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.”
