THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett

“Quit stalling. Sid.” Spade held the flame of his lighter to the end of his cigarette. “What did she tell you that she wanted kept from me?”

Wise looked reprovingly at Spade. “Now, Sammy,” he began, “that’s not–”

Spade looked heavenward at the ceiling and groaned: “Dear God, he’s my own lawyer that’s got rich off me and I have to get down on my knees and beg him to tell me things!” He lowered at Wise. “What in hell do you think I sent her to you for?”

Wise made a weary grimace. “Just one more client like you,” he complained, “and I’d be in a sanitarium–or San Qucntin.”

“You’d be with most of your clients. Did she tell you where she was the night he was killed?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Following him.”

Spade sat up straight and blinked. He exclaimed incredulously: “Jesus, these women!” Then he laughed, relaxed, and asked: “Well, what did she see?”

Wise shook his head. “Nothing much. When he came home for dinner that evening he told her he had a date with a girl at the St. Mark, ragging her, telling her that was her chance to get the divorce she wanted. She thought at first he was just trying to get under her skin. He knew–”

“I know the family history,” Spade said. “Skip it. Tell me what she did.”

“I will if you’ll give me a chance. After he had gone out she began to think that maybe he might have had that date. You know Miles. It would have been like him to–”

“You can skip Miles’s character too.”

“I oughtn’t to tell you a damned thing,” the lawyer said. “So she got their car from the garage and drove down to the St. Mark, sitting in the car across the street. She saw him come out of the hotel and she saw that he was shadowing a man and a girl–she says she saw the same girl with you last night–who had come out just ahead of him. She knew then that he was working, had been kidding her. I suppose she was disappointed, and mad–she sounded that way when she told me about it. She followed Miles long enough to make sure he was shadowing the pair, and then she went up to your apartment. You weren’t home.”

“What time was that?” Spade asked.

“When she got to your place? Between half-past nine and ten the first time.”

“The first time?”

“Yes. She drove around for half an hour or so and then tried again. That would make it, say, ten-thirty. You were still out, so she drove back downtown and went to a movie to kill time until after midnight, when she thought she’d be more likely to find you in.”

Spade frowned. “She went to a movie at ten-thirty?”

“So she says–the one on Powell Street that stays open till one in the morning. She didn’t want to go home, she said, because she didn’t want to be there when Miles came. That always made him mad, it seems, especially if it was around midnight. She stayed in the movie till it closed.” Wise’s words came out slower now and there was a sardonic glint in his eye. “She says she had decided by then not to go back to your place again. She says she didn’t know whether you’d like having her drop in that late. So she went to Tait’s–the one on Ellis Street–had something to eat and then went home–alone.” Wise rocked back in his chair and waited for Spade to speak.

Spade’s face was expressionless. He asked: “You believe her?”

“Don’t you?” Wise replied.

“How do I know? How do I know it isn’t something you fixed up between you to tell me?”

Wise smiled. “You don’t cash many checks for strangers, do your Sammy?”

“Not basketfuls. Well, what then? Miles wasn’t home. It was at least two o’clock by then–must’ve been–and he was dead.”

“Miles wasn’t home,” Wise said. “That seems to have made her mad again–his not being home first to be made mad by her not being home. So she took the car out of the garage again and went back to your place.”

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