“And I wasn’t home. I was down looking at Miles’s corpse. Jesus, what a swell lot of merry-go-round riding. Then what?”
“She went home, and her husband still wasn’t there, and while she was undressing your messenger came with the news of his death.”
Spade didn’t speak until he had with great care rolled and lighted another cigarette. Then he said: “I think that’s an all right spread. It seems to click with most of the known facts. It ought to hold.”
Wise’s fingers, running through his hair again, combed more dandruff down on his shoulders. He studied Spade’s face with curious eyes and asked: “But you don’t believe it?”
Spade plucked his cigarette from between his lips. “I don’t believe it or disbelieve it, Sid. I don’t know a damned thing about it.”
A wry smile twisted the lawyer’s mouth. He moved his shoulders wearily and said: “That’s right–I’m selling you out. Why don’t you get an honest lawyer–one you can trust?”
“That fellow’s dead.” Spade stood up. He sneered at Wise. “Getting touchy, huh? I haven’t got enough to think about: now I’ve got to remember to be polite to you. What did I do? Forget to genuflect when I came in?”
Sid Wise smiled sheepishly. “You’re a son of a gun, Sammy,” he said.
Effie Perine was standing in the center of Spade’s outer office when he entered. She looked at him with worried brown eyes and asked: “What happened?”
Spade’s face grew stiff. “What happened where?” he demanded.
“Why didn’t she come?”
Spade took two long steps and caught Effie Perine by the shoulders. “She didn’t get there?” he bawled into her frightened face.
She shook her head violently from side to side. “I waited and waited and she didn’t come, and I couldn’t get you on the phone, so I came down.”
Spade jerked his hands away from her shoulders, thrust them far down in his trousers-pockets, said, “Another merry-go-round,” in a loud enraged voice, and strode into his private office. He came out again. “Phone your mother,” he commanded. “See if she’s come yet.”
He walked up and down the office while the girl used the telephone. “No,” she said when she had finished. “Did–did you send her out in a taxi?”
His grunt probably meant yes.
“Are you sure she– Somebody must have followed her!”
Spade stopped pacing the floor. He put his hands on his hips and glared at the girl. He addressed her in a loud savage voice: “Nobody followed her. Do you think I’m a God-damned schoolboy? I made sure of it before I put her in the cab, I rode a dozen blocks with her to be more sure, and I checked her another half-dozen blocks after I got out.”
“Well, but–”
“But she didn’t get there. You’ve told me that. I believe it. Do you think I think she did get there?”
Effie Perine sniffed. “You certainly act like a God-damned schoolboy,” she said.
Spade made a harsh noise in his throat and went to the corridor-door. “I’m going out and find her if I have to dig up sewers,” he said. “Stay here till I’m back or you hear from me. For Christ’s sake let’s do something right.”
He went out, walked half the distance to the elevators, and retraced his steps. Effie Perine was sitting at her desk when he opened the door. He said: “You ought to know better than to pay any attention to me when I talk like that.”
“If you think I pay any attention to you you’re crazy,” she replied, “only”–she crossed her arms and felt her shoulders, and her mouth twitched uncertainly–“I won’t be able to wear an evening gown for two weeks, you big brute.”
He grinned humbly, said, “I’m no damned good, darling,” made an exaggerated bow, and went out again.
Two yellow taxicabs were at the corner-stand to which Spade went. Their chauffeurs were standing together talking. Spade asked: “Where’s the red-faced blond driver that was here at noon?”
“Got a load,” one of the chauffeurs said.
“Will he be back here?”
“I guess so.”
The other chauffeur ducked his head to the east. “Here he comes now.”