Brigid O’Shaughnessy grasped Spade’s arm above the elbow and demanded: “Did he follow you to my apartment?”
“No. I shook him before that. Then I suppose he came back here to try to pick me up again.”
Cairo, holding his black hat to his belly with both hands, had come into the passageway. Spade shut the corridor-door behind him and they went into the living-room. There Cairo bowed stiffly over his hat once more and said: “I ani delighted to see you again, Miss O’Shaughnessy.”
“I was sure you would be, Joe,” she replied, giving him her hand.
He made a formal bow over her hand and released it quickly.
She sat in the padded rocker she had occupied before. Cairo sat in the armchair by the table. Spade, when he had hung Cairo’s hat and coat in the closet, sat on an end of the sofa in front of the windows and began to roll a cigarette.
Brigid O’Shaughnessy said to Cairo: “Sam told me about your offer for the falcon. How soon can you have the money ready?”
Cairo’s eyebrows twitched. He smiled. “It is ready.” He continued to smile at the girl for a little while after he had spoken, and then looked at Spade.
Spade was lighting his cigarette. His face was tranquil.
“In cash?” the girl asked.
“Oh, yes,” Cairo replied.
She frowned, put her tongue between her lips, withdrew it, and asked: “You are ready to give us five thousand dollars, now, if we give you the falcon?”
Cairo held up a wriggling hand. “Excuse me,” he said. “I expressed myself badly. I did not mean to say that I have the money in my pockets, but that I am prepared to get it on a very few minutes’ notice at any time during banking hours.”
“Oh!” She looked at Spade.
Spade blew cigarette-smoke down the front of his vest and said: “That’s probably right. He had only a few hundred in his pockets when I frisked him this afternoon.”
When her eyes opened round and wide he grinned.
The Levantine bent forward in his chair. He failed to keep eagerness from showing in his eves and voice. “I can be quite prepared to give you the money at, say, half-past ten in the morning. Eh?”
Brigid O’Shaughnessy smiled at him and said: “But I haven’t got the falcon.”
Cairo’s face was darkened by a flush of annoyance. He put an ugly hand on either arm of his chair, holding his small-boned body erect and stiff between them. His dark eyes were angry. He did not say anything.
The girl made a mock-placatory face at him. “I’ll have it in a week at the most, though,” she said.
“Where is it?” Cairo used politeness of mien to express skepticism.
“Where Floyd hid it.”
“Floyd? Thursby?”
She nodded.
“And you know where that is?” he asked. “I think I do.”
“Then why must we wait a week?”
“Perhaps not a whole week. Whom are you buying it for, Joe?”
Cairo raised his eyebrows. “I told Mr. Spade. For its owner.”
Surprise illuminated the girl’s face. “So you went back to him?”
“Naturally I did.”
She laughed softly in her throat and said: “I should have liked to have seen that.”
Cairo shrugged. “That was the logical development.” He rubbed the back of one hand with the palm of the other. His upper lids came down to shade his eyes. “Why, if I in turn may ask a question, are you willing to sell to me?”
“I’m afraid,” she said simply, “after what happened to Floyd. That’s why I haven’t it now. I’m afraid to touch it except to turn it over to somebody else right away.”
Spade, propped on an elbow on the sofa, looked at and listened to them impartially. In the comfortable slackness of his body, in the easy stillness of his features, there was no indication of either curiosity or impatience.
“Exactly what,” Cairo asked in a low voice, “happened to Floyd?”
The tip of Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s right forefinger traced a swift C in the air.
Cairo said, “I see,” but there was something doubting in his smile. “Is he here?”
“I don’t know.” She spoke impatiently. “What difference does it make?”