Dashiell Hammett - The Adventures Of Sam Spade

Then Dundy said, “Hush,” negligently to Miriam Bliss and took a slip of paper from his pocket. “I got a list of the calls from here today. Sing out when you recognize them.”

He read a telephone number.

Mrs. Hooper said, “That is the butcher. I phoned him before I left this morning.” She said the next number Dundy read was the grocer's.

He read another.

“That's the St. Mark,” Miriam Bliss said. “I called up Boris.” She identified two more numbers as those of friends she had called.

The sixth number, Bliss said, was his brother's office. “Probably my call to Elise to ask her to meet me.”

Spade said “Mine,” to the seventh number, and Dundy said, “That last one's police emergency.” He put the slip back in his pocket.

Spade said cheerfully, “And that gets us a lot of places.”

The doorbell rang.

Dundy went to the door. He and another man could be heard talking in voices too low for their words to be recognized in the living room.

The telephone rang. Spade answered it. “Hello. . . . No, this is Spade. Wait a min—All right.” He listened. “Right, I'll tell him. … I don't know. I'll have him call you. . . .

Right.”

When he turned from the telephone Dundy was standing, hands behind him, in the vestibule doorway. Spade said, “O'Gar says your Russian went completely nuts on the way to the Hall. They had to shove him into a strait-jacket.”

“He ought to been there long ago,” Dundy growled. “Come here.”

Spade followed Dundy into the vestibule. A uniformed policeman stood in the outer doorway.

Dundy brought his hands from behind him. In one was a necktie with narrow diagonal stripes in varying shades of green, in the other was a platinum scarfpin in the shape of a crescent set with small diamonds.

Spade bent over to look at three small, irregular spots on the tie. “Blood?”

“Or dirt,” Dundy said. “He found them crumpled up in a newspaper in the rubbish can on the corner.”

“Yes, sir,” the uniformed man said proudly; “there I found them, all wadded up in—” He stopped because nobody was paying any attention to him.

“Blood's better,” Spade was saying. “It gives a reason for taking the tie away. Let's go in and talk to people.”

Dundy stuffed the tie in one pocket, thrust his hand holding the pin into another. “Right —and we'll call it blood.”

They went into the living-room. Dundy looked from Bliss to Bliss's wife, to Bliss's niece, to the housekeeper, as if he did not like any of them. He took his fist from his pocket, thrust it straight out in front of him, and opened it to show the crescent pin lying in his hand. “What's that?” he demanded.

Miriam Bliss was the first to speak. “Why, it's Father's pin,” she said.

“So it is?” he said disagreeably. “And did he have it on today?”

“He always wore it.” She turned to the others for confirmation.

Mrs. Bliss said, “Yes,” while the others nodded.

“Where did you find it?” the girl asked.

Dundy was surveying them one by one again, as if he liked them less than ever. His face was red. “He always wore it,” he said angrily, “but there wasn't one of you could say, 'Father always wore a pin. Where is it?' No, we got to wait till it turns up before we can get a word out of you about it.”

Bliss said, “Be fair. How were we to know— ?”

“Never mind what you were to know,” Dundy said. “It's coming around to the point where I'm going to do some talking about what I know.” He took the green necktie from his pocket. “This is his tie?”

Mrs. Hooper said, “Yes, sir.”

Dundy said, “Well, it's got blood on it, and it's not his blood, because he didn't have a scratch on him that we could see.” He looked narrow-eyed from one to another of them. “Now, suppose you were trying to choke a man that wore a scarfpin and he was wrestling with you, and—”

He broke off to look at Spade.

Spade had crossed to where Mrs. Hooper was standing. Her big hands were clasped in front of her. He took her right hand, turned it over, took the wadded handkerchief from her palm, and there was a two-inch-long fresh scratch in the flesh.

She had passively allowed him to examine her hand. Her mien lost none of its tranquillity now. She said nothing.

“Well?” he asked.

“I scratched it on Miss Miriam's pin fixing her on the bed when she fainted,” the housekeeper said calmly.

Dundy's laugh was brief, bitter. “It'll hang you just the same,” he said.

There was no change in the woman's face. “The Lord's will be done,” she replied.:

Spade made a peculiar noise in his throat as he dropped her hand. “Well, let's see how we stand.” He grinned at Dundy. “You don't like that star-T, do you?”

Dundy said, “Not by a long shot.”

“Neither do I,” Spade said. “The Talbot threat was probably on the level, but that debt seems to have been squared. Now— Wait a minute.” He went to the telephone and called his office. “The tie thing looked pretty funny, too, for a while,” he said while he waited, “but I guess the blood takes care of that.”

He spoke into the telephone: “Hello, Effie. Listen: Within half an hour or so of the time Bliss called me, did you get any call that maybe wasn't on the level? Anything that could have been a stall… Yes, before… Think now.

He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said to Dundy, “There's a lot of deviltry going on in this world.”

He spoke into the telephone again: “Yes? . . . Yes . . . Kruger? . . . Yes. Man or woman? . . . Thanks. . . . No, I'll be through in half an hour. Wait for me and I'll buy your dinner. 'By.”

He turned away from the telephone. “About half an hour before Bliss phoned, a man called my office and asked for Mr. Kruger.”

Dundy frowned. “So what?”

“Kruger wasn't there.”

Dundy's frown deepened. “Who's Kruger?”

“I don't know,” Spade said blandly. “I never heard of him.” He took tobacco and cigarette papers from his pockets. “All right, Bliss, where's your scratch?”

Theodore Bliss said, “What?” while the others stared blankly at Spade.

“Your scratch,” Spade repeated in a consciously patient tone. His attention was on the cigarette he was making. “The place where your brother's pin gouged you when you were choking him.”

“Are you crazy?” Bliss demanded. “I was—”

“Uh-huh, you were being married when he was killed. You were not.” Spade moistened the edge of his cigarette paper and smoothed it with his forefingers.

Mrs. Bliss spoke now, stammering a little: “But he—but Max Bliss called—“

“Who says Max Bliss called me?” Spade asked. “I don't know that. I wouldn't know his voice. All I know is a man called me and said he was Max Bliss. Anybody could say that.”

“But the telephone records here show the call came from here,” she protested.

He shook his head and smiled. “They show I had a call from here, and I did, but not that one. I told you somebody called up half an hour or so before the supposed Max Bliss call and asked for Mr. Kruger.” He nodded at Theodore Bliss. “He was smart enough to get a call from this apartment to my office on the record before he left to meet you.

She stared from Spade to her husband with dumfounded blue eyes.

Her husband said lightly, “It's nonsense, my dear. You know—“

Spade did not let him finish that sentence. “You know he went out to smoke a cigarette in the corridor while waiting for the judge, and he knew there were telephone booths in the corridor. A minute would be all he needed.” He lit his cigarette and returned his lighter to his pocket.

Bliss said, “Nonsense!” more sharply. “Why should I want to kill Max?” He smiled reassuringly into his wife's horrified eyes. “Don't let this disturb you, dear. Police methods are sometimes—”