“Hello, angel! What’s the good word’ Fine, fine! Hold it. I’ll be out in twenty minutes. . . . Right.”
Half an hour later Spade rang the doorbell of a two-story brick building in Ninth Avenue. Effie Perine opened the door. Her boyish face was tired and smiling. “Hello, boss,” she said. “Enter.” She said in a low voice: “If Ma says anything to you, Sam, be nice to her. She’s all up in the air.” Spade grinned reassuringly and patted her shoulder.
She put her hands on his arm. “Miss O’Shaughnessy?”
“No,” he growled. “I ran into a plant. Are you sure it was her voice?”
“Yes.”
He made an unpleasant face. “Well, it was hooey.”
She took him into a bright living-room, sighed, and slumped down on one end of a Chesterfield, smiling cheerfully up at him through her weariness.
He sat beside her and asked: “Everything went 0 K? Nothing said about the bundle?”
“Nothing. I told them what you told me to tell them, and they seemed to take it for granted that the phone-call had something to do with it, and that you were out running it down.”
“Dundy there?”
“No. Hoff and O’Gar and some others I didn’t know. I talked to the Captain too.”
“They took you down to the Hall?”
“Oh, yes, and they asked me loads of questions, but it was all–you know–routine.”
Spade rubbed his palms together. “Swell,” he said and then frowned, “though I guess they’ll think up plenty to put to me when we meet. That damned Dundy will, anyway, and Bryan.” He moved his shoulders. “Anybody you know, outside of the police, come around?”
“Yes.” She sat up straight. “That boy–the one who brought the mesgage from Gutman–was there. He didn’t come in, but the police left the corridor-door open while they were there and I saw him standing there.”
“You didn’t say anything?”
“Oh, no. You had said not to. So I didn’t pay any attention to him and the next time I looked he was gone.”
Spade grinned at her. “Damned lucky for you, sister, that the coppers got there first.”
“Why?”
“He’s a bad egg, that lad–poison. Was the dead man Jacobi?”
“Yes.”
He pressed her hands and stood up. “I’m going to run along. You’d better hit the hay. You’re all in.”
She rose. “Sam, what is–?”
He stopped her words with his hand on her mouth. “Save it till Monday,” he said. “I want to sneak out before your mother catches me and gives me hell for dragging her lamb through gutters.”
Midnight was a few minutes away when Spade reached his home. He put his key into the street-door’s lock. Heels clicked rapidly on the sidewalk behind him. He let go the key and wheeled. Brigid O’Shaugbnessy ran up the steps to him. She put her arms around him and hung on him, panting: “Oh, I thought you’d never come!” Her face was haggard, distraught, shaken by the tremors that shook her from head to foot.
With the hand not supporting her he felt for the key again, opened the door, and half lifted her inside. “You’ve been waiting?” he asked.
“Yes.” Panting spaced her words. “In a–doorway–up the–street.”
“Can you make it all right?” he asked. “Or shall I carry you?”
She shook her head against his shoulder. “I’ll he–all right–when I– get where–I can–sit down.”
They rode up to Spade’s floor in the elevator and went around to his apartment. She left his arm and stood beside him–panting, both hands to her breast–while he unlocked his door. He switched on the passageway light. They went in. He shut the door and, with his arm around her again, took her back towards the living-room. When they were within a step cf the living-room-door the light in the living-room went on.
The girl cried out and clung to Spade.
Just inside the living-room-door fat Gutman stood smiling benevolently at them. The boy Wilmer came out of the kitchen behind them. Black pistols were gigantic in his small hands. Cairo came from the bathroom. He too had a pistol.
Gutman said: “Well, sir, we’re all here, as you can see for yourself. Now let’s come in and sit down and be comfortable and talk.”