hand and slapped her cheek half a dozen times in quick succession. She moaned again and tried to break away from him. His arm held her and swept her along beside him from wall to wall.
'Keep walking,' he ordered in a harsh voice, and then: 'Who are you?'
Her 'Rhea Gutman' was thick but intelligible.
'The daughter?'
'Yes.' Now she was no farther from the final consonant than sh.
'Where's Brigid?'
She twisted convulsively around in his arms and caught at one of his hands with both of hers. He pulled his hand away quickly and looked at it. Across its back was a thin red scratch an inch and a half or more in length.
'What the hell?' he growled and examined her hands. Her left hand was empty. In her right hand, when he forced it open, lay a three-inch jade-headed steel bouquet-pin. 'What the hell?' he growled again and held the pin up in front of her eyes.
When she saw the pin she whimpered and opened her dressing-gown. She pushed aside the cream-colored pajama-coat under it and showed him her body below her left breast—white flesh crisscrossed with thin red lines, dotted with tiny red dots, where the pin had scratched and punctured it. 'To stay awake . . . walk . . . till you came. . . . She said you'd come ere so long.' She swayed.
Spade tightened his arm around her and said: 'Walk.'
She fought against his arm, squirming around to face him again. 'No tell you . . . sleep . . . save her . . .'
'Brigid?' he demanded.
'Yes … took her . . . Bur-Burlingame . . . twenty-six Ancho . hurry . . . too late . . .' Her head fell over on her shoulder.
Spade pushed her head up roughly. 'Who took her there? Your father?'
'Yes . . . Wilmer … Cairo.' She writhed and her eyelids twitched but did not open. '. . . kill her.' Her head fell over again, and again he pushed it up.
'Who shot Jacobi?'
She did not seem to hear the question. She tried pitifully to hold her head up, to open her eyes. She mumbled: 'Go … she . .
He shook her brutally. 'Stay awake till the doctor comes.'
Fear opened her eyes and pushed for a moment the cloudiness from her face. 'No, no,' she cried thickly, 'father … kill me . . . swear you won't . . . he'd know . . . I did . . . for her . . . promise . . . won't
sleep . . . all right . . . morning . .
He shook her again. 'You're sure you can sleep the stuff off all right?'
'Ye'.' Her head fell down again.
'Where's your bed?'
She tried to raise a hand, hut the effort had become too much for her before the hand pointed at anything except the carpet. With the sigh of a tired child she let her whole body relax and crumple.
Spade caught her up in his arms—scooped her up as she sank—and, holding her easily against his chest, went to the nearest of the three doors. He turned the knob far enough to release the catch, pushed the door open with his foot, and went into a passageway that ran past an open bathroom-door to a bedroom. He looked into the bathroom, saw it was empty, and carried the girl into the bedroom. Nobody was there. The clothing that was in sight and things on the chiffonier said it was a man's room.
Spade carried the girl back to the green-carpeted room and tried the opposite door. Through it he passed into another passageway, past another empty bathroom, and into a bedroom that was feminine in its accessories. He turned back the bedclothes and laid the girl on the bed, removed her slippers, raised her a little to slide the yellow dressing-gown off, fixed a pillow under her head, and put the covers up over her.
Then he opened the room's two windows and stood with his back to them staring at the sleeping girl. Her breathing was heavy but not troubled. He frowned and looked around, working his lips together. Twilight was dimming the room. He stood there in the weakening light for perhaps five minutes. Finally he shook his thick sloping shoulders impatiently and went out, leaving the suite's outer door unlocked.
Spade went to the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company's station in Powell Street and called Davenport 2020. 'Emergency Hospital, please. . . . Hello, there's a girl in suite twelve C at the Alexandria Hotel who has been drugged. . . . Yes, you'd better send somebody to take a look at her. . . . This is Mr. Hooper of the Alexandria.'
He put the receiver on its prong and laughed. He called another number and said: 'Hello, Frank. This is Sam Spade Can you let me have a car with a driver who'll keep his mouth shut? . . . To go down the peninsula right away. . . . Just a couple of hours. . . . Right. Have him pick me up at John's, Ellis Street, as soon as he can make it.'
He called another number—his office's—held the receiver to his ear for a little while without saying anything, and replaced it on its hook.
He went to John's Grill, asked the waiter to hurry his order of chops, baked potato, and sliced tomatoes, ate hurriedly, and was smoking a cigarette with his coffee when a thick-set youngish man with a plaid cap set askew above pale eyes and a tough cheery face came into the Grill and to his table.
'All set, Mr. Spade. She's full of gas and rearing to go.'
'Swell.' Spade emptied his cup and went out with the thick-set man. 'Know' where Aneho Avenue, or Road, or Boulevard, is in Burlingame?'
'Nope, hut if she's there we can find her.'
'Let's do that,' Spade said as he sat beside the chauffeur in the dark Cadillac sedan. 'Twenty-six is the number we w'ant, and the sooner the better, but w'e don't want to pull up at the front door.'
'Correct.'
They rode half a dozen blocks in silence. The chauffeur said: 'Your partner got knocked off, didn't he, Mr. Spade?'
'Uh-huh.'
The chauffeur clucked. 'She's a tough racket. You can have it for mine.'
'Well, hack-drivers don't live forever.'
'Maybe that's right,' the thick-set man conceded, 'but, just the same, it'll always be a surprise to me if I don't.'
Spade stared ahead at nothing and thereafter, until the chauffeur tired of making conversation, replied with uninterested yeses and noes.
At a drug-store in Burlingame the chauffeur learned how to reach Ancho Avenue. Ten minutes later he stopped the sedan near a dark corner, turned off the lights, and waved his hand at the block ahead. 'There she is,' he said. 'She ought to be on the other side, maybe the third or fourth house.'
Spade said, 'Right,' and got out of the car. 'Keep the engine going. We may have to lease in a hurry.'
He crossed the street and went up the other side. Far ahead a lone street-light burned. Warmer lights dotted the night on either side where houses were spaced half a dozen to a block. A high thin moon was cold and feeble as the distant street-light. A radio droned through the open window's of a house on the other side of the street.
In front of the second house from the corner Spade halted. On one of the gateposts that were massive out of all proportion to the fence flanking them a 2 and a 6 of pale metal caught svhat light there was. A square white card was nailed over them. Putting his face close to the card, Spade could see that it was a For Sale or Rent sign. There was no gate betw'een the posts. Spade went up the cement walk to the house. He stood still on the walk at the foot of the porch-steps for a long moment. No sound came from the house. The house w'as dark except for another pale square card nailed on its door.
Spade went up to the door and listened. He could hear nothing. He tried to look through the glass of the door. There was no curtain to keep his gaze out, but inner darkness. FIe tiptoed to a window and then to another. They, like the door, were uncurtained except by inner darkness. He tried both windows. They were locked. He tried the door. It was locked.
