Effie Perine, frightened, stepped out of the man’s way.
He stood in the doorway with his soft hat crushed between his head and the top of the door-frame: he was nearly seven feet tall. A black overcoat cut long and straight and like a sheath, buttoned from throat to knees, exaggerated his leanness. His shoulders stuck out, high, thin, angular. His bony face–weather-coarsened, age-lined–was the color of wet sand and was wet with sweat on cheeks and chin. His eyes were dark and bloodshot and mad above lower lids that hung down to show’ pink inner membrane. Held tight against the left side of his chest by a black-sleeved arm that ended in a yellowish claw was a brown-paper-wrapped parcel bound with thin rope–an ellipsoid somewhat larger than an American football.
The tall man stood in the doorway and there was nothing to show that he saw Spade. He said, “You know–” and then the liquid bubbling came up in his throat and submerged whatever else he said. He put his other hand over the hand that held the ellipsoid. Holding himself stiffly straight, not putting his hands out to break his fall, he fell forward as a tree falls.
Spade, wooden-faced and nimble, sprang from his chair and caught the falling man. When Spade caught him the man’s mouth opened and a little blood spurted out, and the brown-wrapped parcel dropped from the man’s hands and rolled across the floor until a foot of the desk stopped it. Then the man’s knees bent and he bent at the waist and his thin body became limber inside the sheathlike overcoat, sagging in Spade’s arms so that Spade could not hold it up from the floor.
Spade lowered the man carefully until he lay on the floor on his left side. The man’s eyes–dark and bloodshot, but not now mad–were wide open and still. His mouth was open as when blood had spurted from it, but no more blood came from it, and all his long body was as still as the floor it lay on.
Spade said: “Lock the door.”
While Effie Perine, her teeth chattering, fumbled with the corridordoor’s lock Spade knelt beside the thin man, turned him over on his back, and ran a hand down inside his overcoat. When he withdrew the hand presently it came out smeared with blood. The sight of his bloody hand brought not the least nor briefest of changes to Spade’s face. Holding that hand up where it would touch nothing, he took his lighter out of his pocket with his other hand. He snapped on the flame and held the flame close to first one and then the other of the thin man’s eyes. The eyes–lids, balls, irises, and pupils–remained frozen, immobile.
Spade extinguished the flame and returned the lighter to his pocket. He moved on his knees around to the dead man’s side and, using his one clean hand, unbuttoned and opened the tubular overcoat. The inside of the overcoat was wet with blood and the double-breasted blue jacket beneath it was sodden, The jacket’s lapels, where they crossed over the man’s chest, and both sides of his coat immediately below that point, were pierced by soggy ragged holes.
Spade rose and went to the washbowl in the outer office.
Effie Perine, wan and trembling and holding herself upright by means of a hand on the corridor-door’s knob and her back against its glass, whispered: “Is–is he–?”
“Yes. Shot through the chest, maybe half a dozen times.” Spade began to wash his hands.
“Oughtn’t we–?” she began, but he cut her short: “It’s too late for a doctor now and I’ve got to think before we do anything.” He finished washing his hands and began to rinse the bowl. “He couldn’t have come far with those in him. If he– Why in hell couldn’t he have stood up long enough to say something?” He frowned at the girl, rinsed his hands again, and picked up a towel. “Pull yourself together. For Christ’s sake don’t get sick on me now!” He threw the towel down and ran fingers through his hair. “We’ll have a look at that bundle.”
He went into the inner office again, stepped over the dead man’s legs, and picked up the brown-paper-wrapped parcel. When he felt its weight his eyes glowed. He put it on his desk, turning it over so that the knotted part of the rope was uppermost. The knot was hard and tight. He took out his pocket-knife and cut the rope.