The Maltese Falcon (13 page)

“Nothing like that,” Spade assured him. “As a matter of fact, I’m doing a little work for him. I’d tell you if he was wrong.”

“You’d better. Want me to kind of keep an eye on him?”

“Thanks, Luke. It wouldn’t hurt. You can’t know too much about the men you’re working for these days.”

It was twenty-one minutes past eleven by the clock over the elevator-doors when Joel Cairo came in from the street. His forehead was bandaged. His clothes had the limp unfreshness of too many hours’ consecutive wear. His face was pasty, with sagging mouth and eyelids.

Spade met him in front of the desk. “Good morning,” Spade said easily.

Cairo drew his tired body up straight and the drooping lines of his face tightened. “Good morning,” he responded without enthusiasm.

There was a pause.

Spade said: “Let’s go some place where we can talk.”

Cairo raised his chin. “Please excuse me,” he said. “Our conversations in private have not been such that I am anxious to continue them. Pardon my speaking bluntly, but it is the truth.”

“You mean last night?” Spade made an impatient gesture with head and hands. “What in hell else could I do? I thought you’d see that. If you pick a fight with her, or let her pick one with you, I’ve got to throw in with her. I don’t know where that damned bird is. You don’t. She does. How in hell are we going to get it if I don’t play along with her?”

Cairo hesitated, said dubiously: “You have always, I must say, a smooth explanation ready.”

Spade scowled. “What do you want me to do? Learn to stutter? Well, we can talk over here.” He led the way to the divan.

When they were seated he asked: “Dundy take you down to the Hall?”

“Yes.”

“How long did they work on you?”

“Until a very little while ago, and very much against my will.” Pain and indignation were mixed in Cairo’s face and voice. “I shall certainly take the matter up with the Consulate General of Greece and with an attorney.”

“Go ahead, and see what it gets you. What did you let the police shake out of you?”

There was prim satisfaction in Cairo’s smile. “Not a single thing. I adhered to the course you indicated earlier in your rooms.” His smile went away. “Though I certainly wished you had devised a more reasonable story. I felt decidedly ridiculous repeating it.”

Spade grinned mockingly. “Sure,” he said, “but its goofiness is what makes it good. You sure you didn’t give them anything?”

“You may rely upon it, Mr. Spade, I did not.”

Spade drummed with his fingers on the leather seat between them. “You’ll be hearing from Dundy again. Stay dummied-up on him and you’ll be all right. Don’t worry about the story’s goofiness. A sensible one would’ve had us all in the cooler.” He rose to his feet. “You’ll want sleep if you’ve been standing up under a police-storm all night. See you later.”

Effie Perine was saying, “No, not yet,” into the telephone when Spade entered his outer office. She looked around at him and her lips shaped a silent word: “Iva.” He shook his head. “Yes, I’ll have him call you as soon as he comes in,” she said aloud and replaced the receiver on its prong. “That’s the third time she’s called up this morning,” she told Spade.

He made an impatient growling noise.

The girl moved her brown eyes to indicate the inner office. “Your Miss O’Shaughnessy’s in there. She’s been waiting since a few minutes after nine.”

Spade nodded as if he had expected that and asked: “What else?”

“Sergeant Polhaus called up. He didn’t leave any message.”

“Get him for me.”

“And G. called up.”

Spade’s eyes brightened. He asked: “Who?”

“G. That’s what he said.” Her air of personal indifference to the subject was flawless. “When I told him you weren’t in he said: ‘When he comes in, will you please tell him that G., who got his message, phoned and will phone again?’.”

Spade worked his lips together as if tasting something he liked. “Thanks, darling,” he said. “See if you can get Tom Polhaus.” He opened the inner door and went into his private office, pulling the door to behind him.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy, dressed as on her first visit to the office, rose from a chair beside his desk and came quickly towards him. “Somebody has been in my apartment,” she explained. “It is all upside-down, every which way.”

He seemed moderately surprised. “Anything taken?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know. I was afraid to stay. I changed as fast as I could and came down here. Oh, you must’ve let that boy follow you there!”

Spade shook his head. “No, angel.” He took an early copy of an afternoon paper from his pocket, opened it, and showed her a quarter-column headed SCREAM ROUTS BURGLAR.

A young woman named Carolin Beale, who lived alone in a Sutter Street apartment, had been awakened at four that morning by the sound of somebody moving in her bedroom. She had screamed. The mover had run away. Two other women who lived alone in the same building had discovered, later in the morning, signs of the burglars having visited their apartments. Nothing had been taken from any of the three.

“That’s where I shook him,” Spade explained. “I went into that building and ducked out the back door. That’s why all three were women who lived alone. He tried the apartments that had
women’s names in the vestibule-register, hunting for you under an alias.”

“But he was watching your place when we were there,” she objected.

Spade shrugged. “There’s no reason to think he’s working alone. Or maybe he went to Sutter Street after he had begun to think you were going to stay all night in my place. There are a lot of maybes, but I didn’t lead him to the Coronet.”

She was not satisfied. “But he found it, or somebody did.”

“Sure.” He frowned at her feet. “I wonder if it could have been Cairo. He wasn’t at his hotel all night, didn’t get in till a few minutes ago. He told me he had been standing up under a police-grilling all night. I wonder.” He turned, opened the door, and asked Effie Perine: “Got Tom yet?”

“He’s not in. I’ll try again in a few minutes.”

“Thanks.” Spade shut the door and faced Brigid O’Shaughnessy.

She looked at him with cloudy eyes. “You went to see Joe this morning?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She hesitated. “Why?”

“Why?” He smiled down at her. “Because, my own true love, I’ve got to keep in some sort of touch with all the loose ends of this dizzy affair if I’m ever going to make heads or tails of it.” He put an arm around her shoulders and led her over to his swivel-chair. He kissed the tip of her nose lightly and set her down in the chair. He sat on the desk in front of her. He said: “Now we’ve got to find a new home for you, haven’t we?”

She nodded with emphasis. “I won’t go back there.”

He patted the desk beside his thighs and made a thoughtful face. “I think I’ve got it,” he said presently. “Wait a minute.” He went into the outer office, shutting the door.

Effie Perine reached for the telephone, saying: “I’ll try again.”

“Afterwards. Does your woman’s intuition still tell you that she’s a madonna or something?”

She looked sharply up at him. “I still believe that no matter what kind of trouble she’s gotten into she’s all right, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s what I mean,” he said. “Are you strong enough for her to give her a lift?”

“How?”

“Could you put her up for a few days?”

“You mean at home?”

“Yes. Her joint’s been broken into. That’s the second burglary she’s had this week. It’d be better for her if she wasn’t alone. It would help a lot of you could take her in.”

Effie Perine leaned forward, asking earnestly: “Is she really in danger, Sam?”

“I think she is.”

She scratched her lip with a fingernail. “That would scare Ma into a green hemorrhage. I’ll have to tell her she’s a surprise-witness or something that you’re keeping under cover till the last minute.”

“You’re a darling,” Spade said. “Better take her out there now. I’ll get her key from her and bring whatever she needs over from her apartment. Let’s see. You oughtn’t to be seen leaving here together. You go home now. Take a taxi, but make sure you aren’t followed. You probably won’t be, but make sure. I’ll send her out in another in a little while, making sure she isn’t followed.”

The telephone-bell was ringing when Spade returned to his office after sending Brigid O’Shaughnessy off to Effie Perine’s house. He went to the telephone.

“Hello … Yes, this is Spade…. Yes, I got it. I’ve been waiting to hear from you…. Who? … Mr. Gutman? Oh, yes, sure! … Now—the sooner the better…. Twelve C…. Right. Say fifteen minutes…. Right.”

Spade sat on the corner of his desk beside the telephone and rolled a cigarette. His mouth was a hard complacent v. His eyes, watching his fingers make the cigarette, smoldered over lower lids drawn up straight.

The door opened and Iva Archer came in.

Spade said, Hello, honey,” in a voice as lightly amiable as his face had suddenly become.

“Oh, Sam, forgive me! forgive me!” she cried in a choked voice. She stood just inside the door, wadding a black-bordered handkerchief in her small gloved hands, peering into his face with frightened red and swollen eyes.

He did not get up from his seat on the desk-corner. He said: “Sure. That’s all right. Forget it.”

“But, Sam,” she wailed, “I sent those policemen there. I was mad, crazy with jealousy, and I phoned them that if they’d go there they’d learn something about Miles’s murder.”

“What made you think that?”

“Oh, I didn’t! But I was mad, Sam, and I wanted to hurt you.”

“It made things damned awkward.” He put his arm around her and drew her nearer. “But it’s all right now, only don’t get any more crazy notions like that.”

“I won’t,” she promised, “ever. But you weren’t nice to me last night. You were cold and distant and wanted to get rid of me, when I had come down there and waited so long to warn you, and you—”

“Warn me about what?”

“About Phil. He’s found out about—about you being in love with me, and Miles had told him about my wanting a divorce, though of course
he
never knew what for, and now Phil thinks we—you killed his brother because he wouldn’t give me the divorce so we could get married. He told me he believed that, and yesterday he went and told the police.”

“That’s nice,” Spade said softly. “And you came to warn me, and because I was busy you got up on your ear and helped this damned Phil Archer stir things up.”

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered, “I know you won’t forgive me. I—I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“You ought to be,” he agreed, “on your own account as well as mine. Has Dundy been to see you since Phil did his talking? Or anybody from the bureau?”

“No.” Alarm opened her eyes and mouth.

“They will,” he said, “and it’d be just as well to not let them find you here. Did you tell them who you were when you phoned?”

“Oh, no! I simply told them that if they’d go to your apartment right away they’d learn something about the murder and hung up.”

“Where’d you phone from?”

“The drug-store up above your place. Oh, Sam, dearest, I—”

He patted her shoulder and said pleasantly: “It was a dumb trick, all right, but it’s done now. You’d better run along home and think up things to tell the police. You’ll be hearing from them. Maybe it’d be best to say ‘no’ right across the board.” He frowned at something distant. “Or maybe you’d better see Sid Wise first.” He removed his arm from around her, took a card out of his pocket, scribbled three lines on its back, and gave it to her. “You can tell Sid everything.” He frowned. “Or almost everything. Where were you the night Miles was shot?”

“Home,” she replied without hesitating.

He shook his head, grinning at her.

“I was,” she insisted.

“No,” he said, “but if that’s your story it’s all right with me. Go see Sid. It’s up on the next corner, the pinkish building, room eight-twenty-seven.”

Her blue eyes tried to probe his yellow-grey ones. “What makes you think I wasn’t home?” she asked slowly.

“Nothing except that I know you weren’t.”

“But I was, I was.” Her lips twisted and anger darkened her eyes. “Effie Perine told you that,” she said indignantly. “I saw her looking at my clothes and snooping around. You know she doesn’t like me, Sam. Why do you believe things she tells you when you know she’d do anything to make trouble for me?”

“Jesus, you women,” Spade said mildly. He looked at the watch on his wrist. “You’ll have to trot along, precious. I’m late for an appointment now. You do what you want, but if I were you I’d tell Sid the truth or nothing. I mean leave out the parts you don’t want to tell him, but don’t make up anything to take its place.”

“I’m not lying to you, Sam,” she protested.

“Like hell you’re not,” he said and stood up.

She strained on tiptoe to hold her face nearer his. “You don’t believe me?” she whispered.

“I don’t believe you.”

“And you won’t forgive me for—for what I did?”

“Sure I do.” He bent his head and kissed her mouth. “That’s all right. Now run along.”