She shook her head. “Some place in Delaware.”
“What place?”
“I don’t know.”
Spade drew his thickish brows together a little. “Where are you from?”
She said sweetly, “You’re not hunting for me.”
“You act like it,” he grumbled. “Well, who are his friends?”
“Don’t ask me!”
He made an impatient grimace. “You know some of them,” he insisted.
“Sure. There’s a fellow named Minera and a Louis James and somebody he calls Conny.”
“Who are they?”
“Men,” she replied blandly. “I don’t know anything about them. They phone or drop by to pick him up, or I see him around town with them. That’s all I know.”
“What do they do for a living? They can’t all write poetry.”
She laughed. “They could try. One of them, Louis James, is a member of Gene’s staff, I think. I honestly don’t know any more about them than I’ve told you.”
“Think they’d know where your husband is?”
She shrugged. “They’re kidding me if they do. They still call up once in a while to see if he’s turned up.”
“And these women you mentioned?”
“They’re not people I know.”
Spade scowled thoughtfully at the floor, asked, “What’d he do before he started not making a living writing poetry?”
“Anything – sold vacuum cleaners, hoboed, went to sea, dealt blackjack, railroaded, canning houses, lumber camps, carnivals, worked on a newspaper – anything.”
“Have any money when he left?”
“Three dollars he borrowed from me.”
“What’d he say?”
She laughed. “Said if I used whatever influence I had with God while he was gone he’d be back at dinnertime with a surprise for me.”
Spade raised his eyebrows. “You were on good terms?”
“Oh, yes. Our last fight had been patched up a couple of days before.”
“When did he leave?”
“Thursday afternoon; three o’clock, I guess.”
“Got any photographs of him?”
“Yes.” She went to a table by one of the windows, pulled a drawer out, and turned toward Spade with a photograph in her hand.
Spade looked at the picture of a thin face with deep-set eyes, a sensual mouth, and a heavily lined forehead topped by a disorderly mop of coarse blond hair.
He put Haven’s photograph in his pocket and picked up his hat. He turned toward the door, halted. “What kind of poet is he? Pretty good?”
She shrugged. “That depends on who you ask.”
“Any of it around here?”
“No.” She smiled. “Think he’s hiding between pages?”
“You never can tell what’ll lead to what. I’ll be back some time. Think things over and see if you can’t find some way of loosening up a little more. ‘Bye.”
He walked down Post Street to Mulford’s book store and asked for a volume of Haven’s poetry.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said. “I sold my last copy last week” – she smiled – “to Mr. Haven himself. I can order it for you.”
“You know him?”
“Only through selling him books.”
Spade pursed his lips, asked, “What day was it?” He gave her one of his business cards. “Please. It’s important.”
She went to a desk, turned the pages of a red-bound sales book, and came back to him with the book open in her hand. “It was last Wednesday,” she said, “and we delivered it to a Mr. Roger Ferris, 1981 Pacific Avenue.”
“Thanks a lot,” he said.
Outside, he hailed a taxicab and gave the driver Mr. Roger Ferris’s address.
The Pacific Avenue house was a four-story graystone set behind a narrow strip of lawn. The room into which a plump-faced maid ushered Spade was large and high-ceilinged.
Spade sat down, but when the maid had gone away he rose and began to walk around the room. He halted at a table where there were three books. One of them had a salmon-coloured jacket on which was printed in red an outline drawing of a bolt of lightning striking the ground between a man and a woman, and in black the words
Spade picked up the book and went back to his chair.
There was an inscription on the flyleaf – heavy, irregular characters written with blue ink:
To good old Buck, who knew his coloured lights, in memory of those days
Eli
Spade turned the pages at random and idly read a verse:
STATEMENT
He looked up from the book as a man in dinner clothes came into the room. He was not a tall man, but his erectness made him seem tall even when Spade’s six feet and a fraction of an inch were standing before him. He had bright blue eyes undimmed by his fifty-some years, a sunburned face in which no muscle sagged, a smooth, broad forehead, and thick, short, nearly white hair. There was dignity in his countenance, and amiability. He nodded at the book Spade still held. “How do you like it?”
Spade grinned, said, “I guess I’m just a mug,” and put the book down. “That’s what I came to see you about, though, Mr. Ferris. You know Haven?”
“Yes, certainly. Sit down, Mr. Spade.” He sat in a chair not far from Spade’s. “I knew him as a kid. He’s not in trouble, is he?”
Spade said, “I don’t know. I’m trying to find him.”
Ferris spoke hesitantly, “Can I ask why?”
“You know Gene Colyer?”
“Yes.” Ferris hesitated again, then said, “This is in confidence. I’ve a chain of motion-picture houses through northern California, you know, and a couple of years ago when I had some labour trouble I was told that Colyer was the man to get in touch with to have it straightened out. That’s how I happened to meet him.”
“Yes,” Spade said dryly, “a lot of people happen to meet Gene that way.”
“But what’s he got to do with Eli?”
“Wants him found. How long since you’ve seen him?”
“Last Thursday he was here.”
“What time did he leave?”
“Midnight – a little after. He came over in the afternoon around half-past three. We hadn’t seen each other for years. I persuaded him to stay for dinner – he looked pretty seedy – and lent him some money.”
“How much?”
“A hundred and fifty – all I had in the house.”
“Say where he was going when he left?”
