The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett [22]
She sat still holding her numbed face where his hands had left it.
He stood up and said: “Christ! there’s no sense to this.” He took two steps towards the fireplace and stopped, glowering at the burning logs, grinding his teeth together.
She did not move.
He turned to face her. The two vertical lines above his nose were deep clefts between red wales. “I don’t give a damn about your honesty,” he told her, trying to make himself speak calmly. “I don’t care what kind of tricks you’re up to, what your secrets are, but I’ve got to have something to show that you know what you’re doing.”
“I do know. Please believe that I do, and that it’s all for the best, and—”
“Show me,” he ordered. “I’m willing to help you. I’ve done what I could so far. If necessary I’ll go ahead blindfolded, but I can’t do it without more confidence in you than I’ve got now. You’ve got to convince me that you know what it’s all about, that you’re not simply fiddling around by guess and by God, hoping it’ll come out all right somehow in the end.”
“Can’t you trust me just a little longer?”
“How much is a little? And what are you waiting for?”
She bit her lip and looked down. “I must talk to Joel Cairo,” she said almost inaudibly.
“You can see him tonight,” Spade said, looking at his watch. “His show will be out soon. We can get him on the phone at his hotel.”
She raised her eyes, alarmed. “But he can’t come here. I can’t let him know where I am. I’m afraid.”
“My place,” Spade suggested.
She hesitated, working her lips together, then asked: “Do you think he’d go there?”
Spade nodded.
“All right,” she exclaimed, jumping up, her eyes large and bright. “Shall we go now?”
She went into the next room. Spade went to the table in the corner and silently pulled the drawer out. The drawer held two packs of playing-cards, a pad of score-cards for bridge, a brass screw, a piece of red string, and a gold pencil. He had shut the drawer and was lighting a cigarette when she returned wearing a small dark hat and a grey kidskin coat, carrying his hat and coat.
Their taxicab drew up behind a dark sedan that stood directly in front of Spades street-door. Iva Archer was alone in the sedan, sitting at the wheel. Spade lifted his hat to her and went indoors with Brigid O’Shaughnessy. In the lobby he halted beside one of the benches and asked: “Do you mind waiting here a moment? I won’t be long.”
“That’s perfectly all right,” Brigid O’Shaughnessy said, sitting down. “You needn’t hurry.”
Spade went out to the sedan. When he had opened the sedan’s door Iva spoke quickly: “I’ve got to talk to you. Sam. Can’t I come in?” Her face was pale and nervous.
“Not now.”
Iva clicked her teeth together and asked sharply: “Who is she?”
“I’ve only a minute, Iva,” Spade said patiently. “What is it?”
“Who is she?” she repeated, nodding at the street-door.
He looked away from her, down the street. In front of a garage on the next corner an undersized youth of twenty or twenty-one in neat grey cap and overcoat loafed with his back against a wall. Spade frowned and returned his gaze to Iva’s insistent face. “What is the matter?” he asked. “Has anything happened? You oughtn’t to be here at this time of night.”
“I’m beginning to believe that,” she complained. “You told me I oughtn’t to come to the office, and now I oughtn’t to come here. Do you mean I oughtn’t to chase after you? If that’s what you mean why don’t you say it right out?”
“Now, Iva, you’ve got no right to take that attitude.”
“I know I haven’t. I haven’t any rights at all, it seems, where you’re concerned. I thought I did. I thought your pretending to love me gave me—”
Spade said wearily: “This is no time to be arguing about that, precious. What was it you wanted to see me about?”
“I can’t talk to you here, Sam. Can’t I come in?”
“Not now.”
“Why can’t I?”
Spade said nothing.
She made a thin line of her mouth, squirmed around straight behind the wheel, and started the sedan’s engine, staring angrily ahead.
When the sedan began to move Spade said, “Good night, Iva,