morning, but his wife said he hadn’t been home, so we stuck around till four or five and then decided he had given us a run-around, and made Pogey charge the bill to him, and beat it. I ain’t seen him since – dead or alive.”
Spade said mildly. “Maybe. Sure you didn’t find Eli later that morning, taking him riding, swap him bullets for Ferris’s five thou, dump him in the -?”
A sharp double knock sounded on the door.
Spade’s face brightened. He went to the door and opened it.
A young man came in. He was very dapper, and very well proportioned. He wore a light topcoat and his hands were in its pockets. Just inside the door he stepped to the right, and stood with his back to the wall.
By that time another young man was coming in. He stepped to the left. Though they did not actually look alike, their common dapperness, the similar trimness of their bodies, and their almost identical positions – back to wall, hands in pockets, cold, bright eyes studying the occupants of the room – gave them the appearance of twins.
Then Gene Colyer came in. He nodded at Spade, but paid no attention t© the others in the room, though James said, “Hello, Gene.”
“Anything new?” Colyer asked Spade.
Spade nodded. “It seems this gentleman” – he jerked a thumb at Ferris -“ was -“
“Any place we can talk?”
“There’s a kitchen back here.”
Colyer snapped a “Smear anybody that pops” over his shoulder at the two dapper young men and followed Spade into the kitchen. He sat on the one kitchen chair and stared with unblinking green eyes at Spade while Spade told him what he had learned.
When the private detective had finished, the green-eyed man asked, “Well, what do you make of it?”
Spade looked thoughtfully at the other, “You’ve picked up something. I’d like to know what it is.”
Colyer said, “They found the gun in a stream a quarter of a mile from where they found him. It’s James’s – got the mark on it where it was shot out of his hand once in Vallejo.”
“That’s nice,” Spade said.
“Listen. A kid named Thurston says James comes to him last Wednesday and gets him to tail Haven. Thurston picks him up Thursday afternoon, puts him in at Ferris’s, and phones James. James tells him to take a plant on the place and let him know where Haven goes when he leaves, but some nervous woman in the neighbourhood puts in a ruble about the kid hanging around, and the cops chase him along about ten o’clock.”
Spade pursed his lips and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.
Colyer’s eyes were expressionless, but sweat made his round face shiny, and his voice was hoarse. “Spade,” he said, “I’m going to turn him in.”
Spade switched his gaze from the ceiling to the protuberant green eyes.
“I’ve never turned in one of my people before,” Colyer said, “but this one goes. Julia’s got to believe I hadn’t anything to do with it if it’s one of my people and I turn him in, hasn’t she?”
Spade nodded slowly. “I think so.”
Colyer suddenly averted his eyes and cleared his throat. When he spoke again it was curtly. “Well, he goes.”
Minera, James, and Conrad were seated when Spade and Colyer came out of the kitchen. Ferris was walking the floor. The two dapper young men had not moved.
Colyer went over to James. “Where’s your gun, Louis?” he asked.
James moved his right hand a few inches toward his left breast, stopped it, and said, “Oh, I didn’t bring it.”
With his gloved hand – open – Colyer struck James on the side of the face, knocking him out of his chair.
James straightened up, mumbling, “I didn’t mean nothing.” He put a hand to the side of his face. “I know I oughtn’t’ve done it, Chief, but when he called up and said he didn’t like to go up against Ferris without something and didn’t have any of his own, I said, ‘All right,’ and sent it over to him.”
Colyer said, “And you sent Thurston over to him, too.”
“We were just kind of interested in seeing if he did go through with it,” James mumbled.
“And you couldn’t’ve gone there yourself, or sent somebody else?”
“After Thurston had stirred up the whole neighbourhood?”
Colyer turned to Spade. “Want us to help you take them in, or want to call the wagon?”
“We’ll do it regular,” Spade said, and went to the wall telephone. When he turned away from it his face was wooden, his eyes dreamy. He made a cigarette, lit it, and said to Colyer, “I’m silly enough to think your Louis has got a lot of right answers in that story of his.”
James took his hand down from his bruised cheek and stared at Spade with astonished eyes.
Colyer growled, “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” Spade said softly, “except I think you’re a little too anxious to slam it on him.” He blew smoke out. “Why, for instance, should he drop his gun there when it had marks on it that people knew?”
Colyer said, “You think he’s got brains.”
“If these boys killed him, knew he was dead, why do they wait till the body’s found and things are stirred up before they go after Ferris again? What’d they turn his pockets inside out for if they hijacked him? That’s a lot of trouble and only done by folks that kill for some other reason and want to make it look like robbery.” He shook his head. “You’re too anxious to slam it on him. Why should they -“
“That’s not the point right now,” Colyer said. “The point is, why do you keep saying I’m too anxious to slam it on him?”
Spade shrugged. “Maybe to clear yourself with Julia as soon as possible and as clear as possible, maybe even to clear yourself with the police, and then you’ve got clients.”
Colyer said, “What?”
Spade made a careless gesture with his cigarette. “Ferris,” he said blandly. “He killed him, of course.”
Colyer’s eyelids quivered, though he did not actually blink.
Spade said, “First, he’s the last person we know of who saw Eli alive, and that’s always a good bet. Second, he’s the only person I talked to before Eli’s body turned up who cared whether they were holding out on me or not. The rest of you just thought I was hunting for a guy who’d gone away. He knew I was hunting for a man he’d killed, so he had to put himself in the clear. He was even afraid to throw that book away, because it had been sent up by the book store and could be traced, and there might be clerks who’d seen the inscription. Third, he was the only one who thought Eli was just a sweet, clean, lovable boy – for the same reasons. Fourth, that story about a blackmailer showing up at three o’clock in the afternoon, making an easy touch for five grand, and then sticking around till midnight is just silly, no matter how good the booze was. Fifth, the story about the paper Eli signed is still worse, though a forged one could be fixed up easy enough. Sixth, he’s got the best reason of anybody we know for wanting Eli dead.”
Colyer nodded slowly, “Still -“
“Still nothing,” Spade said. “Maybe he did the ten-thousand – out – five-thousand-back trick with his bank, but that was easy. Then he got this feebleminded blackmailer in his house, stalled him along until the servant had gone to bed, took the borrowed gun from him, shoved him downstairs into his car, took him for a ride – maybe took him already dead, maybe shot him down there by the bushes – frisked him clean to make identification harder and to make it look like robbery, tossed the gun in the water, and came home -“
He broke off to listen to the sound of a siren in the street. He looked then, for the first time since he had begun to talk, at Ferris.
Ferris’s face was ghastly white, but he held his eyes steady.
Spade said, “I’ve got a hunch, Ferris, that we’re going to find out about that red-lighting job, too. You told me you had your carnival company with a partner for a while when Eli was working for you, and then by yourself. We oughtn’t to have a lot of trouble finding out about your partner – whether he disappeared, or died a natural death, or is still alive.”
Ferris had lost some of his erectness. He wet his lips and said, “I want to see my lawyer. I don’t want to talk till I’ve seen my lawyer.”
Spade said, “It’s all right with me. You’re up against it, but I don’t like blackmailers myself. I think Eli wrote a good epitaph for them in that book back there – ‘Too many have lived.’”
