The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett [16]
Spade inclined his head at his visitor and then at a chair, saying: “Sit down, Mr. Cairo.”
Cairo bowed elaborately over his hat, said, “I thank you,” in a high-pitched thin voice and sat down. He sat down primly, crossing his ankles, placing his hat on his knees, and began to draw off his yellow gloves.
Spade rocked back in his chair and asked: “Now what can I do for you, Mr. Cairo?” The amiable negligence of his tone, his motion in the chair, were precisely as they had been when he had addressed the same question to Brigid O’Shaughnessy on the previous day.
Cairo turned his hat over, dropping his gloves into it, and placed it bottom-up on the corner of the desk nearest him. Diamonds twinkled on the second and fourth fingers of his left hand, a ruby that matched the one in his tie even to the surrounding diamonds on the third finger of his right hand. His hands were soft and well cared for. Though they were not large their flaccid bluntness made them seem clumsy. He rubbed his palms together and said over the whispering sound they made: “May a stranger offer condolences for your partner’s unfortunate death?”
“Thanks.”
“May I ask, Mr. Spade, if there was, as the newspapers inferred, a certain—ah—relationship between that unfortunate happening and the death a little later of the man Thursby?”
Spade said nothing in a blank-faced definite way.
Cairo rose and bowed. “I beg your pardon.” He sat down and placed his hands side by side, palms down, on the corner of the desk. “More than idle curiosity made me ask that, Mr. Spade I am trying to recover an—ah—ornament that has been—shall we say?—mislaid. I thought, and hoped, you could assist me.”
Spade nodded with eyebrows lifted to indicate attentiveness.
“The ornament is a statuette,” Cairo went on, selecting and mouthing his words carefully, “the black figure of a bird.”
Spade nodded again, with courteous interest.
“I am prepared to pay, on behalf of the figure’s rightful owner, the sum of five thousand dollars for its recovery.” Cairo raised one hand from the desk-corner and touched a spot in the air with the broad-nailed tip of an ugly forefinger. “I am prepared to promise that—what is the phrase?—no questions will be asked.” He put his hand on the desk again beside the other and smiled blandly over them at the private detective.
“Five thousand is a lot of money,” Spade commented, looking thoughtfully at Cairo. “It—”
Fingers drummed lightly on the door.
When Spade had called, “Come in,” the door opened far enough to admit Effie Perine’s head and shoulders. She had put on a small dark felt hat and a dark coat with a grey fur collar.
“Is there anything else?” she asked.
“No. Good night. Lock the door when you go, will you?”
Spade turned in his chair to face Cairo again, saying: “It’s an interesting figure.”
The sound of the corridor-door’s closing behind Effie Perine came to them.
Cairo smiled and took a short compact flat black pistol out of an inner pocket. “You will please,” he said, “clasp your hands together at the back of your neck.”
5
THE LEVANTINE
Spade did not look at the pistol. He raised his arms and, leaning back in his chair, intertwined the fingers of his two hands behind his head. His eyes, holding no particular expression, remained focused on Cairo’s dark face.
Cairo coughed a little apologetic cough and smiled nervously with lips that had lost some of their redness. His dark eyes were humid and bashful and very earnest. “I intend to search your offices, Mr. Spade. I warn you that if you attempt to prevent me I shall certainly shoot you.”
“Go ahead.” Spade’s voice was as empty of expression as his face.
“You will please stand,” the man with the pistol instructed him at whose thick chest the pistol was aimed. “I shall have to make sure that you are not armed.”
Spade stood up pushing his chair back with his calves as he straightened his legs.
Cairo went around behind him. He transferred the pistol from his right hand to his left. He lifted Spade’s coat-tail and looked under it. Holding the pistol close to Spades back, he put his right hand around Spades side and patted his chest. The Levantine face was then no more than six inches below and behind Spades right elbow.