The Maltese Falcon Read online

  “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.”

  11

  THE FAT MAN

  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.”

&n
bsp; “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.”

  She put her arms around him. “Won’t you go with me to see Mr. Wise?”

  “I can’t, and I’d only be in the way.” He patted her arms, took them from around his body, and kissed her left wrist between glove and sleeve. He put his hands on her shoulders, turned her to face the door, and released her with a little push. “Beat it,” he ordered.

  The mahogany door of suite 12-C at the Alexandria Hotel was opened by the boy Spade had talked to in the Belvedere lobby. Spade said, “Hello,” good-naturedly. The boy did not say anything. He stood aside holding the door open.

  Spade went in. A fat man came to meet him.

  The fat man was flabbily fat with bulbous pink cheeks and lips and chins and neck, with a great soft egg of a belly that was all his torso, and pendant cones for arms and legs. As he advanced to meet Spade all his bulbs rose and shook and fell separately with each step, in the manner of clustered soap-bubbles not yet released from the pipe through which they had been blown. His eyes, made small by fat puffs around them, were dark and sleek. Dark ringlets thinly covered his broad scalp. He wore a black cutaway coat, black vest, black satin Ascot tie holding a pinkish pearl, striped grey worsted trousers, and patent-leather shoes.

  His voice was a throaty purr. “Ah, Mr. Spade,” he said with enthusiasm and held out a hand like a fat pink star.

  Spade took the hand and smiled and said: “How do you do, Mr. Gutman?”

  Holding Spade’s hand, the fat man turned beside him, put his other hand to Spade’s elbow, and guided him across a green rug to a green plush chair beside a table that held a siphon, some glasses, and a bottle of Johnnie Walker whiskey on a tray, a box of cigars—Coronas del Ritz—two newspapers, and a small and plain yellow soapstone box.

  Spade sat in the green chair. The fat man began to fill two glasses from bottle and siphon. The boy had disappeared. Doors set in three of the room’s walls were shut. The fourth wall, behind Spade, was pierced by two windows looking out over Geary Street.

  “We begin well, sir,” the fat man purred, turning with a proffered glass in his hand. “I distrust a man that says when. If he’s got to be careful not to drink too much it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does.”

  Spade took the glass and, smiling, made the beginning of a bow over it.

  The fat man raised his glass and held it against a window’s light. He nodded approvingly at the bubbles running up in it. He said: “Well, sir, here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding.”

  They drank and lowered their glasses.

  The fat man looked shrewdly at Spade and asked: “You’re a close-mouthed man?”

  Spade shook his head. “I like to talk.”

  “Better and better!” the fat man exclaimed. “I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in practice.” He beamed over his glass. “We’ll get along, sir, that we will.” He set his glass on the table and held the box of Coronas del Ritz out to Spade. “A cigar, sir.”

  Spade took a cigar, trimmed the end of it, and lighted it. Meanwhile the fat man pulled another green plush chair around to face Spade’s within convenient distance and placed a smoking-stand within reach of both chairs. Then he took his glass from the table, took a cigar from the box, and lowered himself into his chair. His bulbs stopped jouncing and settled into flabby rest. He sighed comfortably and said: “Now, sir, we’ll talk if you like. And I’ll tell you right out that I’m a man who likes talking to a man that likes to talk.”

  “Swell. Will we talk about the black bird?”

  The fat man laughed and his bulbs rode up and down on his laughter. “Will we?” he asked and, “We will,” he replied. His pink face was shiny with delight. “You’re the man for me, sir, a man cut along my own lines. No beating about the bush, but right to the point. ‘Will we talk about the black bird?’ We will. I like that, sir. I like that way of doing business. Let us talk about the black bird by all means, but first, sir, answer me a question, please, though maybe it’s an unnecessary one, so we’ll understand each other from the beginning. You’re here as Miss O’Shaughnessy’s representative?”

  Spade blew smoke above the fat man’s head in a long slanting plume. He frowned thoughtfully at
the ash-tipped end of his cigar. He replied deliberately: “I can’t say yes or no. There’s nothing certain about it either way, yet.” He looked up at the fat man and stopped frowning. “It depends.”

  “It depends on—?”

  Spade shook his head. “If I knew what it depends on I could say yes or no.”

  The fat man took a mouthful from his glass, swallowed it, and suggested: “Maybe it depends on Joel Cairo?”

  Spade’s prompt “Maybe” was noncommittal. He drank.

  The fat man leaned forward until his belly stopped him. His smile was ingratiating and so was his purring voice. “You could say, then, that the question is which one of them you’ll represent?”

  “You could put it that way.”

  “It will be one or the other?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  The fat man’s eyes glistened. His voice sank to a throaty whisper asking: “Who else is there?”

  Spade pointed his cigar at his own chest. “There’s me,” he said.

  The fat man sank back in his chair and let his body go flaccid. He blew his breath out in a long contented gust. “That’s wonderful, sir,” he purred. “That’s wonderful. I do like a man that tells you right out he’s looking out for himself. Don’t we all? I don’t trust a man that says he’s not. And the man that’s telling the truth when he says he’s not I distrust most of all, because he’s an ass and an ass that’s going contrary to the laws of nature.”

  Spade exhaled smoke. His face was politely attentive. He said: “Uh-huh. Now let’s talk about the black bird.”

  The fat man smiled benevolently. “Let’s,” he said. He squinted so that fat puffs crowding together left nothing of his eyes but a dark gleam visible. “Mr. Spade, have you any conception of how much money can be made out of that black bird?”

  “No.”

  The fat man leaned forward again and put a bloated pink hand on the arm of Spade’s chair. “Well, sir, if I told you—by Gad, if I told you half!—you’d call me a liar.”

  Spade smiled. “No,” he said, “not even if I thought it. But if you won’t take the risk just tell me what it is and I’ll figure out the profits.”