“Half’s in a vent pipe from the fuel tanks, the other half’s in a scupper from the boat deck to the promenade deck.”
They stared at him in silence. Grafton got sly again. “Where are you gonna be while we’re takin’ all the risks?”
“Waiting for you on the dock with a car,” said Spade.
Grafton shook his head. “Uh-uh. You’re gonna be right there with us so you’ll be in the can with us if anything goes wrong.”
Spade sighed, shrugged. “You birds are too smart for me.”
From the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Office in Powell Street, Spade called Tom Polhaus in the Detective Squad Room at the Hall of Justice. “Dundy around, Tom?”
“Gone home.” Polhaus chuckled. “So we can talk, if that’s what you’re driving at.”
“That’s what I’m driving at.”
“I can’t be goin’ around behind my partner’s back, Sam.”
“He would behind yours. Bring him in after if that’s what you want, but if he knows about the play beforehand he’ll hex it for sure. And he’ll hog the glory and the promotions. Do you want in on the San Anselmo gold-theft collars or not?”
“Damn, I just knew you had a line to that gold,” said Tom.
Spade talked, hung up, called a Hertz Drive-Ur-Self station and said he would be by to pick up a car within the hour. At Bernstein’s in Powell Street he had a plate of steamed clams, then walked to his apartment to change clothes.
An hour after midnight a 1920 Model T Ford went out along Pier 35 to stop at the wooden fence. Its streamlined hood and big radiator with nickel trimmings gleamed under wet-haloed dock lights. Beyond the fence the black curved side of the San Anselmo stretched up into darkness. In the bay Alcatraz was baying like an old hound, Land’s End lighthouse was yapping back from beyond the Gate.
The car ka-chunked to a stop. The driver’s door creaked open. Sam Spade stepped out. The salt tang of the bay filled his nostrils. He stood for long moments, his head swiveling like the head of a wary bear.
Satisfied, he put one hand on top of the wooden fence and vaulted over. Stood again, listening, watching. At the top of the unguarded gangway two shadowy figures materialized, one heavy, wide, slouchy, the other tall, narrow, quick.
“Where’s the gangplank guard?” asked Spade in an undertone.
“Down in the galley.” Grost used the same low tone. “We put them drops in the coffee urn like you told us; he’s sleeping like a baby. Last night in port, no one else is aboard.”
“The chest’s in the car. Let’s go get it,” said Spade.
The three stealthy figures hauled the obviously empty iron-bound chest up the gangplank, carried it awkwardly down to the promenade deck, opened it, set it under the bottom of the scupper that had clunked dully under Spade’s earlier tapping.
Grafton’s sheath knife dug out the plug. Down poured a shower of gold sovereigns. Spade grabbed the rope handle at one end of the chest, began backing toward the stairs, dragging it with him. The two seamen pushed from behind, then lifted it up step-by-step. On the boat deck above, Grafton unblocked the vent pipe. They hand-over-handed up a twenty-foot length of fire hose, its nozzle down. Spade tipped the open end of the hose over the chest. Another flood of gold coins poured down.
“Fifty thousand dollars in all,” panted Grafton in triumph.
They dragged the chest over to the gangplank, Spade carrying one end by its rope handle, the two seamen carrying the other. Spade seemed to catch his heel on something, lost his balance. He dropped his end of the chest on Grost’s foot; his flailing elbow caught Grafton on the side of his jaw. The chest broke open, gold coins spilled out.
There were sudden shouting voices, pounding feet, light from wildly waving electric torches. Uniformed bulls surged up the gangplank and came from the shadows on the deck. Tom Polhaus was in the forefront, directing them, his small shrewd eyes alight.
“We’ll have the devil’s own time to gather up all them coins, Samuel,” he said.
Spade growled, “What do you want, Tom? Pretty ribbon wrapped around ’em? Here’s something else: if I were you, I’d put divers off the stern of this ship tomorrow morning early.”
“Divers? What for?”
“To recover the two empty chests those birds dumped overboard after they hid the gold you just recovered by inspired police work.” He gave a sardonic laugh. “Unless Dundy is back at the hall working out ways to grab the glory.”
“Aw, c’mon, Sam,” said Polhaus almost sheepishly. “You know the sergeant’s a fair man in his own way.”
Spade said, “I’ll be in tomorrow to give my statement.”
Polhaus led his shackled prisoners down the gangplank as police officers on hands and knees gathered up the scattered coins. Spade melted into the shadow of the cabin, unseen, until the police and dockside onlookers below had dispersed.
Only then did he jerk aside the already-loosened canvas cover on one of the lifeboats slung on davits above the rail. He reached in and, one-handed, bodily hauled a squirming teenager out by his coat collar.
“Sorry to forestall your South Seas dream, son,” he said to “Henny” Hendrickson Barber, “but you’re worth money to me.”
11
At the Blue Rock Inn
Sam Spade’s left hand was about to replace the receiver when he heard Sid Wise’s sleep-thick voice in his ear.
“If the city isn’t on fire, I’m going to—”
“My office. Pronto.” Spade hung up.
He looked at the disconsolate teenager slumped across the desk from him, arms hanging limply outside the chair arms toward the floor. It was cold in the office.
“How much trouble am I in?” asked the boy finally.
Spade licked the paper of one of his hand-rolled, twisted the ends, put one end in his mouth, lit it. “With the cops, none at all.” He put a shrug in his voice. “With your folks—”
“How’d you find me?”
“I saw your clothes and food and books in a lifeboat.”
The boy fell silent. Spade smoked placidly. Henny finally said, “You sound like you tried it once.”
Spade chuckled. “I didn’t get any farther than you did. My old man whaled the tar out of me.”
“That’d be beneath Pater’s dignity. My ma will yell at me and then start hugging me. She never lets me do anything.”
Hurried steps pattered up the hall, came through Spade’s outer door without slowing down. Sid Wise burst in.
“Sam, what the devil are you...” He ran down, seeing the boy for the first time. He exclaimed, “Henny!”
“ ‘Lo, Mr. Wise,” said Henny despondently to the floor.
“Where’d you find him?”
“San Anselmo.” Spade grinned wolfishly. “Got the gold, too, fifty thousand worth. Seventy-five is still missing. So is McPhee, so the case isn’t closed yet in my book.”
Wise gestured Henny out of the chair, fell into it himself. “You’d better tell me all about it. From the beginning.”
Spade pointed at the telephone.
“Call the Barbers. I’ll fill you in while you’re driving the three of us out to their estate to bring this desperado here home to his folks.”
Henny couldn’t hide his sudden grin at the description.
“You’ll be fighting off the girls with a stick at U.C. Berkeley, son.” To Wise he said, “I gave it to Tom Polhaus. The find, the takedown. By the time Dundy gets through shoving him aside, neither his nor my name will appear in the papers.”