“With that taken care of, he’s ready to leave. He goes out quite openly, with only one thing to worry about now — the tie and pin in his pocket. He takes the pin along because he’s not sure the police mightn’t find traces of blood around the setting of the stones, no matter how carefully he wipes it. On his way out he picks up a newspaper — buys one from the newsboy he meets at the street door — wads tie and pin up in a piece of it, and drops it in the rubbish can at the corner. That seems all right. No reason for the police to look for the tie. No reason for the street cleaner who empties the can to investigate a crumpled piece of newspaper, and if something does go wrong — what the deuce!—the murderer dropped it there, but he,
Theodore, can’t be the murderer, because he’s going to
have an alibi.
“Then he jumps in his car and drives to the Municipal Building. He knows there are plenty of phones there and he can always say he’s got to wash his hands, but it turns out he doesn’t have to. While they’re waiting for the judge to get through with a case he goes out to smoke a cigarette, and there you are — ‘Mr. Spade, this is Max Bliss and I’ve been threatened.'”
Effie Ferine nodded, then asked, “Why do you suppose he picked on a private detective instead of the police?”
“Playing safe. If the body had been found, meanwhile, the police might’ve heard of it and trace the call. A private detective wouldn’t be likely to hear about it till he read it in the papers.”
She laughed, then said, “And that was your luck.” “Luck? I don’t know.” He looked gloomily at the back of his left hand. “I hurt a knuckle stopping him and the job only lasted an afternoon. Chances are whoever’s handling the estate’ll raise hob if I send them a bill for any decent amount of money.” He raised a hand to attract the waiter’s attention. “Oh, well, better luck next time. Want to catch a movie or have you got something else to do?”
THE ASSISTANT MURDERfR
GOLD ON THE DOOR, edged with black, said ALEXANDER RUSH, PRIVATE DETECTIVE. Inside, an ugly man sat tilted back in a chair, his feet on a yellow desk.
The office was in no way lovely. Its furnishings were few and old with the shabby age of second-handom. A shredding square of dun carpet covered the floor. On one buff wall hung a framed certificate that licensed Alexander Rush to pursue the calling of private detective in the city of Baltimore in accordance with certain red-numbered regulations. A map of the city hung on another wall. Beneath the map a frail bookcase, small as it was, gaped
emptily around its contents: a yellowish railway guide, a smaller hotel directory, and street and telephone directories for Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia. An insecure oaken clothes-tree held up a black derby and a black overcoat beside a white sink in one corner. The four chairs in the room were unrelated to one another in everything except age. The desk’s scarred top held, in addition to the proprietor’s feet, a telephone, a black-clotted inkwell, a disarray of papers having generally to do with criminals who had escaped from one prison or another, and a grayed ashtray that held as much ash and as many black cigar stumps as a tray of its size could expect to hold. An ugly office — the proprietor was uglier. His head was squatly pear-shaped. Excessively heavy, wide, blunt at the jaw, it narrowed as it rose to the close-cropped, erect grizzled hair that sprouted above a low, slanting forehead. His complexion was of a rich darkish red, his skin tough in texture and rounded over thick cushions of fat. These fundamental inelegancies were by no means all his ugliness. Things had been done to his features. One way you looked at his nose, you said it was crooked. Another way, you said it could not be crooked; it had no shape at all. Whatever your opinion of its form, you could not deny its color. Veins had been broken to pencil its already florid surface with brilliant red stars and curls and puzzling scrawls that looked as if they must have some secret meanings. His lips were thick, tough-skinned. Between them showed the brassy glint of two solid rows of gold teeth, the lower row lapping the upper, so undershot was the bulging jaw. His eyes —small, deep-set and pale