“The police won’t have to know about me?”
She sighed happily and sat on the walnut settee. Her face relaxed and her body relaxed. She smiled up at him with admiring eyes. “However did you manage it?” she asked more in wonder than in curiosity.
“Most things in San Francisco can be bought, or taken.”
“And you won’t get into trouble? Do sit down.” She made room for him on the settee.
“I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble,” he said with not too much complacence.
He stood beside the fireplace and looked at her with eyes that studied, weighed, judged her without pretense that they were not studying, weighing, judging her. She flushed slightly under the frankness of his scrutiny, but she seemed more sure of herself than before, though a becoming shyness had not left her eyes. He stood there until it seemed plain that he meant to ignore her invitation to sit beside her, and then crossed to the settee.
“You aren’t,” he asked as he sat down, “exactly the sort of person you pretend to be, are you?”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said in her hushed voice, looking at him with puzzled eyes.
“Schoolgirl manner,” he explained, “stammering and blushing and all that.”
She blushed and replied hurriedly, not looking at him: “I told you this afternoon that I’ve been bad–worse than you could know.”
“That’s what I mean,” he said. “You told me that this afternoon in the same words, same tone. It’s a speech you’ve practiced.”
After a moment in which she seemed confused almost to the point of tears she laughed and said: “Very well, then, Mr. Spade, I’m not at all the sort of person I pretend to be. I’m eighty years old, incredibly wicked, and an iron-molder by trade. But if it’s a pose it’s one I’ve grown into, so you won’t expect me to drop it entirely, will you?”
“Oh, it’s all right,” he assured her. “Only it wouldn’t be all right if you were actually that innocent. We’d never get anywhere.”
“I won’t be innocent,” she promised with a hand on her heart.
“I saw Joel Cairo tonight,” he said in the manner of one making polite conversation.
Gaiety went out of her face. Her eyes, focused on his profile, became frightened, then cautious. He had stretched his legs out and was looking at his crossed feet. His face did not indicate that he was thinking about anything.
There was a long pause before she asked uneasily:
“You–you know him?”
“I saw him tonight.” Spade did not look up and he maintained his light conversational tone. “He was going to see George Arliss.”
“You mean you talked to him?”
“Only for a minute or two, till the curtain-bell rang.”
She got up from the settee and went to the fireplace to poke the fire. She changed slightly the position of an ornament on the mantelpiece, crossed the rooni to get a box of cigarettes from a table in a corner, straightened a curtain, and returned to her seat. Her face now was smooth and unworried.
Spade grinned sidewise at her and said: “You’re good. You’re very good.”
Her face did not change. She asked quietly: “What did he say?”
“About what?”
She hesitated. “About me.”
“Nothing.” Spade turned to hold his lighter under the end of her cigarette. His eyes were shiny in a wooden satan’s face.
“Well, what did he say?” she asked with half-playful petulance.
“He offered me five thousand dollars for the black bird.”
She started, her teeth tore the end of her cigarette, and her eyes, after a swift alarmed glance at Spade, turned away from him.
“You’re not going to go around poking at the fire and straightening up the room again, are you?” he asked lazily.
She laughed a clear merry laugh, dropped the mangled cigarette into a tray, and looked at him with clear merry eyes. “I won’t,” she promised. “And what did you say?”
“Five thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
She smiled, but when, instead of smiling, he looked gravely at her, her smile became faint, confused, and presently vanished. In its place came a hurt, bewildered look. “Surely you’re not really considering it,” she said.