and shook and fell separately with each step, in the manner of clustered soap-bubbles not yet released from the pipe through which they had been blown. His eyes, made small by fat puffs around them, were dark and sleek. Dark ringlets thinly covered his broad scalp. He wore a black cutaway coat, black vest, black satin Ascot tie holding a pinkish pearl, striped grey worsted trousers, and patent-leather shoes.
His voice was a throaty purr. 'Ah, Mr. Spade,' he said with enthusiasm and held out a hand like a fat pink star.
Spade took the hand and smiled and said: 'How do you do, Mr. Gutman?'
Holding Spade's hand, the fat man turned beside him, put his other hand to Spade's elbow, and guided him across a green rug to a green plush chair beside a table that held a siphon, some glasses, and a bottle of Johnnie Walker whiskey on a tray, a box of cigars—Coronas del Ritz—two newspapers, and a small and plain yellow soapstone box.
Spade sat in the green chair. The fat man began to fill two glasses from bottle and siphon. The boy had disappeared. Doors set in three of the room's walls were shut. The fourth wall, behind Spade, was pierced by two windows hooking out over Geary Street.
'We begin well, sir,' the fat man purred, turning with a proffered glass in his hand. 'I distrust a niami that says when. If he's got to be careful not to drink too niuch it's because he's not to be trusted when he does.'
Spade took the glass and, smiling, made the beginning of a bow over it.
The fat man raised his glass and held it against a window's light. He nodded approvingly at the bubbles running up in it. He said: 'Well, sir, here's to plain speaking and clear understanding.'
They drank and lowered their glasses.
The fat man hooked shrewdly at Spade and asked: 'You're a closemouthed nian?'
Spade shook his head. 'I like to talk.'
'Better and better!' the fat man exclaimed. 'I distrust a closemouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking's somnething you can't do judiciously unless you keep in practice.' He beanied over his glass. 'We'll get along, sir, that we will.' He set his glass on the table and held the box of Coronas del Ritz out to Spade. 'A cigar, sir.'
Spade took a cigar, trimmed the end of it, and lighted it. Meanwhile the fat man pulled another green plush chair around to face Spade's within convenient distance and placed a smoking-stand within reach of both chairs. Then he took his glass from the table, took a cigar from the box, and lowered himself into his chair. His bulbs stopped jouncing and settled into flabby rest. He sighed comfortably and said: 'Now, sir, we'll talk if you like. And I'll tell you right out that I'm a man who likes talking to a nian that likes to talk.'
'Swell. Will we talk about the black bird?'
The fat man laughed and his bulbs rode up and down on his laughter. 'Will we?' he asked and, 'We will,' he replied. His pink face was shiny with delight. 'You're the man for me, sir, a man cut along my own lines. No beating about the bush, but right to the point. 'Will we talk about the black bird?' We will. I hike that, sir. I hike that w'ay of doing business. Let us talk about the black bird by all means, but first, sir, answer me a question, please, though maybe it's an unnecessary one, so we'll understand each other from the beginning. You're here as Miss O'Shoughnessy's representative?'
Spade blew smoke above the fat man's head in a long slanting plume. He frowned thoughtfully at the ash- tipped end of his cigar. He replied deliberately: 'I can't say yes or no. There's nothing certain about it either way, yet.' He looked up at the fat man and stopped frowning. 'It depends.'
'It depends on—?'
Spade shook his head. 'If I knew what it depends on I could say yes or no.'
The fat man took a mouthful from his glass, swallowed it, and suggested: 'Maybe it depends on Joel Cairo?'
Spade's prompt 'Maybe' was noncommittal. He drank.
The fat man leaned forward until his belly stopped him. His smile was ingratiating and so was his purring voice. 'You could say, then, that the question is which one of them you'll represent?'
'You could put it that way.'
'It will be one or the other?'
'I didn't say that.'
The fat man's eyes glistened. His voice sank to a throaty whisper asking: 'Who else is there?'
Spade pointed his cigar at his own chest. 'There's me,' he said.
The fat man sank back in his chair and let his body go flaccid. He blew his breath out in a long contented gust. 'That's wonderful, sir,' he purred. 'That's wonderful. I do like a man that tells you right out he's looking out for himself. Don't we all? I don't trust a man that says he's not. And the man that's telling the truth when he says he's not I distrust most of all, because he's an ass and an ass that's going contrary to the laws of nature.'
Spade exhaled smoke. His face was politely attentive. He said: 'Uhhuh. Now let's talk about the black bird.'
The fat man smiled benevolently. 'Let's,' he said. He squinted so that fat puffs crowding together left nothing of his eyes but a dark gleam visible. 'Mr. Spade, have you any conception of how much money can be made out of that black bird?'
'No.'
The fat man leaned forward again and put a bloated pink hand on the arm of Spade's chair. 'Well, sir, if I told you—by Gad, if I told you half!—you'd call me a liar.'
Spade smiled. 'No,' he said, 'not even if I thought it. But if you won't take the risk just tell me what it is and I'll figure out the profits.'
The fat man laughed. 'You couldn't do it, sir. Nobody could do it that hadn't had a world of experience with things of that sort, and'—he paused impressively—'thcre aren't any other things of that sort.' His bulbs jostled one another as he laughed again. He stopped laughing, abruptly. His fleshy lips hung open as laughter had left them. He stared at Spade with an intentness that suggested myopia. He asked: 'You mean you don't know what it is?' Amazement took the throatiness out of his voice.
Spade made a careless gesture with his cigar. 'Oh, hell,' he said lightly, 'I know what it's supposed to look like. I know the value in life you people put on it. I don't know what it is.'
'She didn't tell you?'
'Miss O'Shaughnessy?'
'Yes. A lovely girl, sir.'
'Uh-huh. No.'
The fat man's eyes were dark gleams in ambush behind pink puffs of flesh. He said indistinctly, 'She must know,' and then, 'And Cairo didn't either?'
'Cairo is cagey. He's willing to buy it, but he won't risk telling me anything I don't know already.'
The fat man moistened his lips with his tongue. 'How much is he willing to buy it for?' he asked.
'Ten thousand dollars.'
The fat man laughed scornfully. 'Ten thousand, and dollars, mind you, not even pounds. That's the Greek for you. Humph! And what did you say to that?'
'I said if I turned it over to him I'd expect the ten thousand.'
'Ah, yes, if! Nicely put, sir.' The fat man's forehead squirmed in a flesh-blurred frown. 'They must know,' he said only partly aloud, then: 'Do they? Do they know what the bird is, sir? What was your impression?'
'I can't help you there,' Spade confessed. 'There's not much to go by. Cairo didn't say he did and he didn't say he didn't. She said she didn't, but I took it for granted that she was lying.'
'That was not an in judicious thing to do,' the fat man said, but his mind was obviously not on his words. He scratched his head. He frowned until his forehead was marked by raw red creases. He fidgeted in his chair as much as his size and the size of the chair permitted fidgeting. He shut his eyes, opened them suddenly—wide—and said to Spade: 'Maybe they don't.' His bulbous pink face slowly lost its worried frown and then, more quickly, took on an expression of ineffable happiness. 'If they don't,' he cried, and again: 'If they don't I'm the only one in the whole wide sweet world who does!'
Spade drew his lips back in a tight smile. 'I'm glad I came to the right place,' he said.
The fat man smiled too, but somewhat vaguely. Happiness had gone out of his face, though he continued to smile, and caution had come into his eyes. His face was a watchful-eyed smiling mask held up between his thoughts
