looked at her bag he looked at her. His little brown eyes ran their bold appraising gaze from her lowered face to her feet and up to her face again. Then he looked at Spade and made a silent whistling mouth of appreciation.
Spade lifted two fingers from the arm of his chair in a brief warning gesture and said: 'We shouldn't have any trouble with it. It's simply a matter of having a man at the hotel this evening to shadow him away when he leaves, and shadow him until he leads us to your sister. If she comes with him, and you persuade her to return with you, so much the better. Otherwise—if she doesn't want to leave him after we've found her—well, we'll find a way of managing that.'
Archer said: 'Yeh.' His voice was heavy, coarse.
Miss Wonderly looked up at Spade, quickly, puckering her forehead between her eyebrows. 'Oh, but you must be careful!' Her voice shook a little, and her lips shaped the words with nervous jerkiness. 'I'm deathly afraid of him, of what he might do. She's so young and his bringing her here from New York is such a serious— Mightn't he—mightn't he do—something to her?'
Spade smiled and patted the arms of his chair. 'Just leave that to us,' he said. 'We'll know how to handle him.'
'But mightn't he?' she insisted.
'There's always a chance.' Spade nodded judicially. 'But you can trust us to take care of that.'
'I do trust you,' she said earnestly, 'but I want you to know that he's a dangerous man. I honestly don't think he'd stop at anything. I don't believe he'd hesitate to—to kill Corinne if he thought it would save him. Mightn't he do that?'
'You didn't threaten him, did you?'
'I told him that all I wanted was to get her home before Mama and Papa came so they'd never know what she had done. I promised him I'd never say a word to them about it if he helped me, but if he didn't Papa would certainly see that he was punished. I—I don't suppose he believed me, altogether.'
'Can he cover up by marrying her?' Archer asked.
The girl blushed and replied in a confused voice: 'He has a wife and three children in England. Corinne wrote me that, to explain why she had gone off with him.'
'They usually do,' Spade said, 'though not always in England.' He leaned forward to reach for pencil and pad of paper. 'What does he look like?'
'Oh, he's thirty-five years old, perhaps, and as tall as you, and either naturally dark or quite sunburned. His hair is dark too, and he has thick eyebrows. He talks in a rather loud, blustery way and has a nervous, irritable manner. He gives the impression of being—of violence.'
Spade, scribbling on the pad, asked without looking up: 'What color eyes?'
'They're blue-grey and watery, though not in a weak way. And—oh, yes—he has a marked cleft in his chin.'
'Thin, medium, or heavy build?'
'Quite athletic. He's broad-shouldered and carries himself erect, has what could be called a decidedly military carriage. He was wearing a light grey suit and a grey hat when I saw him this morning.'
'What does he do for a living?' Spade asked as he laid down his pencil.
'I don't know,' she said. 'I haven't the slightest idea.'
'What time is he coming to see you?'
'After eight o'clock.'
'All right, Miss 'Wonderly, we'll have a man there. It'll help if—'
'Mr. Spade, could either you or Mr. Archer?' She made an appealing gesture with both hands. 'Could either of you look after it personally? I don't mean that the man you'd send wouldn't be capable, but—oh!—I'm so afraid of what might happen to Corinne. I'm afraid of him. Could you? I'd be—I'd expect to be charged more, of course.' She opened her handbag with nervous fingers and put two hundred-dollar bills on Spade's desk. 'Would that be enough?'
'Yeh,' Archer said, 'and I'll look after it myself.'
Miss Wonderly stood up, impulsively holding a hand out to him. 'Thank you! Thank you!' she exclaimed, and then gave Spade her hand, repeating: 'Thank you!'
'Not at all,' Spade said over it. 'Glad to. It'll help some if you either meet Thursby downstairs or let yourself be seen in the lobby with him at some time.'
'I will,' she promised, and thanked the partners again.
'And don't look for me,' Archer cautioned her. 'I'll see you all right.'
Spade went to the corridor-door with Miss Wonderly. When he returned to his desk Archer nodded at the hundred-dollar bills there, growled complacently, 'They're right enough,' picked one up, folded it, and tucked it into a vest-pocket. 'And they had brothers in her bag.'
Spade pocketed the other bill before he sat down. Then he said: 'Well, don't dynamite her too much. What do you think of her?'
'Sweet! And you telling me not to dynamite her.' Archer guffawed suddenly without merriment. 'Maybe you saw her first, Sam, but I spoke first.' He put his hands in his trousers-pockets and teetered on his heels.
'You'll play hell with her, you will.' Spade grinned wolfishly, showing the edges of teeth far back in his jaw. 'You've got brains, yes you have.' He began to make a cigarette.
II.Death in the Fog
A telephone-bell rang in darkness. When it had rung three times bed-springs creaked, fingers fumbled on wood, something small and hard thudded on a carpeted floor, the springs creaked again, and a man's voice said: 'Hello. . . . Yes, speaking. . . . Dead? . . . Yes. . . . Fifteen minutes. Thanks.'
A switch clicked and a white bowl hung on three gilded chains from the ceiling's center filled the room with light. Spade, barefooted in green and white checked pajamas, sat on the side of his bed. He scowled at the telephone on the table while his hands took from beside it a packet of brown papers and a sack of Bull Durham tobacco. Cold steamy air blew in through two open windows, bringing with it half a dozen times a minute the Alcatraz foghorn's dull moaning. A tinny alarm-clock, insecurely mounted on a corner of Duke's Celebrated Criminal Cases of America—face down on the table—held its hands at five minutes past two.
Spade's thick fingers made a cigarette with deliberate care, sifting a measured quantity of tan flakes down into curved paper, spreading the flakes so that they lay equal at the ends with a slight depression in the middle, thumbs rolling the paper's inner edge down and up under the outer edge as forefingers pressed it over, thumbs and fingers sliding to the paper cylinder's ends to hold it even while tongue licked the flap, left forefinger and thumb pinching their end while right forefinger and thumb smoothed the damp seam, right forefinger and thumb twisting their end and lifting the other to Spade's mouth. He picked up the pigskin and nickel lighter that had fallen to the floor, manipulated it, and with the cigarette burning in a corner of his mouth stood up. He took off his pajamas. The smooth thickness of his arms, legs, and body, the sag of his big rounded shoulders, made his body like a bear's. It was like a shaved bear's: his chest was hairless. His skin was childishly soft and pink.
He scratched the back of his neck and began to dress. He put on a thin white union-suit, grey socks, black garters, and dark brown shoes. When he had fastened his shoes he picked up the telephone, called Graystone 4500, and ordered a taxicab. He put on a green-striped white shirt, a soft white collar, a green necktie, the grey suit he had worn that day, a loose tweed overcoat, and a dark grey hat. The street-door-bell rang as he stuffed tobacco, keys, and money into his pockets.
Where Bush Street roofed Stockton before slipping downhill to Chinatown, Spade paid his fare and left the taxicab. San Francisco's night-fog, thin, clammy, and penetrant, blurred the street. A few yards from where Spade had dismissed the taxicab a small group of men stood looking up an alley. Two women stood with a man on the other side of Bush Street, looking at the alley. There were faces at windows.
Spade crossed the sidewalk between iron-railed hatchways that opened above bare ugly stairs, went to the
