"Or maybe you'd better see Sid Wise first."
He removed his arm from around her, took a card out of his pocket, scribbled three lines on its back, and gave it to her.
"You can tell Sid everything."
He frowned.
"Or almost everything.
Where were you the night Miles was shot?"
"Home," she replied without hesitating.
He shook his head, grinning at her.
"I was," she insisted.
"No," he said, "but if that's your story it's all right with me.
Go see Sid.
It's up on the next corner, the pinkish building, room eight-twentyseven."
Her blue eyes tried to probe his yellow-grey ones.
"What makes you think I wasn't home?" she asked slowly.
"Nothing except that I know you weren't."
"But I was, I was."
Her lips twisted and anger darkened her eyes.
"Effie Perine told you that," she said indignantly.
"I saw her hooking at my clothes and snooping around.
You know she doesn't like me, Sam.
Why do you believe things she tells you when you know she'd do anything to make trouble for me?"
"Jesus, you women," Spade said mildly.
He looked at the watch on his wrist.
"You'll have to trot along, precious.
I'm hate for an appointment now.
You do what you want, but if I were you I'd tell Sid the truth or nothing.
I mean leave out the parts you don't want to tell him, but don't make up anything to take its place."
"I'm not lying to you, Sam," she protested.
"Like hell you're not," he said and stood up. She strained on tiptoe to hold her face nearer his.
"You don't believe me?" she whispered.
"I don't believe you."
"And you won't forgive me for—for what I did?"
"Sure I do."
He bent his head and kissed her mouth.
"That's all right.
Now run along."
She put her arms around him.
"Won't you go with me to see Mr. Wise?"
"I can't, and I'd only be in the way."
He patted her arms, took them from around his body, and kissed her left wrist between glove and sleeve. He put his hands on her shoulders, turned her to face the door, and released her with a little push.
"Beat it," he ordered.
The mahogany door of suite 12-C at the Alexandria Hotel was opened by the boy Spade had talked to in the Belvedere lobby.
Spade said, "Hello," good-naturedly.
The boy did not say anything.
He stood aside holding the door open.
Spade went in.
A fat man came to meet him.
The fat man was flabbily fat with bulbous pink cheeks and lips and chins and neck, with a great soft egg of a belly that was all his torso, and pendant cones for arms and legs.
As he advanced to meet Spade all his bulbs rose and shook and fell separately with each step, in the manner of clustered soap-bubbles not yet released from the pipe through which they had been blown.
His eyes, made small by fat puffs around them, were dark and sleek.