Colyer went over to the woman. “Take it easy,” he said. “We’ll pick it out together.”
Spade went into the outer office, shutting the door behind him.
Effie Perine stopped typing a letter. He grinned at her, said, “Somebody ought to write a book about people sometime — they’re peculiar,” and went over to the water bottle. “You’ve got Wally Kellogg’s number. Call him up and ask him where I can find Tom Minera.”
He returned to the inner office.
Mrs. Haven had stopped crying. She said, “I’m sorry.” Spade said, “It’s all right.” He looked sidewise at Colyer. “I still got my job?”
“Yes.” Colyer cleared his throat. “But if there’s nothing special right now, I’d better take Mrs. Haven home.”
“O.K., but there’s one thing: According to the Chronicle, you identified him. How come you were down there?”
“I went down when I heard they’d found a body,” Colyer replied deliberately. “I told you I had connections. I heard about the body through them.”
Spade said, “All right; be seeing you,” and opened the door for them.
When the corridor door closed behind them, Effie Perine said, “Minera’s at the Buxton on Army Street.” Spade said, “Thanks.” He went into the inner office to get his hat. On his way out he said, “If I’m not back in a couple of months tell them to look for my body there.” …
Spade walked down a shabby corridor to a battered green door marked “411.” The murmur of voices came through the door, but no words could be distinguished. He stopped listening and knocked.
An obviously disguised male voice asked, “What is it?”
“I want to see Tom. This is Sam Spade.”
A pause, then: “Tom ain’t here.”
Spade put a hand on the knob and shook the frail door. “Come on, open up,” he growled.
Presently the door was opened by a thin, dark man of twenty-five or -six who tried to make his beady dark eyes guileless while saying, “I didn’t think it was your voice at first.” The slackness of his mouth made his chin seem even smaller than it was. His green-striped shirt, open at the neck, was not clean. His gray pants were carefully pressed.
“You’ve got to be careful these days,” Spade said solemnly, and went through the doorway into a room where two men were trying to seem uninterested in his arrival.
One of them leaned against the window sill filing his fingernails. The other was tilted back in a chair with his , feet on the edge of a table and a newspaper spread between his hands. They glanced at Spade in unison and went on with their occupations.
Spade said cheerfully, “Always glad to meet any friends of Tom Minera’s.”
Minera finished shutting the door and said awkwardly, “Uh — yes — Mr. Spade, meet Mr. Conrad and Mr. James.”
Conrad, the man at the window, made a vaguely polite
gesture with the nail file in his hand. He was a few years older than Minera, of average height, sturdily built, with a thick-featured, dull-eyed face.
James lowered his paper for an instant to look coolly, appraisingly at Spade and say, “How’r’ye, brother?” Then he returned to his reading. He was as sturdily built as Conrad, but taller, and his face had a shrewdness the other’s lacked.
“Ah,” Spade said, “and friends of the late Eli Haven.”
The man at the window jabbed a finger with his nail file, and cursed it bitterly. Minera moistened his lips, and then spoke rapidly, with a whining note in his voice: “But on the level, Spade, we hadn’t none of us seen him for a week.”
Spade seemed mildly amused by the dark man’s manner.
“What do you think he was killed for?”
“All I know is what the paper says: His pockets was all turned inside out and there wasn’t as much as a match on him.” He drew down the ends of his mouth. “But far as I know he didn’t have no dough. He didn’t have none Tuesday night.”
Spade, speaking softly, said, “I hear he got some Thursday night.”
Minera, behind Spade, caught his breath audibly.
James said, “I guess you ought to know. I don’t.”