“But I was, I was.” Her lips twisted and anger darkened her eyes. “Effie Perine told you that,” she said indignantly. “I saw her hooking at my clothes and snooping around. You know she doesn’t like me, Sam. Why do you believe things she tells you when you know she’d do anything to make trouble for me?”
“Jesus, you women,” Spade said mildly. He looked at the watch on his wrist. “You’ll have to trot along, precious. I’m hate for an appointment now. You do what you want, but if I were you I’d tell Sid the truth or nothing. I mean leave out the parts you don’t want to tell him, but don’t make up anything to take its place.”
“I’m not lying to you, Sam,” she protested.
“Like hell you’re not,” he said and stood up.
She strained on tiptoe to hold her face nearer his. “You don’t believe me?” she whispered.
“I don’t believe you.”
“And you won’t forgive me for–for what I did?”
“Sure I do.” He bent his head and kissed her mouth. “That’s all right. Now run along.”
She put her arms around him. “Won’t you go with me to see Mr. Wise?”
“I can’t, and I’d only be in the way.” He patted her arms, took them from around his body, and kissed her left wrist between glove and sleeve. He put his hands on her shoulders, turned her to face the door, and released her with a little push. “Beat it,” he ordered.
The mahogany door of suite 12-C at the Alexandria Hotel was opened by the boy Spade had talked to in the Belvedere lobby. Spade said, “Hello,” good-naturedly. The boy did not say anything. He stood aside holding the door open.
Spade went in. A fat man came to meet him.
The fat man was flabbily fat with bulbous pink cheeks and lips and chins and neck, with a great soft egg of a belly that was all his torso, and pendant cones for arms and legs. As he advanced to meet Spade all his bulbs rose and shook and fell separately with each step, in the manner of clustered soap-bubbles not yet released from the pipe through which they had been blown. His eyes, made small by fat puffs around them, were dark and sleek. Dark ringlets thinly covered his broad scalp. He wore a black cutaway coat, black vest, black satin Ascot tie holding a pinkish pearl, striped grey worsted trousers, and patent-leather shoes.
His voice was a throaty purr. “Ah, Mr. Spade,” he said with enthusiasm and held out a hand like a fat pink star.
Spade took the hand and smiled and said: “How do you do, Mr. Gutman?”
Holding Spade’s hand, the fat man turned beside him, put his other hand to Spade’s elbow, and guided him across a green rug to a green plush chair beside a table that held a siphon, some glasses, and a bottle of Johnnie Walker whiskey on a tray, a box of cigars–Coronas del Ritz–two newspapers, and a small and plain yellow soapstone box.
Spade sat in the green chair. The fat man began to fill two glasses from bottle and siphon. The boy had disappeared. Doors set in three of the room’s walls were shut. The fourth wall, behind Spade, was pierced by two windows hooking out over Geary Street.
“We begin well, sir,” the fat man purred, turning with a proffered glass in his hand. “I distrust a niami that says when. If he’s got to be careful not to drink too niuch it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does.”
Spade took the glass and, smiling, made the beginning of a bow over it.
The fat man raised his glass and held it against a window’s light. He nodded approvingly at the bubbles running up in it. He said: “Well, sir, here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding.”
They drank and lowered their glasses.
The fat man hooked shrewdly at Spade and asked: “You’re a closemouthed nian?”
Spade shook his head. “I like to talk.”
“Better and better!” the fat man exclaimed. “I distrust a closemouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking’s somnething you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in practice.” He beanied over his glass. “We’ll get along, sir, that we will.” He set his glass on the table and held the box of Coronas del Ritz out to Spade. “A cigar, sir.”