The Maltese Falcon - (4)

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. Spade.” He hesitated. “May I have my pistol?”
    “Sure. I’d forgotten it.”
    Spade took the pistol out of his coat-pocket and handed it to Cairo.
    Cairo pointed the pistol at Spade’s chest.
    “You will please keep your hands on the top of the desk,” Cairo said earnestly. “I intend to search your offices.”
    Spade said: “I’ll be damned.” Then he laughed in his throat and said: “All right. Go ahead. I won’t stop you.”
    6
    THE UNDERSIZED SHADOW
    FOR half an hour after Joel Cairo had gone Spade sat alone, still and frowning, at his desk. Then he said aloud in the tone of one dismissing a problem, “Well, they’re paying for it,” and took a bottle of Manhattan cocktail and a paper drinking-cup from a desk-drawer. He filled the cup two-thirds full, drank, returned the bottle to the drawer, tossed the cup into the wastebasket, put on his hat and overcoat, turned off the lights, and went down to the night-lit street.
    An undersized youth of twenty or twenty-one in neat grey cap and overcoat was standing idly on the corner below Spade’s building.
    Spade walked up Sutter Street to Kearny, where he entered a cigar-store to buy two sacks of Bull Durham. When he came out the youth was one of four people waiting for a street-car on the opposite corner.
    Spade ate dinner at Herbert’s Grill in Powell Street. When he left the Grill, at a quarter to eight, the youth was looking into a nearby haberdasher’s window.
    Spade went to the Hotel Belvedere, asking at the desk for Mr. Cairo. He was told that Cairo was not in. The youth sat in a chair in a far corner of the lobby.
    Spade went to the Geary Theatre, failed to see Cairo in the lobby, and posted himself on the curb in front, facing the theatre. The youth loitered with other loiterers before Marquard’s restaurant below.
    At ten minutes past eight Joel Cairo appeared, walking up Geary Street with his little mincing bobbing steps. Apparently he did not see Spade until the private detective touched his shoulder. He seemed moderately surprised for a moment, and then said: “Oh, yes, of course you saw the ticket.”
    “Uh-huh. I’ve got something I want to show you.” Spade drew Cairo back towards the curb a little away from the other waiting theatre-goers. “The kid in the cap down by Marquard’s.”
    Cairo murmured, “I’ll see,” and looked at his watch. He looked up Geary Street. He looked at a theatre-sign in front of him on which George Arliss was shown costumed as Shylock, and then his dark eyes crawled sidewise in their sockets until they were looking at the kid in the cap, at his cool pale face with curling lashes hiding lowered eyes.
    “Who is he?” Spade asked.
    Cairo smiled up at Spade. “I do not know him.”
    “He’s been tailing me around town.”
    Cairo wet his lower lip with his tongue and asked: “Do you think it was wise, then, to let him see us together?”
    “How do I know?” Spade replied. “Anyway, it’s done.”
    Cairo removed his hat and smoothed his hair with a gloved hand. He replaced his hat carefully on his head and said with every appearance of candor: “I give you my word I do not know him, Mr. Spade. I give you my word I have nothing to do with him. I have asked nobody’s assistance except yours, on my word of honor.”
    “Then he’s one of the others?”
    “That may be.”
    “I just wanted to know, because if he gets to be a nuisance I may have to hurt him.”
    “Do as you think best. He is not a friend of mine.”
    “That’s good. There goes the curtain. Good night,” Spade said, and crossed the street to board a westbound street-car.
    The youth in the cap boarded the same car.
    Spade left the car at Hyde Street and went up to his apartment. His rooms were not greatly upset, but showed unmistakable signs of having been searched. When Spade had washed and had put on a fresh shirt and collar he went out again, walked up to Sutter Street, and boarded a westbound car. The youth boarded it also.
    Within half a dozen blocks of the Coronet Spade left the car and went into the vestibule of a tall brown apartment-building. He pressed three bell-buttons together. The street-door-lock buzzed. He entered, passed the elevator and stairs, went down a long yellow-walled corridor to the rear of the building, found a back door fastened by a Yale lock, and let himself out into a narrow court. The court led to a dark back street, up which Spade walked for two blocks. Then he crossed over to California Street and went to the Coronet. It was not quite half-past nine o’clock.
    *        *        *        *        *
    The eagerness with which Brigid O’Shaughnessy welcomed Spade suggested that she had been not entirely certain of his coming. She had put on a satin gown of the blue shade called Artoise that season, with chalcedony shoulder-straps, and her stockings and slippers were Artoise.
    The red and cream sitting-room had been brought to order and livened with flowers in squat pottery vases of black and silver. Three small rough-barked logs burned in the fireplace. Spade watched them burn while she put away his hat and coat.
    “Do you bring me good news?” she asked when she came into the room again. Anxiety looked through her smile, and she held her breath.
    “We won’t have to make anything public that hasn’t already been made public.”
    “The police won’t have to know about me?”
    “No.”
    She sighed happily and sat on the walnut settee. Her face relaxed and her body relaxed. She smiled up at him with admiring eyes. “However did you manage it?” she asked more in wonder than in curiosity.
    “Most things in San Francisco can be bought, or taken.”
    “And you won’t get into trouble? Do sit down.” She made room for him on the settee.
    “I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble,” he said with not too much complacence.
    He stood beside the fireplace and looked at her with eyes that studied, weighed, judged her without pretense that they were not studying, weighing, judging her. She flushed slightly under the frankness of his scrutiny, but she seemed more sure of herself than before, though a becoming shyness had not left her eyes. He stood there until it seemed plain that he meant to ignore her invitation to sit beside her, and then crossed to the settee.
    “You aren’t,” he asked as he sat down, “exactly the sort of person you pretend to be, are you?”
    “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said in her hushed voice, looking at him with puzzled eyes.
    “Schoolgirl manner,” he explained, “stammering and blushing and all that.”
    She blushed and replied hurriedly, not looking at him: “I told you this afternoon that I’ve been bad—worse than you could know.”
    “That’s what I mean,” he said. “You told me that this afternoon in the same words, same tone. It’s a speech you’ve practiced.”
    After a moment in which she seemed confused almost to the point of tears she laughed and said: “Very well, then, Mr. Spade, I’m not at all the sort of person I pretend to be. I’m eighty years old, incredibly wicked, and an iron-molder by trade. But if it’s a pose it’s one I’ve grown into, so you won’t expect me to drop it entirely, will you?”
    “Oh, it’s all right,” he assured her. “Only it wouldn’t be all right if you were actually that innocent. We’d never get anywhere.”
    “I won’t be innocent,” she promised with a hand on her heart.
    “I saw Joel Cairo tonight,” he said in the manner of one making polite conversation.
    Gaiety went out of her face. Her eyes, focused on his profile, became frightened, then cautious. He had stretched his legs out and was looking at his crossed feet. His face did not indicate that he was thinking about anything.
    There was a long pause before she asked uneasily:
    “You—you know him?”
    “I saw him tonight.” Spade did not look up and he maintained his light conversational tone. “He was going to see George Arliss.”
    “You mean you talked to him?”
    “Only for a minute or two, till the curtain-bell rang.”
    She got up from the settee and went to the fireplace to poke the fire. She changed slightly the position of an ornament on the mantelpiece, crossed the room to get a box of cigarettes from a table in a corner, straightened a curtain, and returned to her seat. Her face now was smooth and unworried.
    Spade grinned sidewise at her and said: “You’re good. You’re very good.”
    Her face did not change. She asked quietly: “What did he say?”
    “About what?”
    She hesitated. “About me.”
    “Nothing.” Spade turned to hold his lighter under the end of her cigarette. His eyes were shiny in a wooden satan’s face.
    “Well, what did he say?” she asked with half-playful petulance.
    “He offered me five thousand dollars for the black bird.”
    She started, her teeth tore the end of her cigarette, and her eyes, after a swift alarmed glance at Spade, turned away from him.
    “You’re not going to go around poking at the fire and straightening up the room again, are you?” he asked lazily.
    She laughed a clear merry laugh, dropped the mangled cigarette into a tray, and looked at him with clear merry eyes. “I won’t,” she promised. “And what did you say?”
    “Five thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
    She smiled, but when, instead of smiling, he looked gravely at her, her smile became faint, confused, and presently vanished. In its place came a hurt, bewildered look. “Surely you’re not really considering it,” she said.
    “Why not? Five thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
    “But, Mr. Spade, you promised to help me.” Her hands were on his arm. “I trusted you. You can’t—” She broke off, took her hands from his sleeve and worked them together.
    Spade smiled gently into her troubled eyes. “Don’t let’s try to figure out how much you’ve trusted me,” he said. “I promised to help you—sure—but you didn’t say anything about any black birds.”
    “But you must’ve known or—or you wouldn’t have mentioned it to me. You do know now. You won’t—you can’t—treat me like that.” Her eyes were cobalt-blue prayers.
    “Five thousand dollars is,” he said for the third time, “a lot of money.”
    She lifted her shoulders and hands and let them fall in a gesture that accepted defeat. “It is,” she agreed in a small dull voice. “It is far more than I could ever offer you, if I must bid for your loyalty.”
    Spade laughed. His laughter was brief and somewhat bitter. “That is good,” he said, “coming from you. What have you given me besides money? Have you given me any of your confidence? any of the truth? any help in helping you? Haven’t you tried to buy my loyalty with money and nothing else? Well, if I’m peddling it, why shouldn’t I let it go to the highest bidder?”
    “I’ve given you all the money I have.” Tears glistened in her white-ringed eyes. Her voice was hoarse, vibrant. “I’ve thrown myself on your mercy, told you that without your help I’m utterly lost. What else is there?” She suddenly moved close to him on the settee and cried angrily: “Can I buy you with my body?”
    Their faces were a few inches apart. Spade took her face between his hands and he kissed her mouth roughly and contemptuously. Then he sat back and said: “I’ll think it over.” His face was hard and furious.
    She sat still holding her numbed face where his hands had left it.
    He stood up and said: “Christ! there’s no sense to this.” He took two steps towards the fireplace and stopped, glowering at the burning logs, grinding his teeth together.
    She did not move.
    He turned to face her. The two vertical lines above his nose were deep clefts between red wales. “I don’t give a damn about your honesty,” he told her, trying to make himself speak calmly. “I don’t care what kind of tricks you’re up to, what your secrets are, but I’ve got to have something to show that you know what you’re doing.”
    “I do know. Please believe that I do, and that it’s all for the best, and—”
    “Show me,” he ordered. “I’m willing to help you. I’ve done what I could so far. If necessary I’ll go ahead blindfolded, but I can’t do it without more confidence in you than I’ve got now. You’ve got to convince me that you know what it’s all about, that you’re not simply fiddling around by guess and by God, hoping it’ll come out all right somehow in the end.”
    “Can’t you trust me just a little longer?”
    “How much is a little? And what are you waiting for?”
    She bit her lip and looked down. “I must talk to Joel Cairo,” she said almost inaudibly.