frightened n-ic for a moment! I really thought you— You know you do such wild and unpredictable things that—' She broke off. She thrust her face forward and stared deep into his eyes. Her cheeks and the flesh around her mouth shivered and fear came back into her eyes. 'What—? Sam!' She put her hands to her throat again and lost her erectness.
Spade laughed. His yellow-white face was damp with sweat and though he held his smile he could not hold softness in his voice. He croaked: 'Don't be silly. You're taking the fail. One of us has got to take it, after the talking those birds will do. They'd hang me sure. You're likely to get a better break. Well?'
'But—but, Sam, you can't! Not after what we've been to each other. You can't—'
'Like hell I can't.'
She took a long trembling breath. 'You've been playing with me? Only pretending you cared—to trap me like this? You didn't—care at all? You didn't—don't—I-love me?'
'I think I do,' Spade said. 'What of it?' The muscles holding his smile in place stood out like wales. 'I'm not Thursby. I'm not Jacobi. I won't play the sap for you.'
'That is not just,' she cried. Tears came to her eyes. 'It's unfair. It's contemptible of you. You know it was not that. You can't say that.'
'Like hell I can't,' Spade said. 'You came into my bed to stop me asking questions. You led me out yesterday for Gutman with that phoney call for help. Last night you came here with them and waited outside for me and came in with me. You were in my arms when the trap was sprung—I couldn't have gone for a gun if I'd had one on me and couldn't have made a fight of it if I had wanted to. And if they didn't take you away with them it was only because Gutman's got too much sense to trust you except for short stretches when he has to and because he thought I'd play the sap for you and—not wanting to hurt you—wouldn't be able to hurt him.'
Brigid O'Shaughnessy blinked her tears away. She took a step towards him and stood looking him in the eyes, straight and proud. 'You called me a liar,' she said. 'Now you are hying. You're lying if you say you don't know down in your heart that, in spite of anything I've done, I love you.'
Spade made a short abrupt bow. His eyes were becoming bloodshot, but there was no other change in his damp and yellowish fixedly smiling face. 'Maybe I do,' he said. 'What of it? I should trust you? You who arranged that nice little trick for—for my predecessor, Thursby? You who knocked off Miles, a man you had nothing against, in cold blood, just like swatting a fly, for the sake of double-crossing Thursby? You who doublecrossed Gutman, Cairo, Thursby—one, two, three? You who've never played square with me for half an hour at a stretch since I've known you? I shouid trust you? No, no, darling. I wouldn't do it even if I could. Why should I?'
Her eyes were steady under his and her hushed voice was steady when she replied: 'Why should you? If you've been playing with me, if you do not love me, there is no answer to that. If you did, no answer would be needed.'
Blood streaked Spade's eyeballs now and his long-held smile had become a frightful grimace. He cleared his throat huskily and said: 'Making speeches is no damned good now.' He put a hand on her shoulder. The hand shook and jerked. 'I don't care who loves who I'm not going to play the sap for you. I won't walk in Thursby's and Christ knows who else's footsteps. You killed Miles and you're going over for it. I could have heiped you by letting the others go and standing off the police the best way I could. It's too late for that now. I can't help you now. And I wouldn't if I could.'
She put a hand on his hand on her shoulder. 'Don't help me then,' she whispered, 'but don't hurt me. Let me go away now.'
'No,' he said. 'I'm sunk if I haven't got you to hand over to the police when they come. That's the only thing that can keep me from going down with the others.'
'You won't do that for me?'
'I won't play the sap for you.'
'Don't say that, please.' She took his hand from her shoulder and held it to her face. 'Why must you do this to me, Sam? Surely Mr. Archer wasn't as much to you as—'
'Miles,' Spade said hoarsely, 'was a son of a bitch. I found that out the first week we were in business together and I meant to kick him out as soon as the year was up. You didn't do me a damned bit of harm by killing him.'
'Then what?'
Spade pulled his hand out of hers. He no longer either smiled or grimaced. His wet yellow face was set hard and deeply lined. His eyes burned madly. He said: 'Listen. This isn't a damned bit of good. You'll never understand nc. but I'll try once more and then we'll give it up. Listen. When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around—bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I'm a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it's not the natural thing. The only way I could have let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. That's—'
'You're not serious,' she said. 'You don't expect me to think that these things you're saying are sufficient reason for sending me to the—'
'Wait till I'm through and then you can talk. Fourth, no matter what I wanted to do now it would be absolutely impossible for me to let you go without having myself dragged to the gallows with the others. Next, I've no reason in God's world to think I can trust you and if I did this and got aw-ay with it you'd have something on me that you could use whenever you happened to want to. That's five of them. The sixth would be that, since I've also got something on you, I couldn't be sure you wouldn't decide to shoot a hole in me some day. Seventh, I don't even like the idea of thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you'd played me for a sucker. And eighth—but that's enough. All those on one side. Maybe some of them arc unimportant. I w'on't argue about that. But look at the number of them. Now on the other side we've got what? All we've got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you.'
'You know,' she whispered, 'whether you do or not.'
'I don't. It's easy enough to be nuts about you.' He looked hungrily from her hair to her feet and up to her eyes again. 'But I don't know what that amounts to. Does anybody ever? But suppose I do? What of it? Maybe next month I won't. I've been through it before—when it lasted that long. Then what? Then I'll think I played the sap. And if I did it and got sent over then I'd be sure I was the sap. Well, if I send you over I'll be sorry as hell—I'll have some rotten nights—but that'll pass. Listen.' He took her by the shoulders and bent her back, leaning over her. 'If that doesn't mean anything to you forget it and we'll make it this: I won't because all of me wants to—wants to say to hell with the consequences and do it—and because—God damn you—you've counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with the others.' He took his hands from her shoulders and let them fall to his sides.
She put her hands up to his cheeks and drew his face down again. 'Look at me,' she said, 'and tell me the truth. Would you have done this to me if the falcon had been real and you had been paid your money?'
'What difference does that make now? Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business—bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy.'
She looked at him, saying nothing.
He moved his shoulders a little and said: 'Well, a lot of money would have been at least one more item on the other side of the scales.'
She put her face up to his face. Her mouth was slightly open with lips a little thrust out. She whispered: 'If you loved me you'd need nothing more on that side.'
Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them: 'I won't play the sap for you.'
She put her mouth to his, slowly, her arms around him, and came into his arms. She was in his arms when the door-bell rang.
Spade, left arm around Brigid O'Shaughnessy, opened the corridordoor. Lieutenant Dundy, Detective- sergeant Tom Polhaus, and two other detectives were there.
Spade said: 'Hello, Tom. Get them?'
Polhaus said: 'Got them.'
