The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett [46]
“Was she excited or anything?”
“Not so’s I noticed.”
“And when you got to the Ferry Building?”
“She paid me off, and that was all.”
“Anybody waiting for her there?”
“I didn’t see them if they was.”
“Which way did she go?”
“At the Ferry? I don’t know. Maybe upstairs, or towards the stairs.”
“Take the newspaper with her?”
“Yeah, she had it tucked under her arm when she paid me.”
“With the pink sheet outside, or one of the white?”
“Hell, Cap, I don’t remember that.”
Spade thanked the chauffeur, said, “Get yourself a smoke,” and gave him a silver dollar.
Spade bought a copy of the Call and carried it into an office-building-vestibule to examine it out of the wind.
His eyes ran swiftly over the front-page-headlines and over those on the second and third pages. They paused for a moment under SUSPECT ARRESTED AS COUNTERFEITER on the fourth page, and again on page five under BAY YOUTH SEEKS DEATH WITH BULLET. Pages six and seven held nothing to interest him. On eight 3 BOYS ARRESTED AS S.F. BURGLARS AFTER SHOOTING held his attention for a moment, and after that nothing until he reached the thirty-fifth page, which held news of the weather, shipping, produce, finance, divorce, births, marriages, and deaths. He read the list of the dead, passed over pages thirty-six and thirty-seven—financial news—found nothing to stop his eyes on the thirty-eighth and last page, sighed, folded the newspaper, put it in his coat-pocket, and rolled a cigarette.
For five minutes he stood there in the office-building-vestibule smoking and staring sulkily at nothing. Then he walked up to Stockton Street, hailed a taxicab, and had himself driven to the Coronet.
He let himself into the building and into Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s apartment with the key she had given him. The blue gown she had worn the previous night was hanging across the foot of her bed. Her blue stockings and slippers were on the bedroom floor. The polychrome box that had held jewelry in her dressing-table-drawer now stood empty on the dressing-table-top. Spade frowned at it, ran his tongue across his lips, strolled through the rooms, looking around but not touching anything, then left the Coronet and went downtown again.
In the doorway of Spade’s office-building he came face to face with the boy he had left at Gutman’s. The boy put himself in Spade’s path, blocking the entrance, and said: “Come on. He wants to see you.”
The boy’s hands were in his overcoat-pockets. His pockets bulged more than his hands need have made them bulge.
Spade grinned and said mockingly: “I didn’t expect you till five-twenty-five. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”
The boy raised his eyes to Spade’s mouth and spoke in the strained voice of one in physical pain: “Keep on riding me and you’re going to be picking iron out of your navel.”
Spade chuckled. “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter,” he said cheerfully. “Well, let’s go.”
They walked up Sutter Street side by side. The boy kept his hands in his overcoat-pockets. They walked a little more than a block in silence. Then Spade asked pleasantly: “How long have you been off the goose-berry lay, son?”
The boy did not show that he had heard the question.
“Did you ever—?” Spade began, and stopped. A soft light began to glow in his yellowish eyes. He did not address the boy again.
They went into the Alexandria, rode up to the twelfth floor, and walked down the corridor towards Gutman’s suite. Nobody else was in the corridor.
Spade lagged a little, so that, when they were within fifteen feet of Gutman’s door, he was perhaps a foot and a half behind the boy. He leaned sidewise suddenly and grasped the boy from behind by both arms, just beneath the boy’s elbows. He forced the boy’s arms forward so that the boy’s hands, in his overcoat-pockets, lifted the overcoat up before him. The boy struggled and squirmed, but he was impotent in the big man’s grip. The boy kicked back, but his feet went between Spade’s spread legs.
Spade lifted the boy straight up from the floor and brought him down hard on his feet again. The impact made little noise on the thick carpet. At the moment of impact Spade