“Thirty-eight. Well, nobody in the house is much more help. Wallace and his sister-in-law, Joyce, were in her room, so they say, and didn’t see anything but the dead woman when they ran out, though they think they heard something that could’ve been somebody running downstairs – the back stairs.
“The butler -his name’s Jarboe – was in here when he heard the scream and shot, so he says. Irene Kelly, the maid, was down on the ground floor, so she says. The cook, Margaret Finn, was in her room – third floor back – and didn’t even hear anything, so she says. She’s deaf as a post, so everybody else says. The back door and gate were unlocked, but are supposed to be kept locked, so everybody says. Nobody says they were in or around the kitchen or yard at the time.” Spade spread his hands in a gesture of finality. “That’s the crop.”
Dundy shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said. “How come you were here?”
Spade’s face brightened. “Maybe my client killed her,” he said. “He’s Wallace’s cousin, Ira Binnett. Know him?”
Dundy shook his head. His blue eyes were hard and suspicious.
“He’s a San Francisco lawyer,” Spade said, “respectable and all that. A couple of days ago he came to me with a story about his uncle Timothy, a miserly old skinflint, lousy with money and pretty well broken up by hard living. He was the black sheep of the family. None of them had heard of him for years. But six or eight months ago he showed up in pretty bad shape every way except financially – he seems to have taken a lot of money out of Australia – wanting to spend his last days with his only living relatives, his nephews Wallace and Ira.
“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 toward 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 anything 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.”
