“In England before the war.”
“Sure, there you are.”
Spade nodded and said: “Then that leaves Thursby the only one I lilled.”
Polhaus squirmed in his chair and his face was red and shiny. “Christ’s sake, ain’t you never going to forget that?” he complained earnestly. “That’s out. You know it as well as I do. You’d think you wasn’t a dick yourself the way you bellyache over things. I suppose you don’t never pull the same stuff on anybody that we pulled on you?”
“You mean that you tried to pull on me, Tom–just tried.”
Polhaus swore under his breath and attacked the remainder of his pig’s foot.
Spade said: “All right. You know it’s out and I know it’s out. What does Dundy know?”
“He knows it’s out.”
“What woke him up?”
“Aw, Sam, he never really thought you’d–” Spade’s smile checked Polhaus. He left the sentence incomplete and said: “We dug up a record on Thursby.”
“Yes? Who was he?”
Polhaus’s shrewd small brown eyes studied Spade’s face. Spade exclaimed irritably: “I wish to God I knew half as much about this business as you Smart guys think I do!”
“I wish we all did,” Polhaus grumbled. “Well, he was a St. Louis gunman the first we hear of him. He was picked up a lot of times back there for this and that, but he belonged to the Egan mob, so nothing much was ever done about any of it. I don’t know howcome he left that shelter, but they got him once in New York for knocking over a row of stuss-games–his twist turned him up–and he was in a year before Fallon got him sprung. A couple of years later he did a short hitch in Juliet for pistol-whipping another twist that had given him the needle, but after that he took up with Dixie Monahan and didn’t have any trouble getting out whenever he happened to get in. That was when Dixie was almost as big a shot as Nick the Greek in Chicago gambling. This Thursby was Dixie’s bodyguard and he took the run-out with him when Dixie got in wrong with the rest of the boys over some debts he couldn’t or wouldn’t pay off. That was a couple of years back–about the time the Newport Beach Boating Club was shut up. I don’t know if Dixie had any part in that. Anyways, this is the first time him or Thursby’s been seen since.”
“Dixie’s been seen?” Spade asked.
Polhaus shook his head. “No.” His small eyes became sharp, prying. “Not unless you’ve seen him or know somebody’s seen him.”
Spade lounged back in his chair and began to make a cigarette. “I haven’t,” he said mildly. “This is all new stuff to me.”
“I guess it is,” Polhaus snorted.
Spade grinned at him and asked: “Where’d you pick up all this news about Thurshy?”
“Some of it’s on the records. The rest–well–we got it here and there.”
“From Cairo, for instance?” Now Spade’s eyes held the prying gleam.
Polhaus put down his coffee-cup and shook his head. “Not a word of it. You poisoned that guy for us.”
Spade laughed. “You mean a couple of high-class sleuths like you and Dundy worked on that lily-of-the-valley all night and couldn’t crack him?”
“What do you mean–all night?” Polhaus protested. “We worked on him for less than a couple of hours. We saw we wasn’t getting nowhere, and let him go.”
Spade laughed again and looked at his watch. He caught John’s eye and asked for the check. “I’ve got a date with the D. A. this afternoon,” he told Polhaus while they waited for his change.
“He send for you?”
“Yes.”
Polhaus pushed his chair back and stood up, a barrel-bellied tall man, solid and phlegmatic. “You won’t be doing me any favor,” he said, “by telling him I’ve talked to you like this.”
A lathy youth with salient ears ushered Spade into the District Attorney’s office. Spade went in smiling easily, saying easily: “Hello, Bryan!”
District Attorney Bryan stood up and held his hand out across his desk. He was a blond man of medium stature, perhaps forty-five years dd, with aggressive blue eyes behind black-ribboned nose-glasses, the over-large mouth of an orator, and a wide dimpled chin. When he said, “How do you do, Spade?” his voice was resonant with latent power.