Spade said: “And you’re sure —still absolutely sure — you don’t know anybody who fits your uncle’s description of the man who choked him?”
“Absolutely sure.”
The sound of the doorbell ringing came faintly into the room.
Dundy said sourly, “That’ll do.”
Binnett went out.
Polhaus said: “That guy’s as wrong as they make them. And – ”
From below came the heavy report of a pistol fired indoors.
The lights went out.
In darkness the three detectives collided with one another going through the doorway into the dark hall. Spade reached the stairs first. There was a clatter of footsteps below him, but nothing could be seen until he reached a bend in the stairs. Then enough light came from the street through the open front door to show the dark figure of a man standing with his back to the open door.
A flashlight clicked in Dundy’s hand — he was at Spade’s heels — and threw a glaring white beam of light on the man’s face. He was Ira Binnett. He blinked in the light and pointed at something on the floor in front of him.
Dundy turned the beam of his light down on the floor. Jarboe lay there on his face, bleeding from a bullet hole in the back of his head.
Spade grunted softly.
Tom Polhaus came blundering down the stairs, Wallace Binnett close behind him. Joyce Court’s frightened voice came from farther up: “Oh, what’s happened? Wally, what’s happened?”
“Where’s the light switch?” Dundy barked.
“Inside the cellar door, under these stairs,” Wallace Binnett said. “What is it?”
Polhaus pushed past Binnett towards the cellar door.
Spade made an inarticulate sound in his throat and, pushing Wallace Binnett aside, sprang up the stairs. He brushed past Joyce Court and went on, heedless of her startled
scream. He was half way up the stairs to the third floor when the pistol went off up there.
He ran to Timothy Binnett’s door. The door was open. He went in.
Something hard and angular struck him above his right ear, knocking him across the room, bringing him down on one knee. Something thumped and clattered on the floor just outside the door.
The lights came on.
On the floor, in the center of the room, Timothy Binnett lay on his back bleeding from a bullet wound in his left forearm. His pajama jacket was torn. His eyes were shut.
Spade stood up and put a hand to his head. He scowled at the old man on the floor, at the room, at the black automatic pistol lying on the hallway floor. He said: “Come on, you old cutthroat. Get up and sit on a chair and I’ll see if I can stop that bleeding till the doctor gets here.”
The man on the floor did not move.
There were footsteps in the hallway and Dundy came in, followed by the two younger Binnetts. Dundy’s face was dark and furious. “Kitchen door wide open,” he said in a choked voice. “They run in and out like — ”
“Forget it,” Spade said. “Uncle Tim is our meat.” He paid no attention to Wallace Binnett’s gasp, to the incredulous looks on Dundy’s and Ira Binnett’s faces. “Come on, get up,” he said to the old man on the floor, “and tell us what it was the butler saw when he peeped through the keyhole.”
The old man did not stir.
“He killed the butler because I told him the butler had
peeped,” Spade explained to Dundy. “I peeped, too, but didn’t see anything except that chair and the window, though we’d made enough racket by then to scare him back to bed. Suppose you take the chair apart while I go over the window.” He went to the window and began to examine it carefully. He shook his head, put a hand out behind him, and said: “Give me the flashlight.”
Dundy put the flashlight in his hand.
Spade raised the window and leaned out, turning the light on the outside of the building. Presently he grunted and put his other hand out, tugging at a brick a little below the sill. Presently the brick came loose. He put it on the window sill and stuck his hand into the hole its removal had made. Out of the opening, one at a time, he brought an empty black pistol holster, a partially filled box of cartridges, and an unsealed manila envelope.