"Mihes hadn't many brains, but, Christ! he had too many years' experience as a detective to be caught like that by the man he was shadowing.
Up a blind alley with his gun tucked away on his hip and his overcoat buttoned?
Not a chance.
He was as dumb as any man ought to be, but he wasn't quite that dumb.
The only two ways out of the alley could be watched from the edge of Bush Street over the tunnci.
You'd told us Thursby was a bad actor.
He couldn't have tricked Miles into the alley like that, and i-ic couhdn't have driven him in.
He was dumb, but not dunib enough-i for that."
He ran his tongue over the inside of his lips and smiled affectionately at time girl.
He said:
"But he'd've gone up there with you, angel, if he was sure nobody else was up there.
You were his client, so he would have had no reason for not dropping the shadow on your say-so, and if you caught up w'ith him and asked him to go up there he'd've gone.
He was just dumb enough for that.
He'd've looked you up and down and licked his lips and gone grinning from ear to ear—and then you could've stood as close to him as you liked in the dark and put a hole through him with the gun you had got fron Thursby that evening."
Brigid O'Shaughnessy shrank back fron him until the edge of the table stopped her.
She looked at him with terrified eyes and cried:
"Don't—don't talk to me like that, Sam!
You know I didn't!
You know—"
"Stop it."
He looked at the watch-i on his wrist.
"The police will be blowing in any minute now and we're sitting on dynamite.
Talk!"
She put the back of a hand on her forehead.
"Ohm, why do you accuse me of such a terrible—?"
"Will you stop it?" he demanded in a low impatient voice.
"This isn't the spot for the schoolgirl-act.
Listen to me.
The pair of us are sitting under the gallows."
He took hold of her wrists and made her stand up straight in front of him.
"Talk!"
"I—I— How did you know he—he licked his lips and looked—?"
Spade laughed harshly.
"I knew Miles.
But never mind that.
Why did you shoot him?"
She twisted her wrists out of Spade's fingers and put her hands up around the back of his neck, pulling his head down until his mouth all but touched hers.
Her body was flat against his from km-ices to chest.
He put his arms around her, holding her tight to him.
Her dark-lashied lids were half down over velvet eyes.
Her voice was hushed, throbbing:
"I didn't mean to, at first.
I didn't, really.
I n-icant what I told you, but when I saw Floyd couldn't be frightened I—"
Spade slapped her shoulder. He said:
"That's a lie.
You asked Miles and me to handle it ourselves, You wanted to he sure the shadower was somebody you knew and who knew' you, so they'd go with you.
You got the gun from Thursby that day—that night.
You had already rented the apartment at the Coronet.
You had trunks there and none at the hotel and when I hooked the apartment over I found a rent-receipt dated five or six days before the time you told me you rented it."