THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett

“Oh, he was frightened to death when I struck him,” she replied, looking contemptuously at the Levantine.

Cairo’s face flushed where it was not blood-smeared. He exclaimed: “Pfoo! Another lie!”

She kicked his leg, the high heel of her blue slipper striking him just below the knee. Dundy pulled him away from her while big Tom came to stand close to her, rumbling: “Behave, sister. That’s no way to act.”

“Then make him tell the truth,” she said defiantly.

“We’ll do that all right,” he promised. “Just don’t get rough.” Dundy, looking at Spade with green eyes hard and bright and satisfied, addressed his subordinate: “Well, Tom, I don’t.guess we’ll go wrong pulling the lot of them in.”

Tom nodded gloomily.

Spade left the door and advanced to the center of the room, dropping his cigarette into a tray on the table as he passed it. His smile and manner were amiably composed. “Don’t be in a hurry,” he said. “Everything can be explained.”

“I bet you,” Dundy agreed, sneering.

Spade bowed to the girl. “Miss O’Shaughnessy,” he said, “may I present Lieutenant Dundy and Detective-sergeant Polhaus.” He bowed to Dundy. “Miss O’Shaughnessy is an operative in my employ.”

Joel Cairo said indignantly: “That isn’t so. She–”

Spade interrupted him in a quite loud, but still genial, voice: “I hired her just recently, yesterday. This is Mr. Joel Cairo, a friend–an acquaintance, at any rate–of Thursby’s. He came to me this afternoon and tried to hire me to find something Thursby was supposed to have on him when he was bumped off. It hooked funny, the way he put it to me, so I wouldn’t touch it. Then he pulled a gun–well, never mind that unless it comes to a point of laying charges against each other. Anywa , after talking it over with Miss O’Shaughnessy, I thought maybe I could get something out of him about Miles’s and Thursby’s killings, so I asked him to come up here. Maybe we put the questions to him a little rough, but he wasn’t hurt any, not enough to have to cry for help. I’d already had to take his gun away from him again.”

As Spade talked anxiety came into Cairo’s reddened face. His eyes moved jerkily up and down, shifting their focus uneasily between the floor and Spade’s bland face.

Dundy confronted Cairo and bruskly demanded: “Well, what’ve you got to say to that?”

Cairo had nothing to say for nearly a minute while he stared at the Lieutenant’s chest. When he lifted his eyes they were shy and wary. “I don’t know what I should say,” he murmured. His embarrassment seemed genuine.

“Try telling the facts,” Dundy suggested.

“The facts?” Cairo’s eyes fidgeted, though their gaze did not actually leave the Lieutenant’s. “What assurance have I that the facts will he believed?”

“Quit stalling. All you’ve got to do is swear to a complaint that they took a poke at you and the warrant-clerk will believe you enough to issue a warrant that’ll let us throw them in the can.”

Spade spoke in an amused tone: “Go ahead, Cairo. Make him happy. Tell him you’ll do it, and then we’ll swear to one against you, and he’ll have the lot of us.”

Cairo cleared his throat and looked nervously around the room, not into the eyes of anyone there.

Dundy blew breath through his nose in a puff that was not quite a snort and said: “Get your hats.”

Cairo’s eyes, holding worry and a question, met Spade’s mocking gaze. Spade winked at him and sat on the arni of the padded rocker. “Well, boys amid girls,” he said, grinning at the Levantine and at time girl with nothing but delight in his voice and grin, “we put it over nicely.”

Dundy’s hard square face darkened the least of shades. He repeated peremptorily: “Get your hats.”

Spade turned his grin on the Lieutenant, squirmed into a more comfortable position on the chair-arm and asked lazily: “Don’t you know when you’re lacing kidded?”

Tom Polhaus’s face became red and shiny.

Dundy’s face, still darkening, was immobile except for hips moving stiffly to say: “No, but we’ll let that wait till we get down to the Hall.”

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