Part 20 (1/2)

”Well, sir, that's just the point,” Gutman replied, and still only in his eyes was uneasiness faintly apparent. ”Will they stop right there? Or won't the fall-guy be a fresh clue that as likely as not will lead them to information about the falcon? And, on the other hand, wouldn't you say they were stopped right now, and that the best thing for us to do is leave well enough alone?”

A forked vein began to swell in Spade's forehead. ”Jesus! you don't know what it's all about either,” he said in a restrained tone. ”They're not asleep, Gutman. They're lying low, waiting. Try to get that. I'm in it up to my neck and they know it. That's all right as long as I do something when the time comes. But it won't be all right if I don't.” His voice became persuasive again. ”Listen, Gutman, we've absolutely got to give them a victim. There's no way out of it. Let's give them the punk.” He nodded pleasantly at the boy in the doorway. ”He actually did shoot both of them-Thursby and Jacobi-didn't he? Anyway, he's made to order for the part. Let's pin the necessary evidence on him and turn him over to them.”

The boy in the doorway tightened the corners of his mouth in what may have been a minute smile. Spade's proposal seemed to have no other effect on him. Joel Cairo's dark face was open-mouthed, open-eyed, yellowish, and amazed. He breathed through his mouth, his round effeminate chest rising and falling, while he gaped at Spade. Brigid O'Shaughnessy had moved away from Spade and had twisted herself around on the sofa to stare at him. There was a suggestion of hysterical laughter behind the startled confusion in her face.

Gutman remained still and expressionless for a long moment. Then he decided to laugh. He laughed heartily and lengthily, not stopping until his sleek eyes had borrowed merriment from his laughter. When he stopped laughing he said: ”By Gad, sir, you're a character, that you are!” He took a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. ”Yes, sir, there's never any telling what you'll do or say next, except that it's bound to be something astonis.h.i.+ng.”

”There's nothing funny about it.” Spade did not seem offended by the fat man's laughter, nor in any way impressed. He spoke in the manner of one reasoning with a recalcitrant, but not altogether unreasonable, friend. ”It's our best bet. With him in their hands, the police will-”

”But, my dear man,” Gutman objected, ”can't you see? If I even for a moment thought of doing it- But that's ridiculous too. I feel towards Wilmer just exactly as if he were my own son. I really do. But if I even for a moment thought of doing what you propose, what in the world do you think would keep Wilmer from telling the police every last detail about the falcon and all of us?”

Spade grinned with stiff lips. ”If we had to,” he said softly, ”we could have him killed resisting arrest. But we won't have to go that far. Let him talk his head off. I promise you n.o.body'll do anything about it. That's easy enough to fix.”

The pink flesh on Gutman's forehead crawled in a frown. He lowered his head, mas.h.i.+ng his chins together over his collar, and asked: ”How?” Then, with an abruptness that set all his fat bulbs to quivering and tumbling against one another, he raised his head, squirmed around to look at the boy, and laughed uproariously. ”What do you think of this, Wilmer? It's funny, eh?”

The boy's eyes were cold hazel gleams under his lashes. He said in a low distinct voice: ”Yes, it's funny-the son of a b.i.t.c.h.”

Spade was talking to Brigid O'Shaughnessy: ”How do you feel now, angel? Any better?”

”Yes, much better, only”-she reduced her voice until the last words would have been unintelligible two feet away-”I'm frightened.”

”Don't be,” he said carelessly and put a hand on her grey-stockinged knee. ”Nothing very bad's going to happen. Want a drink?”

”Not now, thanks.” Her voice sank again. ”Be careful, Sam.”

Spade grinned and looked at Gutman, who was looking at him. The fat man smiled genially, saying nothing for a moment, and then asked: ”How?”

Spade was stupid. ”How what?”

The fat man considered more laughter necessary then, and an explanation: ”Well, sir, if you're really serious about this-this suggestion of yours, the least we can do in common politeness is to hear you out. Now how are you going about fixing it so that Wilmer”-he paused here to laugh again-”won't be able to do us any harm?”

Spade shook his head. ”No,” he said, ”I wouldn't want to take advantage of anybody's politeness, no matter how common, like that. Forget it.”

The fat man puckered up his facial bulbs. ”Now come, come,” he protested, ”you make me decidedly uncomfortable. I shouldn't have laughed, and I apologize most humbly and sincerely. I wouldn't want to seem to ridicule anything you'd suggest, Mr. Spade, regardless of how much I disagreed with you, for you must know that I have the greatest respect and admiration for your astuteness. Now mind you, I don't see how this suggestion of yours can be in any way practical-even leaving out the fact that I couldn't feel any different towards Wilmer if he was my own flesh and blood-but I'll consider it a personal favor as well as a sign that you've accepted my apologies, sir, if you'll go ahead and outline the rest of it.”

”Fair enough,” Spade said. ”Bryan is like most district attorneys. He's more interested in how his record will look on paper than anything else. He'd rather drop a doubtful case than try it and have it go against him. I don't know that he ever deliberately framed anybody he believed innocent, but I can't imagine him letting himself believe them innocent if he could sc.r.a.pe up, or twist into shape, proof of their guilt. To be sure of convicting one man he'll let half a dozen equally guilty accomplices go free-if trying to convict them all might confuse his case.

”That's the choice we'll give him and he'll gobble it up. He wouldn't want to know about the falcon. He'll be tickled pink to persuade himself that anything the punk tells him about it is a lot of chewing-gum, an attempt to muddle things up. Leave that end to me. I can show him that if he starts fooling around trying to gather up everybody he's going to have a tangled case that no jury will be able to make heads or tails of, while if he sticks to the punk he can get a conviction standing on his head.”

Gutman wagged his head sidewise in a slow smiling gesture of benign disapproval. ”No, sir,” he said, ”I'm afraid that won't do, won't do at all. I don't see how even this District Attorney of yours can link Thursby and Jacobi and Wilmer together without having to-”

”You don't know district attorneys,” Spade told him. ”The Thursby angle is easy. He was a gunman and so's your punk. Bryan's already got a theory about that. There'll be no catch there. Well, Christ! they can only hang the punk once. Why try him for Jacobi's murder after he's been convicted of Thursby's? They simply close the record by writing it up against him and let it go at that. If, as is likely enough, he used the same gun on both, the bullets will match up. Everybody will be satisfied.”

”Yes, but-” Gutman began, and stopped to look at the boy.

The boy advanced from the doorway, walking stiff-legged, with his legs apart, until he was between Gutman and Cairo, almost in the center of the floor. He halted there, leaning forward slightly from the waist, his shoulders raised towards the front. The pistol in his hand still hung at his side, but his knuckles were white over its grip. His other hand was a small hard fist down at his other side. The indelible youngness of his face gave an indescribably vicious-and inhuman-turn to the white-hot hatred and the cold white malevolence in his face. He said to Spade in a voice cramped by pa.s.sion: ”You b.a.s.t.a.r.d, get up on your feet and go for your heater!”

Spade smiled at the boy. His smile was not broad, but the amus.e.m.e.nt in it seemed genuine and unalloyed.

The boy said: ”You b.a.s.t.a.r.d, get up and shoot it out if you've got the guts. I've taken all the riding from you I'm going to take.”

The amus.e.m.e.nt in Spade's smile deepened. He looked at Gutman and said: ”Young Wild West.” His voice matched his smile. ”Maybe you ought to tell him that shooting me before you get your hands on the falcon would be bad for business.”

Gutman's attempt at a smile was not successful, but he kept the resultant grimace on his mottled face. He licked dry lips with a dry tongue. His voice was too hoa.r.s.e and gritty for the paternally admonis.h.i.+ng tone it tried to achieve. ”Now, now, Wilmer,” he said, ”we can't have any of that. You shouldn't let yourself attach so much importance to these things. You-”

The boy, not taking his eyes from Spade, spoke in a choked voice out the side of his mouth: ”Make him lay off me then. I'm going to fog him if he keeps it up and there won't be anything that'll stop me from doing it.”

”Now, Wilmer,” Gutman said and turned to Spade. His face and voice were under control now. ”Your plan is, sir, as I said in the first place, not at all practical. Let's not say anything more about it.”

Spade looked from one of them to the other. He had stopped smiling. His face held no expression at all. ”I say what I please,” he told them.

”You certainly do,” Gutman said quickly, ”and that's one of the things I've always admired in you. But this matter is, as I say, not at all practical, so there's not the least bit of use of discussing it any further, as you can see for yourself.”

”I can't see it for myself,” Spade said, ”and you haven't made me see it, and I don't think you can.” He frowned at Gutman. ”Let's get this straight. Am I wasting time talking to you? I thought this was your show. Should I do my talking to the punk? I know how to do that.”

”No, sir,” Gutman replied, ”you're quite right in dealing with me.”

Spade said: ”All right. Now I've got another suggestion. It's not as good as the first, but it's better than nothing. Want to hear it?”

”Most a.s.suredly.”

”Give them Cairo.”

Cairo hastily picked up his pistol from the table beside him. He held it tight in his lap with both hands. Its muzzle pointed at the floor a little to one side of the sofa. His face had become yellowish again. His black eyes darted their gaze from face to face. The opaqueness of his eyes made them seem flat, two-dimensional.

Gutman, looking as if he could not believe he had heard what he had heard, asked: ”Do what?”

”Give the police Cairo.”

Gutman seemed about to laugh, but he did not laugh. Finally, he exclaimed: ”Well, by Gad, sir!” in an uncertain tone.

”It's not as good as giving them the punk,” Spade said. ”Cairo's not a gunman and he carries a smaller gun than Thursby and Jacobi were shot with. We'll have to go to more trouble framing him, but that's better than not giving the police anybody.”

Cairo cried in a voice shrill with indignation: ”Suppose we give them you, Mr. Spade, or Miss O'Shaughnessy? How about that if you're so set on giving them somebody?”

Spade smiled at the Levantine and answered him evenly: ”You people want the falcon. I've got it. A fall-guy is part of the price I'm asking. As for Miss O'Shaughnessy”-his dispa.s.sionate glance moved to her white perplexed face and then back to Cairo and his shoulders rose and fell a fraction of an inch-”if you think she can be rigged for the part I'm perfectly willing to discuss it with you.”

The girl put her hands to her throat, uttered a short strangled cry, and moved farther away from him.

Cairo, his face and body twitching with excitement, exclaimed: ”You seem to forget that you are not in a position to insist on anything.”

Spade laughed, a harsh derisive snort.

Gutman said, in a voice that tried to make firmness ingratiating: ”Come now, gentlemen, let's keep our discussion on a friendly basis; but there certainly is”-he was addressing Spade-”something in what Mr. Cairo says. You must take into consideration the-”