Tom looked at Cairo, who said quickly: “Joel Cairo, Hotel Belvedere.”
Spade spoke before Tom could question the girl. “You can always get in touch with Miss O’Shaughnessy through me.”
Tom looked at Dundy. Dundy growled: “Get her address.”
Spade said: “Her address is in care of my office.”
Dundy took a step forward, halting in front of the girl. “Where do you hive?” he asked.
Spade addressed Tom: “Get him out of here. I’ve had enough of this.”
Tom hooked at Spade’s eyes–hard and glittering–and mumbled: “Take it easy, Sam.” He buttoned his coat and turned to Dundy, asking, in a voice that aped casualness, “Well, is that all?” and taking a step towards the door.
Dundy’s scowl failed to conceal indecision.
Cairo moved suddenly towards the door, saying: “I’m going too, if Mr. Spade will be kind enough to give me my hat and coat.”
Spade asked: “What’s the hurry?”
Dundy said angrily: “It was all in fun, but just the same you’re afraid to be left here with them.”
“Not at all,” the Levantine replied, fidgeting, hooking at neither of them, “but it’s quite hate and–and I’m going. I’ll go out with you if you don’t mind.”
Dundy put his lips together firmly and said nothing. A light was glinting in his green eyes.
Spade went to the closet in the passageway and fetched Cairo’s hat and coat. Spade’s face was blank. His voice held the same blankness when he stepped back from helping the Levantine into his coat and said to Tom: “Tell him to leave the gun.”
Dundy took Cairo’s pistol from his overcoat-pocket and put it on the table. He went out first, with Cairo at his heels. Tom halted in front of Spade, muttering, “I hope to God you know what you’re doing,” got no response, sighed, and followed the others out. Spade went after them as far as the bend in the passageway, where he stood until Tom had closed the corridor-door.
IX.
Brigid
Spade returned to the living-room and sat on an end of the sofa, ehbows on knees, cheeks in hands, hooking at the floor and not at Brigid O’Shaughnessy smiling weakly at him from the arnichair. His eyes were sultry. The creases between brows over his nose were deep. His nostrils moved in and out with his breathing.
Brigid O’Shaughnessv, when it became apparent that he was not going to look up at her, stopped smiling and regarded him with growing nneasiness.
Red rage came suddenly into his face and he began to talk in a harsh guttural voice. Holding his maddened face in his hands, glaring at the floor, he cursed Dundy for five minutes without break, cursed him obscenehv, blasphemously, repetitiously, in a harsh guttural voice.
Then he took his face out of his hands, looked at the girl, grinned sheepishly, amid said: “Childish, huh? I know, but, by God, I do hate being hit without hitting back.” He touched his chin with careful fingers. “Not that it was so much of a sock at that.” He laughed and lounged back on the sofa, crossing his legs. “A cheap enough price to pay for winning.” His brows came together in a fleeting scowl. “Though I’ll remember it.”
The girl, smiling again, heft her chair amid sat on the sofa beside him. “You’re absolutely the wildest person I’ve ever knowmm,” she said. “Do you always carry omi so high-handed?”
“I let him hit me, didn’t I?”
“Oh, yes, but a police official.”
“It wasn’t that,” Spade explained. “It was that in hosing his head and slugging me he overplayed his hand. If I’d mixed it with him then he couldn’t’ye backed down. He’d’ve had to go through with it, and we’d’ve had to tell that goofy story at headquarters.” He stared thoughtfully at the girl, and asked: “What did you do to Cairo?”
“Nothing.” Her face became flushed. “I tried to frighten him into keeping still until they had gone and he either got too frightened or stubborn and yelled.”
“And then you smacked him with the gun?”
“I had to. He attacked me.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing.” Spade’s smile did not hide his annoyance. “It’s just what I told you: you’re fumbling along by guess and by God.”