The gray-faced man shook his head. “But he’s sure it wasn’t more than half past three when he left. He says the afternoon papers came in then, and this man had ridden
down with him before they came.” He pushed his hat back to scratch his head, then pointed a thick finger at the design inked on the dead man’s breast and asked somewhat plaintively, “What the deuce do you suppose that thing is?”
Nobody replied. Dundy asked, “Can the elevator boy identify him?”
“He says he could, but that ain’t always the same thing. Says he never saw him before.” He stopped looking at the dead man. “The girl’s getting me a list of his phone calls. How you been, Sam?”
Spade said he had been all right. Then he said slowly, “His brother’s big and blond and maybe forty or forty-five.”
Dundy’s blue eyes were hard and bright. “So what?” he asked.
“You remember the Graystone Loan swindle. They were both in it, but Max eased the load over on Theodore and it turned out to be one to fourteen years in San Quentin.”
Dundy was slowly wagging his head up and down. “I remember now. Where is he?”
Spade shrugged and began to make a cigarette.
Dundy nudged Tom with an elbow. “Find out.”
Tom said, “Sure, but if he was out of here at half past three and this fellow was still alive at five to four — ”
“And he broke his leg so he couldn’t duck back in,” the gray-faced man said jovially.
“Find out,” Dundy repeated.
Tom said, “Sure, sure,” and went to the telephone.
Dundy addressed the gray-faced man: “Check up on the newspapers; see what time they were actually delivered this afternoon.”
The gray-faced man nodded and left the room.
The man who had been searching the secretaire said, “Uh-huh,” and turned around holding an envelope in one hand, a sheet of paper in the other.
Dundy held out his hand. “Something?”
The man said, “Uh-huh,” again and gave Dundy the sheet of paper.
Spade was looking over Dundy’s shoulder.
It was a small sheet of common white paper bearing a penciled message in neat, undistinguished handwriting:
When this reaches you I will be too close for you to escape —this time. We will balance our accounts — for good.
The signature was a five-pointed star enclosing a T, the design on the dead man’s left breast.
Dundy held out his hand again and was given the envelope. Its stamp was French. The address was typewritten:
MAX BLISS, ESQ.
AMSTERDAM APARTMENTS, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. U. S. A.
“Postmarked Paris,” he said, “the second of the month.” He counted swiftly on his fingers. “That would get it here today, all right.” He folded the message slowly, put it in
the envelope, put the envelope in his coat pocket. “Keep digging,” he told the man who had found the message.
The man nodded and returned to the secretaire.
Dundy looked at Spade. “What do you think of it?”
Spade’s brown cigarette wagged up and down with the words. “I don’t like it. I don’t like any of it.”
Tom put down the telephone. “He got out the fifteenth of last month,” he said. “I got them trying to locate him.”
Spade went to the telephone, called a number, and asked for Mr. Darrell. Then: “Hello, Harry, this is Sam Spade. . . . Fine. How’s Lil? . .. Yes. … Listen, Harry, what does a five-pointed star with a capital T in the middle mean? .. . What? How do you spell it? … Yes, I see. . . . And if you found it on a body? . . . Neither do I. … Yes, and thanks. I’ll tell you about it when I see you. . . .Yes, give me a ring. . . . Thanks. . . . ‘By.”
Dundy and Tom were watching him closely when he turned from the telephone. He said, “That’s a fellow who knows things sometimes. He says it’s a pentagram with a Greek tau — t-a-u — in the middle; a sign magicians used to use. Maybe Rosicrucians still do.”
“What’s a Rosicrucian?” Tom asked.