Cairo, sitting beside the boy on the sofa, looked at Spade with questioning opaque eyes.
The boy did not look up.
He was leaning forward, head between hands, elbows on knees, staring at the floor between his feet.
Spade told Gutman:
"No, I didn't find it.
You palmed it."
The fat man chuckled.
"I palmed it?"
"Yes," Spade said, jingling the pistols in his hand.
"Do you want to say so or do you want to stand for a frisk?"
"Stand for—?"
"You're going to admit it," Spade said, "or I'm going to search you.
There's no third way."
Gutman looked up at Spade's hard face and laughed outright.
"By Gad, sir, I believe you would.
I really do.
You're a character, sir, if you don't mind my saying so."
"You palmed it," Spade said.
"Yes, sir, that I did."
The fat man took a crumpled bill from his vest-pocket, smoothed it on a wide thigh, took the envelope holding the nine bills from his coat-pocket, and put the smoothed bill in with the others.
"I must have my little joke every now and then and I was curious to know what you'd do in a situation of that sort.
I must say that you passed the test with flying colors, sir.
It never occurred to me that you'd hit on such a simple and direct way of getting at the truth-i."
Spade sneered at him without bitterness.
"That's the kind of thing I'd expect from somebody the punk's age."
Gutman chuckled.
Brigid O'Shaughnessy, dressed again except for coat and hat, came out of the bathroom, took a step towards the living-room, turned around, went to the kitchen, and turned on the light.
Cairo edged closer to the boy on the sofa and began whispering in his ear again.
The boy shrugged irritably.
Spade, looking at the pistols in his hand and then at Gutman, went out into the passageway, to the closet there.
He opened the door, put the pistols inside on the top of a trunk, shut the door, locked it, put the key in his trousers-pocket, and went to the kitchen door.
Brigid O'Shaughnessy was filling an aluminum percolator.
"Find everything?" Spade asked.
"Yes," she replied in a cool voice, not raising her head.
Then si-ic set the percolator aside and came to the door.
She blushed and her eyes were large and moist and chiding.
"You shouldn't have done that to me, Sam," si-ic said softly.
"I had to find out, angel."
He bent down, kissed her mouth lightly, and returned to the living-room.
Gutman smiled at Spade and offered him the white envelope, saying:
"This will soon be yours; you might as well take it now."
Spade did not take it.
He sat in the armchair and said:
"There's plenty of time for that.
We haven't done enough-i talking about the moneyend.
I ought to have more than ten thousand."
Gutman said: "Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money."
Spade said: "You're quoting me, but it's not all the money in the world."
"No, sir, it's not.
I grant you that.