he’ll chase this visitor, and I put on a show for Molly, who happened to be the nearest one to hand. She took it too seriously, though.
“I had a gun and I did a lot of raving about being spied on by my enemies in Australia and that I was going down and shoot this fellow. But she got too excited and tried to take the gun away from me, and the first thing I knew it had gone off, and I had to make these marks on my neck and think up that story about the big dark man.” He looked contemptuously at Wallace. “I didn’t know he was covering me up. Little as I thought of him, I never thought he’d be low enough to cover up his wife’s murderer—even if he didn’t like her — just for the sake of money.” Spade said: “Never mind that. Now about the butler?” “I don’t know anything about the butler,” the old man replied, looking at Spade with steady eyes.
Spade said: “You had to kill him quick, before he had time to do or say anything. So you slip down the back stairs, open the kitchen door to fool people, go to the front door, ring the bell, shut the door, and hide in the shadow of the cellar door under the front steps. When Jarboe answered the doorbell you shot him — the hole was in the back of his head — pulled the light switch, just inside the cellar door, and ducked up the back stairs in the dark and shot yourself carefully in the arm. I got up there too soon for you; so you smacked me with the gun, chucked it through the door, and spread yourself on the floor while I was shaking pinwheels out of my noodle.” The old man sniffed again. “You’re just — ” “Stop it,” Spade said patiently. “Don’t let’s argue. The
first killing was an accident – all right. The second couldn’t be. And it ought to be easy to show that both bullets, and the one in your arm, were fired from the same gun. What difference does it make which killing we can prove first-degree murder on? They can only hang you once.” He smiled pleasantly. “And they will.”
A MAN CALLED SPADE
SAMUEL SPADE put his telephone aside and looked at his watch. It was not quite four o’clock. He called, “Yoo-hoo!”
Effie Perine came in from the outer office. She was eating a piece of chocolate cake.
“Tell Sid Wise I won’t be able to keep that date this afternoon,” he said.
She put the last of the cake into her mouth and licked the tips of forefinger and thumb. “That’s the third time this week.”
When he smiled, the v’s of his chin, mouth, and brows
grew longer. “I know, but I’ve got to go out and save a life.” He nodded at the telephone. “Somebody’s scaring Max Bliss.”
She laughed. “Probably somebody named John D. Conscience.”
He looked up at her from the cigarette he had begun to make. “Know anything I ought to know about him?”
“Nothing you don’t know. I was just thinking about the time he let his brother go to San Quentin.”
Spade shrugged. “That’s not the worst thing he’s done.” He lit his cigarette, stood up, and reached for his hat. “But he’s all right now. All Samuel Spade clients are honest, God-fearing folk. If I’m not back at closing time just run along.”
He went to a tall apartment building on Nob Hill, pressed a button set in the frame of a door marked 10K. The door was opened immediately by a burly dark man in wrinkled dark clothes. He was nearly bald and carried a gray hat in one hand.
The burly man said, “Hello, Sam.” He smiled, but his small eyes lost none of their shrewdness. “What are you doing here?”
Spade said, “Hello, Torn.” His face was wooden, his voice expressionless. “Bliss in?”
“Is he!” Tom pulled down the corners of his thick-lipped mouth. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
Spade’s brows came together. “Well?”
A man appeared in the vestibule behind Tom. He was smaller than either Spade or Tom, but compactly built. He had a ruddy, square face and a close-trimmed, grizzled