“He ever work with you boys?”
James slowly put aside his newspaper and took his feet off the table. His interest in Spade’s question seemed great enough, but almost impersonal. “Now what do you mean by that?”
Spade pretended surprise. “But you boys must work at something?”
Minera came around to Spade’s side. “Aw, listen, Spade,” he said. “This guy Haven was just a guy we knew. We didn’t have nothing to do with rubbing him out; we don’t know nothing about it. You know, we —” Three deliberate knocks sounded at the door. Minera and Conrad looked at James, who nodded, but by then Spade, moving swiftly, had reached the door and was opening it. Roger Ferris was there.
Spade blinked at Ferris, Ferris at Spade. Then Ferris put out his hand and said, “I am glad to see you.” “Come on in,” Spade said.
“Look at this, Mr. Spade.” Ferris’s hand trembled as he took a slightly soiled envelope from his pocket.
Ferris’ name and address were typewritten on the envelope. There was no postage stamp on it. Spade took out the enclosure, a narrow slip of cheap white paper, and unfolded it. On it was typewritten:
You had better come to Room No 411 Buxton Hotel on ‘ Army St at 5 PM this afternoon on account of Thursday night.
There was no signature.
Spade said, “It’s a long time before five o’clock.” “It is,” Ferris agreed with emphasis. “I came as soon as I got that. It was Thursday night Eli was at my house.” Minera was jostling Spade, asking, “What is all this?” Spade held the note up for the dark man to read. He read it and yelled, “Honest, Spade, I don’t know nothing about that letter.”
“Does anybody?” Spade asked.
Conrad said “No” hastily.
James said, “What letter?”
Spade looked dreamily at Ferris for a moment, then said, as if speaking to himself, “Of course, Haven was trying to shake you down.”
Ferris’s face reddened. “What?”
“Shake-down,” Spade repeated patiently; “money, blackmail.”
“Look here, Spade,” Ferris said earnestly; “you don’t really believe what you said? What would he have to blackmail me on?”
“‘To good old Buck'” — Spade quoted the dead poet’s inscription — ” ‘who knew his colored lights, in memory of them there days.'” He looked somberly at Ferris from beneath slightly raised brows. “What colored lights? What’s the circus and carnival slang term for kicking a guy off a train while it’s going? Red-lighting. Sure, that’s it —red lights. Who’d you red-light, Ferris, that Haven knew about?”
Minera went over to a chair, sat down, put his elbows on his knees, his head between his hands, and stared blankly at the floor. Conrad was breathing as if he had been running.
Spade addressed Ferris: “Well?”
Ferris wiped his face with a handkerchief, put the handkerchief in his pocket, and said simply, “It was a shakedown.”
And you killed him.”
Ferris’s blue eyes, looking into Spade’s yellow-gray ones,
were clear and steady, as was his voice. “I did not,” he said. “I swear I did not. Let me tell you what happened He sent me the book, as I told you, and I knew right away what that joke he wrote in the front meant. So the next day, when he phoned me and said he was coming over to talk over old times and to try to borrow some money for old times’ sake, I knew what he meant again, and I went down to the bank and drew out ten thousand dollars. You can check that up. It’s the Seamen’s National.”
“I will,” Spade said.
. “As it turned out, I didn’t need that much. He wasn’t very big-time and I talked him into taking five thousand. I put the other five back in the bank next day. You can check that up.”
“I will,” Spade said.
“I told him I wasn’t going to stand for any more taps, this five thousand was the first and last. I made him sign a paper saying he’d helped in the —what I’d done —and he signed it. He left sometime around midnight, and that’s the last I ever saw of him.”