The Maltese Falcon Page 13

  “In my hands, safely tucked away.”

  Gutman smiled with approval. “Trust you for that, sir,” he said. “Well now, sir, before we sit down to talk prices, answer me this: how soon can you—or how soon are you willing to—produce the falcon?”

  “A couple of days.”

  The fat man nodded. “That is satisfactory. We— But I forgot our nourishment.” He turned to the table, poured whiskey, squirted charged water into it, set a glass at Spade’s elbow and held his own aloft. “Well, sir, here’s to a fair bargain and profits large enough for both of us.”

  They drank. The fat man sat down. Spade asked: “What’s your idea of a fair bargain?”

  Gutman held his glass up to the light, looked affectionately at it, took another long drink, and said: “I have two proposals to make, sir, and either is fair. Take your choice. I will give you twenty-five thousand dollars when you deliver the falcon to me, and another twenty-five thousand as soon as I get to New York; or I will give you one quarter—twenty-five per cent—of what I realize on the falcon. There you are, sir: an almost immediate fifty thousand dollars or a vastly greater sum within, say, a couple of months.”

  Spade drank and asked: “How much greater?”

  “Vastly,” the fat man repeated. “Who knows how much greater? Shall I say a hundred thousand, or a quarter of a million? Will you believe me if I name the sum that seems the probable minimum?”

  “Why not?”

  The fat man smacked his lips and lowered his voice to a purring murmur. “What would you say, sir, to half a million?”

  Spade narrowed his eyes. “Then you think the dingus is worth two million?”

  Gutman smiled serenely. “In your own words, why not?” he asked.

  Spade emptied his glass and set it on the table. He put his cigar in his mouth, took it out, looked at it, and put it back in. His yellow-grey eyes were faintly muddy. He said: “That’s a hell of a lot of dough.”

  The fat man agreed: “That’s a hell of a lot of dough.” He leaned forward and patted Spade’s knee. “That is the absolute rock-bottom minimum—or Charilaos Konstantinides was a blithering idiot—and he wasn’t.”

  Spade removed the cigar from his mouth again, frowned at it with distaste, and put it on the smoking-stand. He shut his eyes hard, opened them again. Their muddiness had thickened. He said: “The—the minimum, huh? And the maximum?” An unmistakable sh followed the x in maximum as he said it.

  “The maximum?” Gutman held his empty hand out, palm up. “I refuse to guess. You’d think me crazy. I don’t know. There’s no telling how high it could go, sir, and that’s the one and only truth about it.”

  Spade pulled his sagging lower lip tight against the upper. He shook his head impatiently. A sharp frightened gleam awoke in his eyes—and was smothered by the deepening muddiness. He stood up, helping himself up with his hands on the arms of his chair. He shook his head again and took an uncertain step forward. He laughed thickly and muttered: “God damn you.”

  Gutman jumped up and pushed his chair back. His fat globes jiggled. His eyes were dark holes in an oily pink face.

  Spade swung his head from side to side until his dull eyes were pointed at—if not focused on—the door. He took another uncertain step.

  The fat man called sharply: “Wilmer!”

  A door opened and the boy came in.

  Spade took a third step. His face was grey now, with jaw-muscles standing out like tumors under his ears. His legs did not straighten again after his fourth step and his muddy eyes were almost covered by their lids. He took his fifth step.

  The boy walked over and stood close to Spade, a little in front of him, but not directly between Spade and the door. The boy’s right hand was inside his coat over his heart. The corners of his mouth twitched.

  Spade essayed his sixth step.

  The boy’s leg darted out across Spade’s leg, in front. Spade tripped over the interfering leg and crashed face-down on the floor. The boy, keeping his right hand under his coat, looked down at Spade. Spade tried to get up. The boy drew his right foot far back and kicked Spade’s temple. The kick rolled Spade over on his side. Once more he tried to get up, could not, and went to sleep.

  14

  LA PALOMA

  Spade, coming around the corner from the elevator at a few minutes past six in the morning, saw yellow light glowing through the frosted glass of his office-door. He halted abruptly, set his lips together, looked up and down the corridor, and advanced to the door with swift quiet strides.

  He put his hand on the knob and turned it with care that permitted neither rattle nor click. He turned the knob until it would turn no farther: the door was locked. Holding the knob still, he changed hands, taking it now in his left hand. With his right hand he brought his keys out of his pocket, carefully, so they could not jingle against one another. He separated the office-key from the others and, smothering the others together in his palm, inserted the office-key in the lock. The insertion was soundless. He balanced himself on the balls of his feet, filled his lungs, clicked the door open, and went in.

  Effie Perine sat sleeping with her head on her forearms, her forearms on her desk. She wore her coat and had one of Spades overcoats wrapped cape-fashion around her.

  Spade blew his breath out in a muffled laugh, shut the door behind him, and crossed to the inner door. The inner office was empty. He went over to the girl and put a hand on her shoulder.

  She stirred, raised her head drowsily, and her eyelids fluttered. Suddenly she sat up straight, opening her eyes wide. She saw Spade, smiled, leaned back in her chair, and rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “So you finally got back?” she said. “What time is it?”

  “Six o’clock. What are you doing here?”

  She shivered, drew Spade’s overcoat closer around her, and yawned. “You told me to stay till you got back or phoned.”

  “Oh, you’re the sister of the boy who stood on the burning deck?”

  “I wasn’t going to—” She broke off and stood up, letting his coat slide down on the chair behind her. She looked with dark excited eyes at his temple under the brim of his hat and exclaimed: “Oh, your head! What happened?”

  His right temple was dark and swollen.

  “I don’t know whether I fell or was slugged. I don’t think it amounts to much, but it hurts like hell.” He barely touched it with his fingers, flinched, turned his grimace into a grim smile, and explained: “I went visiting, was fed knockout-drops, and came to twelve hours later all spread out on a man’s floor.”

  She reached up and removed his hat from his head. “It’s terrible,” she said. “You’ll have to get a doctor. You can’t walk around with a head like that.”

  “It’s not as bad as it looks, except for the headache, and that might be mostly from the drops.” He went to the cabinet in the corner of the office and ran cold water on a handkerchief. “Anything turn up after I left?”

  “Did you find Miss O’Shaughnessy, Sam?”

  “Not yet. Anything turn up after I left?”

  “The District Attorney’s office phoned. He wants to see you.”

  “Himself?”

  “Yes, that’s the way I understood it. And a boy came in with a message—that Mr. Gutman would be delighted to talk to you before five-thirty.”

  Spade turned off the water, squeezed the handkerchief, and came away from the cabinet holding the handkerchief to his temple. “I got that,” he said. “I met the boy downstairs, and talking to Mr. Gutman got me this.”

  “Is that the G. who phoned, Sam?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what—?”

  Spade stared through the girl and spoke as if using speech to arrange his thoughts: “He wants something he thinks I can get. I persuaded him I could keep him from getting it if he didn’t make the deal with me before five-thirty. Then—uh-huh—sure—it was after I’d told him he’d have to wait a couple of days that he fed me the junk. It’s not likely he thought I’d die. He’d
know I’d be up and around in ten or twelve hours. So maybe the answer’s that he figured he could get it without my help in that time if I was fixed so I couldn’t butt in.” He scowled. “I hope to Christ he was wrong.” His stare became less distant. “You didn’t get any word from the O’Shaughnessy?”

  The girl shook her head no and asked: “Has this got anything to do with her?”

  “Something.”

  “This thing he wants belongs to her?”

  “Or to the King of Spain. Sweetheart, you’ve got an uncle who teaches history or something over at the University?”

  “A cousin. Why?”

  “If we brightened his life with an alleged historical secret four centuries old could we trust him to keep it dark awhile?”

  “Oh, yes, he’s good people.”

  “Fine. Get your pencil and book.”

  She got them and sat in her chair. Spade ran more cold water on his handkerchief and, holding it to his temple, stood in front of her and dictated the story of the falcon as he had heard it from Gutman, from Charles V’s grant to the Hospitallers up to—but no further than—the enameled bird’s arrival in Paris at the time of the Carlist influx. He stumbled over the names of authors and their works that Gutman had mentioned, but managed to achieve some sort of phonetic likeness. The rest of the history he repeated with the accuracy of a trained interviewer.

  When he had finished the girl shut her notebook and raised a flushed smiling face to him. “Oh, isn’t this thrilling?” she said. “It’s—”

  “Yes, or ridiculous. Now will you take it over and read it to your cousin and ask him what he thinks of it? Has he ever run across anything that might have some connection with it? Is it probable? Is it possible—even barely possible? Or is it the bunk? If he wants more time to look it up, O K, but get some sort of opinion out of him now. And for God’s sake make him keep it under his hat.”

  “I’ll go right now,” she said, “and you go see a doctor about that head.”

  “We’ll have breakfast first.”

  “No, I’ll eat over in Berkeley. I can’t wait to hear what Ted thinks of this.”

  “Well,” Spade said, “don’t start boo-hooing if he laughs at you.”

  After a leisurely breakfast at the Palace, during which he read both morning papers, Spade went home, shaved, bathed, rubbed ice on his bruised temple, and put on fresh clothes.

  He went to Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s apartment at the Coronet. Nobody was in the apartment. Nothing had been changed in it since his last visit.

  He went to the Alexandria Hotel. Gutman was not in. None of the other occupants of Gutman’s suite was in. Spade learned that these other occupants were the fat man’s secretary, Wilmer Cook, and his daughter Rhea, a brown-eyed fair-haired smallish girl of seventeen whom the hotel-staff said was beautiful. Spade was told that the Gutman party had arrived at the hotel, from New York, ten days before, and had not checked out.

  Spade went to the Belvedere and found the hotel-detective eating in the hotel-café.

  “Morning, Sam. Set down and bite an egg.” The hotel-detective stared at Spade’s temple. “By God, somebody maced you plenty!”

  “Thanks, I’ve had mine,” Spade said as he sat down, and then, referring to his temple: “It looks worse than it is. How’s my Cairo’s conduct?”

  “He went out not more than half an hour behind you yesterday and I ain’t seen him since. He didn’t sleep here again last night.”

  “He’s getting bad habits.”

  “Well, a fellow like that alone in a big city. Who put the slug to you, Sam?”

  “It wasn’t Cairo.” Spade looked attentively at the small silver dome covering Luke’s toast. “How’s chances of giving his room a casing while he’s out?”

  “Can do. You know I’m willing to go all the way with you all the time.” Luke pushed his coffee back, put his elbows on the table, and screwed up his eyes at Spade. “But I got a hunch you ain’t going all the way with me. What’s the honest-to-God on this guy, Sam? You don’t have to kick back on me. You know I’m regular.”

  Spade lifted his eyes from the silver dome. They were clear and candid. “Sure, you are,” he said. “I’m not holding out. I gave you it straight. I’m doing a job for him, but he’s got some friends that look wrong to me and I’m a little leery of him.”

  “The kid we chased out yesterday was one of his friends.”

  “Yes, Luke, he was.”

  “And it was one of them that shoved Miles across.”

  Spade shook his head. “Thursby killed Miles.”

  “And who killed him?”

  Spade smiled. “That’s supposed to be a secret, but, confidentially, I did,” he said, “according to the police.”

  Luke grunted and stood up saying: “You’re a tough one to figure out, Sam. Come on, we’ll have that look-see.”

  They stopped at the desk long enough for Luke to “fix it so we’ll get a ring if he comes in,” and went up to Cairo’s room. Cairo’s bed was smooth and trim, but paper in the wastebasket, unevenly drawn blinds, and a couple of rumpled towels in the bathroom showed that the chambermaid had not yet been in that morning.

  Cairo’s luggage consisted of a square trunk, a valise, and a gladstone bag. His bathroom-cabinet was stocked with cosmetics—boxes, cans, jars, and bottles of powders, creams, unguents, perfumes, lotions, and tonics. Two suits and an overcoat hung in the closet over three pairs of carefully treed shoes.

  The valise and smaller bag were unlocked. Luke had the trunk unlocked by the time Spade had finished searching elsewhere.

  “Blank so far,” Spade said as they dug down into the trunk.

  They found nothing there to interest them.

  “Any particular thing we’re supposed to be looking for?” Luke asked as he locked the trunk again.

  “No. He’s supposed to have come here from Constantinople. I’d like to know if he did. I haven’t seen anything that says he didn’t.”

  “What’s his racket?”

  Spade shook his head. “That’s something else I’d like to know.” He crossed the room and bent down over the wastebasket. “Well, this is our last shot.”

  He took a newspaper from the basket. His eyes brightened when he saw it was the previous day’s Call. It was folded with the classified-advertising page outside. He opened it, examined that page, and nothing there stopped his eyes.

  He turned the paper over and looked at the page that had been folded inside, the page that held financial and shipping news, the weather, births, marriages, divorces, and deaths. From the lower left-hand corner, a little more than two inches of the bottom of the second column had been torn out.

  Immediately above the tear was a small caption Arrived Today followed by:

  12:20 A.M.—Capac from Astoria.

  5:05 A.M.—Helen P. Drew from Greenwood.

  5:06 A.M.—Albarado from Bandon.

  The tear passed through the next line, leaving only enough of its letters to make from Sydney inferable.

  Spade put the Call down on the desk and looked into the wastebasket again. He found a small piece of wrapping-paper, a piece of string, two hosiery tags, a haberdasher’s sale-ticket for half a dozen pairs of socks, and, in the bottom of the basket, a piece of newspaper rolled in a tiny ball.

  He opened the ball carefully, smoothed it out on the desk, and fitted it into the torn part of the Call. The fit at the sides was exact, but between the top of the crumpled fragment and the inferable from Sydney half an inch was missing, sufficient space to have held announcement of six or seven boats’ arrival. He turned the sheet over and saw that the other side of the missing portion could have held only a meaningless corner of a stockbroker’s advertisement.

  Luke, leaning over his shoulder, asked: “What’s this all about?”

  “Looks like the gent’s interested in a boat.”

  “Well, there’s no law against that, or is there?” Luke said while Spade was folding the torn page and the crumpled fragment t
ogether and putting them into his coat-pocket. “You all through here now?”

  “Yes. Thanks a lot, Luke. Will you give me a ring as soon as he comes in?”

  “Sure.”

  Spade went to the Business Office of the Call, bought a copy of the previous day’s issue, opened it to the shipping-news-page, and compared it with the page taken from Cairo’s wastebasket. The missing portion had read:

  5:17 A.M.—Tahiti from Sydney and Papeete.

  6:05 A.M.—Admiral Peoples from Astoria.

  8:07 A.M.—Caddopeak from San Pedro.

  8:17 A.M.—Silverado from San Pedro.

  8:05 A.M.—La Paloma from Hongkong.

  9:03 A.M.—Daisy Gray from Seattle.

  He read the list slowly and when he had finished he underscored Hongkong with a fingernail, cut the list of arrivals from the paper with his pocket-knife, put the rest of the paper and Cairo’s sheet into the wastebasket, and returned to his office.

  He sat down at his desk, looked up a number in the telephone-book, and used the telephone.

  “Kearny one four o one, please…. Where is the Paloma, in from Hongkong yesterday morning docked?” He repeated the question. “Thanks.”

  He held the receiver-hook down with his thumb for a moment, released it, and said: “Davenport two o two o, please…. Detective bureau, please.... Is Sergeant Polhaus there?… Thanks…. Hello, Tom, this is Sam Spade…. Yes, I tried to get you yesterday afternoon…. Sure, suppose you go to lunch with me…. Right.”

  He kept the receiver to his ear while his thumb worked the hook again.

  “Davenport o one seven o, please…. Hello, this is Samuel Spade. My secretary got a message yesterday that Mr. Bryan wanted to see me. Will you ask him what time’s the most convenient for him? … Yes, Spade, S-p-a-d-e.” A long pause. “Yes…. Two-thirty? All right. Thanks.”

  He called a fifth number and said: “Hello, darling, let me talk to Sid? … Hello, Sid—Sam. I’ve got a date with the District Attorney at half-past two this afternoon. Will you give me a ring—here or there—around four, just to see that I’m not in trouble? … Hell with your Saturday afternoon golf: your job’s to keep me out of jail…. Right, Sid. ’Bye.”