The Maltese Falcon Read Online Free PDF Page B

hired one. She left a forwarding address—the Ambassador, Los Angeles.”
    Spade said, “Thanks a lot, Freed,” and left the St. Mark.
    When Spade returned to his office Effie Perine stopped typing a letter to tell him: “Your friend Dundy was in. He wanted to look at your guns.”
    “And?”
    “I told him to come back when you were here.”
    “Good girl. If he comes back again let him look at them.”
    “And Miss Wonderly called up.”
    “It’s about time. What did she say?”
    “She wants to see you.” The girl picked up a slip of paper from her desk and read the memorandum penciled on it: “She’s at the Coronet, on California Street, apartment one thousand and one. You’re to ask for Miss Leblanc.”
    Spade said, “Give me,” and held out his hand. When she had given him the memorandum he took out his lighter, snapped on the flame, set it to the slip of paper, held the paper until all but one corner was curling black ash, dropped it on the linoleum floor, and mashed it under his shoesole.
    The girl watched him with disapproving eyes.
    He grinned at her, said, “That’s just the way it is, dear,” and went out again.

 
4
THE BLACK BIRD

    Miss Wonderly, in a belted green crêpe silk dress, opened the door of apartment 1001 at the Coronet. Her face was flushed. Her dark red hair, parted on the left side, swept back in loose waves over her right temple, was somewhat tousled.
    Spade took off his hat and said: “Good morning.”
    His smile brought a fainter smile to her face. Her eyes, of blue that was almost violet, did not lose their troubled look. She lowered her head and said in a hushed, timid voice: “Come in, Mr. Spade.”
    She led him past open kitchen-, bathroom-, and bedroom-doors into a cream and red living-room, apologizing for its confusion: “Everything is upside-down. I haven’t even finished unpacking.”
    She laid his hat on a table and sat down on a walnut settee. He sat on a brocaded oval-backed chair facing her.
    She looked at her fingers, working them together, and said: “Mr. Spade, I’ve a terrible, terrible confession to make.”
    Spade smiled a polite smile, which she did not lift her eyes to see, and said nothing.
    “That—that story I told you yesterday was all—a story,” she stammered, and looked up at him now with miserable frightened eyes.
    “Oh, that,” Spade said lightly. “We didn’t exactly believe your story.”
    “Then—?” Perplexity was added to the misery and fright in her eyes.
    “We believed your two hundred dollars.”
    “You mean—?” She seemed to not know what he meant.
    “I mean that you paid us more than if you’d been telling the truth,” he explained blandly, “and enough more to make it all right.”
    Her eyes suddenly lighted up. She lifted herself a few inches from the settee, settled down again, smoothed her skirt, leaned forward, and spoke eagerly: “And even now you’d be willing to—?”
    Spade stopped her with a palm-up motion of one hand. The upper part of his face frowned. The lower part smiled. “That depends,” he said. “The hell of it is, Miss—Is your name Wonderly or Leblanc?”
    She blushed and murmured: “It’s really O’Shaughnessy—Brigid O’Shaughnessy.”
    “The hell of it is, Miss O’Shaughnessy, that a couple of murders”—she winced—“coming together like this get everybody stirred up, make the police think they can go the limit, make everybody hard to handle and expensive. It’s not—”
    He stopped talking because she had stopped listening and was waiting for him to finish.
    “Mr. Spade, tell me the truth.” Her voice quivered on the verge of hysteria. Her face had become haggard around desperate eyes. “Am I to blame for—for last night?”
    Spade shook his head. “Not unless there are things I don’t know about,” he said. “You warned us that Thursby was dangerous. Of course you lied to us about your sister and all, but that doesn’t count: we didn’t believe you.” He