“He wouldn’t say. He shut up tight. You couldn’t blame him.”
“Uh-huh,” Spade agreed.
“Then nothing. He never showed up at Fogey’s. We tried to get him on the phone around two o’clock in the morning, but his wife said he hadn’t been home, so we stuck around till four or five and then decided he had given us a run-around, and made Pogey charge the bill to him, and beat it. I ain’t seen him since—dead or alive.” Spade said mildly. “Maybe. Sure you didn’t find Eli later that morning, take him riding, swap him bullets for Ferris’s five thou, dump him in the??”
A sharp double knock sounded on the door.
Spade’s face brightened. He went to the door and opened it.
A young man came in. He was very dapper, and very well proportioned. He wore a light topcoat and his hands were in its pockets. Just inside the door he stepped to the right, and stood with his back to the wall. By that time another young man was coming in. He stepped to the left. Though they did not actually look alike, their common dapperness, the similar trimness of their bodies, and their almost identical positions—backs to wall, hands in pockets, cold, bright eyes studying the occupants of the room—gave them, for an instant, the appearance of twins.
Then Gene Colyer came in. He nodded at Spade, but paid no attention to the others in the room, though James said, “Hello, Gene.”
“Anything new?” Colyer asked Spade.
Spade nodded. “It seems this gentleman”—he jerked a thumb at Ferris—“was—”
“Any place we can talk?”
“There’s a kitchen back here.”
Colyer snapped a “Smear anybody that pops” over his shoulder at the two dapper young men and followed Spade into the kitchen. He sat on the one kitchen chair and stared with unblinking green eyes at Spade while Spade told him what he had learned.
When the private detective had finished, the green-eyed man asked, “Well, what do you make of it?”
Spade looked thoughtfully at the other. “You’ve picked up something. I’d like to know what it is.”
Colyer said, “They found the gun in a stream a quarter of a mile from where they found him. It’s James’s—got the mark on it where it was shot out of his hand once in Vallejo.”
“That’s nice,” Spade said.
“Listen. A kid named Thurber says James comes to him last Wednesday and gets him to tail Haven. Thurber picks him up Thursday afternoon, puts him in at Ferris’s, and phones James. James tells him to take a plant on the place and let him know where Haven goes when he leaves, but some nervous woman in the neighborhood puts in a rumble about the kid hanging around, and the cops chase him along about ten o’clock.”
Spade pursed his lips and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.
Colyer’s eyes were expressionless, but sweat made his round face shiny, and his voice was hoarse. “Spade,” he said, “I’m going to turn him in.”
Spade switched his gaze from the ceiling to the protuberant green eyes.
“I’ve never turned in one of my people before,” Colyer said, “but this one goes. Julia’s got to believe I hadn’t anything to do with it if it’s one of my people and I turn him in, hasn’t she?”
Spade nodded slowly. “I think so.”
Colyer suddenly averted his eyes and cleared his throat. When he spoke again it was curtly: “Well, he goes.”
Minera, James, and Conrad were seated when Spade and Colyer came out of the kitchen. Ferris was walking the floor. The two dapper young men had not moved.
Colyer went over to James. “Where’s your gun, Louis?” he asked.
James moved his right hand a few inches towards his left breast, stopped it, and said, “Oh, I didn’t bring it.”
With his gloved hand—open—Colyer struck James on the side of the face, knocking him out of his chair.
James straightened up, mumbling, “I didn’t mean nothing.” He put a hand to the side of his face. “I know I oughtn’t’ve done it, Chief, but when he called up and said he didn’t like to go up against Ferris without something and didn’t have any of his own, I said, ‘All right,’ and sent it over to him.”
Colyer said, “And you sent Thurber over to him, too.”
“We were just kind of interested in seeing if he did go through with it,” James mumbled!
“And you couldn’t’ve gone there yourself, or sent somebody else?”
“After Thurber had stirred up the whole neighborhood?”
Colyer turned to Spade. “Want us to help you take them in, or want to call the wagon?”
“We’ll do it regular,” Spade said, and went to the wall telephone. When he turned away from it his face was wooden, his eyes dreamy. He made a cigarette, lit it, and said to Colyer, “I’m silly enough to think your Louis has got a lot of right answers in that story of his.”
James took his hand down from his bruised cheek and stared at Spade with astonished eyes. Colyer growled, “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” Spade said softly, “except I think you’re a little too anxious to slam it on him.” He blew smoke out. “Why, for instance, should he drop his gun there when it had marks on it that people knew?” Colyer said, “You think he’s got brains.”
“If these boys killed him, knew he was dead, why do they wait till the body’s found and things are stirred up before they go after Ferris again? What’d they turn his pockets inside out for if they hijacked him? That’s a lot of trouble and only done by folks that kill for some other reason and want to make it look like robbery.” He shook his head. “You’re too anxious to slam it on them. Why should they-?”
“That’s not the point right now,” Colyer said. “The point is, why do you keep saying I’m too anxious to slam « on him?”
Spade shrugged. “Maybe to clear yourself with Julia as soon as possible and as clear as possible, maybe even to clear yourself with the police, and then you’ve got clients.”
Colyer said, “What?”
Spade made a careless gesture with his cigarette. “Ferris” he said blandly. “He killed him, of course.”
Colyer’s eyelids quivered, though he did not actually blink.
Spade said, “First, he’s the last person we know of who saw Eli alive, and that’s always a good bet. Second, he’s the only person I talked to before Eli’s body turned up who cared whether I thought they were holding out on me or not. The rest of you just thought I was hunting for a guy who’d gone away. He knew I was hunting for a man he’d killed, so he had to put himself in the clear. He was even afraid to throw that book away, because it had been sent up by the book store and could be traced, and there might be clerks who’d seen the inscription. Third, he was the only one who thought Eli was just a sweet, clean, lovable boy—for the same reasons. Fourth, that story about a blackmailer showing up at three o’clock in the afternoon, making an easy touch for five grand, and then sticking around till midnight is just silly, no matter how good the booze was. Fifth, the story about the paper Eli signed is still worse, though a forged one could be fixed up easy enough. Sixth, he’s got the best reason for anybody we know for wanting Eli dead.”
Colyer nodded slowly. “Still—”
“Still nothing,” Spade said. “Maybe he did the ten-thousand-out-five-thousand-back trick with his bank, but that was easy. Then he got this feeble-minded blackmailer in his house, stalled him along until the servants had gone to bed, took the borrowed gun away from him, shoved him downstairs into his car, took him for a ride—maybe took him already dead, maybe shot him down there by the bushes—frisked him clean to make identification harder and to make it look like robbery, tossed the gun in the water, and came home—”
He broke off to listen to the sound of a siren in the street. He looked then, for the first time since he had begun to talk, at Ferris.
Ferris’s face was ghastly white, but he held his eyes steady.
Spade said, “I’ve got a hunch, Ferris, that we’re going to find out about that red-lighting job, too. You
told me you had your carnival company with a partner for a while when Eli was working for you, and then by yourself. We oughtn’t to have a lot of trouble finding out about your partner—whether he disappeared, or died a natural death, or is still alive.”
Ferris had lost some of his erectness. He wet his lips and said, “I want to see my lawyer. I don’t want to talk till I’ve seen my lawyer.”
Spade said, “It’s all right with me. You’re up against it, but I don’t like blackmailers myself. I think Eli wrote a good epitaph for them in that book back there—‘Too many have lived.’ ”
WEEK-END
On the bed Mildred had piled the things she intended taking with her: a mound of silks and crepes and laces, glowing under the room’s one electric light, here pink and salmon, there flesh and cream, streaked irregularly by deeper ribbon-colors. Now Mildred, looking anxiously at her wrist watch, began moving the mound from bed to bag, packing with breathless care, with the infinite pains of a window-dresser.
The door opened and Mildred’s mother came two steps into the room. She was a gaunt woman in her late forties. Ill-fitting teeth pushed her thin lips awry. Her pallid eyes protruded disapprovingly.
“A person would think you were going on your honeymoon,” said she.
The pink in Mildred’s face deepened. She bent low over the bag that the flush might seem to come from packing efforts. Envelopes, nightgowns, camisoles on the bed seemed confessions. The cream of several Christmases and birthdays, heretofore too fine for wear, they had an obscene eloquence. Their profusion underscored the confession: they exceeded two days’ possible requirements, but they were soft and fine and would go easily into the bag; she had yielded to the temptation to take them all—a holiday gesture.
“No use letting them rot in the drawer.” She did not look up. “I might just as well wear them and get some use out of them.”
She went on packing, with exaggerated slowness now, hoping her mother would leave the room before she was done. The elder woman watched her daughter’s preparations with severe pale eyes. When the last thing had gone into the bag and Mildred had looked through the bureau to make sure she had forgotten nothing, her mother spoke again.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re thinking of, running off after this Harry Kenney. Seems to me a young girl with any shame about her would wait for her young man to come see her.” Her voice, aping resignation, achieved whining hostility. “And taking a day off from the office, and drawing two weeks’ pay, when we need so many things. Fred has got to have shoes, and the dining-room couch is falling to pieces. I declare, I don’t know what’s got into you!”
“I don’t care what we need. I’m tired of always scrimping and scraping and never having anything. I’m going to see Harry before he goes east if it’s the last thing I do. I’m going to do something I want to do once.”
“Oh, you’ll have your own way, I know! There’s no use of me talking. But I do hate to see you getting yourself talked about and doing things that a modest girl wouldn’t do, after all the trouble I’ve gone to to bring you up right. Do you think your Harry will ever marry you with you running after him every time he crooks a finger? Likely!”
Mildred winced.
“How do you know I want to marry him?”
Her mother’s lips writhed back between machine-trimmed teeth-edges.
“Look out you don’t have to,” she said harshly.
At a little after eight Mildred left the house, though her train did not go until half past nine. She stopped at the corner drug store for a box of someone’s seasickness preventative. She never felt well on trains and the pills had been recommended by one of the girls in the office.
She reached the station a little before eight-thirty—an hour’s wait. After taking two of the pills in the dressing-room she bought a magazine and sat on a bench near the iron gates that opened into the train shed. She was not so excited as she had expected to be, not nearly so much so as she had been the last two days. She looked at the pictures in the magazine, peering every few minutes at the clock across the concourse, comparing it with her wrist watch.
Presently hunger reminded her that she had not eaten since noon, had neglected the evening meal for dressing and packing. At the station lunch-counter she ordered a sandwich, a slice of pie, a cup of coffee. She had no appetite for them when they were set before her. She ate a mouthful of the sandwich and half the pie, washing the food down with coffee.
Excitement returned to her. When the gates were opened she was nervous, flustered, unreasonably afraid she would get aboard the wrong train. She asked three uniformed men for directions during her walk down the long platform. When she reached her car her berth was already made up. She got into it at once.
The night was interminable. The air was heavily odorous. She could not adjust her body comfortably to the berth. The other passengers were oppressively near. The rattling and rocking made her head ache. She was nauseated and from time to time took more of the pills, swallowing them difficultly without water. Switching on the light, trying to read, she found darkness preferable. When she dozed the jarring halts and starts at the frequent stations shook her into wakefulness. After dawn she lay looking out the window until the whirling country brought giddiness. She lowered the blind and tried to sleep until it was time to get up and dress.
The hurry and bustle from train to ferry in Oakland stimulated her. A light drizzle was falling. She felt unclean: the water in the train had been cold and she had been unable to do much with the small quantity the bowl held. But as she stood in the broad bow of the boat crossing the bay the damp salt wind washed away the taste and smell of cinders and smoke. The buildinged hills of San Francisco were gray in the rain, an inviting and cordial gray until she thought perhaps Harry wouldn’t be there to meet her, then the approaching city was cold, hostile.
The crowd swept her through the ferry building toward the street. Harry, standing beside a flower stand, saw her, pushed through the crowd. He was short—barely an inch taller than Mildred—and, while he was not young for his thirty years, his mouth and eyes were boyish. He took her bag and led her toward a row of taxicabs, telling her the while how glad he was to see her, how fine it was of her to come all this distance to see him.
“Can’t we walk, Harry?” she protested. “I’m tired of riding.”
“Sure.” He guided her across the Embarcadero.
The rain came down harder, but she did not mind. She had not eaten on the train, had eaten only a few mouthfuls since the previous noon. Now hunger came. In a restaurant in O’Farrell Street he smoked and talked over his coffee while she ate fried ham and waffles.
“We’ll get a room and then I’ll show you everything in the city,” he promised. She had not been in San Francisco before.
“Now, listen, Harry,” she said. “I know you’re glad to see me and everything, but I came on my own account and I’m going to pay my own bills while I’m here. I mean it.”
“Nonsense!” he laughed smokily. “But we’ll fight that out after we get up to our room.”
“Harry!” Mildred’s face was suddenly rosy. “I couldn’t!”
“Couldn’t what?”
“We can’t have a room together! That wouldn’t be right!”
“Wouldn’t be right? Nonsense! I’m going away and maybe we won’t see each other again for months. I’m not going to fumble the only chance I’ve ever had of having you all to myself for two days. Be reasonable!”
“No, no! We couldn’t.” Mildred shook her head. Her eyes were frightened. “It wouldn’t be right. You can come up to my room, but—”
“It’ll be great,” he insisted, “whether it’s right or not, and I’ll sit here and battle with you all day before I’ll let you swindle me out of this chance.”
They argued. The principle on which she based her refusal to share a room with him was too obscure for adequate defense: the objection did not extend to those intimacies to which that sharing would be a means. Her oppo
sition presently was smothered by repetitions of “Nonsense,” a favorite word of his.
They went to a hotel in Ellis Street, where she pretended interest in a framed map of California on the wall while he signed the register, George Burns and wife, Los Angeles. In their room she bathed and he made her lie down and try to sleep while he went out to see a fellow. Her headache returned. She tossed restlessly on the bed until Harry came back. Then they went out for luncheon.
The rain continued. She decided she would rather go to a matinee than sight-seeing. The music and lights made her head ache more violently. After the performance they returned to the hotel.
Later in the evening they went to a cabaret in Mason Street. She had never been in a cabaret before and momentarily expected some vague horror. The food was not bad and nothing exceptionable happened, but she was not comfortable, sat primly and disapprovingly straight on the edge of her chair. Harry looked disappointed, almost bored, though he talked gaily, volubly. Two tables away a woman lighted a cigarette. Mildred averted her face as from a shameful spectacle, and though Harry chaffed her good-naturedly about it she would not look in that direction again. They left early and went back to the hotel.
Harry had bought some magazines and the Sunday papers. He lay across the bed smoking and reading to her. She wondered with how many women he had spent days and nights like this. The matter-of-factness that made it bearable for her testified, she thought, to familiarity with the situation. But that, of course, was all right. He had never disguised his attitude toward this part of life. Perhaps that was why he had always had his way with her. She would have liked to have had him more ardent now, but that was not to be expected. He had never seriously said he loved her—not like that. He was not like that.
After a while he stopped reading and jumped into bed. She was long going to sleep. The street noises kept her awake. Her head ached, ached, ached. The thought that Harry had not wanted to see her before he went east came. She sat up in bed.
Harry rolled over, ran the back of a hand across his eyes, asked sleepily, “What’s the matter?”
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