They shook hands and sat down.
The District Attorney put his finger on one of the pearl buttons in a battery of four on his desk, said to the lathy youth who opened the door again, “Ask Mr. Thomas and Healy to come in,” and then, rocking back in his chair, addressed Spade pleasantly: “You and the police haven’t been hitting it off so well, have you?”
Spade made a negligent gesture with the fingers of his right hand. “Nothing serious,” he said lightly. “Dundy gets too enthusiastic.”
The door opened to admit two men. The one to whom Spade said, “Hello, Thomas!” was a sunburned stocky man of thirty in clothing and hair of a kindred unruliness. He clapped Spade on the shoulder with a freckled hand, asked, “How’s tricks?” and sat down beside him. The second man was younger and colorless. He took a seat a little apart from the others and balanced a stenographer’s notebook on his knee, holding a green pencil over it.
Spade glanced his way, chuckled, and asked Bryan: “Anything I say will be used against me?”
The District Attorney smiled. “That always holds good.” He took his glasses off, looked at them, and set them on his nose again. He looked through them at Spade and asked: “Who killed Thursby?”
Spade said: “I don’t know.”
Bryan rubbed his black eyeglass-ribbon between thumb and fingers and said knowingly: “Perhaps you don’t, but you certainly could make an excellent guess.”
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t.”
The District Attorney raised his eyebrows.
“I wouldn’t,” Spade repeated. He was serene. “My guess might be excellent, or it might be crummy, but Mrs. Spade didn’t raise any children dippy enough to make guesses in front of a district attorney, an assistant district attorney, and a stenographer.”
“Why shouldn’t you, if you’ve nothing to conceal?”
“Everybody,” Spade responded mildly, “has something to conceal.”
“And you have–?”
“My guesses, for one thing.”
The District Attorney looked down at his desk and then up at Spade. He settled his glasses more firmly on his nose. He said: “If you’d prefer not having the stenographer here we can dismiss him. It was simply as a matter of convenience that I brought him in.”
“I don’t mind him a damned hit,” Spade replied. “I’m willing to have anything I say put down and I’m willing to sign it.”
“We don’t intend asking you to sign anything,” Bryan assured him, “I wish you wouldn’t regard this as a formal inquiry at all. And please don’t think I’ve any belief–much less confidence–in those theories the police seem to have formed.”
“No?”
“Not a particle.”
Spade sighed and crossed his legs. “I’m glad of that.” He felt in his pockets for tobacco and papers. “What’s your theory?”
Bryan leaned forward in his chair and his eyes were hard and shiny as the lenses over them. “Tell me who Archer was shadowing Thursby for and I’ll tell you who killed Thursby.”
Spade’s laugh was brief and scornful. “You’re as wrong as Dundy,” he said.
“Don’t misunderstand me, Spade,” Bryan said, knocking on the desk with his knuckles. “I don’t say your client killed Thursby or had him killed, but I do say that, knowing who your client is, or was, I’ll mighty soon know who killed Thursby.”
Spade lighted his cigarette, removed it from his lips, emptied his lungs of smoke, and spoke as if puzzled: “I don’t exactly get that.”
“You don’t? Then suppose I put it this way: where is Dixie Monahan?”
Spade’s face retained its puzzled look. “Putting it that way doesn’t help much,” he said. “I still don’t get it.”
The District Attorney took his glasses off and shook them for emphasis. He said: “We know Thursby was Monahan’s bodyguard and went with him when Monahan found it wise to vanish from Chicago. We know Monahan welshed on something like two-hundred-thousand-dollars’ worth of bets when he vanished. We don’t know–not yet–who his creditors were.” He put the glasses on again and smiled grimly. “But we all know what’s likely to happen to a gambler who welshes, and to his bodyguard, when his creditors find him. It’s happened before.”
Spade ran his tongue over his lips and pulled his lips back over his teeth in an ugly grin. His eyes glittered under pulled-down brows. His reddening neck bulged over the rim of his collar. His voice was low and hoarse and passionate. “Well, what do you think? Did I kill him for his creditors? Or just find him and let them do their own killing?”