The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)
Page 35
He closed his eyes and smiled complacently at an inner thought. He opened his eyes and continued:
“That was seventeen years ago. Well, sir, it took me seventeen years to locate that bird, but I did it. I wanted it, and I’m not a man that’s easily discouraged when he wants something.” His smile grew broad. “I wanted it, and I found it. I wanted it, and I’m going to have it.” He drained his glass, dried his lips again, and returned his handkerchief to his pocket. “I traced it to the home of a Russian general, Kemidov, in a Constantinople suburb. He didn’t know a thing about it. It was nothing but a black-enameled bird to him, but his natural contrariness—the natural contrariness of a Russian general—kept him from letting me have it when I made him an offer. Maybe in my eagerness I was a little clumsy, though not very. I don’t know about that. But I do know I wanted it, and I was afraid this stupid soldier might begin to investigate, might chip off some of the enamel. So I sent some—ah—agents to get it. Well, sir, they got it, and I haven’t got it.” He stood up and carried his empty glass to the table. “But I’m going to get it. Your glass, sir.”
“Then the bird doesn’t belong to any of you,” Spade asked, “but to a Russian named Kemidov?”
“Belong?” the fat man said jovially. “Well, sir, you might say it belonged to the King of Spain, but I don’t see how you can honestly grant anybody else clear title to it, except by right of possession.” He clucked. “An article of that value that has passed from hand to hand by such means is clearly the property of whoever can get hold of it.”
“Then it is Miss O’Shaughnessy’s now?”
“No, sir, except as my agent.”
Spade said, “Oh,” ironically.
Gutman, looking thoughtfully at the cork of the whiskey bottle in his hand, asked:
“There’s no doubt that she has got it now?”
“Not much.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
The fat man set the bottle on the table with a bang.
“But you said you did,” he protested.
Spade made a careless gesture with one hand.
“I meant to say I know where to get it when the time comes.”
The pink bulbs in Gutman’s face arranged themselves more happily.
“And you do?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Spade grinned and said:
“Leave that to me. That’s my end.”
“When?”
“When I’m ready.”
The fat man pursed his lips, and, smiling with only slight uneasiness, asked: “Mr. Spade, where is Miss O’Shaughnessy now?”
“In my hands, safely put away.”
Gutman smiled approvingly.
“Trust you for that, sir,” he said. “Well, now, sir, before we sit down to talk prices answer me this: How soon can you, or how soon are you willing to, produce the falcon?”
“A couple of days.”
The fat man nodded. “That is satisfactory. We— But I forget our nourishment.” He turned to the table, poured whiskey, squirted charged water into it, set a glass at Spade’s elbow and held his own aloft. “Well, sir, here’s to a fair bargain and a profit large enough for both of us.”
They drank. The fat man sat down. Spade asked:
“What’s your idea of a fair bargain?”
Gutman held his glass to the light, looked at it as if he liked it, took another long drink, and said:
“I have two proposals to make, sir, and either is fair. Take your choice. I will give you twenty-five thousand dollars when you deliver the falcon, and another twenty-five thousand as soon as I get to New York; or I will give you one quarter—twenty-five percent—of what I realize on the falcon. There you are, sir: an almost immediate fifty thousand dollars or a vastly greater sum within, say, a couple of months.”
Spade drank and asked:
“How much greater?”
“Vastly,” the fat man repeated. “Will you believe me if I name the amount that seems the probable minimum?”
“Why not?”
“What would you say, sir, to half a million?”
Spade narrowed his eyes. “Then you think the dingus is worth two million?”
Gutman smiled serenely. “In your own words, why not?” he asked.
Spade emptied his glass and set it on the table. He put his cigar in his mouth, took it out, looked at it, and put it back in. His yellow-gray eyes were faintly muddy. He said:
“That’s a hell of a lot of dough.”
The fat man agreed: “That’s a hell of a lot of dough.” He leaned forward and patted Spade’s knee. “That is the absolute, rock-bottom minimum, or Charilaos Konstantinides was a blithering idiot, and he wasn’t.”
Spade removed the cigar from his mouth again, frowned at it with distaste, and put it on the smoking stand. He shut his eyes hard, opened them again. Their muddiness had thickened.
“The—the minimum, huh? And the maximum?” he asked. An unmistakable sh followed the X in maximum as he pronounced it.
“The maximum?” Gutman held his empty hand out, palm up. “I refuse to guess. You’d think me crazy. I don’t know. There’s no telling how high it could go, sir, and that’s the one and only truth about it.”
Spade pulled his sagging lower lip tight against the upper. He shook his head impatiently. A sharp frightened gleam awoke in his eyes, and was smothered by the deepening muddiness.
He stood up, helping himself with his hands on the arms of the chair. He shook his head again, took an uncertain step forward, laughed thickly, and muttered: “—— damn you! The drops.”
Gutman jumped up and pushed his chair back. His fat jiggled. His eyes were dark holes in a bulbous pink face.
Spade swung his head slowly from side to side until his dull eyes were, if not focused on, at least pointed at the corridor door. He took another unsteady step.
The fat man called sharply: “Wilmer!”
A door opened and the boy came in.
Spade took a third step. His face was grayish now, with jaw muscles standing out like tumors under his ears. His legs did not straighten again after his fourth step, and his muddy eyes were almost covered by their lids.
He took the fifth step.
The boy walked over and stood close to Spade, a little in front of him, but not directly between man and door. The boy’s right hand was inside his coat over his heart. The corners of his mouth twitched.
Spade essayed his sixth step.
The boy’s leg darted out across Spade’s leg, in front. Spade tripped over the interfering leg and crashed face down on the floor.
The boy, keeping his right hand under his coat, looked down at Spade.
Spade tried to get up.
The boy drew his right foot far back, and kicked Spade’s temple.
The kick rolled Spade over on his side. Once more he tried to get up, could not, and went to sleep.
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett
PADE TRIED TO GET up, could not, and went to sleep.
When Brigid O’Shaughnessy engaged Samuel Spade and Miles Archer, private detectives, to shadow Floyd Thursby, she told them she was trying to find her sister, who had come to San Francisco from New York with Thursby. But when Archer, shadowing Thursby, was shot to death that night, and then Thursby was killed shortly afterward, she confessed to Spade that she had lied, that Thursby and she had come from Constantinople, where, with a Levantine named Joel Cairo, they had stolen a black figure of a bird from a Russian named Kemidov. She was obviously in utter terror of someone she referred to as “G,” whom she accused of Thursby’s murder, and, though Spade could get little truthful information out of her, he took what money she had—five hundred dollars—and promised to shield her from both “G” and the police.
Lieutenant Dundy of the police suspected Spade of having killed Thursby to avenge his partner’s death. Later, Dundy suspected him of having killed Archer, with
whose wife, Iva, Spade had been on rather too-intimate terms. Iva and Archer’s brother both suspected Spade of having killed Archer. Effie Perine, Spade’s stenographer, thought Iva had killed her husband so she could marry Spade.
Joel Cairo came to Spade and offered him five thousand dollars for the bird. Spade arranged a meeting with Cairo and Brigid O’Shaughnessy in his apartment that night. The meeting broke up with quarrels between Cairo and Brigid and between Lieutenant Dundy and Spade. Brigid remained in Spade’s apartment all night. While she slept he went to her apartment and searched it for the bird, but did not find it.
At Cairo’s hotel the next morning, Spade met a boy who had tried to shadow him, and told the boy to tell “G” to get in touch with him. Later that morning Brigid came to Spade’s office to tell him her apartment had been searched by someone. Spade sent her out to Effie Perine’s house to stay until the trouble was over.
In response to a telephone message Spade went to see Casper Gutman, the “G” Brigid was afraid of. When Gutman learned that apparently Spade, Brigid and Cairo were all ignorant of the bird’s real nature he refused to deal with him. Spade left in a rage, returning to his office to learn that Brigid had never reached Effie Perine’s house. Spade learned that she had gone to the Ferry Building instead.
The boy who had shadowed Spade came to him with another invitation from Gutman. Spade went to Gutman’s suite and was told that the bird was a jewel-studded gold figure made for Charles V by the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in the sixteenth century, now enameled over to conceal its value. Gutman offered Spade fifty thousand dollars in cash for the bird, but, when he learned that Spade could not deliver it to him for two or three days, he gave the private detective a drugged drink. Spade tried to get out of the suite before the drug overcame him, but was tripped by the boy. He fell, tried to get up. The boy kicked his temple.
Once more he tried to get up, could not, and went to sleep.
CHAPTER XIV
LA PALOMA
Spade, coming around the corner from the elevator at a few minutes past six o’clock in the morning, saw yellow light glowing through the frosted glass of his office door. He halted abruptly, set his lips together, looked up and down the corridor, and advanced to the door with swift, silent strides.
He put his hand on the knob and turned it with care that permitted neither rattle nor click. He turned the knob until it would turn no farther; the door was locked. Holding the knob as it was, he changed hands, taking it now in his left hand. With his right hand he took his keys from his pocket, carefully, so they would not jingle against one another. He separated the office key from the others and, smothering the others together in his palm, inserted the office key in the lock. The insertion was done without a sound. He balanced himself on the balls of his feet, filled his lungs, then clicked the door open and went in.
Effie Perine sat sleeping with her head on her forearms, her forearms on her desk. She wore her coat and had one of Spade’s overcoats wrapped cape-fashion around her.
Spade blew out his breath in a muffled laugh, shut the door behind him, and crossed to the inner office door. The inner office was empty. He went over to the girl and put a hand on her shoulder.
She stirred, raised her head drowsily, and her eyelids fluttered. Suddenly she sat up straight, opening her eyes wide. She saw Spade, smiled, leaned back in her chair, and rubbed her eyes with the pointed tips of her fingers.
“So you finally got back?” she said. “What time is it?”
“Six o’clock. What are you doing here?”
She shivered, drew Spade’s coat closer around her, and yawned. “You told me to stay till you came back or phoned.”
“Oh, you’re the sister of the boy who stood on the burning deck?”
“I wasn’t going to—” She broke off and stood up, letting his coat slide down on the chair behind her. She looked with dark, excited eyes under his hat brim at his temple, and exclaimed: “Oh, your head! What happened, Sam?”
His right temple was dark and swollen.
“I don’t know whether I fell or was slugged. I don’t think it amounts to much, but it hurts like hell.” He barely touched it with his fingers, flinched, turned his grimace into a bitter smile, and explained: “I went visiting, was fed knock-out drops, and came to twelve hours later all spread out on a man’s floor.”
She reached up and removed his hat from his head.
“It’s terrible,” she said. “You’ll have to get a doctor. You can’t walk around with a head like that.”
“It’s not so bad as it looks, except for the headache, and that might be mostly from the drops.” He went to the cabinet in the corner of the office and ran cold water on a handkerchief. “Anything turn up after I left?”
“The District Attorney’s office phoned. He wants to see you.”
“Himself?”
“Yes, that’s the way I understood it. And a boy came in with a message that Mr. Gutman would be delighted to talk to you before five-thirty, just like that.”
Spade turned off the water, squeezed the handkerchief, and came away from the cabinet holding the handkerchief to his temple.
“I got that,” he said. “I met the boy downstairs, and talking to Mr. Gutman got me this.”
“Is that the G. who phoned, Sam?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what—?”
Spade stared through the girl and spoke as if using speech to arrange his thoughts:
“He wants something he thinks I can get. I persuaded him I could keep him from getting it if he didn’t make the deal with me before five-thirty. Then—uh-huh, sure—it was after I told him he’d have to wait a couple of days that he fed me the junk. It’s not likely he thought I was dead. He’d know I’d be up and around in ten or twelve hours. So maybe the answer’s that he figured he could get it without my help in that time if I was fixed up so I couldn’t interfere.” He scowled. “I hope to —— he was wrong.” His stare became less distant. “Any word from O’Shaughnessy?”
The girl shook her head no, and asked:
“Has this got anything to do with her?”
“Something.”
“This thing he wants belongs to her?”
“Or to the King of Spain. Sweetheart, you’ve got an uncle that teaches history or something over at the university?”
“A cousin. Why?”
“If we brighten his life with an alleged historical secret four centuries old, can he be trusted to keep it dark awhile?”
“Oh, yes; he’s good people.”
“Fine. Get your pencil and book.”
She got them and sat in her chair. Spade ran more cold water on his handkerchief and, holding it to his temple, stood in front of her and dictated the story of the falcon as he had heard it from Gutman, from Charles V’s grant to the Hospitallers up to, but no further than, the enameled bird’s arrival in Paris at the time of the Carlist influx. He stumbled over the names of authors and their works that Gutman had mentioned, but managed to achieve some sort of phonetic likeness. The rest of the history he repeated with the accuracy of a trained interviewer.
When he had finished, the girl shut her notebook and raised a flushed, smiling face to him.
“Oh, isn’t this thrilling?” she said. “It’s—”
“Yes, or ridiculous. Now will you take it over and read it to your cousin, and ask him what he thinks of it? Has he ever run across anything that might have some connection with it? Is it probable? Is it possible, even barely possible? Or is it the bunk? If he wants more time to look it up, O.K., but get some sort of an opinion out of him now. And for God’s sake make him keep it under his hat.”
“I’ll go right now,” she said, “and you go see a doctor about that head.”
“We’ll have breakfast first.”
“No, I’ll eat over in Berkeley. I can’t wait to hear what Ted thinks of this.”
“Well,” Spade said, “don’t start boohooing if he laughs at you.”
He went to Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s apartment at the Coronet. Nobody was in her apartment. Nothing had been changed in it since his last visit.
He went to the Alexandria Hotel. Gutman was not in. None of the other occupants of Gutman’s suite was in. Spade learned that these other occupants were the fat man’s secretary, Wilmer Cook, and his daughter Rhea, a brown-eyed fair-haired, smallish girl of seventeen, called beautiful by the hotel staff. Spade was told that the Gutman party had arrived at the hotel, from New York, ten days ago, and had not checked out.
Spade went to the Belvedere and found the hotel detective eating in the hotel café.
“Morning, Sam, sit down and bite an egg.” The hotel detective stared at Spade’s temple. “My God, somebody maced you plenty!”
“Thanks, I’ve had mine,” Spade said as he sat down, and then, referring to his temple: “It looks worse than it is. How’s my Cairo’s conduct?”
“He went out not more than half an hour behind you yesterday, and I ain’t seen him since. He didn’t sleep here again last night.”
“He’s getting bad habits.”
“Well, a fellow like that alone in a big city. Who put the slug to you, Sam?”
“It wasn’t Cairo.” Spade looked attentively at the small silver dome covering Luke’s toast. “How’s chances of giving his room a casing while he’s out?”