A voice groaned feebly behind Spade.
He turned swiftly. Through an open doorway he could see an old man in white pajamas lying sprawled across a rumpled bed. His head, a shoulder, an arm dangled over the edge of the bed. His other hand held his throat tightly. He groaned again and his eyelids twitched, but did not open.
Spade lifted the old man’s head and shoulders and put them up on the pillows. The old man groaned again and took his hand from his throat. His throat was red with half a dozen bruises. He was a gaunt man with a seamed face that probably exaggerated his age.
A glass of water was on a table beside the bed. Spade put water on the old man’s face and, when the old man’s eyes twitched again, leaned down and growled softly: “Who did it?”
The twitching eyelids went up far enough to show a narrow strip of bloodshot gray eyes. The old man spoke painfully, putting a hand to his throat again: “A man — he—” He coughed.
Spade made an impatient grimace. His lips almost touched the old man’s ear. “Where’d he go?” His voice was urgent.
A gaunt hand moved weakly to indicate the rear of the house and fell back on the bed.
The butler and two frightened female servants had joined Wallace Binnett beside the dead woman in the hallway.
“Who did it?” Spade asked them.
They stared at him blankly.
“Somebody look after the old man,” he growled, and went down the hallway.
At the end of the hallway was a rear staircase. He descended two flights and went through a pantry into the kitchen. He saw nobody. The kitchen door was shut but, when he tried it, not locked. He crossed a narrow back yard to a gate that was shut, not locked. He opened the gate. There was nobody in the narrow alley behind it.
He sighed, shut the gate, and returned to the house.
Spade sat comfortably slack in a deep leather chair in a room that ran across the front second story of Wallace Binnett’s house. There were shelves of books and the lights were on. The window showed outer darkness weakly diluted by a distant street lamp. Facing Spade, Detective Sergeant Polhaus — a big, carelessly shaven, florid man in dark clothes that needed pressing — was sprawled in another leather chair; Lieutenant Dundy — smaller, compactly built, square-faced — stood with legs apart, head thrust a little forward, in the center of the room.
Spade was saying: “...and the doctor would only let me talk to the old man a couple of minutes. We can try it again when he’s rested a little, but it doesn’t look like he knows much. He was catching a nap and he woke up with somebody’s hands on his throat dragging him around the bed. The best he got was a one-eyed look at the fellow choking him. A big fellow, he says, with a soft hat pulled down over his eyes, dark, needing a shave. Sounds like Tom.” Spade nodded at Polhaus.
The detective sergeant chuckled, but Dundy said, “Go on,” curtly.
Spade grinned and went on: “He’s pretty far gone when he hears Mrs. Binnett scream at the door. The hands go away from his throat and he hears the shot and just before passing out he gets a flash of the big fellow heading for the rear of the house and Mrs. Binnett tumbling down on the hall floor. He says he never saw the big fellow before.”
“What size gun was it?” Dundy asked.
“Thirty-eight. Well, nobody in the house is much more help. Wallace and his sister-in-law, Joyce, were in her room, so they say, and didn’t see anything but the dead woman when they ran out, though they think they heard something that could’ve been somebody running downstairs — the back stairs.
“The butler — his name’s Jarboe — was in here when he heard the scream and shot, so he says. Irene Kelly, the maid, was down on the ground floor, so she says. The cook, Margaret Finn, was in her room — third floor back — and didn’t even hear anything, so she says. She’s deaf as a post, so everybody else says. The back door and gate were unlocked, but are supposed to be kept locked, so everybody says. Nobody says they were in or around the kitchen or yard at the time.” Spade spread his hands in a gesture of finality. “That’s the crop.”
Dundy shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said. “How come you were here?”
Spade’s face brightened. “Maybe my client killed her,” he said. “He’s Wallace’s cousin, Ira Binnett. Know him?”
Dundy shook his head. His blue eyes were hard and suspicious.
“He’s a San Francisco lawyer,” Spade said, “respectable and all that. A couple of days ago he came to me with a story about his uncle Timothy, a miserly old skinflint, lousy with money and pretty well broken up by hard living. He was the black sheep of the family. None of them had heard of him for years. But six or eight months ago he showed up in pretty bad shape every way except financially — he seems to have taken a lot of money out of Australia — wanting to spend his last days with his only living relatives, his nephews Wallace and Ira.
“That was all right with them. ‘Only living relatives’ meant ‘only heirs’ in their language. But by and by the nephews began to think it was better to be an heir than to be one of a couple of heirs — twice as good, in fact — and started fiddling for the inside track with the old man. At least, that’s what Ira told me about Wallace, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Wallace would say the same thing about Ira, though Wallace seems to be the harder up of the two. Anyhow, the nephews fell out, and then Uncle Tim, who had been staying at Ira’s, came over here. That was a couple of months ago, and Ira hasn’t seen Uncle Tim since, and hasn’t been able to get in touch with him by phone or mail.
“That’s what he wanted a private detective about. He didn’t think Uncle Tim would come to any harm here — oh, no, he went to a lot of trouble to make that clear — but he thought maybe undue pressure was being brought to bear on the old boy, or he was being hornswoggled somehow, and at least being told lies about his loving nephew Ira. He wanted to know what was what. I waited until today, when a boat from Australia docked, and came up here as a Mr. Ames with some important information for Uncle Tim about his properties down there. All I wanted was fifteen minutes alone with him.” Spade frowned thoughtfully. “Well, I didn’t get them. Wallace told me the old man refused to see me. I don’t know.”
Suspicion had deepened in Dundy’s cold blue eyes. “And where is this Ira Binnett now?” he asked.
Spade’s yellow-gray eyes were as guileless as his voice. “I wish I knew. I phoned his house and office and left word for him to come right over, but I’m afraid—”
Knuckles knocked sharply twice on the other side of the room’s one door. The three men in the room turned to face the door.
Dundy called, “Come in.”
The door was opened by a sunburned blond policeman whose left hand held the right wrist of a plump man of forty or forty-five in well-fitting gray clothes. The policeman pushed the plump man into the room. “Found him monkeying with the kitchen door,” he said.
Spade looked up and said: “Ah!” His tone expressed satisfaction. “Mr. Ira Wallace, Lieutenant Dundy, Sergeant Polhaus.”
Ira Binnett said rapidly: “Mr. Spade, will you tell this man that—”
Dundy addressed the policeman: “All right. Good work. You can leave him.”
The policeman moved a hand vaguely towards his cap and went away.
Dundy glowered at Ira Binnett and demanded, “Well?”
Binnett looked from Dundy to Spade. “Has something—”
Spade said: “Better tell him why you were at the back door instead of the front.”
Ira Binnett suddenly blushed. He cleared his throat in embarrassment. He said: “I... uh... I should explain. It wasn’t my fault, of course, but when Jarboe — he’s the butler — phoned me that Uncle Tim wanted to see me he told me he’d leave the kitchen door unlocked, so Wallace wouldn’t have to know I’d—”