He shut his eyes and smiled complacently at an inner thought. He opened his eyes and said: “That was seventeen years ago. Well, Sir, it took me seventeen years to locate that bird, but I did it. I wanted it, and I’m not a man that’s easily discouraged when he wants something.” His smile grew broad. “I wanted it and I found it. I want it and I’m going to have it.” He drained his glass, dried his lips again, and returned his handkerchief to his pocket. “I traced it to the home of a Russian general–one Kemidov–in a Constantinople suburb. He didn’t know a thing about it. It was nothing but a black enameled figure to him, but his natural contrariness–the natural contrariness of a Russian general–kept him from selling it to me when I made him an offer. Perhaps in my eagerness I was a little unskillful, though not very. I don’t know about that. But I did know I wanted it and I was afraid this stupid soldier might begin to investigate his property, might chip off some of the enamel. So I sent some–ah–agents to get it. Well, sir, they got it and I haven’t got it.” He stood up and carried his empty glass to the table. “But I’m going to get it. Your glass, sir.”
“Then the bird doesn’t belong to any of you?” Spade asked, “but to a General Kemidov?”
“Belong?” the fat man said jovially. “Well, sir, you might say it belonged to the King of Spain, but I don’t see how you can honestly grant anybody else clear title to it–except by right of possession.” He clucked. “An article of that value that has passed from hand to hand by such means is clearly the property of whoever can get hold of it.”
“Then it’s Miss O’Shaughnessy’s now?”
“No, sir, except as my agent.”
Spade said, “Oh,” ironically.
Gutman, looking thoughtfully at the stopper of the whiskey-bottle in his hand, asked: “There’s no doubt that she’s got it now?”
“Not much.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
The fat man set the bottle on the table with a bang. “But you said you did,” he protested.
Spade made a careless gesture with one hand. “I meant to say I know where to get it when the time comes.”
The pink bulbs of Gutman’s face arranged themselves more happily. “And you do?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Spade grinned and said: “Leave that to me. That’s my end.”
“When?”
“When I’m ready.”
The fat man pursed his lips and, smiling with only slight uneasiness, asked: “Mr. Spade, where is Miss O’Shaughnessy now?”
“In my hands, safely tucked away.”
Gutman smiled with approval. “Trust you for that, sir,” he said. “Well now, sir, before we sit down to talk prices, answer me this: how soon can you–or how soon are you willing to–produce the falcon?”
“A couple of days.”
The fat man nodded. “That is satisfactory. We– But I forgot our nourishment.” He turned to the table, poured whiskey, squirted charged water into it, set a glass at Spade’s elbow and held his own aloft. “Well, sir, here’s to a fair bargain and profits large enough for both of us.”
They drank. The fat man sat down. Spade asked: “What’s your idea of a fair bargain?”
Gutman held his glass up to the light, looked affectionately at it, took another long drink, and said: “I have two proposals to make, sir, and either is fair. Take your choice. I will give you twenty-five thousand dollars when you deliver the falcon to me, and another twenty-five thousand as soon as I get to New York; or I will give you one quarter–twenty-five per cent–of what I realize on the falcon. There you are, sir: an almost immediate fifty thousand dollars or a vastly greater sum within, say, a couple of months.”
Spade drank and asked: “How much greater?”
“Vastly,” the fat man repeated. “Who knows how much greater? Shall I say a hundred thousand, or a quarter of a million? Will you believe me if I name the sum that seems the probable minimum?”
“Why not?”
The fat man smacked his lips and lowered his voice to a purring murmur. “What would you say, sir, to half a million?”