Their taxicab drew up behind a dark sedan that stood directly in front of Spade’s street-door. Iva Archer was alone in the sedan, sitting at the wheel. Spade lifted his hat to her and went indoors with Brigid O’Shaughncssy. In the lobby he halted beside one of the benches and asked: “Do you mind waiting here a moment? I won’t be long.”
“That’s perfectly all right,” Brigid O’Shaughnessy said, sitting down. “You needn’t hurry.”
Spade went out to the sedan. When he had opened the sedan’s door Iva spoke quickly: “I’ve got to talk to you, Sam. Can’t I come in?” Her face was pale and nervous.
“Not now.”
Iva clicked her teeth together and asked sharply: “Who is she?”
“I’ve only a minute, Iva,” Spade said patiently. “What is it?”
“Who is she?” she repeated, nodding at the street-door.
He looked away from her, down the street. In front of a garage on the next corner an undersized youth of twenty or twenty-one in neat grey cap and overcoat loafed with his back against a wall. Spade frowned and returned his gaze to Iva’s insistent face. “What is the matter?” he asked. “Has anything happened? You oughtn’t to be here at this time of night.”
“I’m beginning to believe that,” she complained. “You told me I oughtn’t to come to the office, and now I oughtn’t to come here. Do you mean I oughtn’t to chase after you? If that’s what you mean why don’t you say it right out?”
“Now, Iva, you’ve got no right to take that attitude.”
“I know I haven’t. I haven’t any rights at all, it seems, where you’re concerned. I thought I did. I thought your pretending to love me gave me–”
Spade said wearily: “This is no time to be arguing about that, precious. What was it you wanted to see me about?”
“I can’t talk to you here, Sam. Can’t I come in?”
“Not now.”
“Why can’t I?”
Spade said nothing.
She made a thin line of her mouth, squirmed around straight behind the wheel, and started the sedan’s engine, staring angrily ahead.
When the sedan began to move Spade said, “Good night, Iva,” shut the door, and stood at the curb with his hat in his hand until it had been driven away. f’lmeim he went irmdoors again.
Brigid O’Shaughnessy rose snmiling cheerfully from the bench and they went up to his apartment.
VII.
G in the Air
In his bedroom that was a living-room now the wall-bed was up, Spade took Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s hat and coat, made her comfortable in a padded rocking chair, and telephoned the Hotel Belvedere. Cairo had not returned from the theatre. Spade left his telephone-number with the request that Cairo call him as soon as he came in.
Spade sat down in the armchair beside the table and without any preliminary, without an introductory remark of any sort, began to tell the girl about a thing that had happened some years before in the Northwest. He talked in a steady matter-of-fact voice that was devoid of emphasis or pauses, though now and then he repeated a sentence slightly rearranged, as if it were important that each detail be related exactly as it had happened.
At the beginning Brigid O’Shaughnessy listened with only partial attentiveness, obviously more surprised by his telling the story than interested in it, her curiosity more engaged with his purpose in telling the story than with the story he told; but presently, as the story went on, it caught her more and more fully and she became still and receptive.
A man named Flitcraft had left his real-estate-office, in Tacoma, to go to luncheon one day and had never returned. He did not keep an engagement to play golf after four that afternoon, though he had taken the initiative in making the engagement less than half an hour before he went out to luncheon. His wife and children never saw him again. His wife and he were supposed to be on the best of terms. He had two children, boys, one five and the other three. He owned his house in a Tacoma suburb, a new Packard, and the rest of the appurtenances of successful American living.