He turned and with angry heedlessness tossed his glass at the table. The glass struck the wood, burst apart, and splashed its contents and glittering fragments over table and floor. Spade, deaf and blind to the crash, wheeled to confront the fat man again.
The fat man paid no more attention to the glass’s fate than Spade did: lips pursed, eyebrows raised, head cocked a little to the left, he had maintained his pink-faced blandness throughout Spade’s angry speech, and he maintained it now.
Spade, still furious, said: “And another thing. I don’t want–”
The door to Spade’s left opened. The boy who had admitted Spade came in. He shut the door, stood in front of it with his hands flat against his flanks, and looked at Spade. The boy’s eyes were wide open and dark with wide pupils. Their gaze ran over Spade’s body from shoulders to knees, and up again to settle on the handkerchief whose maroon border peeped from the breast-pocket of Spade’s brown coat.
“Another thing,” Spade repeated, glaring at the boy: “Keep that gunsel away from me while you’re making up your mind. I’ll kill him. I don’t like him. He makes me nervous. I’ll kill him the first time he gets in my way. I won’t give him an even break. I won’t give him a chance. I’ll kill him.”
The boy’s lips twitched in a shadowy smile. He neither raised his eyes nor spoke.
The fat man said tolerantly: “Well, sir, I must say you have a most violent temper.”
“Temper?” Spade laughed crazily. He crossed to the chair on which he had dropped his hat, picked up the hat, and set it on his head. He held out a long arm that ended in a thick forefinger pointing at the fat man’s belly. His angry voice filled the room. “Think it over and think like hell. You’ve got till five-thirty to do it in. Then you’re either in or out, for keeps.” He let his arm drop, scowled at the bland fat man for a moment, scowled at the boy, and went to the door through which he had entered. When he opened the door he turned and said harshly: “Five-thirty–then the curtain.”
The boy, staring at Spade’s chest, repeated the two words he had twice spoken in the Belvedere lobby. His voice was not loud. It was bitter.
Spade went out and slammed the door.
XII.
Merry-Go-Round
Spade rode down from Gutman’s floor in an elevator. His lips were dry and rough in a face otherwise pale and damp. When he took out his handkerchief to wipe his face he saw his hand trembling. He grinned at it and said, “Whew!” so loudly that the elevator-operator turned his head over his shoulder and asked: “Sir?”
Spade walked down Geary Street to the Palace Hotel, where he ate luncheon. His face had lost its pallor, his lips their dryness, and his hand its trembling by the time he had sat down. He ate hungrily without haste, and then went to Sid Wise’s office.
When Spade entered, Wise was biting a fingernail and staring at the window. He took his hand from his mouth, screwed his chair around to face Spade, and said: “‘Lo. Push a chair up.”
Spade moved a chair to the side of the big paper-laden desk and sat down. “Mrs. Archer come in?” he asked.
“Yes.” The faintest of lights flickered in Wise’s eyes. “Going to marry the lady, Sammy?”
Spade sighed irritably through his nose. “Christ, now you start that!” he grumbled.
A brief tired smile lifted the corners of the lawyer’s mouth. “If you don’t,” he said, “you’re going to have a job on your hands.”
Spade looked up from the cigarette he was making and spoke sourly: “You mean you are? Well, that’s what you’re for. What did she tell you?”
“About you?”
“About anything I ought to know.”
Wise ran fingers through his hair, sprinkling dandruff down on his shoulders. “She told me she had tried to get a divorce from Miles so she could–”
“I know all that,” Spade interrupted him. “You can skip it. Get to the part I don’t know.”
“How do I know how much she–?”