“And suppose you’d got it? What then?”
“Then I’d have been in a position to talk terms with Mr. Floyd Thursby.”
Spade squinted at her and suggested: “But you wouldn’t have known where to take it to get more money than he’d give you, the larger suni that you knew he expected to sell it for?”
“I did not know,” she said.
Spade scowled at the ashes he had dumped on his plate. “What makes it worth all that money?” he demanded. “You must have some idea, at least be able to guess.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
He directed the scowl at her. “What’s it made of?”
“Porcelain or black stone. I don’t know. I’ve never touched it. I’ve only seen it once, for a few minutes. Floyd showed it to me when we’d first got hold of it.”
Spade mashed the end of his cigarette in his plate and made one draught of the coffee and brandy in his cup. His scowl had gone away. He wiped his lips with his napkin, dropped it crumpled on the table, and spoke casually: “You are a liar.”
She got up and stood at the end of the table, looking down at him with dark abashed eyes in a pinkening face. “I am a liar,” she said. “I have always been a liar.”
“Don’t brag about it. It’s childish.” His voice was good-humored. He came out from between table and bench. “Was there any truth at all in that yarn?”
She hung her head. Dampness glistened on her dark lashes. “Some,” she whispered.
“How much?”
“Not–not very much.”
Spade put a hand under her chin and lifted her head. He laughed into her wet eyes and said: “We’ve got all night before us. I’ll put some more brandy in some more coffee and we’ll try again.”
Her eyelids drooped. “Oh, I’m so tired,” she said tremulously, “so tired of it all, of myself, of lying and thinking up lies, and of not knowing what is a lie and what is the truth. I wish I–”
She put her hands up to Spade’s cheeks, put her open mouth hard against his mouth, her body flat against his body.
Spade’s arms went around her, holding her to him, muscles bulging his blue sleeves, a hand cradling her head, its fingers half lost among red hair, a hand moving groping fingers over her slim back. His eyes burned yellowly.
X.
The Belvedere Divan
Beginning day had reduced night to a thin smokiness when Spade sat up. At his side Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s soft breathing had the regularity of utter sleep. Spade was quiet leaving bed and bedroom and shutting the bedroom-door. He dressed in the bathroom. Then he examined the sleeping girl’s clothes, took a flat brass key from the pocket of her coat, and went out.
He went to the Coronet, letting himself into the building and into her apartment with the key. To the eye there was nothing furtive about h’is going in: he entered boldly and directly. To the ear his going in was almost unnoticeabhe: he made as little sound as might be.
In the girl’s apartment he switched on all the lights. He searched the place from wall to wall. His eyes and thick fingers moved without apparent haste, and without ever lingering or fumbling or going back, from one inch of their fields to the next, probing, scrutinizing, testing with expert certainty. Every drawer, cupboard, cubbyhole, box, bag, trunk–locked or unlocked–was opened and its contents subjected to examination by eyes and fingers. Every piece of clothing was tested by hands that felt for telltale bulges and ears that listened for the crinkle of paper between pressing fingers. He stripped the bed of bedclothes. He looked under rugs and at the under side of each piece of furniture. He pulled down blinds to see that nothing had been rolled up in them for concealment. He leaned through windows to see that nothing hung below them on the outside. He poked with a fork into powder and cream-jars on the dressing-table. He held atomizers and bottles up against the light. He examined dishes and pans and food and food-containers. He emptied the garbage-can on spread sheets of newspaper. He opened the top of the flush-box in tIme bathroom, drained the box, and peered down into it. He examined and tested the metal screens over the drains of bathtub, wash-bowl, sink, and laundry tub.