The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  Spade went to the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company’s Powell Street station and called Davenport 2020:

  “Emergency Hospital, please … Hello, there’s a girl in suite 12-C at the Alexandria Hotel who has been drugged.… Yes, you’d better send somebody to take a look at her.… Yes, this is Mr. Hooper of the Alexandria.”

  He put the receiver on its prong and laughed.

  He called another number and said:

  “Hello, Frank. This is Sam Spade.… Can you let me have a car to go down the peninsula right away? … Just a couple of hours. And give me a driver that will keep his mouth shut, will you? … Right. Have him pick me up at John’s, Ellis Street, as soon as he can make it.”

  He called another number, his own office’s, held the receiver to his ear for a little while without saying anything, and replaced it on its hook.

  He went to John’s Grill, asked the waiter to hurry his order of chops, baked potato, and sliced tomatoes, ate hurriedly, and was smoking a cigarette with his coffee when a thick-set youngish man with a plaid cap set askew above pale eyes and a tough cheery face came into the Grill and to his table.

  “All set, Mr. Spade. She’s full of gas and raring to go.”

  “Swell.” Spade emptied his cup and went out with the thick-set man. “Know where Ancho Avenue, or Road, or Boulevard, is in Burlingame?”

  “Nope, but if she’s there we can find her.”

  “Let’s do that,” Spade said as he sat beside the chauffeur in a dark Cadillac sedan. “Twenty-six is the number we want, and the sooner the better, but we don’t want to pull up at the front door.”

  “Correct.”

  They rode a half dozen blocks. The chauffeur said:

  “Your partner got knocked off, didn’t he?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The chauffeur clucked. “She’s a tough racket.”

  “Well, hack-drivers don’t live forever.”

  “Maybe that’s right,” the thick-set man conceded, “but, just the same, it’ll always be a surprise to me if I don’t.”

  Spade stared ahead at nothing and thereafter, until the chauffeur became tired of making conversation, replied with uninterested yeses and noes.

  At a drugstore in Burlingame the chauffeur learned how to reach Ancho Avenue.

  Ten minutes later he stopped the car near a dark corner, turned off the lights, and waved his hand at the block ahead.

  “There she is,” he said. “She ought to be on the other side, maybe the third or fourth house.”

  Spade said, “Right,” and got out of the car. “Keep the engine going. We might have to leave in a hurry.”

  He crossed the street and went up the other side.

  Night had settled. Far ahead a lone streetlight burned. Warmer lights dotted the night on either side, where houses were spaced half a dozen to a block. A high thin moon was cold and feeble as the distant streetlight. A radio droned through the open window of a house on the other side of the street.

  In front of the second house from the corner Spade halted. On one of the gateposts that were massive out of all proportion to the fence flanking them, a 2 and a 6 of pale metal caught what light there was. A square white card was nailed above them. Putting his face close to the card, Spade could see it was a FOR SALE OR RENT sign.

  There was no gate between the posts. Spade went up the cement walk to the house. He stood still on the walk at the foot of the porch steps for a long moment. No sound came from the house. The house was dark except for another pale square card on its door.

  Spade went up to the door and listened. He could hear nothing. He tried to look through the glass of the door. There was no curtain to keep his gaze out, but inner darkness. He tip-toed to a window, and then to another. They, like the door, were uncurtained except by inner darkness. He tried both windows. They were locked. He tried the door. It was locked.

  He left the porch and, stepping carefully over unfamiliar ground, walked through weeds around the house. The side windows were too high to be reached. The back door and the one back window he could reach were locked.

  Spade went back to the gatepost, and, cupping the flame between his hands, held his lighter up to the FOR SALE OR RENT sign. It bore the printed name and address of a San Mateo real estate dealer, and a line penciled in blue: Key at 31.

  Spade went back to the sedan and asked the chauffeur:

  “Got a flashlight?”

  “Sure.” He gave it to Spade. “Can I give you a hand at anything?”

  “Maybe.” Spade got into the sedan. “We’ll ride up to number thirty-one. You can use your lights.”

  Number 31 was a square gray house across the street from, but a little farther up than, 26. Lights glowed in its downstairs windows.

  Spade went up on the porch and rang the bell. A dark-haired girl of fourteen or fifteen opened the door. Spade, bowing and smiling, said:

  “I’d like to get the key to number twenty-six.”

  “I’ll call Papa,” she said, and went back into the house calling: “Papa.”

  A plump red-faced man, baldheaded and heavily mustached, appeared, carrying a newspaper.

  Spade said: “I’d like to get the key to twenty-six.”

  The plump man looked doubtful. He said:

  “The lights are not on. You couldn’t see anything.”

  Spade patted his pocket. “I’ve a flashlight.”

  The plump man looked more doubtful. He cleared his throat uneasily and crumpled the newspaper in his hand.

  Spade showed the man one of his business cards, put it back in his pocket, and said in a low voice:

  “We got a tip that there might be something hidden over there.”

  The plump man’s face and voice were eager.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ll go over with you.”

  When he came back a moment later he carried a brass key attached to a yellow and red tag. Spade beckoned to the chauffeur as they passed the sedan, and the chauffeur joined them.

  “Anybody been looking at the house lately?” Spade asked.

  “Not that I know of,” the plump man replied. “Nobody’s been to me for the key in a couple of months.”

  The plump man marched ahead with the key until they had gone up on the porch. Then he thrust it into Spade’s hand, mumbled, “Here you are,” and stepped aside.

  Spade unlocked the door and pushed it open. There was silence and darkness.

  Holding the flashlight, dark, in his left hand, Spade went in. The chauffeur came close behind him, and then, at a little distance, the plump man followed them.

  They searched the house from bottom to top, cautiously at first, then, finding nothing, boldly. The house was empty, unmistakably, and there was nothing to show that it had been visited in weeks.

  Spade, saying, “That’s all, thanks,” and, “Good night,” left the sedan in front of the Alexandria. He went into the hotel, to the desk, where a tall young man with a dark grave face said: “Good evening, Mr. Spade.”

  “Good evening.” Spade drew the young man to one end of the desk. “These Gutmans up in 12-C—are they in?”

  The young man replied, “No,” darting a quick sharp glance at Spade. Then he looked away, hesitated, looked at Spade again, and murmured: “A funny thing happened a couple of hours ago. Somebody called the Emergency Hospital and told them there was a sick girl up there.”

  “And there wasn’t?”

  “Oh, no—there was nobody up there. They went out earlier in the evening.”

  Spade said: “Well, these practical jokers have to have their fun. Thanks.”

  He went to a telephone booth, called a number, and said:

  “Hello … Mrs. Perine? … Is Effie there? … Yes, please … Thanks.

  “Hello, angel! What’s the good word? … Fine, fine! Hold it. I’ll be out in twenty minutes.… Right.”

  Half an hour later Spade rang the doorbell of a two-story brick house in Seventh Avenue. Effie Perine opened the door. Her boyish
face was tired and smiling.

  “Hello, boss,” she said. “Enter.” Then she said in a low voice: “If Ma says anything to you, Sam, be nice to her. She’s all up in the air.”

  Spade grinned reassuringly and patted her shoulder.

  She put her hands on his arm. “Miss O’Shaughnessy?”

  “No,” he growled. “I ran into a plant. Are you sure it was her voice?”

  “Yes.”

  He made an unpleasant face. “Well, it was hooey.”

  She took him into a bright living-room, sighed, and slumped down on one end of a Chesterfield, smiling cheerfully up at him through her weariness.

  He sat beside her and asked:

  “Everything went O.K.? Nothing said about the bundle?”

  “Nothing. I told them what you told me to tell them, and they seemed to take it for granted that the telephone call had had something to do with him, and that you were off trying to clear it up.”

  “Dundy there?”

  “No. Hoff and O’Gar, and some others I didn’t know. I talked to the Captain, too.”

  “They took you down to the Hall?”

  “Oh, yes, and they asked me loads of questions, but it was all—you know—routine.”

  Spade rubbed his palms together.

  “Swell,” he said, and then frowned, “though I guess they’ll think up plenty outside of routine to put to me when we meet. That damned Dundy will anyway, and Bryan.” He shrugged. “Anybody you know, outside of the coppers, come around?”

  “Yes.” She sat up straight. “That boy—the one who brought the message from Gutman—was there. He didn’t come in, but the police left the corridor door open when they came in and I saw him standing there.”

  “You didn’t say anything?”

  “Oh, no. You had said not to. So I didn’t pay any attention to him, and the next time I looked he was gone.”

  Spade grinned at her. “Damned lucky for you, sister, that the coppers got there first.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a bad egg, that lad—poison. Was the dead man Jacobi?”

  “Yes.”

  He pressed her hands and stood up.

  “I’m going to run along. You’d better hit the hay. You’re all in.”

  She rose.

  “Sam, what is—?”

  He stopped her words with a hand over her mouth.

  “Keep your questions till Monday,” he said. “I want to sneak out before your mother catches me and gives me hell for dragging her lamb through gutters.”

  Midnight was a few minutes away when Spade reached his home. He put his key into the street door’s lock. Heels clicked rapidly on the sidewalk behind him. He let go the key and wheeled. Brigid O’Shaughnessy ran up the steps to him.

  She put her arms around him and hung on him, panting: “Oh, I thought you’d never come!” Her face was wan, distraught, shaken by the tremors that shook her from head to foot.

  With the hand not supporting her he felt for the key again, opened the door, and half lifted her inside.

  “You’ve been waiting?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Panting spaced her words. “In a—doorway—up the—street.”

  “Make it all right?” he asked. “Or shall I carry you up?”

  She shook her head against his shoulder.

  “I’ll be—all right—when I—get where—I can—sit down.”

  They rode up to Spade’s floor in the elevator, and went around to his apartment. She left his arm, and stood beside him, panting, both hands to her breast, while he unlocked his door. He switched on the passageway light. They went in.

  He shut the door, and with his arm around her again half-carried her toward the living-room. When they were within a step of the living-room door, the living-room light went on.

  The girl cried out and clung to Spade.

  Just inside the living-room door, fat Gutman stood smiling benevolently at them.

  The undersized youth Gutman had called Wilmer came out of the kitchen behind them. Black pistols were gigantic in his small hands.

  Cairo came out of the bathroom. He too had a pistol.

  Gutman said:

  “Well, sir, we’re all here, as you can see. Now let’s come in and sit down and be comfortable and talk.”

  To our readers:

  I read this story just as you have read it—installment by installment. When I got this far I was as uncertain as you are how the story comes out, or who killed Archer and Thursby. I had ideas, of course, just as you probably have. It wasn’t until, practically speaking, the very last word of the last installment (the installment you will read next—in the January issue) that I knew the answer; and it took me completely by surprise.

  As a matter of fact, when I finished reading the last installment I was breathless and almost overwhelmed. In all of my experience I have never read a story as intense, as gripping or as powerful as this last installment. It is a magnificent piece of writing: with all the earnestness of which I am capable I tell you not to miss it.

  THE EDITOR

  The Maltese Falcon

  Dashiell Hammett

  ELL, SIR, WE’RE all here, as you can see for yourself. Now let’s come in and sit down and be comfortable and talk.”

  When Brigid O’Shaughnessy engaged Samuel Spade and Miles Archer, private detectives, to shadow Floyd Thursby for her she told them she was trying to find her sister, who had come to San Francisco from New York with Thursby. But when Archer and Thursby were shot to death on the streets that night she confessed to Spade that she had lied, that she and Thursby had come from Constantinople, where, with a Levantine named Joel Cairo, they had stolen a black figure of a bird from one Kemidov, a Russian general. She was obviously in utter terror of someone she called “G,” whom she accused of Thursby’s murder, and, though Spade could get little truthful information out of her, he took what money she had—five hundred dollars—and promised to shield her from “G” and the police.

  Lieutenant Dundy of the police suspected Spade of having killed Thursby to avenge his partner’s death. Later, Dundy accused him of having killed Archer, with whose wife, Iva, Spade had been on too-intimate terms. Iva and Archer’s brother both apparently suspected Spade of having killed his partner. Effie Perine, Spade’s stenographer, told him she thought Iva had killed her husband so she could marry Spade.

  Joel Cairo came to Spade and offered him five thousand dollars for the recovery of the black bird. Casper Gutman, the “G” of whom Brigid was afraid, and the man for whom Cairo and Brigid had been supposed to get the bird in the first place, offered Spade a much greater sum for it, and told him it was a jewel-studded gold figure made by the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem for Charles V in the sixteenth century, and later enameled to conceal its value.

  Brigid disappeared on her way to Effie Perine’s house. Spade traced her to the waterfront and later learned that Cairo had been interested in the arrival of La Paloma, a boat from Hongkong. Later he learns that she, Cairo, Gutman, and the boy Wilmer met on the Paloma spent most of an evening there, and left at midnight with the captain. That afternoon the captain of La Paloma staggers into Spade’s office carrying the black bird under his arm and half a dozen bullets in his chest. He dies before he can tell Spade anything.

  Immediately thereafter the telephone rings and Brigid O’Shaughnessy cries over it for help, saying she is in Gutman’s suite at the Alexandria Hotel. Spade checks the black bird at a parcel room, mails the check to himself, and goes to the Alexandria. Gutman’s daughter is the only occupant of his suite. She tells him she has been drugged, tells him Brigid has been taken to a house in Burlingame, and collapses. Spade goes to Burlingame and finds he has been sent on a wild-goose chase.

  When Spade returns to his apartment he finds Brigid waiting outside for him. He takes her in. Gutman, Cairo, and the boy Wilmer are concealed in his apartment. They cover him with their guns and Gutman says:

  “Well, sir, we’re all here, as you can see for
yourself. Now let’s come in and sit down and be comfortable and talk.”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE FALL-GUY

  Spade, with his arms around Brigid O’Shaughnessy, smiled meagerly over her head and said:

  “Sure, we’ll talk.”

  Gutman’s bulbs jounced as he took three waddling, backward steps away from the door.

  Spade and the girl went in together. The boy and Cairo followed them in. Cairo stopped in the doorway. The boy put away one of his pistols and came up close behind Spade.

  Spade turned his head far around to look down over his shoulder at the boy, and said:

  “Get away. You’re not going to frisk me.”

  The boy said:

  “Shut up. Stand still.”

  Spade’s nostrils went in and out with his breathing. His voice was level:

  “Get away. Put your paw on me and I’m going to make you use the gun. Ask your boss if he wants me shot up before we talk.”

  “Never mind, Wilmer,” the fat man said. He frowned indulgently at Spade. “You are certainly a most headstrong individual. Well, let’s be seated.”

  Spade said, “I told you I didn’t like that punk,” and took Brigid O’Shaughnessy to the sofa by the windows. They sat close together, her head against his left shoulder, his left arm around her shoulders.

  She had stopped trembling, had stopped panting. The appearance of Gutman and his companions seemed to have robbed her of that freedom of personal movement and emotion which is animal, leaving her alive, conscious, but quiescent as a plant.

  Gutman lowered himself into the padded rocking chair. Cairo chose the armchair by the table. The boy Wilmer did not sit down. He stood in the doorway where Cairo had stood, letting his one visible pistol hang down at his side, looking under curling lashes at Spade’s body. Cairo put his pistol on the table beside him.

  Spade took off his hat and tossed it to the other end of the sofa. He grinned at Gutman. The looseness of his lower lip and the droop of his upper eyelids combined with the V’s in his face to make his grin lewd as a satyr’s.