Hammett Dashiell. The Adventures Of Sam Spade

   “That was all right with them. 'Only living relatives' meant 'only heirs' in their language. But by and by the nephews began to think it was better to be an heir than to be one of a couple of heirs—twice as good, in fact—and started fiddling for the inside track with the old man. At least, that's what Ira told me about Wallace, and I wouldn't be surprised if Wallace would say the same thing about Ira, though Wallace seems to be the harder up of the two. Anyhow, the nephews fell out, and then Uncle Tim, who had been staying at Ira's, came over here. That was a couple of months ago, and Ira hasn't seen Uncle Tim since, and hasn't been able to get in touch with him by phone or mail.
   “That's what he wanted a private detective about. He didn't think Uncle Tim would come to any harm here—oh, no, he went to a lot of trouble to make that clear—but he thought maybe undue pressure was being brought to bear on the old boy, or he was being hornswoggled somehow, and at least being told lies about his loving nephew Ira. He wanted to know what was what. I waited until today, when a boat from Australia docked, and came up here as a Mr. Ames with some important information for Uncle Tim about his properties down there. All I wanted was fifteen minutes alone with him.” Spade frowned thoughtfully. “Well, I didn't get them. Wallace told me the old man refused to see me. I don't know.”
   Suspicion had deepened in Dundy's cold blue eyes. “And where is this Ira Binnett now?” he asked.
   Spade's yellow-gray eyes were as guileless as his voice.
   “I wish I knew. I phoned his house and office and left word for him to come right over, but I'm afraid—”
   Knuckles knocked sharply twice on the other side of the room's one door. The three men in the room turned to face the door.
   Dundy called, “Come in.”
   The door was opened by a sunburned blond policeman whose left hand held the right wrist of a plump man of forty or forty-five in well-fitting gray clothes. The policeman pushed the plump man into the room. “Found him monkeying with the kitchen door,” he said.
   Spade looked up and said: “Ah!” His tone expressed satisfaction. “Mr. Ira Binnett, Lieutenant Dundy, Sergeant Polhaus.”
   Ira Binnett said rapidly: “Mr. Spade, will you tell this man that—”
   Dundy addressed the policeman: “All right. Good work. You can leave him.”
   The policeman moved a hand vaguely towards his cap and went away.'
   Dundy glowered at Ira Binnett and demanded, “Well?”
   Binnett looked from Dundy to Spade. “Has something—”
   Spade said: “Better tell him why you were at the back door instead of the front.”
   Ira Binnett suddenly blushed. He cleared his throat in embarrassment. He said: “I —uh —I should explain. It wasn't my fault, of course, but when Jarboe—he's the butler—phoned me that Uncle Tim wanted to see me he told me he'd leave the kitchen door unlocked, so Wallace wouldn't have to know I'd—“
   “What'd he want to see you about?” Dundy asked.
   “I don't know. He didn't say. He said it was very important.”
   “Didn't you get my message?” Spade asked.
   Ira Binnett's eyes widened. “No. What was it? Has any-think happened? What is—“
   Spade was moving toward the door. “Go ahead,” he said to Dundy. “I'll be right back.”
   He shut the door carefully behind him and went up to the third floor.
   The butler Jarboe was on his knees at Timothy Binnett's door with an eye to the keyhole. On the floor beside him was a tray holding an egg in an egg-cup, toast, a pot of coffee, china, silver, and a napkin.
   Spade said: “Your toast's going to get cold.”
   Jarboe, scrambling to his feet, almost upsetting the coffeepot in his haste, his face red and sheepish, stammered: “I—er—beg your pardon, sir. I wanted to make sure Mr. Timothy was awake before I took this in.” He picked up the tray. “I didn't want to disturb his rest if—“
   Spade, who had reached the door, said, “Sure, sure,” and bent over to put his eye to the keyhole. When he straightened up he said in a mildly complaining tone: “You can't see the bed—only a chair and part of the window.”
   The butler replied quickly: “Yes, sir, I found that out.”
   Spade laughed.
   The butler coughed, seemed about to say something, but did not. He hesitated, then knocked lightly on the door.
   A tired voice said, “Come in.”
   Spade asked quickly in a low voice: “Where's Miss Court?”
   “In her room, I think, sir, the second door on the left,” the butler said.
   The tired voice inside the room said petulantly: “Well, come on in.”
   The butler opened the door and went in. Through the door, before the butler shut it, Spade caught a glimpse of Timothy Binnett propped up on pillows in his bed.
   Spade went to the second door on the left and knocked. The door was opened almost immediately by Joyce Court. She stood in the doorway, not smiling, not speaking.
   He said: “Miss Court, when you came into the room where I was with your brother-in-law you said, 'Wally, that old fool has—' Meaning Timothy?”
   She stared at Spade for a moment. Then: “Yes.”
   “Mind telling me what the rest of the sentence would have been?”
   She said slowly: “I don't know who you really are or why you ask, but I don't mind telling you. It would have been 'sent for Ira.' Jarboe had just told me.”
   “Thanks.”
   She shut the door before he had turned away.
   He returned to Timothy Binnett's door and knocked on it.
   “Who is it now?” the old man's voice demanded.
   Spade opened the door. The old man was sitting up in bed.
   Spade said: “This Jarboe was peeping through your keyhole a few minutes ago,” and returned to the library.
   Ira Binnett, seated in the chair Spade had occupied, was saying to Dundy and Polhaus: “And Wallace got caught in the crash, like most of us, but he seems to have juggled accounts trying to save himself. He was expelled from the Stock Exchange.”
   Dundy waved a hand to indicate the room and its furnishings. “Pretty classy layout for a man that's busted.”
   “His wife has some money,” Ira Binnett said, “and he always lived beyond his means.”
   Dundy scowled at Binnett. “And you really think he and his missus weren't on good terms?”
   “I don't think it,” Binnett replied evenly. “I know it.”
   Dundy nodded. “And you know he's got a yen for the sister-in-law, this Court?”
   “I don't know that. But I've heard plenty of gossip to the same effect.”
   Dundy made a growling noise in his throat, then asked sharply: “How does the old man's will read?”
   “I don't know. I don't know whether he's made one.” He addressed Spade, now earnestly: “I've told everything I know, every single thing.”
   Dundy said, “It's not enough.” He jerked a thumb at the door. “Show him where to wait, Tom, and let's have the widower in again.”
   Big Polhaus said, “Right,” went out with Ira Binnett, and returned with Wallace Binnett, whose face was hard and pale.
   Dundy asked: “Has your uncle made a will?”
   “I don't know,” Binnett replied.
   Spade put the next question, softly: “Did your wife?”
   Binnett's mouth tightened in a mirthless smile. He spoke deliberately: “I'm going to say some things I'd rather not have to say. My wife, properly, had no money. When I got into financial trouble some time ago I made some property over to her, to save it. She turned it into money without my knowing about it till afterwards. She paid our bills—our living expenses—out of it, but she refused to return it to me and she assured me that in no event—whether she lived or died or we stayed together or were divorced—would I ever be able to get hold of a penny of it. I believed her, and still do.”
   “You wanted a divorce?” Dundy asked.
   “Yes.”
   “Why?”
   “It wasn't a happy marriage.”
   “Joyce Court?”
   Binnett's face flushed. He said stiffly: “I admire Joyce Court tremendously, but I'd've wanted a divorce anyway.”
   Spade said: “And you're sure —still absolutely sure—you don't know anybody who fits your uncle's description of the man who choked him?”
   “Absolutely sure.”
   The sound of the doorbell ringing came faintly into the room.
   Dundy said sourly, “That'll do.”
   Binnett went out.
   Polhaus said: “That guy's as wrong as they make them. And—”
   From below came the heavy report of a pistol fired indoors.
   The lights went out.
   In darkness the three detectives collided with one another going through the doorway into the dark hall. Spade reached the stairs first. There was a clatter of footsteps below him, but nothing could be seen until he reached a bend in the stairs. Then enough light came from the street through the open front door to show the dark figure of a man standing with his back to the open door.
   A flashlight clicked in Dundy's hand—he was at Spade's heels—and threw a glaring white beam of light on the man's face. He was Ira Binnett. He blinked in the light and pointed at something on the floor in front of him.
   Dundy turned the beam of his light down on the floor. Jarboe lay there on his face, bleeding from a bullet hole in the back of his head.
   Spade grunted softly.
   Tom Polhaus came blundering down the stairs, Wallace Binnett close behind him. Joyce Court's frightened voice came from farther up: “Oh, what's happened? Wally, what's happened?”
   “Where's the light switch?” Dundy barked.
   “Inside the cellar door, under these stairs,” Wallace Binnett said. “What is it?”
   Polhaus pushed past Binnett towards the cellar door.
   Spade made an inarticulate sound in his throat and, pushing Wallace Binnett aside, sprang up the stairs. He brushed past Joyce Court and went on, heedless of her startled scream. He was half way up the stairs to the third floor when the pistol went off up there.
   He ran to Timothy Binnett's door. The door was open. He went in.
   Something hard and angular struck him above his right ear, knocking him across the room, bringing him down on one knee. Something thumped and clattered on the floor just outside the door.
   The lights came on.
   On the floor, in the center of the room, Timothy Binnett lay on his back bleeding from a bullet wound in his left forearm. His pajama jacket was torn. His eyes were shut.
   Spade stood up and put a hand to his head. He scowled at the old man on the floor, at the room, at the black automatic pistol lying on the hallway floor. He said: “Come on, you old cutthroat. Get up and sit on a chair and I'll see if I can stop that bleeding till the doctor gets here.”
   The man on the floor did not move.
   There were footsteps in the hallway and Dundy came in, followed by the two younger Binnetts. Dundy's face was dark and furious. “Kitchen door wide open,” he said in a choked voice. “They run in and out like—“
   “Forget it,” Spade said. “Uncle Tim is our meat.” He paid no attention to Wallace Binnett's gasp, to the incredulous looks on Dundy's and Ira Binnett's faces. “Come on, get up,” he said to the old man on the floor, “and tell us what it was the butler saw when he peeped through the keyhole.”
   The old man did not stir.
   “He killed the butler because I told him the butler had peeped,” Spade explained to Dundy. “I peeped, too, but didn't see anything except that chair and the window, though we'd made enough racket by then to scare him back to bed. Suppose you take the chair apart while I go over the window.” He went to the window and began to examine it carefully. He shook his head, put a hand out behind him, and said: “Give me the flashlight.”
   Dundy put the flashlight in his hand.
   Spade raised the window and leaned out, turning the light on the outside of the building. Presently he grunted and put his other hand out, tugging at a brick a little below the sill. Presently the brick came loose. He put it on the window sill and stuck his hand into the hole its removal had made. Out of the opening, one at a time, he brought an empty black pistol holster, a partially filled box of cartridges, and an unsealed manila envelope.
   Holding these things in his hands, he turned to face the others. Joyce Court came in with a basin of water and a roll of gauze and knelt beside Timothy Binnett. Spade put the holster and cartridges on a table and opened the manila envelope. Inside were two sheets of paper, covered on both sides with boldly penciled writing. Spade read a paragraph to himself, suddenly laughed, and began at the beginning again, reading aloud:
   ” 'I, Timothy Kieran Binnett, being sound of mind and body, do declare this to be my last will and testament. To my dear nephews, Ira Binnett and Wallace Bourke Binnett, in recognition of the loving kindness with which they have received me into their homes and attended my declining years, I give and bequeath, share and share alike, all my worldly possessions of whatever kind, to wit, my carcass and the clothes I stand in.
   ” 'I bequeath them, furthermore, the expense of my funeral and these memories: First, the memory of their credulity in believing that the fifteen years I spent in Sing Sing were spent in Australia; second, the memory of their optimism in supposing that those fifteen years had brought me great wealth, and that if I lived on them, borrowed from them, and never spent any of my own money, it was because I was a miser whose hoard they would inherit; and not because I had no money except what I shook them down for; third, for their hopefulness in thinking that I would leave either of them anything if I had it; and, lastly because their painful lack of any decent sense of humor will keep them from ever seeing how funny this has all been. Signed and sealed this—' ”
   Spade looked up to say: “There is no date, but it's signed Timothy Kieran Binnett with flourishes.”
   Ira Binnett was purple with anger, Wallace's face was ghastly in its pallor and his whole body was trembling. Joyce Court had stopped working on Timothy Binnett's arm.
   The old man sat up and opened his eyes. He looked at his nephews and began to laugh. There was in his laughter neither hysteria nor madness: it was sane, hearty laughter, and subsided slowly.
   Spade said: “All right, now you've had your fun. Let's talk about the killings.”
   “I know nothing more about the first one than I've told you,” the old man said, “and this one's not a killing, since I'm only—”
   Wallace Binnett, still trembling violently, said painfully through his teeth: “That's a lie. You killed Molly. Joyce and I came out of her room when we heard Molly scream, and heard the shot and saw her fall out of your room, and nobody came out afterwards.”
   The old man said calmly: “Well, I'll tell you: it was an accident. They told me there was a fellow from Australia here to see me about some of my properties there. I knew there was something funny about that somewhere”—he grinned—“not ever having been there. I didn't know whether one of my dear nephews was getting suspicious and putting up a game on me or what, but I knew that if Wally wasn't in on it he'd certainly try to pump the gentleman from Australia about me and maybe I'd lose one of my free boarding houses.” He chuckled.
   “So I figured I'd get in touch with Ira so I could go back to his house if things worked out bad here, and I'd try to get rid of this Australian. Wally's always thought I'm half-cracked”—he leered at his nephew—“and's afraid they'll lug me off to a madhouse before I could make a will in his favor, or they'll break it if I do. You see, he's got a pretty bad reputation, what with that Stock Exchange trouble and all, and he knows no court would appoint him to handle my affairs if I went screwy—not as long as I've got another nephew”—he turned his leer on Ira—“who's a respectable lawyer. So now I know that rather than have me kick up a row that might wind me up in the madhouse, he'll chase this visitor, and I put on a show for Molly, who happened to be the nearest one to hand. She took it too seriously, though.
   “I had a gun and I did a lot of raving about being spied on by my enemies in Australia and that I was going down and shoot this fellow. But she got too excited and tried to take the gun away from me, and the first thing I knew it had gone off, and I had to make these marks on my neck and think up that story about the big dark man.” He looked contemptuously at Wallace. “I didn't know he was covering me up. Little as I thought of him, I never thought he'd be low enough to cover up his wife's murderer—even if he didn't like her—just for the sake of money.” Spade said: “Never mind that. Now about the butler?”
   “I don't know anything about the butler,” the old man replied, looking at Spade with steady eyes.
   Spade said: “You had to kill him quick, before he had time to do or say anything. So you slip down the back stairs, open the kitchen door to fool people, go to the front door, ring the bell, shut the door, and hide in the shadow of the cellar door under the front steps. When Jarboe answered the doorbell you shot him—the hole was in the back of his head—pulled the light switch, just inside the cellar door, and ducked up the back stairs in the dark and shot yourself carefully in the arm. I got up there too soon for you; so you smacked me with the gun, chucked it through the door, and spread yourself on the floor while I was shaking pinwheels out of my noodle.” The old man sniffed again. “You're just—“
   “Stop it,” Spade said patiently. “Don't let's argue. The first killing was an accident—all right. The second couldn't be. And it ought to be easy to show that both bullets, and the one in your arm, were fired from the same gun. What difference does it make which killing we can prove first-degree murder on? They can only hang you once.” He smiled pleasantly. “And they will.”

A MAN CALLED SPADE

   SAMUEL SPADE put his telephone aside and looked at his watch. It was not quite four o'clock. He called, “Yoo-hoo!”
   Effie Perine came in from the outer office. She was eating a piece of chocolate cake.
   “Tell Sid Wise I won't be able to keep that date this afternoon,” he said.
   She put the last of the cake into her mouth and licked the tips of forefinger and thumb. “That's the third time this week.”
   When he smiled, the v's of his chin, mouth, and brows grew longer. “I know, but I've got to go out and save a life.” He nodded at the telephone. “Somebody's scaring Max Bliss.”
   She laughed. “Probably somebody named John D. Conscience.”
   He looked up at her from the cigarette he had begun to make. “Know anything I ought to know about him?”
   “Nothing you don't know. I was just thinking about the time he let his brother go to San Quentin.”
   Spade shrugged. “That's not the worst thing he's done.” He lit his cigarette, stood up, and reached for his hat. “But he's all right now. All Samuel Spade clients are honest, God-fearing folk. If I'm not back at closing time just run along.”
   He went to a tall apartment building on Nob Hill, pressed a button set in the frame of a door marked 10K. The door was opened immediately by a burly dark man in wrinkled dark clothes. He was nearly bald and carried a gray hat in one hand.
   The burly man said, “Hello, Sam.” He smiled, but his small eyes lost none of their shrewdness. “What are you doing here?”
   Spade said, “Hello, Torn.” His face was wooden, his voice expressionless. “Bliss in?”
   “Is he!” Tom pulled down the corners of his thick-lipped mouth. “You don't have to worry about that.”
   Spade's brows came together. “Well?”
   A man appeared in the vestibule behind Tom. He was smaller than either Spade or Tom, but compactly built. He had a ruddy, square face and a close-trimmed, grizzled mustache. His clothes were neat. He wore a black bowler perched on the back of his head.
   Spade addressed this man over Tom's shoulder: “Hello, Dundy.”
   Dundy nodded briefly and came to the door. His blue eyes were hard and prying.
   “What is it?” he asked Tom.
   “B-1-i-s-s, M-a-x,” Spade spelled patiently. “I want to see him. He wants to see me. Catch on?”
   Tom laughed. Dundy did not. Tom said, “Only one of you gets your wish.” Then he glanced sidewise at Dundy and abruptly stopped laughing. He seemed uncomfortable.
   Spade scowled. “All right,” he demanded irritably; “is he dead or has he killed somebody?”
   Dundy thrust his square face up at Spade and seemed to push his words out with his lower Up. “What makes you think either?”
   Spade said, “Oh, sure! I come calling on Mr. Bliss and I'm stopped at the door by a couple of men from the police Homicide Detail, and I'm supposed to think I'm just interrupting a game of rummy.”
   “Aw, stop it, Sam,” Tom grumbled, looking at neither Spade nor Dundy. “He's dead.”
   “Killed?”
   Tom wagged his head slowly up and down. He looked at Spade now. “What've you got on it?”
   Spade replied in a deliberate monotone, “He called me up this afternoon—say at five minutes to four—I looked at my watch after he hung up and there was still a minute or so to go—and said somebody was after his scalp. He wanted me to come over. It seemed real enough to him—it was up in his neck all right.” He made a small gesture with one hand. “Well, here I am.”
   “Didn't say who or how?” Dundy asked.
   Spade shook his head. “No. Just somebody had offered to kill him and he believed them, and would I come over right away.”
   “Didn't he—?” Dundy began quickly.
   “He didn't say anything else,” Spade said. “Don't you people tell me anything?”
   Dundy said curtly, “Come in and take a look at him.”
   Tom said, “It's a sight.”
   They went across the vestibule and through a door into a green and rose living-room.
   A man near the door stopped sprinkling white powder on the end of a glass-covered small table to say, “Hello, Sam.”
   Spade nodded, said, “How are you, Phels?” and then nodded at the two men who stood talking by a window.
   The dead man lay with his mouth open. Some of his clothes had been taken off. His throat was puffy and dark. The end of his tongue showing in a corner of his mouth was bluish, swollen. On his bare chest, over the heart, a five-pointed star had been outlined in black ink and in the center of it a T.
   Spade looked down at the dead man and stood for a moment silently studying him. Then he asked, “He was found like that?”
   “About,” Tom said. “We moved him around a little.” He jerked a thumb at the shirt, undershirt, vest, and coat lying on a table. “They were spread over the floor.”
   Spade rubbed his chin. His yellow-gray eyes were dreamy. “When?”
   Tom said, “We got it at four-twenty. His daughter gave it to us.” He moved his head to indicate a closed door. “You'll see her.”
   “Know anything?”
   “Heaven knows,” Tom said wearily. “She's been kind of hard to get along with so far.” He turned to Dundy. “Want to try her again now?”
   Dundy nodded, then spoke to one of the men at the window. “Start sifting his papers, Mack. He's supposed to've been threatened.”
   Mack said, “Right.” He pulled his hat down over his eyes and walked towards a green secretaire in the far end of the room.
   A man came in from the corridor, a heavy man of fifty with a deeply lined, grayish face under a broad-brimmed black hat. He said, “Hello, Sam,” and then told Dundy, “He had company around half past two, stayed just about an hour. A big blond man in brown, maybe forty or forty-five. Didn't send his name up. I got it from the Filipino in the elevator that rode him both ways.”
   “Sure it was only an hour?” Dundy asked.
   The gray-faced man shook his head. “But he's sure it wasn't more than half past three when he left. He says the afternoon papers came in then, and this man had ridden down with him before they came.” He pushed his hat back to scratch his head, then pointed a thick finger at the design inked on the dead man's breast and asked somewhat plaintively, “What the deuce do you suppose that thing is?”
   Nobody replied. Dundy asked, “Can the elevator boy identify him?”
   “He says he could, but that ain't always the same thing. Says he never saw him before.” He stopped looking at the dead man. “The girl's getting me a list of his phone calls. How you been, Sam?”
   Spade said he had been all right. Then he said slowly, “His brother's big and blond and maybe forty or forty-five.”
   Dundy's blue eyes were hard and bright. “So what?” he asked.
   “You remember the Graystone Loan swindle. They were both in it, but Max eased the load over on Theodore and it turned out to be one to fourteen years in San Quentin.”
   Dundy was slowly wagging his head up and down. “I remember now. Where is he?”
   Spade shrugged and began to make a cigarette.
   Dundy nudged Tom with an elbow. “Find out.”
   Tom said, “Sure, but if he was out of here at half past three and this fellow was still alive at five to four—”
   “And he broke his leg so he couldn't duck back in,” the gray-faced man said jovially.
   “Find out,” Dundy repeated.
   Tom said, “Sure, sure,” and went to the telephone.
   Dundy addressed the gray-faced man: “Check up on the newspapers; see what time they were actually delivered this afternoon.”
   The gray-faced man nodded and left the room.
   The man who had been searching the secretaire said, “Uh-huh,” and turned around holding an envelope in one hand, a sheet of paper in the other.
   Dundy held out his hand. “Something?”
   The man said, “Uh-huh,” again and gave Dundy the sheet of paper.
   Spade was looking over Dundy's shoulder.
   It was a small sheet of common white paper bearing a penciled message in neat, undistinguished handwriting:
   When this reaches you I will be too close for you to escape —this time. We will balance our accounts—for good.
   The signature was a five-pointed star enclosing a T, the design on the dead man's left breast.
   Dundy held out his hand again and was given the envelope. Its stamp was French. The address was typewritten:
   MAX BLISS, ESQ.
   AMSTERDAM APARTMENTS, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. U. S. A.
   “Postmarked Paris,” he said, “the second of the month.” He counted swiftly on his fingers. “That would get it here today, all right.” He folded the message slowly, put it in the envelope, put the envelope in his coat pocket. “Keep digging,” he told the man who had found the message.
   The man nodded and returned to the secretaire.
   Dundy looked at Spade. “What do you think of it?”
   Spade's brown cigarette wagged up and down with the words. “I don't like it. I don't like any of it.”
   Tom put down the telephone. “He got out the fifteenth of last month,” he said. “I got them trying to locate him.”
   Spade went to the telephone, called a number, and asked for Mr. Darrell. Then: “Hello, Harry, this is Sam Spade. . . . Fine. How's Lil? . .. Yes. … Listen, Harry, what does a five-pointed star with a capital T in the middle mean? . . . What? How do you spell it? … Yes, I see. . . . And if you found it on a body? . . . Neither do I. … Yes, and thanks. I'll tell you about it when I see you. . . .Yes, give me a ring. . . . Thanks. . . . 'By.”
   Dundy and Tom were watching him closely when he turned from the telephone. He said, “That's a fellow who knows things sometimes. He says it's a pentagram with a Greek tau—t-a-u—in the middle; a sign magicians used to use. Maybe Rosicrucians still do.”
   “What's a Rosicrucian?” Tom asked.
   “It could be Theodore's first initial, too,” Dundy said.
   Spade moved his shoulders, said carelessly, “Yes, but if he wanted to autograph the job it'd been just as easy for him to sign his name.”
   He then went on more thoughtfully, “There are Rosicrucians at both San Jose and Point Loma. I don't go much for this, but maybe we ought to look them up.”
   Dundy nodded.
   Spade looked at the dead man's clothes o'n the table. “Anything in his pockets?”
   “Only what you'd expect to find,” Dundy replied. “It's on the table there.”
   Spade went to the table and looked down at the little pile of watch and chain, keys, wallet, address book, money, gold pencil, handkerchief, and spectacle case beside the clothing. He did not touch them, but slowly picked up, one at a time, the dead man's shirt, undershirt, vest, and coat. A blue necktie lay on the table beneath them. He scowled irritably at it. “It hasn't been worn,” he complained.
   Dundy, Tom, and the coroner's deputy, who had stood silent all this while by the window—he was a small man with a slim, dark, intelligent face—came together to stare down at the unwrinkled blue silk.
   Tom groaned miserably. Dundy cursed under his breath. Spade lifted the necktie to look at its back. The label was a London haberdasher's.
   Spade said cheerfully, “Swell. San Francisco, Point Loma, San Jose, Paris, London.”
   Dundy glowered at him.
   The gray-faced man came in. “The papers got here at three-thirty, all right,” he said. His eyes widened a little. “What's up?” As he crossed the room towards them he said, “I can't find anybody that saw Blondy sneak back in here again.” He looked uncomprehendingly at the necktie until Tom growled, “It's brand-new”; then he whistled softly.
   Dundy turned to Spade. “The deuce with all this,” he said bitterly. “He's got a brother with reasons for not liking him. The brother just got out of stir. Somebody who looks like his brother left here at half past three. Twenty-five minutes later he phoned you he'd been threatened. Less than half an hour after that his daughter came in and found him dead—strangled.” He poked a finger at the small, dark-faced man's chest. “Right?”
   “Strangled,” the dark-faced man said precisely, “by a man. The hands were large.”
   “O. K.” Dundy turned to Spade again. “We find a threatening letter. Maybe that's what he was telling you about, maybe it was something his brother said to him. Don't let's guess. Let's stick to what we know. We know he—”
   The man at the secretaire turned around and said, “Got another one.” His mien was somewhat smug.
   The eyes with which the five men at the table looked at him were identically cold, unsympathetic.
   He, nowise disturbed by their hostility, read aloud:
 
   Dear Bliss:
   I am writing this to tell you for the last time that I want my money back, and I want it back by the first of the month, all of it. If I don't get it I am going to do something about it, and you ought to be able to guess what I mean. And don't think I am kidding. Yours truly,
   Daniel Talbot.”
 
   He grinned. “That's another T for you.” He picked up an envelope. “Postmarked San Diego, the twenty-fifth of last month.” He grinned again. “And that's another city for you.”
   Spade shook his head. “Point Loma's down that way,” he said.
   He went over with Dundy to look at the letter. It was written in blue ink on white stationery of good quality, as was the address on the envelope, in a cramped, angular handwriting that seemed to have nothing in common with that of the penciled letter.
   Spade said ironically, “Now we're getting somewhere.”
   Dundy made an impatient gesture. “Let's stick to what we know,” he growled.
   “Sure,” Spade agreed. “What is it?”
   There was no reply.
   Spade took tobacco and cigarette papers from his pocket. “Didn't somebody say something about talking to a daughter?” he asked.
   “We'll talk to her.” Dundy turned on his heel, then suddenly frowned at the dead man on the floor. He jerked a thumb at the small, dark-faced man. “Through with it?”
   “I'm through.”
   Dundy addressed Tom curtly: “Get rid of it.” He addressed the gray-faced man: “I want to see both elevator boys when I'm finished with the girl.”
   He went to the closed door Tom had pointed out to Spade and knocked on it.
   A slightly harsh female voice within asked, “What is it?”
   “Lieutenant Dundy. I want to talk to Miss Bliss.”
   There was a pause; then the voice said, “Come in.”
   Dundy opened the door and Spade followed him into a black, gray, and silver room, where a big-boned and ugly middle-aged woman in black dress and white apron sat beside a bed on which a girl lay.
   The girl lay, elbow on pillow, cheek on hand, facing the big-boned, ugly woman. She was apparently about eighteen years old. She wore a gray suit. Her hair was blonde and short, her face firm-featured and remarkably symmetrical. She did not look at the two men coming into the room.
   Dundy spoke to the big-boned woman, while Spade was lighting his cigarette: “We want to ask you a couple of questions, too, Mrs. Hooper. You're Bliss's housekeeper, aren't you?”
   The woman said, “I am.” Her slightly harsh voice, the level gaze of her deep-set gray eyes, the stillness and size of her hands lying in her lap, all contributed to the impression she gave of resting strength.
   “What do you know about this?”
   “I don't know anything about it. I was let off this morning to go over to Oakland to my nephew's funeral, and when I got back you and the other gentlemen were here and—and this had happened.”
   Dundy nodded, asked, “What do you think about it?”
   “I don't know what to think,” she replied simply.
   “Didn't you know he expected it to happen?”
   Now the girl suddenly stopped watching Mrs. Hooper. She sat up in bed, turning wide, excited eyes on Dundy, and asked, “What do you mean?”
   “I mean what I said. He'd been threatened. He called up Mr. Spade”—he indicated Spade with a nod—“and told him so just a few minutes before he was killed.”
   “But who—?” she began.
   “That's what we're asking you,” Dundy said. “Who had that much against him?”
   She stared at him in astonishment. “Nobody would—“
   This time Spade interrupted her, speaking with a soft ness that made his words seem less brutal than they were.
   “Somebody did.” When she turned her stare on him he asked, “You don't know of any threats?”
   She shook her head from side to side with emphasis.
   He looked at Mrs. Hooper. “You?”
   “No, sir,” she said.
   He returned his attention to the girl. “Do you know Daniel Talbot?”
   “Why, yes,” she said. “He was here for dinner last night.”
   “Who is he?” '
   “I don't know, except that he lives in San Diego, and he and Father had some sort of business together. I'd never met him before.”
   “What sort of terms were they on?” She frowned a little, said slowly, “Friendly.” Dundy spoke: “What business was your father in?”
   “He was a financier.”
   “You mean a promoter?”
   “Yes, I suppose you could call it that.”
   “Where is Talbot staying, or has he gone back to San Diego?”
   “I don't know.”
   “What does he look like?”
   She frowned again, thoughtfully. “He's kind of large, with a red face and white hair and a white mustache.”
   “Old?”
   “I guess he must be sixty; fifty-five at least.”
   Dundy looked at Spade, who put the stub of his cigarette in a tray on the dressing table and took up the questioning. “How long since you've seen your uncle?”
   Her face flushed. “You mean Uncle Ted?”
   He nodded.
   “Not since,” she began, and bit her lip. Then she said, “Of course, you know. Not since he first got out of prison.”
   “He came here?”
   “Yes.”
   “To see your father?”
   “Of course.”
   “What sort of terms were they on?”
   She opened her eyes wide. “Neither of them is very demonstrative,” she said, “but they are brothers, and Father was giving him money to set him up in business again.”
   “Then they were on good terms?”
   “Yes,” she replied in the tone of one answering an unnecessary question.
   “Where does he live?”
   “On Post Street,” she said, and gave a number.
   “And you haven't seen him since?”
   “No. He was shy, you know, about having been in prison—” She finished the sentence with a gesture of one hand.
   Spade addressed Mrs. Hooper: “You've seen him since?”
   “No, sir.”
   He pursed his lips, asked slowly, “Either of you know he was here this afternoon?”
   They said, “No,” together.
   “Where did-?”
   Someone knocked on the door.
   Dundy said, “Come in.”
   Tom opened the door far enough to stick his head in. “His brother's here,” he said.
   The girl leaning forward, called, “Oh, Uncle Ted!”
   A big blond man in brown appeared behind Tom. He was sunburned to an extent that made his teeth seem whiter, his clear eyes bluer, than they were.
   He asked, “What's the matter, Miriam?”
   “Father's dead,” she said, and began to cry.
   Dundy nodded at Tom, who stepped out of Theodore Bliss's way and let him come into the room.
   A woman came in behind him, slowly, hesitantly. She was a tall woman in her late twenties, blonde, not quite plump. Her features were generous, her face pleasant and intelligent. She wore a 'small brown hat and a mink coat.
   Bliss put an arm around his niece, kissed her forehead, sat on the bed beside her. “There, there,” he said awkwardly.
   She saw the blonde woman, stared through her tears at her for a moment, then said, “Oh, how do you do, Miss
   Barrow.”
   The blonde woman said, “I'm awfully sorry to —” Bliss cleared his throat, and said, “She's Mrs. Bliss now.
   We were married this afternoon.”
   Dundy looked angrily at Spade. Spade, making a cigarette, seemed about to laugh.
   Miriam Bliss, after a moment's surprised silence, said, “Oh, I do wish you all the happiness in the world.” She turned to her uncle while his wife was murmuring “Thank you” and said, “And you too, Uncle Ted.”
   He patted her shoulder and squeezed her to him. He was looking questioningly at Spade and Dundy.
   “Your brother died this afternoon,” Dundy said. “He was murdered.”
   Mrs. Bliss caught her breath. Bliss's arm tightened around his niece with a little jerk, but there was not yet any change in his face. “Murdered?” he repeated uncompre-hendingly.
   “Yes.” Dundy put his hands in his coat pockets. “You were here this afternoon.”
   Theodore Bliss paled a little under his sunburn, but said, “I was,” steadily enough.
   “How long?”
   “About an hour. I got here about half past two and—“ He turned to his wife. “It was almost half past three when I phoned you, wasn't it?”
   She said, “Yes.”
   “Well, I left right after that.”
   “Did you have a date with him?” Dundy asked.
   “No. I phoned his office”—he nodded at his wife—“and was told he'd left for home, so I came on up. I wanted to see him before Elise and I left, of course, and I wanted him to come to the wedding, but he couldn't. He said he was expecting somebody. We sat here and talked longer than I had intended, so I had to phone Elise to meet me at the Municipal Building.”
   After a thoughtful pause, Dundy asked, “What time?”
   “That we met there?” Bliss looked inquiringly at his wife, who said, “It was just quarter to four.” She laughed a little. “I got there first and I kept looking at my watch.”
   Bliss said very deliberately, “It was a few minutes after four that we were married. We had to wait for Judge Whitefield—about ten minutes, and it was a few more before we got started—to get through with the case he was hearing. You can check it up—Superior Court, Part Two, I think.”
   Spade whirled around and pointed at Tom. “Maybe you'd better check it up.”
   Tom said, “Oke,” and went away from the door.
   “If that's so, you're all right, Mr. Bliss,” Dundy said, “but I have to ask you these things. Now, did your brother say who he was expecting?”
   “No.”
   “Did he say anything about having been threatened?”
   “No. He never talked much about his affairs to anybody, not even to me. Had he been threatened?”
   Dundy's lips tightened a little. “Were you and he on intimate terms?”
   “Friendly, if that's what you mean.”
   “Are you sure?” Dundy asked. “Are you sure neither of you held any grudge against the other?”
   Theodore Bliss took his arm free from around his niece. Increasing pallor made his sunburned face yellowish. He said, “Everybody here knows about my having been in
   San Quentin. You can speak out, if that's what you're getting at.”
   “It is,” Dundy said, and then, after a pause, “Well?”
   Bliss stood up. “Well, what?” he asked impatiently. “Did I hold a grudge against him for that? No. Why should I? We were both in it. He could get out; I couldn't. I was sure of being convicted whether he was or not. Having him sent over with me wasn't going to make it any better for me. We talked it over and decided I'd go it alone, leaving him outside to pull things together. And he did. If you look up his bank account you'll see he gave me a check for twenty-five thousand dollars two days after I was discharged from San Quentin, and the registrar of the National Steel Corporation can tell you a thousand shares of stock have been transferred from his name to mine since then.”
   He smiled apologetically and sat down on the bed again. “I'm sorry. I know you have to ask things.”
   Dundy ignored the apology. “Do you know Daniel Tal-bot?” he asked.
   Bliss said, “No.”
   His wife said, “I do; that is, I've seen him. He was in the office yesterday.”
   Dundy looked her up and down carefully before asking, “What office?”
   “I am—I was Mr. Bliss's secretary, and—”
   “Max Bliss's?”
   “Yes, and a Daniel Talbot came in to see him yesterday afternoon, if it's the same one.”
   “What happened?”
   She looked at her husband, who said, “If you know anything, for heaven's sake tell them.”
   She said, “But nothing really happened. I thought they were angry with each other at first, but when they left together they were laughing and talking, and before they went Mr. Bliss rang for me and told me to have Trapper—he's the bookkeeper—make out a check to Mr. Tal-bot's order.”
   “Did he?”
   “Oh, yes. I took it in to him. It was for seventy-five hundred and some dollars.”
   “What was it for?”
   She shook her head. “I don't know.”
   “If you were Bliss's secretary,” Dundy insisted, “you must have some idea of what his business with Talbot was.”
   “But I haven't,” she said. “I'd never even heard of him before.”
   Dundy looked at Spade. Spade's face was wooden. Dundy glowered at him, then put a question to the man on the bed: “What kind of necktie was your brother wearing when you saw him last?”
   Bliss blinked, then stared distantly past Dundy, and finally shut his eyes. When he opened them he said, “It was green with—I'd know it if I saw it. Why?”
   Mrs. Bliss said, “Narrow diagonal stripes of different shades of green. That's the one he had on at the office this morning.”
   “Where does he keep his neckties?” Dundy asked the housekeeper.
   She rose, saying, “In a closet in his bedroom. I'll show you.”