Dashiell Hammett - The Adventures Of Sam Spade

“No, sir. Another gentleman, not an American gentleman.” He had raised his head again and now brightness came back into his face. “I think he is Armenian.”

“Why?”

“Because he not like us Americans, not talk like us.”

Spade laughed, asked, “Ever seen an Armenian?”

“No, sir. That is why I think—“ He shut his mouth with a click as Dundy made a growling noise in his throat.

“What'd he look like?” Dundy asked.

The boy lifted his shoulders, spread his hands. “He tall, like this gentleman.” He indicated Spade. “Got dark hair, dark mustache. Very”—he frowned earnestly—“very nice clothes. Very nice-looking man. Cane, gloves, spats,| even, and—”

“Young?” Dundy asked.

The head went up and down again. “Young, yes, sir.”

“When did he leave?”

“Five minutes,” the boy replied.

Dundy made a chewing motion with his jaws, then asked, “What time did they come in?”

The boy spread his hands, lifted his shoulders again. “Four o'clock—maybe ten minutes after.”

“Did you bring anybody else up before we got here?”

The Filipinos shook their heads in unison once more.

Dundy spoke out the side of his mouth to Spade: “Get her.”

Spade opened the bedroom door, bowed slightly, said, “Will you come out a moment, Miss Bliss?”

“What is it?” she asked wearily.

“Just for a moment,” he said, holding the door open. Then he suddenly added, “And you'd better come along, too, Mr. Bliss.”

Miriam Bliss came slowly into the living-room followed by her uncle, and Spade shut the door behind them. Miss Bliss's lower lip twitched a little when she saw the elevator boys. She looked apprehensively at Dundy.

He asked, “What's this fiddlededee about the man that came in with you?”

Her lower lip twitched again. “Wh-what?” She tried to put bewilderment on her face. Theodore Bliss hastily crossed the room, stood for a moment before her as if he intended to say something, and then, apparently changing his mind, took up a position behind her, his arms crossed over the back of a chair.

“The man who came in with you,” Dundy said harshly, rapidly. “Who is he? Where is he? Why'd he leave? Why didn't you say anything about him?”

The girl put her hands over her face and began to cry. “He didn't have anything to do with it,” she blubbered through her hands. “He didn't, and it would just make trouble for him.”

“Nice boy,” Dundy said. “So, to keep his name out of the newspapers, he runs off and leaves you alone with your murdered father.”

She took her hands away from her face. “Oh, but he had to,” she cried. “His wife is so jealous, and if she knew he had been with me again she'd certainly divorce him, and he hasn't a cent in the world of his own.”

Dundy looked at Spade. Spade looked at the goggling Filipinos and jerked a thumb at the outer door. “Scram,” he said. They went out quickly.

“And who is this gem?” Dundy asked the girl. “But he didn't have any—”

“Who is he?”

Her shoulders drooped a little and she lowered her eyes. “His name is Boris Smekalov,” she said wearily.

“Spell it.”

She spelled it.

“Where does he live?”

“At the St. Mark Hotel.”

“Does he do anything for a living except marry money?”

Anger came into her face as she raised it, but went away as quickly. “He doesn't do anything,” she said.

Dundy wheeled to address the gray-faced man. “Get him.”

The gray-faced man grunted and went out.

Dundy faced the girl again. “You and this Smekalov in love with each other?”

Her face became scornful. She looked at him with scornful eyes and said nothing.

He said, “Now your father's dead, will you have enough money for him to marry if his wife divorces him?”

She covered her face with her hands.

He said, “Now your father's dead, will—?”

Spade, leaning far over, caught her as she fell. He lifted her easily and carried her into the bedroom. When he came back he shut the door behind him and leaned against it. “Whatever the rest of it was,” he said, “the faint's a phony.“

“Everything's a. phony,” Dundy growled.

Spade grinned mockingly. “There ought to be a law making criminals give themselves up.”

Mr. Bliss smiled and sat down at his brother's desk by the window.

Dundy's voice was disagreeable. “You got nothing to worry about,” he said to Spade. “Even your client's dead and can't complain. But if I don't come across I've got to stand for riding from the captain, the chief, the newspapers, and heaven knows who all.”

“Stay with it,” Spade said soothingly; “you'll catch a murderer sooner or later yet.” His face became serious except for the lights in his yellow-gray eyes. “I don't want to run this job up any more alleys than we have to, but don't you think we ought to check up on the funeral the housekeeper said she went to? There's something funny about that woman.”

After looking suspiciously at Spade for a moment, Dundy nodded, and said, “Tom'11 do it.”

Spade turned about and, shaking his ringer at Tom, said, “It's a ten-to-one bet there wasn't any funeral. Check on it … don't miss a trick.”

Then he opened the bedroom door and called Mrs. Hooper. “Sergeant Polhaus wants some information from you,” he told her.

While Tom was writing down names and addresses that the woman gave him, Spade sat on the sofa and made and smoked a cigarette, and Dundy walked the floor slowly, scowling at the rug. With Spade's approval, Theodore Bliss rose and rejoined his wife in the bedroom.

Presently Tom put his note book in his pocket, said, “Thank you,” to the housekeeper, “Be seeing you,” to Spade and Dundy, and left the apartment.

The housekeeper stood where he had left her, ugly, strong, serene, patient.

Spade twisted himself around on the sofa until he was looking into her deep-set, steady eyes. “Don't worry about that,” he said, flirting a hand toward the door Tom had gone through. “Just routine.” He pursed his lips, asked, “What do you honestly think of this thing, Mrs. Hooper?” She replied calmly, in her strong, somewhat harsh voice, “I think it's the judgment of God.” Dundy stopped pacing the floor. Spade said, “What?”

There was certainty and no excitement in her voice: “The wages of sin is death.”

Dundy began to advance towards Mrs. Hooper in the manner of one stalking game. Spade waved him back with a hand which the sofa hid from the woman. His face and voice showed interest, but were now as composed as the woman's. “Sin?” he asked.

She said, “ 'Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged around his neck, and he were cast into the sea.'” She spoke, not as if quoting, but as if saying something she believed.

Dundy barked a question at her: “What little one?” She turned her grave gray eyes on him, then looked past him at the bedroom door. “Her,” she said; “Miriam.” Dundy frowned at her, “His daughter?” The woman said, “Yes, his own adopted daughter.” Angry blood mottled Dundy's square face. “What the heck is this?” he demanded. He shook his head as if to free it from some clinging thing. “She's not really his daughter?”

The woman's serenity was in no way disturbed by his anger. “No. His wife was an invalid most of her life. They didn't have any children.”

Dundy moved his jaws as if chewing for a moment and when he spoke again his voice was cooler. “What did he do to her?”

“I don't know,” she said, “but I truly believe that when the truth's found out you'll see that the money her father—I mean her real father—left her has been—“