The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett [41]
Spade blew smoke above the fat man’s head in a long slanting plume. He frowned thoughtfully at the ash-tipped end of his cigar. He replied deliberately: “I can’t say yes or no. There’s nothing certain about it either way, yet.” He looked up at the fat man and stopped frowning. “It depends.”
“It depends on—?”
Spade shook his head. “If I knew what it depends on I could say yes or no.”
The fat man took a mouthful from his glass, swallowed it, and suggested: “Maybe it depends on Joel Cairo?”
Spade’s prompt “Maybe” was noncommittal. He drank.
The fat man leaned forward until his belly stopped him. His smile was ingratiating and so was his purring voice. “You could say, then, that the question is which one of them you’ll represent?”
“You could put it that way.”
“It will be one or the other?”
“I didn’t say that.”
The fat man’s eyes glistened. His voice sank to a throaty whisper asking: “Who else is there?”
Spade pointed his cigar at his own chest. “There’s me,” he said.
The fat man sank back in his chair and let his body go flaccid. He blew his breath out in a long contented gust. “That’s wonderful, sir,” he purred. “That’s wonderful. I do like a man that tells you right out he’s looking out for himself. Don’t we all? I don’t trust a man that says he’s not. And the man that’s telling the truth when he says he’s not I distrust most of all, because he’s an ass and an ass that’s going contrary to the laws of nature.”
Spade exhaled smoke. His face was politely attentive. He said: “Uh-huh. Now let’s talk about the black bird.”
The fat man smiled benevolently. “Let’s,” he said. He squinted so that fat puffs crowding together left nothing of his eyes but a dark gleam visible. “Mr. Spade, have you any conception of how much money can be made out of that black bird?”
“No.”
The fat man leaned forward again and put a bloated pink hand on the arm of Spade’s chair. “Well, sir, if I told you—by Gad, if I told you half!—you’d call me a liar.”
Spade smiled. “No,” he said, “not even if I thought it. But if you won’t take the risk just tell me what it is and I’ll figure out the profits.”
The fat man laughed. “You couldn’t do it, sir. Nobody could do it that hadn’t had a world of experience with things of that sort, and”—he paused impressively—“there aren’t any other things of that sort.” His bulbs jostled one another as he laughed again. He stopped laughing, abruptly. His fleshy lips hung open as laughter had left them. He stared at Spade with an intentness that suggested myopia. He asked: “You mean you don’t know what it is?” Amazement took the throatiness out of his voice.
Spade made a careless gesture with his cigar. “Oh, hell,” he said lightly, “I know what it’s supposed to look like. I know the value in life you people put on it. I don’t know what it is.”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“Miss O’Shaughnessy?”
“Yes. A lovely girl, sir.”
“Uh-huh. No.”
The fat man’s eyes were dark gleams in ambush behind pink puffs of flesh. He said indistinctly, “She must know,” and then, “And Cairo didn’t either?”
“Cairo is cagey. He’s willing to buy it, but he won’t risk telling me anything I don’t know already.”
The fat man moistened his lips with his tongue. “How much is he willing to buy it for?” he asked.
“Ten thousand dollars.”
The fat man laughed scornfully. “Ten thousand, and dollars, mind you, not even pounds. That’s the Greek for you. Humph! And what did you say to that?”
“I said if I turned it over to him I’d expect the ten thousand.”
“Ah, yes, if! Nicely put, sir.” The fat man’s forehead squirmed in a flesh-blurred frown.