The woman stirred in his arms and raised her face again. Her blue eyes were wet, round, and white-ringed. Her mouth was moist. “Oh, Sam,” she moaned, “did you kill him?”
Spade stared at her with bulging eyes. His bony jaw fell down. He took his arms from her and stepped back out of her arms. He scowled at her and cleared his throat. She held her arms up as he had left them. Anguish clouded her eyes, partly closed them under eyebrows pulled up at the inner ends. Her soft damp red lips trembled.
Spade laughed a harsh syllable, “Ha!” and went to the buff-curtained window. He stood there with his back to her looking through the curtain into the court until she started towards him. Then he turned quickly and went to his desk. He sat down, put his elbows on the desk, his chin between his fists, and looked at her. His yellowish eyes glittered between narrowed lids. “Who,” he asked coldly, “put that bright idea in your head?”
“I thought–” She lifted a hand to her mouth and fresh tears came to her eyes. She came to stand beside the desk, moving with easy surefooted grace in black slippers whose smallness and heel-height were extreme. “Be kind to me, Sam,” she said humbly.
He laughed at her, his eyes still glittering. “You killed my husband, Sam, be kind to me.” He clapped his palms together and said: “Jesus Christ.”
She began to cry audibly, holding a white handkerchief to her face. He got up and stood close behind her. He put his arms around her. He kissed her neck between ear and coat-collar. He said: “Now, Iva, don’t.” His face was expressionless. When she had stopped crying he put his mouth to hem ear and murmured: “You shouldn’t have come here today, precious. It wasn’t wise. You c2n’t stay. You ought to be home.”
She turned around in his arms to face him and asked: “You’ll come tonight?”
He shook his head gently. “Not tonight.”
“Soon?”
“Yes.”
“How soon?”
“As soon as I can.”
He kissed her mouth, led her to the door, opened it, said, “Goodbye, Iva,” bowed her out, shut the door, and returned to his desk. He took tobacco and cigarette-papers from his vest-pockets, but did not roll a cigarette. He sat holding the papers in one hand, the tobacco in the other, and looked with brooding eyes at his dead partner’s desk.
Effie Perine opened the door and came in. Her brown eyes were uneasy. Her voice was careless. She asked: “Well?” Spade said nothing. His brooding gaze did not move from his partner’s desk. The girl frowned and came around to his side. “Well,” she asked in a louder voice, “how did you and the widow make out?”
“She thinks I shot Miles,” he said. Only his lips moved.
“So you could marry her?”
Spade made no reply to that. The girl took his hat from his head and put it on the desk. Then she leaned over and took the tobacco-sack and the papers from his inert fingers. “The police think I shot Thursby,” he said.
“Who is he?” she asked, separating a cigarette-paper from the packet, sifting tobacco into it.
“Who do you think I shot?” he asked. When she ignored that question he said: “Thursby’s the guy Miles was supposed to be tailing for the Wonderly girl.”
Her thin fingers finished shaping the cigarette. She licked it, smoothed it, twisted its ends, and placed it between Spade’s lips. He said, “Thanks, honey,” put an arm around her slim waist, and rested his cheek wearily against her hip, shutting his eyes.
“Are you going to marry Iva?” she asked, looking down at his pale brown hair.
“Don’t be silly,” he muttered. The unlighted cigarette bobbed up and down with the movement of his lips.
“She doesn’t think it’s silly. Why should she–the way you’ve played around with her?”
He sighed and said: “I wish to Christ I’d never seen her.”
“Maybe you do now.” A trace of spitefulness came into the girl’s voice. “But there was a time.”
“I never know what to do or say to women except that way,” he grumbled, “and then I didn’t like Miles.”