“You saw it?”
“Oh, I’ve seen it often. I know he always carries one there. I didn’t see it last night, but I know he never wears an overcoat without it.”
“Why all the guns?”
“He lived by them. There was a story in Hongkong that he had come out there, to the Orient, as bodyguard to a gambler who had had to leave the States, and that the gambler had since disappeared. They said Floyd knew about his disappearing. I don’t know. I do know that he always went heavily armed and that he never went to sleep without covering the floor around his bed with crumpled newspaper so nobody could come silently into his room.”
“You picked a nice sort of playmate.”
“Only that sort could have helped me,” she said simply, “if he had been loyal.”
“Yes, if.” Spade pinched his lower lip between finger and thumb and looked gloomily at her. The vertical creases over his nose deepened, drawing his brows together. “How bad a hole are you actually in?”
“As bad,” she said, “as could be.”
“Physical danger?”
“I’m not heroic. I don’t think there’s anything worse than death.”
“Then it’s that?”
“It’s that as surely as we’re sitting here”–she shivered–“unless you help me.”
He took his fingers away from his mouth and ran them through his hair. “I’m not Christ,” he said irritably. “I can’t work miracles out of thin air.” He looked at his watch. “The day’s going and you’re giving me nothing to work with. Who killed Thursby?”
She put a crumpled handkerchief to her mouth and said, “I don’t know,” through it.
“Your enemies or his?”
“I don’t know. His, I hope, but I’m afraid–I don’t know.”
“How was he supposed to be helping you? Why did you bring him here from Hongkong?”
She looked at him with frightened eyes and shook her head in silence. Her face was haggard and pitifully stubborn. Spade stood up, thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and scowled down at her. “This is hopeless,” he said savagely. “I can’t do anything for you. I don’t know what you want done. I don’t even know if you know what you want.”
She hung her head and wept. He made a growling animal noise in his throat and went to the table for his hat. “You won’t,” she begged in a small choked voice, not looking up, “go to the police?”
“Go to them!” he exclaimed, his voice loud with rage. “They’ve been running me ragged since four o’clock this morning. I’ve made myself God knows how much trouble standing them off. For what? For some crazy notion that I could help you. I can’t. I won’t try.” He put his hat on his head and pulled it down tight. “Go to them? All I’ve got to do is stand still and they’ll be swarming all over me. Well, I’ll tell them what I know and you’ll have to take your chances.”
She rose from the settee and held herself straight in front of him though her knees were trembling, and she held her white panic-stricken face up high though she couldn’t hold the twitching muscles of niouth and chin still. She said: “You’ve been patient. You’ve tried to help me. It ishopeless, and useless, I suppose.” She stretched out her right hand. “I thank you for what you have done. I–I’ll have to take mny chances.”
Spade made the growling animal noise in his throat again and sat down on the settee. “How much money have you got?” he asked.
The question startled her. Then she pinched her lower lip between her teeth and answered reluctantly: “I’ve about five hundred dollars left.”
“Give it to me.”
She hesitated, looking timidly at him. He made angry gestures with mouth, eyebrows, hands, and shoulders. She went into her bedroom, returning almost immediately with a sheaf of paper money in one hand. He took the money from her, counted it, and said: “There’s only four hundred here.”
“I had to keep some to live on,” she explained meekly, putting a hand to her breast.
“Can’t you get any more?”
“No.”
“You must have something you can raise money on,” he insisted.