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

by Unknown

  The street doorbell rang at ten minutes of eight. Spade went to the telephone box and pressed the button that released the door. Gutman put down his book and rose smiling.

  “You don’t mind if I go to the door with you?” he asked.

  “O.K.,” Spade told him.

  Gutman followed him to the corridor door. Spade opened it. Presently Effie Perine, carrying the brown-wrapped parcel, came from the elevator. Her boyish face was gay and excited, and she came forward quickly, almost trotting. After one quick glance she did not look at Gutman. She smiled at Spade and gave him the parcel.

  He took it, saying: “Thanks a lot, lady. I’m sorry to spoil your day of rest, but this—”

  “It’s not the first one you’ve spoiled,” she replied, laughing, and then, when it was apparent that he was not going to invite her in, asked: “Anything else?”

  He shook his head. “No, thanks.”

  She said, “Bye-bye,” and went back to the elevator.

  Spade shut the door and carried the parcel into the living-room. Gutman’s face was red and his cheeks quivered.

  Cairo and Brigid O’Shaughnessy came to the table as Spade put the parcel there. They were excited. The boy rose, pale and tense, but he remained by the sofa, staring under curling lashes at the others.

  Spade stepped back from the table, saying, “There you are.”

  Gutman’s fat fingers made short work of cord and paper and excelsior, and he had the black bird in his hands.

  “Ah,” he said huskily, “now, after seventeen years!” His eyes were moist.

  Cairo licked his red lips and worked his hands together. The girl’s lower lip was between her teeth. She and Cairo, like Gutman, and like Spade and the boy, were breathing heavily. The air in the room was chilly and stale and heavy with tobacco smoke.

  Gutman set the bird down on the table again and fumbled at a pocket.

  “It’s it,” he said, “but we’ll make sure.”

  Sweat glistened on his round cheeks. His fingers jerked as he took out a gold pocket-knife and opened it. Cairo and the girl stood close beside him, on either side. Spade stood back a little, where he could watch the boy as well as the group at the table.

  Gutman turned the bird upside down and scraped an edge of its base with his knife. Black enamel came off in tiny curls, exposing blackened metal beneath. Gutman’s knife blade bit into the metal, turning back a thin curved shaving. The inside of the shaving, and the narrow plane its removal had left, had the soft gray sheen of lead.

  Gutman’s breath hissed between his teeth. His face became turgid with hot blood. He twisted the bird around and hacked at its head. There, too, the edge of his knife bared lead. He let knife and bird bang down on the table while he wheeled to confront Spade.

  “It’s a fake,” he said hoarsely.

  Spade’s face had become somber. His nod was slow, but there was no slowness in his hand’s going out to catch Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s wrist. He pulled her to him and grasped her chin with his other hand, raising her face roughly.

  “All right,” he growled down into her frightened face. “You’ve had your little joke. Now tell us about it.”

  She cried: “No, Sam, no! That is the one I got from Kemidov. I swear—”

  Joel Cairo thrust himself between Spade and Gutman and began to emit words in a shrill, spluttering stream:

  “That’s it, that’s it! It was the Russian! I should have known! What a fool we thought him, and what fools he made of us!” Tears ran down the Levantine’s cheeks and he danced up and down. “You bungled it!” he screamed at Gutman. “You and your stupid attempt to buy it from him! You fat fool! You let him know it was valuable, and he found out how valuable, and made a duplicate for us. No wonder we had so little trouble stealing it! No wonder he was so willing to send me off around the world looking for it! You imbecile, you bloated idiot!” He put his hands to his face and blubbered.

  Gutman’s jaw sagged. He blinked vacant eyes. Then he shook himself and was—by the time his bulbs had stopped jouncing—again a jovially smiling fat man.

  “Come, sir,” he said good-naturedly, “there’s no need of going on like that. Everybody errs at times, and you may be sure that this is every bit as severe a blow to me as to anyone else. Yes, that is the Russian’s hand—there’s no doubt of it. Well, sir, what do you suggest? Shall we stand here and call each other names? Or shall we”—he paused, and his smile was a cherub’s—“go to Constantinople?”

  Now Cairo’s jaw sagged while Cairo’s eyes bulged. In a little while he stammered: “You are—?” Amazement that came with full comprehension seemed to rob him of further words.

  Gutman patted a fat cheek gently with a fat hand. His eyes twinkled. His voice was a complacent throaty purring:

  “For seventeen years I have wanted that little item, and have been trying to get it. If I must spend another year on the quest, well, sir, that will be an additional expenditure in time of only”—his lips moved silently as he calculated—“five and fifteen-seventeenths percent.”

  The Levantine giggled and cried: “I go with you!”

  Spade suddenly released the girl’s wrist and looked around the room. The boy was not there. Spade went into the passageway. The corridor door was open. Spade made a dissatisfied mouth, shut the door, and returned to the living-room.

  He leaned against the door-frame and looked at Gutman. He looked at him for a long time, sourly. Then he spoke, mimicking the fat man’s throaty purr:

  “Well, sir, I must say you’re a swell lot of thieves.”

  Gutman chuckled.

  “We’ve nothing to boast of, and that’s a fact, sir,” he said. “But, well, we’re none of us dead yet, and there’s not a bit of use of thinking the world’s come to an end just because we’ve run into a little setback.” He brought his left hand from behind him and held it out at Spade, pink smooth hilly palm up. “I’ll have to ask you for that envelope, sir.”

  Spade did not move. His face was wooden. He said:

  “I held up my end. You got your dingus. It’s your hard luck, not mine, that it wasn’t what you wanted.”

  “Now, come, sir,” Gutman said persuasively, “we’ve all failed, and there’s no reason for expecting any one of us to bear the brunt of it. It’s simply one of those unfortunate happenings, and—” He brought his right hand from behind him. In the hand was a small pistol, an ornately engraved and inlaid affair of silver and gold and mother-of-pearl. “In short, sir, I must ask you to return my ten thousand dollars.”

  Spade’s face did not change. He shrugged phlegmatically and took the envelope from his pocket. He started to hold it out to Gutman, hesitated, opened the envelope and took out one thousand-dollar bill. He put that bill into his pants pocket. He tucked the envelope’s flap in over the other bills and held them out to Gutman.

  “That’ll take care of my time and expenses,” he said.

  Gutman, after a little pause, imitated Spade’s shrug and accepted the envelope. He said:

  “Now, sir, we will say goodbye to you, unless”—the fat puffs around his eyes crinkled—“you care to undertake the Constantinople expedition with us. You don’t? Well, sir, frankly, I’d like to have you along. You’re a man to my liking, a man of many resources and of nice judgment. Because we know you’re a man of nice judgment we know we can say goodbye with every assurance that you’ll hold the details of our little enterprise in confidence. We know we can count on you appreciating the fact that, as the situation now stands, any legal difficulties that came to us in connection with these last few days would likewise and equally come to you and the charming Miss O’Shaughnessy. You’re too shrewd not to realize that, sir, I’m sure.”

  “I understand that,” Spade replied.

  “I was sure you would. I’m also sure that, now there’s no alternative, you’ll somehow manage the police without giving them a fall-guy.”

  “I’ll make out all right,” Spade replied.

  “I was sure you woul
d. Well, sir, the shortest farewells are the best. Adieu.” He made a portly bow. “And to you, Miss O’Shaughnessy, adieu. I leave you the rara avis on the table as a little memento.”

  CHAPTER XX

  IF THEY HANG YOU

  or all of five minutes after the outer door had closed behind Joel Cairo and Casper Gutman, Spade, motionless, stood staring at the knob of the open living-room door. His eyes were gloomy under a forehead drawn down. The clefts at the root of his nose were deep and red. His lips protruded loosely, pouting. He drew them in to make a hard V and went to the telephone. He had not looked at Brigid O’Shaughnessy, who stood by the table looking with uneasy eyes at him.

  He picked up the telephone, set it on its shelf again, and bent to look into the telephone directory hanging from a corner of the shelf. He turned the pages rapidly, found the one he wanted, ran his finger down a column, straightened up, and lifted the telephone from the shelf again.

  He called a number and said:

  “Hello, is Sergeant Polhaus there? … Will you call him, please? This is Samuel Spade.” He stared into space, waiting. “Hello, Tom, I’ve got something for you.… Yes, plenty. Here it is: Thursby and Jacobi were shot by a kid named Wilmer Cook, from New York, I think.” He described the boy minutely. “He’s tied up with—working for—a man named Casper Gutman.” He described Gutman. “That fellow Cairo you met here is in with them now also.… Yes, that’s it.… Gutman and the kid have been staying at the Alexandria, suite 12-C. They’ve just left here, and they’re blowing town, so you’ll have to move quick; but I don’t think they’re expecting a pinch.… There’s a girl in it, too—Gutman’s daughter.” He described Rhea Gutman. “Watch yourself when you go up against the kid. He’s supposed to be pretty good with the gun.… That’s right, Tom; and I’ve got some stuff here for you. I think I’ve got the guns he used.… Right. Step on it—and luck to you.”

  Spade slowly replaced receiver on prong, telephone on shelf. He licked his lips and looked down at his hands. Their palms were wet. He filled his deep chest with air. His eyes began to glitter between straightened lids. He turned and took three long, swift steps into the living-room.

  Brigid O’Shaughnessy, startled by the suddenness of his approach, let her breath out in a little laughing gasp.

  Spade, face to face with her, very close to her, tall, big-boned and thick-muscled, coldly smiling, hard of jaw and eye, said:

  “They’ll talk when they’re pinched—about us. We’re sitting on dynamite, and we’ve got only minutes to get set for the police. I can swing it if I’m sure I know what’s what. Give me all of it—fast. Gutman sent you and Cairo to Constantinople?”

  She started to speak, hesitated, and bit her lip.

  He put a hand on her shoulder.

  “—— damn you, talk!” he said. “I’m in this with you, and you’re not going to gum it. Talk. He sent you to Constantinople?”

  “Y-yes. He sent me. I met Joe there, and—and asked him to help me. Then we—”

  “Wait. You asked Cairo to help you get it from Kemidov?”

  “Yes.”

  “For Gutman?”

  She hesitated again, squirmed under the hard, angry glare of his eyes, swallowed, and said:

  “No, not then. We thought we would get it for ourselves.”

  “All right. Then?”

  “Oh, then I began to be afraid that Joe wouldn’t play fair with me, so—so I asked Floyd Thursby to help me.”

  “And he did. Well?”

  “Well, we got it and went to Hongkong.”

  “With Cairo, or had he been ditched before that?”

  “Yes. We left him in Constantinople, in jail—something about a check.”

  “Something you fixed up to hold him there?”

  She looked shamefacedly at Spade and whispered: “Yes.”

  “Right. Now you and Thursby are in Hongkong with the bird.”

  “Yes, and then—I didn’t know him very well—I didn’t know whether I could trust him. I thought it would be safest—anyway, I met Captain Jacobi and I knew his boat was coming here, so I asked him to bring a package for me—and that was the falcon. I wasn’t sure I could trust Floyd, and that was safer than running the risk of having it where he could get it.”

  “All right. Then you and Thursby caught one of the fast boats over. Then what?”

  “Then—then I was afraid of Gutman. I knew he had people—connections—everywhere, and he’d soon know what we had done; and I was afraid he’d have learned that we had left Hongkong for San Francisco. He was in New York, and I knew if he heard that by cable, even some time after we’d left, he could get here by the time we did. And he did. I didn’t know that then, but I was afraid of it, and I had to wait here until Captain Jacobi arrived. And I was afraid Gutman would find me, or find Floyd, and buy him over. That’s why I came to you and Mr. Archer and asked you to watch him for—”

  “That’s a lie,” Spade said. “You had Thursby hooked, and you knew it. He was a sucker for women. His record shows that: the only falls he ever took were over women. And, once a chump, always a chump. Maybe you didn’t know his record, but you’d know you had him safe.”

  She blushed and looked timidly at him.

  He said: “You wanted to get him out of the way before Jacobi arrived with the loot. What was your scheme?”

  “I—I knew he’d left the States with a gambler, after some trouble. I didn’t know what it was, but I thought that if it was anything serious and he saw a detective watching him, he’d think it was on account of the old trouble, and would be frightened into going away. I didn’t think—”

  “You told him he was being shadowed,” Spade said confidently. “Miles hadn’t many brains, but he wasn’t clumsy enough to be spotted the first night.”

  “I told him, yes. When we went for a walk that night I pretended to discover Mr. Archer following us, and pointed him out to Floyd.” She sobbed.

  “But please believe, Sam, that I wouldn’t have done it if I’d thought Floyd would kill him. I thought he’d be frightened into leaving the city. I didn’t for a minute think he’d shoot him like that.”

  Spade smiled wolfishly with his lips, but not at all with his eyes. He said:

  “If you thought he wouldn’t you were right.”

  The girl’s upraised face held utter astonishment.

  Spade said: “Thursby didn’t shoot him.”

  Incredulity joined the astonishment in the girl’s face.

  Spade said: “Miles hadn’t many brains, but ——! He had had too many years’ experience as a detective to be caught like that by a man he was shadowing. Up a blind alley, with his gun tucked away on his hip? Not a chance. He was as dumb as any man ought to be, but he wasn’t that dumb. The only two ways out of the alley could have been watched from the edge of Bush Street over the tunnel. You’d told us Thursby was a bad actor. He couldn’t have tricked Miles into the alley like that, and he couldn’t have driven him in. He was dumb, but not dumb enough for that.”

  He ran his tongue across the inside of his lips and smiled affectionately at the girl. He said:

  “But he’d have gone up there with you, angel, if he was sure nobody else was up there. You were his client, so he would have had no reason for not dropping the shadow on your say-so, and if you had caught up with him and asked him to go up there, he’d’ve gone. He was just dumb enough for that. He’d’ve licked his lips and looked you up and down and gone—and then you could have stood as close to him as you liked in the dark and put a hole through him with the gun you had got from Thursby that evening.”

  Brigid O’Shaughnessy shrank back from him until the edge of the table stopped her. She looked at him with horrified wide eyes and cried:

  “Don’t—don’t talk to me like that, Sam! You know I didn’t! You know—”

  “Stop it.” He looked at the watch on his wrist. “The police will be blowing in any minute now, and we’re sitting on dynamite. Talk.”

  She put the ba
ck of a hand to her forehead. “Oh, why do you accuse me of such a terrible—?”

  “Will you stop it?” he demanded in a low, impatient voice. “This isn’t the spot for the schoolgirl manners. Listen to me. The pair of us are sitting under the gallows.” He took hold of her wrists and made her stand up straight in front of him. “Talk!”

  “I—I— How did you know he—he licked his lips and looked—?”

  Spade laughed harshly.

  “I knew Miles, but never mind that. Why did you shoot him?”

  She twisted her wrists out of Spade’s fingers and put her hands up around the back of his neck, pulling his head down until his mouth all but touched hers. Her body was flat against his from knees to chest. He put his arms around her, holding her tight to him. Her dark-lashed lids were half down over velvety blue eyes. Her voice was hushed, throaty:

  “I didn’t mean to, at first. I didn’t, really. I meant what I told you, but when I saw Floyd couldn’t be frightened, I—”

  Spade shook her roughly. He said: “That’s a lie. You asked Miles and me to handle it ourselves. You wanted to be sure the shadower was somebody you knew and who knew you, so they’d go with you. You got the gun from Thursby that day—that night. You had already rented the apartment at the Coronet. You had trunks there, and none at the hotel, and when I looked the apartment over I found a rent receipt dated five or six days before the time you told me you had moved in.”

  She swallowed with difficulty, and her voice was humble:

  “Yes, that’s a lie, Sam. I did mean to, if Floyd— I—I can’t look at you and tell you this, Sam.” She pulled his head farther down until her cheek was against his cheek, her mouth by his ear, and whispered: “I knew Floyd wouldn’t be easily frightened, but I thought that if he knew somebody was shadowing him, either he’d— Oh, I can’t say it, Sam!” She clung to him, sobbing.