Spade, who had held his breath through much of this speech, now emptied his lungs with a long sighing exhalation between pursed lips and said: “You won’t need much of anybody’s help. You’re good. You’re very good. It’s chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get into your voice when you say things like ‘Be generous, Mr. Spade.'”
She jumped up on her feet. Her face crimsoned painfully, but she held her head erect and she looked Spade straight in the eyes. “I deserve that,” she said. “I deserve it, but–oh!–I did want your help so much. I do want it, and need it, so much. And the lie was in the way I said it, and not at all in what I said.” She turned away, no longer holding herself erect. “It is my own fault that you can’t believe me now.”
Spade’s face reddened and he looked down at the floor, muttering: “Now you are dangerous.”
Brigid O’Shaughnessy went to the table and picked up his hat. She came back and stood in front of him holding the hat, not offering it to him, but holding it for him to take if he wished. Her face was white and thin. Spade looked at his hat and asked: “What happened last night?”
“Floyd came to the hotel at nine o’clock, and we went out for a walk. I suggested that so Mr. Archer could see him. We stopped at a restaurant in Geary Street, I think it was, for supper and to dance, and came back to the hotel at about half-past twelve. Floyd left me at the door and I stood inside and watched Mr. Archer follow him down the street, on the other side.”
“Down? You mean towards Market Street?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what they’d be doing in the neighborhood of Bush and Stockton, where Archer was shot?”
“Isn’t that near where Floyd lived?”
“No. It would be nearly a dozen blocks out of his way if he was going from your hotel to his. Well, what did you do after they had gone?”
“I went to bed. And this morning when I went out for breakfast I saw the headlines in the papers and read about–you know. Then I went up to Union Square, where I had seen automobiles for hire, and got one and went to the hotel for my luggage. After I found my room had been searched yesterday I knew I would have to move, and I had found this place yesterday afternoon. So I came up here and then telephoned your office.”
“Your room at the St. Mark was searched?” he asked.
“Yes, while I was at your office.” She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean to tell you that.”
“That means I’m not supposed to question you about it?”
She nodded shyly. He frowned. She moved his hat a little in her hands. He laughed impatiently and said: “Stop waving the hat in my face. Haven’t I offered to do what I can?”
She smiled contritely, returned the hat to the table, and sat beside him on the settee again. He said: “I’ve got nothing against trusting you blindly except that I won’t be able to do you much good if I haven’t some idea of what it’s all about. For instance, I’ve got to have some sort of a line on your Floyd Thursby.”
“I met him in the Orient.” She spoke slowly, looking down at a pointed finger tracing eights on the settee between them. “We came here from Hongkong last week. He was–he had promised to help me. He took advantage of my helplessness and dependence on him to betray me.”
“Betray you how?” She shook her head and said nothing. Spade, frowning with impatience, asked: “Why did you want him shadowed?”
“I wanted to learn how far he had gone. He wouldn’t even let me know where he was staying. I wanted to find out what he was doing, whom he was meeting, things like that.”
“Did he kill Archer?”
She looked up at him, surprised. “Yes, certainly,” she said.
“He had a Luger in a shoulder-holster. Archer wasn’t shot with a Luger.”
“He had a revolver in his overcoat-pocket,” she said.