He nodded at the book Spade still held. “How do you like it?”
Spade grinned, said, “I guess I'm just a mug,” and put the book down. “That's what I came to see you about, though, Mr. Ferris. You know Haven?”
“Yes, certainly. Sit down, Mr. Spade.” He sat in a chair not far from Spade's. “I knew him as a kid. He's not in trouble, is he?”
Spade said, “I don't know. I'm trying to find him.”
Ferris spoke hesitantly: “Can I ask why?”
“You know Gene Colyer?”
“Yes.” Ferris hesitated again, then said, “This is in confidence. I've a chain of picture houses through northern California, you know, and a couple of years ago when I had some labor trouble I was told that Colyer was the man to get in touch with to have it straightened out. That's how I happened to meet him.”
“Yes,” Spade said dryly. “A lot of people happen to meet Gene that way.”
“But what's he got to do with Eli?”
“Wants him found. How long since you've seen him?”
“Last Thursday he was here.”
“What time did he leave?”
“Midnight—a little after. He came over in the afternoon around half past three. We hadn't seen each other for years. I persuaded him to stay for dinner—he looked pretty seedy—and lent him some money.”
“How much?”
“A hundred and fifty—all I had in the house.”
“Say where he was going when he left?” Ferris shook his head. “He said he'd phone me the next day.”
“Did he phone you the next day?”
“No.”
“And you've known him all his life?”
“Not exactly, but he worked for me fifteen or sixteen years ago when I had a carnival company—Great Eastern and Western Combined Shows—with a partner for a while and then by myself, and I always liked the kid.”
“How long before Thursday since you'd seen him?”
“Lord knows,” Ferris replied. “I'd lost track of him for years. Then, Wednesday, out of a clear sky, that book came, with no address or anything, just that stuff written in the front, and the next morning he called me up. I was tickled to death to know he was still alive and doing something with himself. So he came over that afternoon and we Put in about nine hours straight talking about old times.”
“Tell you much about what he'd been doing since then?”
“Just that he'd been knocking around, doing one thing and another, taking the breaks as they came. He didn't complain much; I had to make him take the hundred and fifty.”
Spade stood up. “Thanks ever so much, Mr. Ferris. I —” Ferris interrupted him: “Not at all, and if there's anything I can do, call on me.”
Spade looked at his watch. “Can I phone my office to see if anything's turned up?—”
“Certainly; there's a phone in the next room, to the right.”
Spade said “Thanks” and went out. When he returned he was rolling a cigarette. His face was wooden.
“Any news?” Ferris asked.
“Yes. Colyer's called the job off. He says Haven's body's been found in some bushes on the other side of San Jose, with three bullets in it.” He smiled, adding mildly, “He told me he might be able to find out something through his connections.” . . .
Morning sunshine, coming through the curtains that screened Spade's office windows, put two fat, yellow rectangles on the floor and gave everything in the room a yellow tint.
He sat at his desk, staring meditatively at a newspaper. He did not look up when Effie Ferine came in from the outer office.
She said, “Mrs. Haven is here.”
He raised his head then and said, “That's better. Pus her in.”
Mrs. Haven came in quickly. Her face was white and she was shivering in spite of her fur coat and the warmth of the day. She came straight to Spade and asked, “Did Gene kill him?” Spade said, “I don't know.”
“I've got to know,” she cried.
Spade took her hands. “Here, sit down.” He led her to a chair. He asked, “Colyer tell you he'd called the job off?” She stared at him in amazement. “He what?”
“He left word here last night that your husband had been found and he wouldn't need me any more.”
She hung her head and her words were barely audible. “Then he did.”
Spade shrugged. “Maybe only an innocent man could've afforded to call it off then, or maybe he was guilty, but had brains enough and nerve enough to—”
She was not listening to him. She was leaning towards him, speaking earnestly: “But, Mr. Spade, you're not going to drop it like that? You're not going to let him stop you?” While she was speaking his telephone bell rang. He said, “Excuse me,” and picked up the receiver. “Yes? . . . Uh-huh. . . . So?” He pursed his lips. “I'll let you know.” He pushed the telephone aside slowly and faced Mrs. Haven again. “Colyer's outside.”
“Does he know I'm here?” she asked quickly. “Couldn't say.” He stood up, pretending he was not watching her closely. “Do you care?”
She pinched her lower lip between her teeth, said “No” hesitantly.
“Fine. I'll have him in.”
She raised a hand as if in protest, then let it drop, and her white face was composed. “Whatever you want,” she said.
Spade opened the door, said, “Hello, Colyer. Come on in. We were just talking about you.”
Colyer nodded and came into the office holding his stick ' in one hand, his hat in the other. “How are you this morning, Julia? You ought to've phoned me. I'd've driven you back to town.”
“I—I didn't know what I was doing.”
Colyer looked at her for a moment longer, then shifted the focus of his expressionless green eyes to Spade's face. “Well, have you been able to convince her I didn't do it?”
“We hadn't got around to that,” Spade said. “I was just trying to find out how much reason there was for suspecting you. Sit down.”
Colyer sat down somewhat carefully, asked, “And?”
“And then you arrived.”
Colyer nodded gravely. “All right, Spade,” he said; “you're hired again to prove to Mrs. Haven that I didn't have anything to do with it.”
“Gene!” she exclaimed in a choked voice and held her hands out toward him appealingly. “I don't think you did—I don't want to think you did—but I'm so afraid.” She put her hands to her face and began to cry.
Colyer went over to the woman. “Take it easy,” he said. “We'll pick it out together.”
Spade went into the outer office, shutting the door behind him.
Effie Perine stopped typing a letter. He grinned at her, said, “Somebody ought to write a book about people sometime—they're peculiar,” and went over to the water bottle. “You've got Wally Kellogg's number. Call him up and ask him where I can find Tom Minera.”
He returned to the inner office.
Mrs. Haven had stopped crying. She said, “I'm sorry.” Spade said, “It's all right.” He looked sidewise at Colyer. “I still got my job?”
“Yes.” Colyer cleared his throat. “But if there's nothing special right now, I'd better take Mrs. Haven home.”
“O.K., but there's one thing: According to the Chronicle, you identified him. How come you were down there?”
“I went down when I heard they'd found a body,” Colyer replied deliberately. “I told you I had connections. I heard about the body through them.”
Spade said, “All right; be seeing you,” and opened the door for them.
When the corridor door closed behind them, Effie Perine said, “Minera's at the Buxton on Army Street.” Spade said, “Thanks.” He went into the inner office to get his hat. On his way out he said, “If I'm not back in a couple of months tell them to look for my body there.” …
Spade walked down a shabby corridor to a battered green door marked “411.” The murmur of voices came through the door, but no words could be distinguished. He stopped listening and knocked.
An obviously disguised male voice asked, “What is it?”
“I want to see Tom. This is Sam Spade.”
A pause, then: “Tom ain't here.”
Spade put a hand on the knob and shook the frail door. “Come on, open up,” he growled.
Presently the door was opened by a thin, dark man of twenty-five or —six who tried to make his beady dark eyes guileless while saying, “I didn't think it was your voice at first.” The slackness of his mouth made his chin seem even smaller than it was. His green-striped shirt, open at the neck, was not clean. His gray pants were carefully pressed.
“You've got to be careful these days,” Spade said solemnly, and went through the doorway into a room where two men were trying to seem uninterested in his arrival.
One of them leaned against the window sill filing his fingernails. The other was tilted back in a chair with his , feet on the edge of a table and a newspaper spread between his hands. They glanced at Spade in unison and went on with their occupations.
Spade said cheerfully, “Always glad to meet any friends of Tom Minera's.”
Minera finished shutting the door and said awkwardly, “Uh—yes—Mr. Spade, meet Mr. Conrad and Mr. James.”
Conrad, the man at the window, made a vaguely polite gesture with the nail file in his hand. He was a few years older than Minera, of average height, sturdily built, with a thick-featured, dull-eyed face.