The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett [84]
“All right. Then you and Thursby caught one of the fast boats over. Then what?”
“Then—then I was afraid of Gutman. I knew he had people-connections—everywhere, and he’d soon know what we had done. And I was afraid he’d have learned that we had left Hongkong for San Francisco. He was in New York and I knew if he heard that by cable he would have plenty of time to get here by the time we did, or before. He did. I didn’t know that then, but I was afraid of it, and I had to wait here until Captain Jacobi’s boat arrived. And I was afraid Gutman would find me—or find Floyd and buy. him over. That’s why I came to you and asked you to watch him for—”
“That’s a lie,” Spade said. “You had Thursby hooked and you knew it. He was a sucker for women. His record shows that—the only falls he took were over women. And once a chump, always a chump. Maybe you didn’t know his record, but you’d know you had him safe.”
She blushed and looked timidly at him.
He said: “You wanted to get him out of the way before Jacobi came with the loot. What was your scheme?”
“I—I knew he’d left the States with a gambler after some trouble. I didn’t know what it was, but I thought that if it was anything serious and he saw a detective watching him he’d think it was on account of the old trouble, and would be frightened into going away. I didn’t think—”
“You told him he was being shadowed,” Spade said confidently. “Miles hadn’t many brains, but he wasn’t clumsy enough to be spotted the first night.”
“I told him, yes. When we went out for a walk that night I pretended to discover Mr. Archer following us and pointed him out to Floyd.” She sobbed. “But please believe, Sam, that I wouldn’t have done it if I had thought Floyd would kill him. I thought he’d be frightened into leaving the city. I didn’t for a minute think he’d shoot him like that.”
Spade smiled wolfishly with his lips, but not at all with his eyes. He said: “If you thought he wouldn’t you were right, angel.”
The girl’s upraised face held utter astonishment.
Spade said: “Thursby didn’t shoot him.”
Incredulity joined astonishment in the girl’s face.
Spade said: “Miles hadn’t many brains, but, Christ! he had too many years’ experience as a detective to be caught like that by the man he was shadowing. Up a blind alley with his gun tucked away on his hip and his overcoat buttoned? Not a chance. He was as dumb as any man ought to be, but he wasn’t quite that dumb. The only two ways out of the alley could be watched from the edge of Bush Street over the tunnel. You’d told us Thursby was a bad actor. He couldn’t have tricked Miles into the alley like that, and he couldn’t have driven him in. He was dumb, but not dumb enough for that.”
He ran his tongue over the inside of his lips and smiled affectionately at the girl. He said: “But he’d’ve gone up there with you, angel, if he was sure nobody else was up there. You were his client, so he would have had no reason for not dropping the shadow on your say-so, and if you caught up with him and asked him to go up there he’d’ve gone. He was just dumb enough for that. He’d’ve looked you up and down and licked his lips and gone grinning from ear to ear—and then you could’ve stood as close to him as you liked in the dark and put a hole through him with the gun you had got from Thursby that evening.”
Brigid O’Shaughnessy shrank back from him until the edge of the table stopped her. She looked at him with terrified eyes and cried: “Don’t—don’t talk to me like that, Sam! You know I didn’t! You know—”
“Stop it.” He looked at the watch on his wrist. “The police will be blowing in any minute now and we’re sitting on dynamite. Talk!”
She put the back of a hand on her forehead. “Oh, why do you accuse me of such a terrible—?”
“Will you stop it?” he demanded in a low impatient voice. “This isn’t the spot for the schoolgirl-act. Listen to me. The pair of us are sitting under the gallows.” He took hold of her wrists and made her stand up straight in front of him. “Talk!”
“I—I— How did you know he—he licked his lips and looked—?