The Maltese Falcon Read Free Page A

before?”
    Spade nodded. “I’ve seen Webley-Fosberys,” he said without interest, and then spoke rapidly: “He was shot up here, huh? Standing where you are, with his back to the fence. The man that shot him stands here.” He went around in front of Tom and raised a hand breast-high with leveled forefinger. “Lets him have it and Miles goes back, taking the top off the fence and going on through and down till the rock catches him. That it?”
    “That’s it,” Tom replied slowly, working his brows together. “The blast burnt his coat.”
    “Who found him?”
    “The man on the beat, Shilling. He was coming down Bush, and just as he got here a machine turning threw headlights up here, and he saw the top off the fence. So he came up to look at it, and found him.”
    “What about the machine that was turning around?”
    “Not a damned thing about it, Sam. Shilling didn’t pay any attention to it, not knowing anything was wrong then. He says nobody didn’t come out of here while he was coming down from Powell or he’d’ve seen them. The only other way out would be under the billboard on Stockton. Nobody went that way. The fog’s got the ground soggy, and the only marks are where Miles slid down and where this here gun rolled.”
    “Didn’t anybody hear the shot?”
    “For the love of God, Sam, we only just got here. Somebody must’ve heard it, when we find them.” He turned and put a leg over the fence. “Coming down for a look at him before he’s moved?”
    Spade said: “No.”
    Tom halted astride the fence and looked back at Spade with surprised small eyes.
    Spade said: “You’ve seen him. You’d see everything I could.”
    Tom, still looking at Spade, nodded doubtfully and withdrew his leg over the fence.
    “His gun was tucked away on his hip,” he said. “It hadn’t been fired. His overcoat was buttoned. There’s a hundred and sixty-some bucks in his clothes. Was he working, Sam?”
    Spade, after a moment’s hesitation, nodded.
    Tom asked: “Well?”
    “He was supposed to be tailing a fellow named Floyd Thursby,” Spade said, and described Thursby as Miss Wonderly had described him.
    “What for?”
    Spade put his hands into his overcoat-pockets and blinked sleepy eyes at Tom.
    Tom repeated impatiently: “What for?”
    “He was an Englishman, maybe. I don’t know what his game was, exactly. We were trying to find out where he lived.” Spade grinned faintly and took a hand from his pocket to pat Tom’s shoulder. “Don’t crowd me.” He put the hand in his pocket again. “I’m going out to break the news to Miles’s wife.” He turned away.
    Tom, scowling, opened his mouth, closed it without having said anything, cleared his throat, put the scowl off his face, and spoke with a husky sort of gentleness:
    “It’s tough, him getting it like that. Miles had his faults same as the rest of us, but I guess he must’ve had some good points too.”
    “I guess so,” Spade agreed in a tone that was utterly meaningless, and went out of the alley.
    In an all-night drug-store on the corner of Bush and Taylor Streets, Spade used a telephone.
    “Precious,” he said into it a little while after he had given a number, “Miles has been shot…. Yes, he’s dead…. Now don’t get excited…. Yes…. You’ll have to break it to Iva…. No, I’m damned if I will. You’ve got to do it…. That’s a good girl…. And keep her away from the office…. Tell her I’ll see her—uh—some time…. Yes, but don’t tie me up to anything…. That’s the stuff. You’re an angel. ’Bye.”
    Spade’s tinny alarmclock said three-forty when he turned on the light in the suspended bowl again. He dropped his hat and overcoat on the bed and went into his kitchen, returning to the bedroom with a wine-glass and a tall bottle of Bacardi. He poured a drink and drank it standing. He put bottle and glass on the table, sat on the side of the bed facing them, and rolled a cigarette. He had drunk his third