Part 8 (1/2)

Tom groaned.

Dundy, still speaking through his teeth, said: ”It'd pay you to play along with us a little, Spade. You've got away with this and you've got away with that, but you can't keep it up forever.”

”Stop me when you can,” Spade replied arrogantly.

”That's what I'll do.” Dundy put his hands behind him and thrust his hard face up towards the private detective's. ”There's talk going around that you and Archer's wife were cheating on him.”

Spade laughed. ”That sounds like something you thought up yourself.”

”Then there's not anything to it?”

”Not anything.”

”The talk is,” Dundy said, ”that she tried to get a divorce out of him so's she could put in with you, but he wouldn't give it to her. Anything to that?”

”No.”

”There's even talk,” Dundy went on stolidly, ”that that's why he was put on the spot.”

Spade seemed mildly amused. ”Don't be a hog,” he said. ”You oughtn't try to pin more than one murder at a time on me. Your first idea that I knocked Thursby off because he'd killed Miles falls apart if you blame me for killing Miles too.”

”You haven't heard me say you killed anybody,” Dundy replied. ”You're the one that keeps bringing that up. But suppose I did. You could have blipped them both. There's a way of figuring it.”

”Uh-huh. I could've butchered Miles to get his wife, and then Thursby so I could hang Miles's killing on him. That's a h.e.l.l of a swell system, or will be when I can give somebody else the b.u.mp and hang Thursby's on them. How long am I supposed to keep that up? Are you going to put your hand on my shoulder for all the killings in San Francisco from now on?”

Tom said: ”Aw, cut the comedy, Sam. You know d.a.m.ned well we don't like this any more than you do, but we got our work to do.”

”I hope you've got something to do besides pop in here early every morning with a lot of d.a.m.ned fool questions.”

”And get d.a.m.ned lying answers,” Dundy added deliberately.

”Take it easy,” Spade cautioned him.

Dundy looked him up and down and then looked him straight in the eyes. ”If you say there was nothing between you and Archer's wife,” he said, ”you're a liar, and I'm telling you so.”

A startled look came into Tom's small eyes.

Spade moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue and asked: ”Is that the hot tip that brought you here at this unG.o.dly time of night?”

”That's one of them.”

”And the others?”

Dundy pulled down the corners of his mouth. ”Let us in.” He nodded significantly at the doorway in which Spade stood.

Spade frowned and shook his head.

Dundy's mouth-corners lifted in a smile of grim satisfaction. ”There must've been something to it,” he told Tom.

Tom s.h.i.+fted his feet and, not looking at either man, mumbled: ”G.o.d knows.”

”What's this?” Spade asked. ”Charades?”

”All right, Spade, we're going.” Dundy b.u.t.toned his overcoat. ”We'll be in to see you now and then. Maybe you're right in bucking us. Think it over.”

”Uh-huh,” Spade said, grinning. ”Glad to see you any time, Lieutenant, and whenever I'm not busy I'll let you in.”

A voice in Spade's living-room screamed: ”Help! Help! Police! Help!” The voice, high and thin and shrill, was Joel Cairo's.

Lieutenant Dundy stopped turning away from the door, confronted Spade again, and said decisively: ”I guess we're going in.”

The sounds of a brief struggle, of a blow, of a subdued cry, came to them.

Spade's face twisted into a smile that held little joy. He said, ”I guess you are,” and stood out of the way.

When the police-detectives had entered he shut the corridor-door and followed them back to the living-room.

8.

HORSE FEATHERS.

Brigid O'Shaughnessy was huddled in the armchair by the table. Her forearms were up over her cheeks, her knees drawn up until they hid the lower part of her face. Her eyes were white-circled and terrified.

Joel Cairo stood in front of her, bending over her, holding in one hand the pistol Spade had twisted out of his hand. His other hand was clapped to his forehead. Blood ran through the fingers of that hand and down under them to his eyes. A smaller trickle from his cut lip made three wavy lines across his chin.

Cairo did not heed the detectives. He was glaring at the girl huddled in front of him. His lips were working spasmodically, but no coherent sound came from between them.

Dundy, the first of the three into the living-room, moved swiftly to Cairo's side, put a hand on his own hip under his overcoat, a hand on the Levantine's wrist, and growled: ”What are you up to here?”

Cairo took the red-smeared hand from his head and flourished it close to the Lieutenant's face. Uncovered by the hand, his forehead showed a three-inch ragged tear. ”This is what she has done,” he cried. ”Look at it.”

The girl put her feet down on the floor and looked warily from Dundy, holding Cairo's wrist, to Tom Polhaus, standing a little behind them, to Spade, leaning against the door-frame. Spade's face was placid. When his gaze met hers his yellow-grey eyes glinted for an instant with malicious humor and then became expressionless again.

”Did you do that?” Dundy asked the girl, nodding at Cairo's cut head.

She looked at Spade again. He did not in any way respond to the appeal in her eyes. He leaned against the door-frame and observed the occupants of the room with the polite detached air of a disinterested spectator.

The girl turned her eyes up to Dundy's. Her eyes were wide and dark and earnest. ”I had to,” she said in a low throbbing voice. ”I was all alone in here with him when he attacked me. I couldn't- I tried to keep him off. I-I couldn't make myself shoot him.”

”Oh, you liar!” Cairo cried, trying unsuccessfully to pull the arm that held his pistol out of Dundy's grip. ”Oh, you dirty filthy liar!” He twisted himself around to face Dundy. ”She's lying awfully. I came here in good faith and was attacked by both of them, and when you came he went out to talk to you, leaving her here with this pistol, and then she said they were going to kill me after you left, and I called for help, so you wouldn't leave me here to be murdered, and then she struck me with the pistol.”

”Here, give me this thing,” Dundy said, and took the pistol from Cairo's hand. ”Now let's get this straight. What'd you come here for?”

”He sent for me.” Cairo twisted his head around to stare defiantly at Spade. ”He called me up on the phone and asked me to come here.”