The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett [45]
Sid Wise smiled sheepishly. “You’re a son of a gun, Sammy,” he said.
Effie Perine was standing in the center of Spade’s outer office when he entered. She looked at him with worried brown eyes and asked: “What happened?”
Spade’s face grew stiff. “What happened where?” he demanded.
“Why didn’t she come?”
Spade took two long steps and caught Effie Perine by the shoulders. “She didn’t get there?” he bawled into her frightened face.
She shook her head violently from side to side. “I waited and waited and she didn’t come, and I couldn’t get you on the phone, so I came down.”
Spade jerked his hands away from her shoulders, thrust them far down in his trousers-pockets, said, “Another merry-go-round,” in a loud enraged voice, and strode into his private office. He came out again. “Phone your mother,” he commanded. “See if she’s come yet.”
He walked up and down the office while the girl used the telephone. “No,” she said when she had finished. “Did—did you send her out in a taxi?”
His grunt probably meant yes.
“Are you sure she— Somebody must have followed her!”
Spade stopped pacing the floor. He put his hands on his hips and glared at the girl. He addressed her in a loud savage voice: “Nobody followed her. Do you think I’m a God-damned schoolboy? I made sure of it before I put her in the cab, I rode a dozen blocks with her to be more sure, and I checked her another half-dozen blocks after I got out.”
“Well, but—”
“But she didn’t get there. You’ve told me that. I believe it. Do you think I think she did get there?”
Effie Perine sniffed. “You certainly act like a God-damned schoolboy,” she said.
Spade made a harsh noise in his throat and went to the corridor-door. “I’m going out and find her if I have to dig up sewers,” he said. “Stay here till I’m back or you hear from me. For Christ’s sake let’s do something right.”
He went out, walked half the distance to the elevators, and retraced his steps. Effie Perine was sitting at her desk when he opened the door. He said: “You ought to know better than to pay any attention to me when I talk like that.”
“If you think I pay any attention to you you’re crazy,” she replied, “only”—she crossed her arms and felt her shoulders, and her mouth twitched uncertainly—“I won’t be able to wear an evening gown for two weeks, you big brute.”
He grinned humbly, said, “I’m no damned good, darling,” made an exaggerated bow, and went out again.
Two yellow taxicabs were at the corner-stand to which Spade went. Their chauffeurs were standing together talking. Spade asked: “Where’s the red-faced blond driver that was here at noon?”
“Got a load,” one of the chauffeurs said.
“Will he be back here?”
“I guess so.”
The other chauffeur ducked his head to the east. “Here he comes now.”
Spade walked down to the corner and stood by the curb until the red-faced blond chauffeur had parked his cab and got out. Then Spade went up to him and said: “I got into your cab with a lady at noontime. We went out Stockton Street and up Sacramento to Jones, where I got out.”
“Sure,” the red-faced man said. “I remember that.”
“I told you to take her to a Ninth-Avenue-number. You didn’t take her there. Where did you take her?”
The chauffeur rubbed his cheek with a grimy hand and looked doubtfully at Spade. “I don’t know about this.”
“It’s all right,” Spade assured him, giving him one of his cards. “If you want to play safe, though, we can ride up to your office and get your superintendent’s OK.”
“I guess it’s all right. I took her to the Ferry Building.”
“By herself?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Didn’t take her anywhere else first?”
“No. It was like this: after we dropped you I went on out Sacramento, and when we got to Polk she rapped on the glass and said she wanted to get a newspaper, so I stopped at the corner and whistled for a kid, and she got her paper.”
“Which paper?”
“The Call. Then I went on out Sacramento some more, and just after we’d crossed Van Ness she knocked on the glass again and said take her to the Ferry Building.