The Maltese Falcon Read Online Free PDF Page A

was expressionless. When she had stopped crying he put his mouth to her ear and murmured: “You shouldn’t have come here today, precious. It wasn’t wise. You can’t stay. You ought to be home.”
    She turned around in his arms to face him and asked: “You’ll come tonight?”
    He shook his head gently. “Not tonight.”
    “Soon?”
    “Yes.”
    “How soon?”
    “As soon as I can.”
    He kissed her mouth, led her to the door, opened it, said, “Good-bye, Iva,” bowed her out, shut the door, and returned to his desk.
    He took tobacco and cigarette-papers from his vest-pockets, but did not roll a cigarette. He sat holding the papers in one hand, the tobacco in the other, and looked with brooding eyes at his dead partners desk.
    Effie Perine opened the door and came in. Her brown eyes were uneasy. Her voice was careless. She asked: “Well?”
    Spade said nothing. His brooding gaze did not move from his partner’s desk.
    The girl frowned and came around to his side. “Well,” she asked in a louder voice, “how did you and the widow make out?”
    “She thinks I shot Miles,” he said. Only his lips moved.
    “So you could marry her?”
    Spade made no reply to that.
    The girl took his hat from his head and put it on the desk. Then she leaned over and took the tobacco-sack and the papers from his inert fingers.
    “The police think I shot Thursby,” he said.
    “Who is he?” she asked, separating a cigarette-paper from the packet, sifting tobacco into it.
    “Who do you think I shot?” he asked.
    When she ignored that question he said: “Thursby’s the guy Miles was supposed to be tailing for the Wonderly girl.”
    Her thin fingers finished shaping the cigarette. She licked it, smoothed it, twisted its ends, and placed it between Spade’s lips. He said, “Thanks, honey,” put an arm around her slim waist, and rested his cheek wearily against her hip, shutting his eyes.
    “Are you going to marry Iva?” she asked, looking down at his pale brown hair.
    “Don’t be silly,” he muttered. The unlighted cigarette bobbed up and down with the movement of his lips.
    “She doesn’t think it’s silly. Why should she—the way you’ve played around with her?”
    He sighed and said: “I wish to Christ I’d never seen her.”
    “Maybe you do now.” A trace of spitefulness came into the girl’s voice. “But there was a time.”
    “I never know what to do or say to women except that way,” he grumbled, “and then I didn’t like Miles.”
    “That’s a lie, Sam,” the girl said. “You know I think she’s a louse, but I’d be a louse too if it would give me a body like hers.”
    Spade rubbed his face impatiently against her hip, but said nothing.
    Effie Perine bit her lip, wrinkled her forehead, and, bendingover for a better view of his face, asked: “Do you suppose she could have killed him?”
    Spade sat up straight and took his arm from her waist. He smiled at her. His smile held nothing but amusement. He took out his lighter, snapped on the flame, and applied it to the end of his cigarette. “You’re an angel,” he said tenderly through smoke, “a nice rattle-brained angel.”
    She smiled a bit wryly. “Oh, am I? Suppose I told you that your Iva hadn’t been home many minutes when I arrived to break the news at three o’clock this morning?”
    “Are you telling me?” he asked. His eyes had become alert though his mouth continued to smile.
    “She kept me waiting at the door while she undressed or finished undressing. I saw her clothes where she had dumped them on a chair. Her hat and coat were underneath. Her singlette, on top, was still warm. She said she had been asleep, but she hadn’t. She had wrinkled up the bed, but the wrinkles weren’t mashed down.”
    Spade took the girl’s hand and patted it. “You’re a detective, darling, but”—he shook his head—“she didn’t kill him.”
    Effie Perine snatched her hand away. “That louse wants to marry you, Sam,” she said