A gaunt hand moved weakly to indicate the rear of the house and fell back on the bed.
The butler and two frightened female servants had joined Wallace Binnett beside the dead woman in the hallway.
“Who did it?” Spade asked them.
They stared at him blankly.
“Somebody look after the old man,” he growled, and went down the hallway.
At the end of the hallway was a rear staircase. He descended two flights and went through a pantry into the kitchen. He saw nobody. The kitchen door was shut but, when he tried it, not locked. He crossed a narrow back yard to a gate that was shut, not locked. He opened the gate. There was nobody in the narrow alley behind it.
He sighed, shut the gate, and returned to the house.
Spade sat comfortably slack in a deep leather chair in a room that ran across the front second story of Wallace Binnett’s house. There were shelves of books and the lights were on. The window showed outer darkness weakly diluted by a distant street lamp. Facing Spade, Detective Sergeant Polhaus — a big, carelessly shaven, florid man in dark clothes that needed pressing —was sprawled in another leather chair; Lieutenant Dundy — smaller, compactly built, square-faced — stood with legs apart, head thrust a little forward, in the center of the room.
Spade was saying: “. . . and the doctor would only let me talk to the old man a couple of minutes. We can try it again when he’s rested a little, but it doesn’t look like he knows much. He was catching a nap and he woke up with somebody’s hands on his throat dragging him around the bed. The best he got was a one-eyed look at the fellow choking him. A big fellow, he says, with a soft hat pulled down over his eyes, dark, needing a shave. Sounds like Tom.” Spade nodded at Polhaus.
The detective sergeant chuckled, but Dundy said, “Go on,” curtly.
Spade grinned and went on: “He’s pretty far gone when he hears Mrs. Binnett scream at the door. The hands go away from his throat and he hears the shot and just before passing out he gets a flash of the big fellow heading for the rear of the house and Mrs. Binnett tumbling down on the hall floor. He says he never saw the big fellow before.”
“What size gun was it?” Dundy asked.
“Thirty-eight. Well, nobody in the house is much more
help. Wallace and his sister-in-law, Joyce, were in her room, so they say, and didn’t see anything but the dead woman when they ran out, though they think they heard something that could’ve been somebody running downstairs — the back stairs.
“The butler — his name’s Jarboe — was in here when he heard the scream and shot, so he says. Irene Kelly, the maid, was down on the ground floor, so she says. The cook, Margaret Finn, was in her room — third floor back — and didn’t even hear anything, so she says. She’s deaf as a post, so everybody else says. The back door and gate were unlocked, but are supposed to be kept locked, so everybody says. Nobody says they were in or around the kitchen or yard at the time.” Spade spread his hands in a gesture of finality. “That’s the crop.”
Dundy shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said. “How come you were here?”
Spade’s face brightened. “Maybe my client killed her,” he said. “He’s Wallace cousin, Ira Binnett. Know him?”
Dundy shook his head. His blue eyes were hard and suspicious.
“He’s a San Francisco lawyer,” Spade said, “respectable and all that. A couple of days ago he came to me with a story about his uncle Timothy, a miserly old skinflint, lousy with money and pretty well broken up by hard living. He was the black sheep of the family. None of them had heard of him for years. But six or eight months ago he showed up in pretty bad shape every way except financially —he seems to have taken a lot of money out of Australia — wanting to spend his last days with his only