The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett [44]
The boy, staring at Spade’s chest, repeated the two words he had twice spoken in the Belvedere lobby. His voice was not loud. It was bitter.
Spade went out and slammed the door.
12
MERRY-GO-ROUND
Spade rode down from Gutman’s floor in an elevator. His lips were dry and rough in a face otherwise pale and damp. When he took out his handkerchief to wipe his face he saw his hand trembling. He grinned at it and said, “Whew!” so loudly that the elevator-operator turned his head over his shoulder and asked: “Sir?”
Spade walked down Geary Street to the Palace Hotel, where he ate luncheon. His face had lost its pallor, his lips their dryness, and his hand its trembling by the time he had sat down. He ate hungrily without haste, and then went to Sid Wise’s office.
When Spade entered, Wise was biting a fingernail and staring at the window. He took his hand from his mouth, screwed his chair around to face Spade, and said: “‘Lo. Push a chair up.”
Spade moved a chair to the side of the big paper-laden desk and sat down. “Mrs. Archer come in?” he asked.
“Yes.” The faintest of lights flickered in Wise’s eyes. “Going to marry the lady, Sammy?”
Spade sighed irritably through his nose. “Christ, now you start that!” he grumbled.
A brief tired smile lifted the corners of the lawyer’s mouth. “If you don’t,” he said, “you’re going to have a job on your hands.”
Spade looked up from the cigarette he was making and spoke sourly: “You mean you are? Well, that’s what you’re for. What did she tell you?”
“About you?”
“About anything I ought to know.”
Wise ran fingers through his hair, sprinkling dandruff down on his shoulders. “She told me she had tried to get a divorce from Miles so she could—”
“I know all that,” Spade interrupted him. “You can skip it. Get to the part I don’t know.”
“How do I know how much she—?”
“Quit stalling, Sid.” Spade held the flame of his lighter to the end of his cigarette. “What did she tell you that she wanted kept from me?”
Wise looked reprovingly at Spade. “Now, Sammy,” he began, “that’s not—”
Spade looked heavenward at the ceiling and groaned: “Dear God, he’s my own lawyer that’s got rich off me and I have to get down on my knees and beg him to tell me things!” He lowered at Wise. “What in hell do you think I sent her to you for?”
Wise made a weary grimace. “Just one more client like you,” he complained, “and I’d be in a sanitarium—or San Quentin.”
“You’d be with most of your clients. Did she tell you where she was the night he was killed?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Following him.”
Spade sat up straight and blinked. He exclaimed incredulously: “Jesus, these women!” Then he laughed, relaxed, and asked: “Well, what did she see?”
Wise shook his head. “Nothing much. When he came home for dinner that evening he told her he had a date with a girl at the St. Mark, ragging her, telling her that was her chance to get the divorce she wanted. She thought at first he was just trying to get under her skin. He knew—”
“I know the family history,” Spade said. “Skip it. Tell me what she did.”
“I will if you’ll give me a chance. After he had gone out she began to think that maybe he might have had that date. You know Miles. It would have been like him to—”
“You can skip Miles’s character too.”
“I oughtn’t to tell you a damned thing,” the lawyer said. “So she got their car from the garage and drove to the St. Mark, sitting in the car across the street. She saw him come out of the hotel and she saw that he was shadowing a man and a girl—she says she saw the same girl with you last night—who had