by Unknown
“That’s a lie, Sam,” the girl said. “You know I think she’s a louse, but I’d be a louse too if I could have a body like that.”
Spade rubbed his face impatiently against her hip, but said nothing.
Effie Perine bit her lower lip, wrinkled her forehead, and, bending down for a better view of his face, asked:
“Do you suppose she could have killed him?”
Spade sat up straight and took his arm from her waist. He smiled at her. His smile held nothing but amusement. He took out his lighter, snapped it on, and lit his cigarette.
“You’re an angel,” he said tenderly through smoke, “a nice rattle-brained angel.”
She smiled a little wryly.
“Oh, am I? Suppose I told you that your Iva hadn’t been home very many minutes when I arrived to break the news at three o’clock this morning?”
“Are you telling me?” he asked. His eyes had become alert, though his mouth continued to smile.
“She kept me waiting at the door while she undressed or finished undressing. I saw her clothes where she had dumped them on a chair. Her coat and hat were underneath. Her singlette, on top, was still warm. She said she had been asleep, but she hadn’t. She had wrinkled up the bed, but the wrinkles weren’t mashed down.”
Spade took the girl’s hand and patted it.
“You’re a detective, darling, but”—he shook his head—“she didn’t kill him.”
Effie Perine snatched her hand away from him.
“That louse wants to marry you, Sam,” she said bitterly.
He made a careless gesture of dismissal with one hand.
She frowned at him and demanded:
“Did you see her last night?”
“No.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly. Don’t act like Dundy, sweetheart. It ill becomes you.”
“Has Dundy been after you?”
“Uh-huh. He and Tom Polhaus stopped in for a drink at four o’clock.”
“Do they really think you killed this what’s-his-name?”
“Thursby.”
He dropped what was left of his cigarette into the brass tray and began to roll another.
“Do they?” she insisted.
“God knows.” His eyes were on the cigarette he was making. “They did have some such notion. I don’t know how far I talked them out of it.”
“Look at me, Sam.”
He looked at her and laughed so that for the moment merriment mingled with the anxiety in her face.
“You worry me,” she said, seriousness returning to her face as she talked. “You always think you know what you’re doing, but you’re too slick for your own good, and some day you’re going to find it out.”
He sighed mockingly and rubbed his cheek against her arm.
“That’s what Dundy says, but you keep Iva away from me, sweet, and I’ll manage to survive the rest of my troubles.” He stood up and put on his hat. “Have the Spade & Archer taken off the door and Samuel Spade put in its place. I’ll be back in an hour, or phone you.”
Spade went through the St. Mark’s long purplish lobby to the desk and asked a blond dandy if Miss Wonderly was in. The dandy turned away from Spade, and then back to him shaking his head.
“She checked out this morning, Mr. Spade.”
“Thanks.”
Spade walked past the desk to the alcove off the lobby, where a plump young-middle-aged man in dark clothes sat at a flat-topped mahogany desk. On the edge of the desk facing the lobby was a triangular prism of mahogany and brass inscribed Mr. Freed.
The plump man got up from his chair and came around the desk holding out his hand.
“I was awfully sorry to hear about Archer, Spade,” he said in the tone of one trained to sympathize readily without intrusiveness. “I’ve just seen it in the Call. He was in here last night, you know.”
“Thanks, Freed. Were you talking to him?”
“No. He was sitting in the lobby when I came in early in the evening. I didn’t stop. I thought he was working and I know you fellows like to be let alone when you’re busy. Did that have anything to do with his—?”
“I don’t think so, but we don’t know yet. Anyway, we won’t mix the house up in it if we can help it.”
“Thanks.”
“That’s all right. Can you give me some information about an ex-guest, and then forget I asked for it?”
“Surely.”
“A Miss Wonderly checked out this morning. I’d like to know the details.”
“Come along,” Freed said, “and we’ll see what we can learn.”
Spade stood still shaking his head.
“I don’t want to show in it,” he said.
Freed nodded his sleek head and went out of the alcove. In the lobby he halted suddenly and returned to Spade.
“Barriman was the house detective on duty last night,” he said. “He’s sure to have seen Archer. Shall I caution him not to mention it?”
Spade looked at Freed from the corners of his eyes.
“Better not, Freed. That won’t make any difference as long as there’s no connection shown with this Wonderly. Barriman’s all right, but he likes to talk, and I’d rather he didn’t think there was anything to be kept quiet.”
Freed nodded again and went away.
Fifteen minutes later he returned.
“She came here last Tuesday, registering from New York. She hadn’t a trunk, only some bags. There were no phone calls charged to her room, and she doesn’t seem to have gotten much mail, if any. The only visitor I could learn about was a tall dark man of thirty-six or so. They seem to have been together a lot. She went out at half past nine this morning, came back an hour later, paid her bill, and had her bags carried out to a car. The boy who carried them says it was a Nash touring car, probably a hired car. She left a forwarding address: the Ambassador, Los Angeles.”
Spade said: “Thanks a lot, Freed,” and left the St. Mark.
When Spade returned to his office Effie Perine stopped typing a letter to tell him: “Your friend Dundy was in. He wanted to look at your guns.”
“And?”
“I told him to come back when you were here.”
“Good girl. If he comes back let him see them.”
“And Miss Wonderly called up.”
“It’s about time. What did she say?”
“She wants you to come to see her.” The girl picked a slip of paper up from her desk and read the memorandum penciled on it: “She’s at the Coronet, on California Street, apartment 1001. You’re to ask for Miss Leblanc.”
Spade said, “Give me,” and held out his hand. When she had given him the memorandum he took out his lighter, snapped on the flame, applied it to the slip of paper, held the paper till all but one corner was curling black ash, dropped it on the linoleum floor, and mashed it under his shoe sole.
The girl watched him suspiciously.
He grinned at her, said, “That’s just the way it is, dear,” and went out again.
CHAPTER IV
THE BLACK BIRD
iss Wonderly, in a belted green crepe silk dress, opened the door of apartment 1001 at the Coronet. Her face was flushed. Her dark red hair, parted on the left side, swept back in loose waves over her right temple, was somewhat tousled.
Spade took off his hat and said: “Good morning.”
His smile brought a fainter smile to her face. Her eyes, of blue that was almost violet, did not lose their troubled look.
She lowered her head, and said in a hushed, timid voice: “Come in, Mr. Spade.”
She led him past open kitchen, bathroom and bedroom doors into a cream and red living room, apologizing for its confusion: “Everything is upside down. I haven’t even finished unpacking.”
She laid his hat on a table and sat down on a walnut settee. He sat on a brocaded oval-back chair facing her.
She looked at her fingers, working them together, and said:
“Mr. Spade, I’ve a terrible, terr
ible confession to make.”
Spade smiled a polite smile, which she did not raise her eyes to see, and said nothing.
“That—that story I told you yesterday was all—a story,” she stammered, and looked up at him now with miserable frightened eyes.
“Oh, that,” Spade said lightly. “We didn’t exactly believe your story.”
“Then—?” Perplexity was added to the misery and fright in her eyes.
“We believed your two hundred dollars.”
“You mean—?” She seemed to have no idea of what he meant.
“I mean that you paid us more than if you’d been telling the truth,” he explained blandly, “and enough more to make it all right.”
Her eyes lighted up suddenly. She lifted herself a few inches from the settee, settled down again, smoothed her skirt, leaned forward, and spoke eagerly:
“And even now you’d be willing to—?”
Spade stopped her with a palm-up motion of one hand. The upper part of his face frowned. The lower part smiled.
“That depends,” he said. “The hell of it is, Miss— Is your name Wonderly or Leblanc?”
She blushed and murmured: “It’s O’Shaughnessy, Brigid O’Shaughnessy.”
“The hell of it is, Miss O’Shaughnessy, that a couple of murders”—she winced—“coming together like this get everybody stirred up, make the police think they can go the limit, make everything and everybody hard to handle, and expensive. It’s not—”
He stopped talking because she had stopped listening and was impatiently waiting for him to finish.
“Mr. Spade, tell me the truth.” Her voice quivered on the verge of hysteria. Her face had become haggard around desperate eyes. “Am I to blame for—for last night?”
Spade shook his head.
“Not unless there are things I don’t know about,” he said. “You warned us that Thursby was dangerous. Of course, you did lie to us about your sister and all, but that doesn’t count: we didn’t believe you.” He shrugged his sloping shoulders. “I wouldn’t say it looked like your fault.”
She said, “Thank you,” very softly, and then moved her head from side to side. “But I’ll always blame myself.” She put a hand to her throat. “Mr. Archer was so—so alive yesterday afternoon, so solid and hearty and—”
“Stop it,” Slade commanded. “He knew what he was doing. They’re the chances we take.”
“Was—was he married?”
“Yes, with ten thousand insurance, no children, and a wife who didn’t like him.”
“Oh, please don’t!” she whispered.
Spade shrugged again. “That’s the way it was.” He glanced at the watch on his wrist, and moved from his chair to the settee beside her. “There’s no time for worrying about that now.” His voice was amiable but firm. “Out there a flock of policemen and reporters and assistant district attorneys are running around with their noses to the ground. What do you want to do?”
“I want you to save me from—from all of it,” she said in a thin, tremulous voice. She put a hand timidly on his forearm. “Mr. Spade, do they know about me?”
“Not yet. I wanted to see you first.”
“What—what would they think if they knew about the way I came to you, with those lies?”
“That wouldn’t mean anything to the police except guilt. That’s why I’ve been stalling them till I could see you. I thought maybe we wouldn’t have to let them know it all. We ought to be able to fake a story that will rock them to sleep, if necessary.”
“Mr. Spade, you don’t think I had anything to do with—the murders—do you?”
He grinned at her and said: “I forgot to ask you that. Did you?”
“No.”
“That’s good. Now what are we going to tell the police?”
She squirmed on her end of the settee and her eyes wavered between heavy lashes, as if trying and failing to free their gaze from his. She seemed smaller, and very young and oppressed.
“Must they know about me at all?” she asked. “I think I’d rather die than that, Mr. Spade. I can’t explain now, but can’t you somehow manage so that you can shield me from them altogether, so I won’t have to answer their questions? I couldn’t stand being questioned, Mr. Spade. I would rather die. Can’t you?”
“Maybe,” he said, “but I’ll have to know what it’s all about.”
She went down on her knees at his knees. She held her face up to him. Her face was wan, taut, and fearful over tight-clasped hands.
“I haven’t lived a good life,” she cried. “I’m bad—worse than you could know—but I’m not all bad. Look at me, Mr. Spade. You know I’m not all bad, don’t you? You can see that, can’t you? Then can’t you trust me a little? I’m so alone and afraid, and I’ve got nobody to help me if you won’t help me. I know I’ve no right to ask you to trust me if I won’t trust you. I do trust you, but I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you now. Later I will, when I can. I’m afraid, Mr. Spade. I’m afraid of trusting you. I don’t mean that. I do trust you, but—but I trusted Floyd, and—I’ve nobody else, nobody else, Mr. Spade. You can save me. You’ve said you can save me. If I hadn’t believed you could save me I would have run away today instead of sending for you. If I thought anybody else could save me would I be down on my knees to you? I know this isn’t fair of me. But be generous, Mr. Spade. Don’t ask me to be fair. You’re strong, you’re resourceful, you’re brave. You can spare me some of that strength and resourcefulness and courage, surely. Help me, Mr. Spade. Help me because I need help so badly, and because if you don’t where will I find anyone who can, however willing? Help me. I’ve no right to ask you to help me blindly, but I do ask you. Be generous, Mr. Spade. You can save me. You can. Won’t you?”
Spade, who had held his breath throughout much of this speech, now emptied his lungs with a long sighing exhalation between pursed lips and said:
“You won’t need much of anybody’s help. You’re good. You’re very good. It’s chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throaty sob you get into your voice when you say things like, ‘Be generous, Mr. Spade.’ ”
She jumped up on her feet. Her face crimsoned painfully, but she held her head erect and she looked Spade straight in the eyes.
“I deserve that,” she said. “I deserve it, but—oh!—I did want your help so much, and I do want it so much, and the lie was in the way I said it, Mr. Spade, and hardly at all in what I said.” She turned away from him, no longer holding herself erect. “It’s my own fault that you can’t believe me now.”
Spade’s face reddened and he looked down at the floor, muttering:
“Now you are dangerous.”
Brigid O’Shaughnessy went to the table and got his hat. She came back and stood in front of him holding the hat, not offering it to him, but holding it for him to take if he wished. Her face was white and thin.
Spade looked at his hat and asked:
“What happened last night?”
“Floyd came to the hotel at nine o’clock, and we went out for a walk. I suggested that, so Mr. Archer could see him. We stopped at a restaurant in Geary Street, I think it was, for supper and to dance, and got back to the hotel at about half past twelve. Floyd left me at the door, and I stood inside and watched Mr. Archer follow him down the street, on the other side.”
“Down? You mean toward Market Street?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what they’d be doing in the neighborhood of Bush and Stockton, where Archer was shot?”
“Isn’t that near where Floyd lived?”
“No. It would be a dozen blocks out of his way if he was going from your hotel to his. Well, what did you do after they left?”
“I went to bed. And this morning when I went out for breakfast I saw the headlines in the paper and read about both of them being killed. Then I went up to Union Square, where I had seen automobiles for hire, and got one and went to my hotel for my luggage. After I found my room had been searched yesterday I knew I would have t
o move, and I had found this place yesterday afternoon. So I came up here and then phoned your office.”
“Your room at the St. Mark was searched?” he asked.
“Yes, while I was in your office.” She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean to tell you that.”
“You mean by that that I’m not to question you about it?”
She nodded timidly.
He frowned.
She moved his hat a little in her hands.
He laughed impatiently and said:
“Stop waving my hat in my face. Haven’t I promised to do what I can?”
She smiled contritely, returned the hat to the table, and sat beside him on the settee again.
He said: “As for trusting you blindly, I’ve got nothing against that except that I won’t be able to do much if I haven’t some idea of what’s going on. For instance, I’ve got to know something about your Floyd Thursby.”
“I met him in the Orient.” She spoke slowly, looking down at a pointed finger that traced 8’s on the seat of the settee between them. “We came here together from Hongkong, last week. He was—he had promised to help me. He took advantage of my helplessness and dependence on him to—to betray me.”
“Betray you how?”
She shook her head and said nothing.
Spade frowned impatiently and asked:
“Why did you want him shadowed?”
“I wanted to know how far he had gone. He wouldn’t even tell me where he was staying. I wanted to find out what he was doing, who he was meeting, things like that.”
“Did he kill Archer?”
She looked up at him, surprised.
“Yes, certainly,” she said.
“He had a Lüger in a shoulder-holster. Archer wasn’t shot with a Lüger.”
“He had a revolver in his overcoat pocket,” she said.
“You saw it?”
“Oh, I’ve seen it often. I know he always carried it there. I didn’t see it last night, but I know he never wore an overcoat without it.”
“Why all the guns?”
“He lived by them. There was a story in Hongkong that he had come out there, to the Orient, as bodyguard to a gambler who had had to leave the States, and that the gambler had since disappeared. They said Floyd knew about his disappearance. I don’t know. I do know that he always went heavily armed, and that he never went to sleep without covering the floor around his bed with crumpled newspapers, so nobody could come silently into his room.”