She stirred, raised her head drowsily, and her eyelids fluttered. Suddenly she sat up straight, opening her eyes wide. She saw Spade, smiled, leaned back in her chair, and rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “So you finally got back?” she said. “What time is it?”
“Six o’clock. What are you doing here?”
She shivered, drew Spade’s overcoat closer around her, and yawned. “You told me to stay till you got back or phoned.”
“Oh, you’re the sister of the boy who stood on the burning deck?”
“I wasn’t going to–” She broke off and stood up, letting his coat slide down on the chair behind her. She looked with dark excited eyes at his temple under the brim of his hat and exclaimed: “Oh, your head! What happened?”
His right temple was dark and swollen.
“I don’t know whether I fell or was slugged. I don’t think it amounts to much, but it hurts like hell.” He barely touched it with his fingers, flinched, turned his grimace into a grim smile, and explained: “I went visiting, was fed knockout-drops, and came to twelve hours later all Spread out on a man’s floor.”
She reached up and removed his hat from his head. “It’s terrible,” she said. “You’ll have to get a doctor. You can’t walk around with a head like that.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks, except for the headache, and that might be mostly from the drops.” He went to the cabinet in the corner of the office and ran cold water on a handkerchief. “Anything turn up after I left?”
“Did you find Miss O’Shaughnessy, Sam?”
“Not yet. Anything turn up after I left?”
“The District Attorney’s office phoned. He wants to see you.”
“Himself?”
“Yes, that’s the way I understood it. And a boy came in with a mesSage–that Mr. Gutman would be delighted to talk to you before fivethirty.”
Spade turned off the water, squeezed the handkerchief, and came away from the cabinet holding the handkerchief to his temple. “I got that,” he said. “I met the boy downstairs, and talking to Mr. Gutman got me this.”
“Is that the G. who phoned, Sam?”
“Yes.”
“And what–?”
Spade stared through the girl and spoke as if using speech to arrange his thoughts: “He wants something he thinks I can get. I persuaded him I could keep him from getting it if he didn’t make the deal with me before five-thirty. Then–uh-huh–sure–it was after I’d told him he’d have to wait a couple of days that he fed me the junk. It’s not likely he thought I’d die. He’d know I’d be up and around in ten or twelve hours. So maybe the answer’s that he figured he could get it without my help in that time if I was fixed SO I couldn’t butt in.” He scowled. “I hope to Christ he was wrong.” His stare became less distant. “You didn’t get any word from the O’Shaughnessy?”
The girl shook her head no and asked: “Has this got anything to do with her?”
“Something.”
“This thing he wants belongs to her?”
“Or to the King of Spain. Sweetheart, you’ve got an uncle who teaches history or something over at the University?”
“A cousin. Why?”
“If we brightened his life with an alleged historical secret four centuries old could we trust him to keep it dark awhile?”
“Oh, yes, he’s good people.”
“Fine. Get your pencil and book.”
She got them and sat in her chair. Spade ran more cold water on his handkerchief and, holding it to his temple, stood in front of her and dictated the story of the falcon as he had heard it from Gutman, from Charles V’s grant to the Hospitallers up to–but no further than–the enameled bird’s arrival in Paris at the time of the Carlist influx. He stumbled over the names of authors and their works that Gutman had mentioned, but managed to achieve some sort of phonetic likeness. The rest of the history he repeated with the accuracy of a trained interviewer.
When he had finished the girl shut her notebook and raised a flushed smiling face to him. “Oh, isn’t this thrilling?” she said. “It’s–”
“Yes, or ridiculous. Now will you take it over and read it to your cousin and ask him what he thinks of it? Has he ever run across anything that might have some connection with it? Is it probable? Is it possible– even barely possible? Or is it the bunk? If he wants more time to look it up, O.K., but get some sort of opinion out of him now. And for God’s sake make him keep it under his hat.”