah—ornament that has been—shall we say?—mislaid. I thought, and
hoped, you could assist me.”

Spade nodded with eyebrows lifted to indicate attentiveness.

“The ornament is a statuette,” Cairo went on, selecting and mouthing his
words carefully, “the black figure of a bird.”

Spade nodded again, with courteous interest.

“I am prepared to pay, on behalf of the figure’s rightful owner, the sum
of five thousand dollars for its recovery.” Cairo raised one hand from
the desk-corner and touched a spot in the air with the broad-nailed tip
of an ugly forefinger. “I am prepared to promise that—what is the
phrase?—no questions will be asked.” He put his hand on the desk again
beside the other and smiled blandly over them at the private detective.

“Five thousand is a lot of money,” Spade commented, looking thoughtfully
at Cairo. “It—”

Fingers drummed lightly on the door.

When Spade had called, “Come in,” the door opened far enough to admit
Effie Perine’s head and shoulders. She had put on a small dark felt hat
and a dark coat with a grey fur collar.

“Is there anything else?” she asked.

“No. Good night. Lock the door when you go, will you?”

Spade turned in his chair to face Cairo again, saying: “It’s an
interesting figure.”

The sound of the corridor-door’s closing behind Effie Perine came to
them.

Cairo smiled and took a short compact flat black pistol out of an inner
pocket. “You will please,” he said, “clasp your hands together at the
back of your neck.”

5

THE LEVANTINE

SPADE did not look at the pistol. He raised his arms and, leaning back
in his chair, intertwined the fingers of his two hands behind his head.
His eyes, holding no particular expression, remained focused on Cairo’s
dark face.

Cairo coughed a little apologetic cough and smiled nervously with lips
that had lost some of their redness. His dark eyes were humid and
bashful and very earnest. “I intend to search your offices, Mr. Spade. I
warn you that if you attempt to prevent me I shall certainly shoot you.”

“Go ahead.” Spade’s voice was as empty of expression as his face.

“You will please stand,” the man with the pistol instructed him at whose
thick chest the pistol was aimed. “I shall have to make sure that you
are not armed.”

Spade stood up pushing his chair back with his calves as he straightened
his legs.

Cairo went around behind him. He transferred the pistol from his right
hand to his left. He lifted Spade’s coat-tail and looked under it.
Holding the pistol close to Spade’s back, he put his right hand around
Spade’s side and patted his chest. The Levantine face was then no more
than six inches below and behind Spade’s right elbow.

Spade’s elbow dropped as Spade spun to the right. Cairo’s face jerked
back not far enough: Spade’s right heel on the patent-leathered toes
anchored the smaller man in the elbow’s path. The elbow struck him
beneath the cheek-bone, staggering him so that he must have fallen had
he not been held by Spade’s foot on his foot. Spade’s elbow went on past
the astonished dark face and straightened when Spade’s hand struck down
at the pistol. Cairo let the pistol go the instant that Spade’s fingers
touched it. The pistol was small in Spade’s hand.

Spade took his foot off Cairo’s to complete his about-face. With his
left hand Spade gathered together the smaller man’s coat-lapels—the
ruby-set green tie bunching out over his knuckles—while his right hand
stowed the captured weapon away in a coat-pocket. Spade’s yellow-grey
eyes were somber. His face was wooden, with a trace of sullenness around
the mouth.

Cairo’s face was twisted by pain and chagrin. There were tears in his
dark eyes. His skin was the complexion of polished lead except where the
elbow had reddened his cheek.

Spade by means of his grip on the Levantine’s lapels turned him slowly
and pushed him back until he was standing close in front of the chair he
had lately occupied. A puzzled look replaced the look of pain in the
lead-colored face. Then Spade smiled. His smile was gentle, even dreamy.
His right shoulder raised a few inches. His bent right arm was driven up
by the shoulder’s lift. Fist, wrist, forearm, crooked elbow, and upper
arm seemed all one rigid piece, with only the limber shoulder giving
them motion. The fist struck Cairo’s face, covering for a moment one
side of his chin, a corner of his mouth, and most of his cheek between
cheek-bone and jaw-bone.

Cairo shut his eyes and was unconscious.

Spade lowered the limp body into the chair, where it lay with sprawled
arms and legs, the head lolling back against the chair’s back, the mouth
open.

Spade emptied the unconscious man’s pockets one by one, working
methodically, moving the lax body when necessary, making a pile of the
pockets’ contents on the desk. When the last pocket had been turned out
he returned to his own chair, rolled and lighted a cigarette, and began
to examine his spoils. He examined them with grave unhurried
thoroughness.

There was a large wallet of dark soft leather. The wallet contained
three hundred and sixty-five dollars in United States bills of several
sizes; three five-pound notes; a much-visaed Greek passport bearing
Cairo’s name and portrait; five folded sheets of pinkish onion-skin
paper covered with what seemed to be Arabic writing; a raggedly clipped
newspaper-account of the finding of Archer’s and Thursby’s bodies; a
post-card-photograph of a dusky woman with bold cruel eyes and a tender
drooping mouth; a large silk handkerchief, yellow with age and somewhat
cracked along its folds; a thin sheaf of Mr. Joel Cairo’s engraved
cards; and a ticket for an orchestra seat at the Geary Theatre that
evening.

Besides the wallet and its contents there were three gaily colored silk
handkerchiefs fragrant of _chypre_; a platinum Longines watch on a
platinum and red gold chain, attached at the other end to a small
pear-shaped pendant of some white metal; a handful of United States,
British, French, and Chinese coins; a ring holding half a dozen keys; a
silver and onyx fountain-pen; a metal comb in a leatherette case; a
nail-file in a leatherette case; a small street-guide to San Francisco;
a Southern Pacific baggage-check; a half-filled package of violet
pastilles; a Shanghai insurance-broker’s business-card; and four sheets
of Hotel Belvedere writing paper, on one of which was written in small
precise letters Samuel Spade’s name and the addresses of his office and
his apartment.

Having examined these articles carefully—he even opened the back of the
watch-case to see that nothing was hidden inside—Spade leaned over and
took the unconscious man’s wrist between finger and thumb, feeling his
pulse. Then he dropped the wrist, settled back in his chair, and rolled
and lighted another cigarette. His face while he smoked was, except for
occasional slight and aimless movements of his lower lip, so still and
reflective that it seemed stupid; but when Cairo presently moaned and
fluttered his eyelids Spade’s face became bland, and he put the
beginning of a friendly smile into his eyes and mouth.

Joel Cairo awakened slowly. His eyes opened first, but a full minute
passed before they fixed their gaze on any definite part of the ceiling.
Then he shut his mouth and swallowed, exhaling heavily through his nose
afterward. He drew in one foot and turned a hand over on his thigh. Then
he raised his head from the chair-back, looked around the office in
confusion, saw Spade, and sat up. He opened his mouth to speak, started,
clapped a hand to his face where Spade’s fist had struck and where there
was now a florid bruise.

Cairo said through his teeth, painfully: “I could have shot you, Mr.
Spade.”

“You could have tried,” Spade conceded.

“I did not try.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you strike me after I was disarmed?”

“Sorry,” Spade said, and grinned wolfishly, showing his jaw-teeth, “but
imagine my embarrassment when I found that five-thousand-dollar offer
was just hooey.”

“You are mistaken, Mr. Spade. That was, and is, a genuine offer.”

“What the hell?” Spade’s surprise was genuine.

“I am prepared to pay five thousand dollars for the figure’s return.”
Cairo took his hand away from his bruised face and sat up prim and
business-like again. “You have it?”

“No.”

“If it is not here”—Cairo was very politely skeptical—“why should you
have risked serious injury to prevent my searching for it?”

“I should sit around and let people come in and stick me up?” Spade
flicked a finger at Cairo’s possessions on the desk. “You’ve got my
apartment-address. Been up there yet?”

“Yes, Mr. Spade. I am ready to pay five thousand dollars for the
figure’s return, but surely it is natural enough that I should try first
to spare the owner that expense if possible.”

“Who is he?”

Cairo shook his head and smiled. “You will have to forgive my not
answering that question.”

“Will I?” Spade leaned forward smiling with tight lips. “I’ve got you by
the neck, Cairo. You’ve walked in and tied yourself up, plenty strong
enough to suit the police, with last night’s killings. Well, now you’ll
have to play with me or else.”

Cairo’s smile was demure and not in any way alarmed. “I made somewhat
extensive inquiries about you before taking any action,” he said, “and
was assured that you were far too reasonable to allow other
considerations to interfere with profitable business relations.”

Spade shrugged. “Where are they?” he asked.

“I have offered you five thousand dollars for—”

Spade thumped Cairo’s wallet with the backs of his fingers and said:
“There’s nothing like five thousand dollars here. You’re betting your
eyes. You could come in and say you’d pay me a million for a purple
elephant, but what in hell would that mean?”

“I see, I see,” Cairo said thoughtfully, screwing up his eyes. “You wish
some assurance of my sincerity.” He brushed his red lower lip with a
fingertip. “A retainer, would that serve?”

“It might.”

Cairo put his hand out towards his wallet, hesitated, withdrew the hand,
and said: “You will take, say, a hundred dollars?”

Spade picked up the wallet and took out a hundred dollars. Then he
frowned, said, “Better make it two hundred,” and did.

Cairo said nothing.

“Your first guess was that I had the bird,” Spade said in a crisp voice
when he had put the two hundred dollars into his pocket and had dropped
the wallet on the desk again. “There’s nothing in that. What’s your
second?”

“That you know where it is, or, if not exactly that, that you know it is
where you can get it.”

Spade neither denied nor affirmed that: he seemed hardly to have heard
it. He asked: “What sort of proof can you give me that your man is the
owner?”

“Very little, unfortunately. There is this, though: nobody else can give
you any authentic evidence of ownership at all. And if you know as much
about the affair as I suppose—or I should not be here—you know that
the means by which it was taken from him shows that his right to it was
more valid than anyone else’s—certainly more valid than Thursby’s.”

“What about his daughter?” Spade asked.

Excitement opened Cairo’s eyes and mouth, turned his face red, made his
voice shrill. “_He_ is not the owner!”

Spade said, “Oh,” mildly and ambiguously.

“Is he here, in San Francisco, now?” Cairo asked in a less shrill, but
still excited, voice.

Spade blinked his eyes sleepily and suggested: “It might be better all
around if we put our cards on the table.”

Cairo recovered composure with a little jerk. “I do not think it would
be better.” His voice was suave now. “If you know more than I, I shall
profit by your knowledge, and so will you to the extent of five thousand
dollars. If you do not then I have made a mistake in coming to you, and
to do as you suggest would be simply to make that mistake worse.”

Spade nodded indifferently and waved his hand at the articles on the
desk, saying: “There’s your stuff”; and then, when Cairo was returning
them to his pockets: “It’s understood that you’re to pay my expenses
while I’m getting this black bird for you, and five thousand dollars
when it’s done?”

“Yes, Mr. Spade; that is, five thousand dollars less whatever moneys
have been advanced to you—five thousand in all.”

“Right. And it’s a legitimate proposition.” Spade’s face was solemn
except for wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “You’re not hiring me to
do any murders or burglaries for you, but simply to get it back if
possible in an honest and lawful way.”

“If possible,” Cairo agreed. His face also was solemn except for the
eyes. “And in any event with discretion.” He rose and picked up his hat.
“I am at the Hotel Belvedere when you wish to communicate with me—room
six-thirty-five. I confidently expect the greatest mutual benefit from
our association, Mr.