“She didn’t tell you?”
“Miss O’Shaughnessy?”
“Yes. A lovely girl, sir.”
“Uh-huh. No.”
The fat man’s eyes were dark gleams in ambush behind pink puffs of flesh. He said indistinctly, “She must know,” and then, “And Cairo didn’t either?”
“Cairo is cagey. He’s willing to buy it, but he won’t risk telling me anything I don’t know already.”
The fat man moistened his lips with his tongue. “How much is he willing to buy it for?” he asked.
“Ten thousand dollars.”
The fat man laughed scornfully. “Ten thousand, and dollars, mind you, not even pounds. That’s the Greek for you. Humph! And what did you say to that?”
“I said if I turned it over to him I’d expect the ten thousand.”
“Ah, yes, if! Nicely put, sir.” The fat man’s forehead squirmed in a flesh-blurred frown. “They must know,” he said only partly aloud, then: “Do they? Do they know what the bird is, sir? What was your impression?”
“I can’t help you there,” Spade confessed. “There’s not much to go by. Cairo didn’t say he did and he didn’t say he didn’t. She said she didn’t, but I took it for granted that she was lying.”
“That was not an in judicious thing to do,” the fat man said, but his mind was obviously not on his words. He scratched his head. He frowned until his forehead was marked by raw red creases. He fidgeted in his chair as much as his size and the size of the chair permitted fidgeting. He shut his eyes, opened them suddenly–wide–and said to Spade: “Maybe they don’t.” His bulbous pink face slowly lost its worried frown and then, more quickly, took on an expression of ineffable happiness. “If they don’t,” he cried, and again: “If they don’t I’m the only one in the whole wide sweet world who does!”
Spade drew his lips back in a tight smile. “I’m glad I came to the right place,” he said.
The fat man smiled too, but somewhat vaguely. Happiness had gone out of his face, though he continued to smile, and caution had come into his eyes. His face was a watchful-eyed smiling mask held up between his thoughts and Spade. His eyes, avoiding Spade’s, shifted to the glass at Spade’s elbow. His face brightened. “By Gad, sir,” he said, “your glass is empty.” He got up and went to the table and clattered glasses and siphon and bottle mixing two drinks.
Spade was immobile in his chair until the fat man, with a flourish and a bow and a jocular “Ah, sir, this kind of medicine will never hurt you!” had handed him his refilled glass. Then Spade rose and stood close to the fat man, looking down at him, and Spade’s eyes were hard and bright. He raised his glass. His voice was deliberate, challenging: “Here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding.”
The fat man chuckled and they drank. The fat man sat down. He held his glass against his belly with both hands and smiled up at Spade. He said: “Well, sir, it’s surprising, but it well may be a fact that neither of them does know exactly what that bird is, and that nobody in all this whole wide sweet world knows what it is, saving and excepting only your humble servant, Casper Gutman, Esquire.”
“Swell.” Spade stood with legs apart, one hand in his trousers-pocket, the other holding his glass. “When you’ve told me there’ll only be two of us who know.”
“Mathematically correct, sir”–the fat man’s eyes twinkled–“but”– his smile spread–“I don’t know for certain that I’m going to tell you.”
“Don’t be a damned fool,” Spade said patiently. “You know what it is. I know where it is. That’s why we’re here.”
“Well, sir, where is it?”
Spade ignored the question.
The fat man bunched his lips, raised his eyebrows, and cocked his head a little to the left. “You see,” he said blandly, “I must tell you what I know, but you will not tell me what you know. That is hardly equitable, sir. No, no, I do not think we can do business along those lines.”
Spade’s face became pale and hard. He spoke rapidly in a low furious voice: “Think again and think fast. I told that punk of yours that you’d have to talk to me before you got through. I’ll tell you now that you’ll do your talking today or you are through. What are you wasting my time for? You and your lousy secret! Christ! I know exactly what that stuff is that they keep in the subtreasury vaults, but what good does that do me? I can get along without you. God damn you! Maybe you could have got along without me if you’d kept clear of me. You can’t now. Not in San Francisco. You’ll come in or you’ll get out–and you’ll do it today.”