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By Root 2983 0

bending the paper around it, working rapidly, making a larger and clumsy package. “As soon as I’ve gone phone the police. Tell them how it happened, but don’t drag any name’s in. You don’t know. I got the phone-call and I told you I had to go out, but I didn’t say where.” He cursed the rope for being tangled, yanked it into straightness, and began to bind the package. “Forget this thing. Tell it as it happened, but forget he had a bundle.” He chewed his lower lip. “Unless they pin you down. If they seem to know about it you’ll have to admit it. But that’s not likely. If they do then I took the bundle away with me, unopened.” He finished tying the knot and straightened up with the parcel under his left arm. “Get it straight, now. Everything happened the way it did happen, but without this dingus unless they already know about it. Don’t deny it—just don’t mention it. And I got the phone-call—not you. And you don’t know anything about anybody else having any connection with this fellow. You don’t know anything about him and you can’t talk about my business until you see me. Got it?”

“Yes, Sam. Who—do you know who he is?”

He grinned wolfishly. “Uh-uh,” he said, “but I’d guess he was Captain Jacobi, master of La Paloma.” He picked up his hat and put it on. He looked thoughtfully at the dead man and then around the room.

“Hurry, Sam,” the girl begged.

“Sure,” he said absent-mindedly, “I’ll hurry. Might not hurt to get those few scraps of excelsior off the floor before the police come. And maybe you ought to try to get hold of Sid. No.” He rubbed his chin. “We’ll leave him out of it awhile. It’ll look better. I’d keep the door locked till they come.” He took his hand from his chin and rubbed her cheek. “You’re a damned good man, sister,” he said and went out.

17

SATURDAY NIGHT

Carrying the parcel lightly under his arm, walking briskly, with only the ceaseless shifting of his eyes to denote wariness, Spade went, partly by way of an alley and a narrow court, from his office-building to Kearny and Post Streets, where he hailed a passing taxicab.

The taxicab carried him to the Pickwick Stage terminal in Fifth Street. He checked the bird at the Parcel Room there, put the check into a stamped envelope, wrote M. F. Holland and a San Francisco Post Office box-number on the envelope, sealed it, and dropped it into a mail-box. From the stage-terminal another taxicab carried him to the Alexandria Hotel.

Spade went up to suite 12-C and knocked on the door. The door was opened, when he had knocked a second time, by a small fair-haired girl in a shimmering yellow dressing-gown—a small girl whose face was white and dim and who clung desperately to the inner doorknob with both hands and gasped: “Mr. Spade?”

Spade said, “Yes,” and caught her as she swayed.

Her body arched back over his arm and her head dropped straight back so that her short fair hair hung down her scalp and her slender throat was a firm curve from chin to chest.

Spade slid his supporting arm higher up her back and bent to get his other arm under her knees, but she stirred then, resisting, and between parted lips that barely moved blurred words came: “No! Ma’ me wa’!”

Spade made her walk. He kicked the door shut and he walked her up and down the green-carpeted room from wall to wall. One of his arms around her small body, that hand under her armpit, his other hand gripping her other arm, held her erect when she stumbled, checked her swaying, kept urging her forward, but made her tottering legs bear all her weight they could bear. They walked across and across the floor, the girl falteringly, with incoördinate steps, Spade surely on the balls of his feet with balance unaffected by her staggering. Her face was chalk-white and eyeless, his sullen, with eyes hardened to watch everywhere at once.

He talked to her monotonously: “That’s the stuff. Left, right, left, right. That’s the stuff. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, now we turn.” He shook her as they turned from the wall. “Now back again. One, two, three, four. Hold your head up. That’s the stuff. Good