She put her face up to his face.
Her mouth was slightly open with lips a little thrust out.
She whispered:
"If you loved me you'd need nothing more on that side."
Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them:
"I won't play the sap for you."
She put her mouth to his, slowly, her arms around him, and came into his arms.
She was in his arms when the door-bell rang.
Spade, left arm around Brigid O'Shaughnessy, opened the corridordoor.
Lieutenant Dundy, Detective-sergeant Tom Polhaus, and two other detectives were there.
Spade said:
"Hello, Tom.
Get them?"
Polhaus said: "Got them."
"Swell.
Come in.
Here's another one for you."
Spade pressed the girl forward.
"She killed Miles.
And I've got some exhibits—the boy's guns, one of Cairo's, a black statuette that all the hell was about, and a thousand-dollar bill that I was supposed to be bribed with."
He looked at Dundy, drew his brows together, leaned forward to peer into the Lieutenant's face, and burst out laughing.
"What in hell's the matter with your little playmate, Tom?
He looks heartbroken."
He laughed again.
"I bet, by God! when he heard Gutman's story he thought he had me at last."
"Cut it out, Sam," Tom grumbled.
"We didn't think—"
"Like hell he didn't," Spade said merrily.
"He came up here with his mouth watering, though you'd have sense enough to know I'd been stringing Gutman."
"Cut it out," Tom grumbled again, looking uneasily sidewise at his superior.
"Anyways we got it from Cairo.
Gutman's dead.
The kid had just finished shooting him up when we got there."
Spade nodded. "He ought to have expected that," he said.
Effie Perine put down her newspaper and jumped out of Spade's chair when he came into the office at a little after nine o'clock Monday morning.
He said:
"Morning, angel."
"Is that—what the papers have—right?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am."
He dropped his hat on the desk and sat down.
His face was pasty in color, but its lines were strong and cheerful and his eyes, though still somewhat red-veined, were clear.
The girl's brown eyes were peculiarly enlarged and there was a queer twist to her mouth.
She stood beside him, staring down at him.
He raised his head, grinned, and said mockingly:
"So much for your woman's intuition."
Her voice was queer as the expression on her face.
"You did that, Sam, to her?"
He nodded.
"Your Sam's a detective."
He looked sharply at her.