He promised to tell her he had seen me, and to bring her to see me—if she would come—this evening at the hotel.
He said he knew she wouldn't.
He promised to come himself if she wouldn't.
He—"
She broke off with a startled hand to her mouth as the door opened.
The man who had opened the door came in a step, said,
"Oh, excuse me!" hastily took his brown hat from his head, and backed out.
"It's all right, Miles," Spade told him.
"Come in. Miss Wonderly, this is Mr. Archer, my partner."
Miles Archer came into the office again, shutting the door behind him, ducking his head and smiling at Miss Wonderly, making a vaguely polite gesture with the hat in his hand. He was of medium height, solidly built, wide in the shoulders, thick in the neck, with a jovial heavy-jawed red face and some grey in his close-trimmed hair.
He was apparently as many years past forty as Spade was past thirty.
Spade said:
"Miss Wonderly's sister ran away from New York with a fellow named Floyd Thursby.
They're here.
Miss Wonderly has seen Thursby and has a date with him tonight.
Maybe he'll bring the sister with him.
The chances are he won't.
Miss Wonderly wants us to find the sister and get her away from him and back home."
He looked at Miss Wonderly. "Right?"
"Yes," she said indistinctly.
The embarrassment that had gradually been driven away by Spade's ingratiating smiles and nods and assurances was pinkening her face again.
She looked at the bag in her lap and picked nervously at it with a gloved finger.
Spade winked at his partner.
Miles Archer came forward to stand at a corner of the desk.
While the girl looked at her bag he looked at her.
His little brown eyes ran their bold appraising gaze from her lowered face to her feet and up to her face again.
Then he looked at Spade and made a silent whistling mouth of appreciation.
Spade lifted two fingers from the arm of his chair in a brief warning gesture and said:
"We shouldn't have any trouble with it.
It's simply a matter of having a man at the hotel this evening to shadow him away when he leaves, and shadow him until he leads us to your sister.
If she comes with him, and you persuade her to return with you, so much the better.
Otherwise—if she doesn't want to leave him after we've found her—well, we'll find a way of managing that."
Archer said: "Yeh." His voice was heavy, coarse.
Miss Wonderly looked up at Spade, quickly, puckering her forehead between her eyebrows.
"Oh, but you must be careful!"
Her voice shook a little, and her lips shaped the words with nervous jerkiness.
"I'm deathly afraid of him, of what he might do.
She's so young and his bringing her here from New York is such a serious— Mightn't he—mightn't he do—something to her?"
Spade smiled and patted the arms of his chair.
"Just leave that to us," he said.
"We'll know how to handle him."
"But mightn't he?" she insisted.
"There's always a chance." Spade nodded judicially.
"But you can trust us to take care of that."
"I do trust you," she said earnestly, "but I want you to know that he's a dangerous man.
I honestly don't think he'd stop at anything.
I don't believe he'd hesitate to—to kill Corinne if he thought it would save him.
Mightn't he do that?"
"You didn't threaten him, did you?"
"I told him that all I wanted was to get her home before Mama and Papa came so they'd never know what she had done.