The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett [28]
“Uh-huh. I could’ve butchered Miles to get his wife, and then Thursby so I could hang Miles’s killing on him. That’s a hell of a swell system, or will be when I can give somebody else the bump and hang Thursby’s on them. How long am I supposed to keep that up? Are you going to put your hand on my shoulder for all the killings in San Francisco from now on?”
Tom said: “Aw, cut the comedy, Sam. You know damned well we don’t like this any more than you do, but we got our work to do.”
“I hope you’ve got something to do besides pop in here early every morning with a lot of damned fool questions.”
“And get damned lying answers,” Dundy added deliberately.
“Take it easy,” Spade cautioned him.
Dundy looked him up and down and then looked him straight in the eyes. “If you say there was nothing between you and Archer’s wife,” he said, “you’re a liar, and I’m telling you so.”
A startled look came into Tom’s small eyes.
Spade moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue and asked: “Is that the hot tip that brought you here at this ungodly time of night?”
“That’s one of them.”
“And the others?”
Dundy pulled down the corners of his mouth. “Let us in.” He nodded significantly at the doorway in which Spade stood.
Spade frowned and shook his head.
Dundy’s mouth-corners lifted in a smile of grim satisfaction. “There must’ve been something to it,” he told Tom.
Tom shifted his feet and, not looking at either man, mumbled: “God knows.”
“What’s this?” Spade asked. “Charades?”
“All right, Spade, we’re going.” Dundy buttoned his overcoat. “We’ll be in to see you now and then. Maybe you’re right in bucking us. Think it over.”
“Uh-huh,” Spade said, grinning. “Glad to see you any time, Lieutenant, and whenever I’m not busy I’ll let you in.”
A voice in Spade’s living-room screamed: “Help! Help! Police! Help!” The voice, high and thin and shrill, was Joel Cairo’s.
Lieutenant Dundy stopped turning away from the door, confronted Spade again, and said decisively: “I guess we’re going in.”
The sounds of a brief struggle, of a blow, of a subdued cry, came to them.
Spade’s face twisted into a smile that held little joy. He said, “I guess you are,” and stood out of the way.
When the police-detectives had entered he shut the corridor-door and followed them back to the living-room.
8
HORSE FEATHERS
Brigid O’Shaughnessy was huddled in the armchair by the table. Her forearms were up over her cheeks, her knees drawn up until they hid the lower part of her face. Her eyes were white-circled and terrified.
Joel Cairo stood in front of her, bending over her, holding in one hand the pistol Spade had twisted out of his hand. His other hand was clapped to his forehead. Blood ran through the fingers of that hand and down under them to his eyes. A smaller trickle from his cut lip made three wavy lines across his chin.
Cairo did not heed the detectives. He was glaring at the girl huddled in front of him. His lips were working spasmodically, but no coherent sound came from between them.
Dundy, the first of the three into the living-room, moved swiftly to Cairo’s side, put a hand on his own hip under his overcoat, a hand on the Levantine’s wrist, and growled: “What are you up to here?”
Cairo took the red-smeared hand from his head and flourished it close to the Lieutenant’s face. Uncovered by the hand, his forehead showed a three-inch ragged tear. “This is what she has done,” he cried. “Look at it.”
The girl put her feet down on the floor and looked warily from Dundy, holding Cairo’s wrist, to Tom Polhaus, standing a little behind them, to Spade, leaning against the door-frame. Spade’s face was placid. When his gaze met hers his yellow-grey eyes glinted for an instant with malicious humor and then became expressionless again.
“Did you do that?” Dundy asked the girl, nodding at Cairo’s cut head.
She looked at Spade again. He did not in any way respond to the appeal in her eyes. He leaned against the door-frame and observed the