asked.
Polhaus nodded, put the forkful of jelly into his mouth, swallowed it, and qualified his nod: 'Mostly.'
'Dundy send you?'
Polhaus made a disgusted mouth. 'You know he didn't. He's as bullheaded as you are.'
Spade smiled and shook his head. 'No, he's not, Tom,' he said. 'He just thinks he is.'
Tom scowled and chopped at his pig's foot with a knife. 'Ain't you ever going to grow up?' he grumbled. 'What've you got to beef about? He didn't hurt you. You came out on top. What's the sense of making a grudge of it? You're just making a lot of grief for yourself.'
Spade placed his knife and fork carefully together on his plate, and put his hands on the table beside his plate. His smile was faint and devoid of warmth. 'With every bull in town working overtime trying to pile up grief for me a little more won't hurt. I won't even know it's there.'
Polhaus's ruddiness deepened. He said: 'That's a swell thing to say to me.'
Spade picked up his knife and fork and began to eat. Polhaus ate.
Presently Spade asked: 'See the boat on fire in the bay?'
'I saw the smoke. Be reasonable. Sam. Dundy was wrong and he knows it. Why don't you let it go at that?'
'Think I ought to go around and tell him I hope my chin didn't hurt his fist?'
Polhaus cut savagely into his pig's foot.
Spade said: 'Phil Archer been in with any more hot tips?'
'Aw, hell! Dundy didn't think you shot Miles, but what else could he do except run the lead down? You'd've done the same thing in his place, and you know it.'
'Yes?' Malice glittered in Spade's eyes. 'What made him think I didn't do it? What makes you think I didn't? Or don't you?'
Polhaus's ruddy face flushed again. He said: 'Thursby shot Miles.'
'You think he did.'
'He did. That Webley was his, and the slug in Miles came out of it.'
'Sure?' Spade demanded.
'Dead sure,' the police-detective replied. 'We got hold of a kid—a bellhop at Thursby's hotel—that had seen it in his room just that morning. He noticed it particular because he'd never saw one just like it before. I never saw one. You say they don't make them any more. It ain't likely there'd be another around and—anyway—if that wasn't Thursby's what happened to his? And that's the gun the slug in Miles come out of.' He started to put a piece of bread into his mouth, withdrew it, and asked: 'You say you've seen them before: where was that at?' He put the bread into his mouth.
'In England before the war.'
'Sure, there you are.'
Spade nodded and said: 'Then that leaves Thursby the only one I lilled.'
Polhaus squirmed in his chair and his face was red and shiny. 'Christ's sake, ain't you never going to forget that?' he complained earnestly. 'That's out. You know it as well as I do. You'd think you wasn't a dick yourself the way you bellyache over things. I suppose you don't never pull the same stuff on anybody that we pulled on you?'
'You mean that you tried to pull on me, Tom—just tried.'
Polhaus swore under his breath and attacked the remainder of his pig's foot.
Spade said: 'All right. You know it's out and I know it's out. What does Dundy know?'
'He knows it's out.'
'What woke him up?'
'Aw, Sam, he never really thought you'd—' Spade's smile checked Polhaus. He left the sentence incomplete and said: 'We dug up a record on Thursby.'
'Yes? Who was he?'
Polhaus's shrewd small brown eyes studied Spade's face. Spade exclaimed irritably: 'I wish to God I knew half as much about this business as you Smart guys think I do!'
'I wish we all did,' Polhaus grumbled. 'Well, he was a St. Louis gunman the first we hear of him. He was picked up a lot of times back there for this and that, but he belonged to the Egan mob, so nothing much was ever done about any of it. I don't know howcome he left that shelter, but they got him once in New York for knocking over a row of stuss-games—his twist turned him up—and he was in a year before Fallon got him sprung. A couple of years later he did a short hitch in Juliet for pistol-whipping another twist that had given him the needle, but after that he took up with Dixie Monahan and didn't have any trouble getting out whenever he happened to get in. That was when Dixie was almost as big a shot as Nick the Greek in Chicago gambling. This Thursby was Dixie's bodyguard and he took the run-out with him when Dixie got in wrong with the rest of the boys over some debts he couldn't or wouldn't pay off. That was a couple of years back—about the time the Newport Beach Boating Club was shut up. I don't know if Dixie had any part in that. Anyways, this is the first time him or Thursby's been seen since.'
'Dixie's been seen?' Spade asked.
Polhaus shook his head. 'No.' His small eyes became sharp, prying. 'Not unless you've seen him or know somebody's seen him.'
Spade lounged back in his chair and began to make a cigarette. 'I haven't,' he said mildly. 'This is all new stuff to me.'
'I guess it is,' Polhaus snorted.
Spade grinned at him and asked: 'Where'd you pick up all this news about Thurshy?'
'Some of it's on the records. The rest—well—we got it here and there.'
'From Cairo, for instance?' Now Spade's eyes held the prying gleam.
Polhaus put down his coffee-cup and shook his head. 'Not a word of it. You poisoned that guy for us.'
Spade laughed. 'You mean a couple of high-class sleuths like you and Dundy worked on that lily-of-the- valley all night and couldn't crack him?'
'What do you mean—all night?' Polhaus protested. 'We worked on him for less than a couple of hours. We saw we wasn't getting nowhere, and let him go.'
Spade laughed again and looked at his watch. He caught John's eye and asked for the check. 'I've got a date with the D. A. this afternoon,' he told Polhaus while they waited for his change.
'He send for you?'
'Yes.'
Polhaus pushed his chair back and stood up, a barrel-bellied tall man, solid and phlegmatic. 'You won't be doing me any favor,' he said, 'by telling him I've talked to you like this.'
A lathy youth with salient ears ushered Spade into the District Attorney's office. Spade went in smiling easily, saying easily: 'Hello, Bryan!'
District Attorney Bryan stood up and held his hand out across his desk. He was a blond man of medium stature, perhaps forty-five years dd, with aggressive blue eyes behind black-ribboned nose-glasses, the over-large mouth of an orator, and a wide dimpled chin. When he said, 'How do you do, Spade?' his voice was resonant with latent power.
They shook hands and sat down.
The District Attorney put his finger on one of the pearl buttons in a battery of four on his desk, said to the lathy youth who opened the door again, 'Ask Mr. Thomas and Healy to come in,' and then, rocking back in his chair, addressed Spade pleasantly: 'You and the police haven't been hitting it off so well, have you?'
Spade made a negligent gesture with the fingers of his right hand. 'Nothing serious,' he said lightly. 'Dundy gets too enthusiastic.'
The door opened to admit two men. The one to whom Spade said, 'Hello, Thomas!' was a sunburned stocky man of thirty in clothing and hair of a kindred unruliness. He clapped Spade on the shoulder with a freckled hand, asked, 'How's tricks?' and sat down beside him. The second man was younger and colorless. He took a seat a little apart from the others and balanced a stenographer's notebook on his knee, holding a green pencil over it.
