The Maltese Falcon Read Free Page B

glass of Bacardi and was lighting his fifth cigarette when the street-doorbell rang. The hands of the alarmclock registered four-thirty.
    Spade sighed, rose from the bed, and went to the telephone-box beside his bathroom door. He pressed the button that released the street-door-lock. He muttered, “Damn her,” and stood scowling at the black telephone-box, breathing irregularly while a dull flush grew in his cheeks.
    The grating and rattling of the elevator-door opening and closing came from the corridor. Spade sighed again and moved towards the corridor-door. Soft heavy footsteps sounded on the carpetedfloor outside, the footsteps of two men. Spades face brightened. His eyes were no longer harassed. He opened the door quickly.
    “Hello, Tom,” he said to the barrel-bellied tall detective with whom he had talked in Burritt Street, and, “Hello, Lieutenant,” to the man beside Tom. “Come in.”
    They nodded together, neither saying anything, and came in. Spade shut the door and ushered them into his bedroom. Tom sat on an end of the sofa by the windows. The Lieutenant sat on a chair beside the table.
    The Lieutenant was a compactly built man with a round head under short-cut grizzled hair and a square face behind a short-cut grizzled mustache. A five-dollar gold-piece was pinned to his necktie and there was a small elaborate diamond-set secret-society-emblem on his lapel.
    Spade brought two wine-glasses in from the kitchen, filled them and his own with Bacardi, gave one to each of his visitors, and sat down with his on the side of the bed. His face was placid and uncurious. He raised his glass, and said, “Success to crime,” and drank it down.
    Tom emptied his glass, set it on the floor beside his feet, and wiped his mouth with a muddy forefinger. He stared at the foot of the bed as if trying to remember something of which it vaguely reminded him.
    The Lieutenant looked at his glass for a dozen seconds, took a very small sip of its contents, and put the glass on the table at his elbow. He examined the room with hard deliberate eyes, and then looked at Tom.
    Tom moved uncomfortably on the sofa and, not looking up, asked: “Did you break the news to Miles’s wife, Sam?”
    Spade said: “Uh-huh.”
    “How’d she take it?”
    Spade shook his head. “I don’t know anything about women.”
    Tom said softly: “The hell you don’t.”
    The Lieutenant put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. His greenish eyes were fixed on Spade in a peculiarly rigid stare, asif their focus were a matter of mechanics, to be changed only by pulling a lever or pressing a button.
    “What kind of gun do you carry?” he asked.
    “None. I don’t like them much. Of course there are some in the office.”
    “I’d like to see one of them,” the Lieutenant said. “You don’t happen to have one here?”
    “No.”
    “You sure of that?”
    “Look around.” Spade smiled and waved his empty glass a little. “Turn the dump upside-down if you want. I won’t squawk—if you’ve got a search-warrant.”
    Tom protested: “Oh, hell, Sam!”
    Spade set his glass on the table and stood up facing the Lieutenant.
    “What do you want, Dundy?” he asked in a voice hard and cold as his eyes.
    Lieutenant Dundy’s eyes had moved to maintain their focus on Spade’s. Only his eyes had moved.
    Tom shifted his weight on the sofa again, blew a deep breath out through his nose, and growled plaintively: “We’re not wanting to make any trouble, Sam.”
    Spade, ignoring Tom, said to Dundy: “Well, what do you want? Talk turkey. Who in hell do you think you are, coming in here trying to rope me?”
    “All right,” Dundy said in his chest, “sit down and listen.”
    “I’ll sit or stand as I damned please,” said Spade, not moving.
    “For Christ’s sake be reasonable,” Tom begged. “What’s the use of us having a row? If you want to know why we didn’t talk turkey it’s because when I asked you who this Thursby was you as good as