now!' He threw the towel down and ran fingers through his hair. 'We'll have a look at that bundle.'
He went into the inner office again, stepped over the dead man's legs, and picked up the brown-paper- wrapped parcel. When he felt its weight his eyes glowed. He put it on his desk, turning it over so that the knotted part of the rope was uppermost. The knot was hard and tight. He took out his pocket-knife and cut the rope.
The girl had left the door and, edging around the dead man with her face turned away, had come to Spade's side. As she stood there—hands on a corner of the desk—watching him pull the rope loose and push aside brown paper, excitement began to supplant nausea in her face. 'Do you think it is?' she whispered.
'We'll soon know,' Spade said, his big fingers busy with the inner husk of coarse grey paper, three sheets thick, that the brown paper's removal had revealed. His face was hard and dull. His eyes were shining. When he had put the grey paper out of the way he had an egg-shaped mass of pale excelsior, wadded tight. His fingers tore the wad apart and then he had the foot-high figure of a bird, black as coal and shiny w'here its polish was not dulled by wood-dust and fragments of excelsior.
Spade laughed. He put a hand down on the bird. His wide-spread fingers had ownership in their curving. He put his other arm around Effie Perine and crushed her body against his. 'We've got the damned thing, angel,' he said.
'Ouch!' she said, 'you're hurting me.'
He took his arm away from her, picked the black bird up in both hands, and shook it to dislodge clinging excelsior. Then he stepped back holding it up in front of him and blew dust off it, regarding it triumphantly.
Effie Perine made a horrified face and screamed, pointing at his feet.
He looked down at his feet. His last backward step had brought his left heel into contact with the dead man's hand, pinching a quarter-inch of flesh at a side of the palm between heel and floor. Spade jerked his foot away from the hand.
The telephone-bell rang.
He nodded at the girl. She turned to the desk and put the receiver to her ear. She said: 'Hello. . . . Yes. . . . Who? . . . Oh, yes!' Her eyes became large. 'Yes Yes. . . Hold the line Fler mouth suddenly stretched wide and fearful. She cried: 'Hello! Hello! Hello!' She rattled the prong up and down and cried, 'Hello!' twice. Then she sobbed and spun around to face Spade, who was close beside her by now. 'It was Miss O'Shaughnessy,' she said wildly. 'She wants you. She's at the Alexandria—in danger. Her voice was—oh, it was awful, Sarn!—and something happened to her before she could finish. Co help her, Sam!'
Spade put the falcon down on the desk and scowled gloomily. 'I've got to take care of this fellow first,' he said, pointing his thumb at the thin corpse on the floor.
She beat his chest with her fists, crying: 'No, no—you've got to go to her. Don't you see, Sam? He had the thing that was hers and he came to you with it. Don't you see? He was helping her and they killed him and now she's— Oh, you've gut to go!'
'All right.' Spade pushed her away and bent over his desk, putting the black bird back into its nest of excelsior, bending the paper around it, working rapidly, making a larger and clumsy package. 'As soon as I've gone phone the police. Tell them how it happened, but don't drag any names in. You don't know. I got the phone-call and I told you I had to go out, but I didn't say where.' He cursed the rope for being tangled, yanked it into straightness, and began to bind the package. 'Forget this thing. Tell it as it happened, but forget he had a bundle.' He chewed his lower lip. 'Unless they pin you down. If they seem to know about it you'll have to admit it. But that's not likely. If they do then I took the bundle away with me, unopened.' He finished tying the knot and straightened up with the parcel under his left arm. 'Get it straight, now. Everything happened the way it did happen, but without this dingus unless they already know about it. Don't deny it—just don't mention it. And I got the phone-call— not you. And you don't know anything about anybody else having any connection with this fellow. You don't know anything about him and you can't talk about my business until you see me. Got it?'
'Yes, Sam. Who—do you know who he is?'
He grinned wolfishly. 'Uh-uh,' he said, 'but I'd guess he was Captain Jacobi, master of La Paloma.' He picked up his hat and put it on. He looked thoughtfully at the dead man and then around the room.
'Hurry, Sam,' the girl begged.
'Sure,' he said absent-mindedly, 'I'll hurry. Might not hurt to get those few scraps of excelsior off the floor before the police come. And maybe you ought to try to get hold of Sid. No.' He rubbed his chin. 'We'll leave him out of it awhile. It'll look better. I'd keep the door locked till they come.' He took his hand from his chin and rubbed her cheek. 'You're a damned good man, sister,' he said and went out.
XVII.Saturday Night
Carrying the parcel lightly under his arm, walking briskly, with only the ceaseless shifting of his eyes to denote wariness, Spade went, partly by way of an alley and a narrow court, from his office-building to Kearny and Post Streets, where he hailed a passing taxicab.
The taxicab carried him to the Pickwick Stage terminal in Fifth Street. He checked the bird at the Parcel Room there, put the check into a stamped envelope, wrote M. F. Holland and a San Francisco Post Office box- number on the envelope, sealed it, and dropped it into a mail-box. From the stage-terminal another taxicab carried him to the Alexandria Hotel.
Spade went up to suite i 2-C and knocked on the door. The door was opened, when he had knocked a second time, by a small fair-haired girl in a shimmering yellow dressing-gown—a small girl whose face was white and dim and who clung desperately to the inner doorknob with both hands and gasped: 'Mr. Spade?'
Spade said, 'Yes,' and caught her as she swayed.
Her body arched back over his arm and her head dropped straight back so that her short fair hair hung down her scalp and her slender throat was a firm curve from chin to chest.
Spade slid his supporting arm higher up her back and bent to get his other arm under her knees, but she stirred then, resisting, and between parted lips that barely moved blurred words came: 'No! Ma' me wa'!'
Spade made her walk. He kicked the door shut and he walked her up and down the green-carpeted room from wall to wall. One of his arms around her small body, that hand under her armpit, his other hand gripping her other arm, held her erect when she stumbled, checked her swaying, kept urging her forward, but made her tottering legs bear all her weight they could bear. They walked across and across the floor, the girl falteringly, with incoOrdinatc steps, Spade surely on the balls of his feet with balance unaffected by her staggering. Her face was chalk-white and eyeless, his sullen, with eyes hardened to watch everywhere at once.
He talked to her monotonously: 'That's the stuff. Left, right, left, right. That's the stuff. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, now we turn.' He shook her as they turned from the wall. 'Now back again. One, two, three, four. Hold your head up. That's the stuff. Good girl. Left, right, left, right. Now we turn again.' He shook her again. 'That's the girl. Walk, walk, walk, walk. One, two, three, four. Now we go around.' He shook her, more roughly, and increased their pace. 'That's the trick. Left, right, left, right. We're in a hurry. One, two, three
She shuddered and swallowed audibly. Spade began to chafe her arm and side and he put his mouth nearer her ear. 'That's fine. You're doing fine. One, two, three, four. Faster, faster, faster, faster. That's it. Step, step, step, step. Pick them up and lay them down. That's the stuff. Now we turn. Left, right, left, right. What'd they do— dope you? The same stuff' they gave me?'
Her eyelids twitched up then for an instant over dulled golden-brown eyes and she managed to say all of 'Yes' except the final consonant.
They walked the floor, the girl almost trotting now to keep up with Spade, Spade slapping and kneading her flesh through yellow silk with both hands, talking and talking while his eyes remained hard and aloof and watchful. 'Left, right, left, right, left, right, turn. That's the girl. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Keep the chin up. That's the stuff. One, two . .
Her lids lifted again a bare fraction of an inch and under them her eyes moved weakly from side to side.
'That's fine,' he said in a crisp voice, dropping his monotone. 'Keep them open. Open them wide—wide!' He shook her.
She moaned in protest, but her lids went farther up, though her eyes were without inner light. He raised his
