“It might.”
Cairo put his hand out towards his wallet, hesitated, withdrew the hand, and said: “You will take, say, a hundred dollars?”
Spade picked up the wallet and took out a hundred dollars. Then he frowned, said, “Better make it two hundred,” and did.
Cairo said nothing.
“Your first guess was that I had the bird,” Spade said in a crisp voice when he had put the two hundred dollars into his pocket and had dropped the wallet on the desk again. “There’s nothing in that. What’s your second?”
“That you know where it is, or, if not exactly that, that you know it is where you can get it.”
Spade neither denied nor affirmed that: he seenied hardly to have heard it. He asked: “What sort of proof can you give me that your man is the owner?”
“Very little, unfortunately. There is this, though: nobody else can give you any authentic evidence of ownership at all. And if you know as much about the affair as I suppose–or I should not be here–you know that the means by which it was taken from him shows that his right to it was more valid than anyone else’s–certainly more valid than Thursby’s.”
“What about his daughter?” Spade asked.
Excitement opened Cairo’s eyes and mouth, turned his face red, made his voice shrill. “He is not the owner!”
Spade said, “Oh,” mildly and ambiguously.
“Is he here, in San Francisco, now?” Cairo asked in a less shrill, but still excited, voice.
Spade blinked his eyes sleepily and suggested: “It might be better all around if we put our cards on the table.”
Cairo recovered composure with a little jerk. “I do not think it would be better.” His voice was suave now. “If you know more than I, I shall profit by your knowledge, and so will you to the extent of five thousand dollars. If you do not then I have made a mistake in coming to you, and to do as you suggest would be simply to make that mistake worse.”
Spade nodded indifferently and waved his hand at the articles on the desk, saying: “There’s your stuff”; and then, when Cairo was returning them to his pockets: “It’s understood that you’re to pay my expenses while I’m getting this black bird for you, and five thousand dollars when it’s done?”
“Yes, Mr. Spade; that is, five thousand dollars less whatever moneys have been advanced to you–five thousand in all.”
“Right. And it’s a legitimate proposition.” Spade’s face was solemn except for wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “You’re not hiring me to do any murders or burglaries for you, but simply to get it back if possible in an honest and lawful way.”
“If possible,” Cairo agreed. His face also was solemn except for the eyes. “And in any event with discretion.” He rose and picked up his hat. “I am at the Hotel Belvedere when you wish to communicate with me– room six-thirty-five. I confidently expect the greatest mutual benefit from our association, Mr. Spade.” He hesitated. “May I have my pistol?”
“Sure. I’d forgotten it.”
Spade took the pistol out of his coat-pocket and handed it to Cairo.
Cairo pointed the pistol at Spade’s chest.
“You will please keep your hands on the top of the desk,” Cairo said earnestly. “I intend to search your offices.”
Spade said: “I’ll be damned.” Then he laughed in his throat and said: “All right. Go ahead. I won’t stop you.”
VI.
The Undersized Shadow
For half an hour after Joel Cairo had gone Spade sat alone, still and frowning, at his desk. Then he said aloud in the tone of one dismissing a problem, “Well, they’re paying for it,” and took a bottle of Manhattan cocktail and a paper drinking-cup from a desk-drawer. He filled the cup two-thirds full, drank, returned the bottle to the drawer, tossed the cup into the wastebasket, put on his hat and overcoat, turned off the lights, and went down to the night-lit street.
An undersized youth of twenty or twenty-one in neat grey cap and overcoat was standing idly on the corner below Spade’s building.
Spade walked up Sutter Street to Kearny, where he entered a cigarstore to buy two sacks of Bull Durham. When he came out the youth was one of four people waiting for a street-car on the opposite corner.