The Maltese Falcon -- Chapter 11
11
THE FAT MAN
The telephone-bell was ringing when Spade returned to his office after sending Brigid O’Shaughnessy off to Effie Perine’s house. He went to the telephone.
“Hello. . . . Yes, this is Spade. . . . Yes, I got it. I’ve been waiting to hear from you. . . . Who? . . . Mr. Gutman? Oh, yes, sure! . . . Now—the sooner the better. . . . Twelve C. . . . Right. Say fifteen minutes. . . . Right.”
Spade sat on the corner of his desk beside the telephone and rolled a cigarette. His mouth was a hard complacent v. His eyes, watching his fingers make the cigarette, smoldered over lower lids drawn up straight.
The door opened and Iva Archer came in.
Spade said, “Hello, honey,” in a voice as lightly amiable as his face had suddenly become.
“Oh, Sam, forgive me! forgive me!” she cried in a choked voice. She stood just inside the door, wadding a black-bordered handkerchief in her small gloved hands, peering into his face with frightened red and swollen eyes.
He did not get up from his seat on the desk-corner. He said: “Sure. That’s all right. Forget it.”
“But, Sam,” she wailed, “I sent those policemen there. I was mad, crazy with jealousy, and I phoned them that if they’d go there they’d learn something about Miles’s murder.”
“What made you think that?”
“Oh, I didn’t! But I was mad, Sam, and I wanted to hurt you.”
“It made things damned awkward.” He put his arm around her and drew her nearer. “But it’s all right now, only don’t get any more crazy notions like that.”
“I won’t,” she promised, “ever. But you weren’t nice to me last night. You were cold and distant and wanted to get rid of me, when I had come down there and waited so long to warn you, and you—”
“Warn me about what?”
“About Phil. He’s found out about—about you being in love with me, and Miles had told him about my wanting a divorce, though of course he never knew what for, and now Phil thinks we—you killed his brother because he wouldn’t give me the divorce so we could get married. He told me he believed that, and yesterday he went and told the police.”
“That’s nice,” Spade said softly. “And you came to warn me, and because I was busy you got up on your ear and helped this damned Phil Archer stir things up.”
“I’m sorry,” she whimpered, “I know you won’t forgive me. I—I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”
“You ought to be,” he agreed, “on your own account as well as mine. Has Dundy been to see you since Phil did his talking? Or anybody from the bureau?”
