There you are, sir: an almost immediate fifty thousand dollars or a vastly greater sum within, say, a couple of months."
Spade drank and asked:
"How much greater?"
"Vastly," the fat man repeated.
"Who knows how much greater?
Shall I say a hundred thousand, or a quarter of a million?
Will you believe me if I name the sum that seems the probable minimum?" "Why not?"
The fat man smacked his lips and lowered his voice to a purring murmur.
"What would you say, sir, to half a million?"
Spade narrowed his eyes.
"Then you think the dinguS is worth two million?"
Gutman smiled serenely.
"In your own words, why not?" he asked.
Spade emptied his glass and set it on the table.
He put his cigar in his mouth, took it out, looked at it, and put it back in.
His yellow-grey eyes were faintly muddy.
He said:
"That's a hell of a lot of dough."
The fat man agreed:
"That's a hell of a lot of dough."
He leaned forward and patted Spade's knee.
"That is the absolute rock-bottom minimum—or Charilaos Konstantinides was a blithering idiot—and he wasn't."
Spade removed the cigar from his mouth again, frowned at it with distaste, and put it on the smoking-stand.
He shut his eyes hard, opened them again. Their muddiness had thickened.
He said:
"The—the minimum, huh? And the maximum?" An unmistakable sh followed the x in maximum as he said it. "The maximum?"
Gutman held his empty hand out, palm up.
"I refuse to guess.
You'd think me crazy.
I don't know.
There's no telling how high it could go, sir, and that's the one and only truth about it."
Spade pulled his sagging lower lip tight against the upper.
He shook his head impatiently.
A sharp frightened gleam awoke in his eyes—and was smothered by the deepening muddiness.
He stood up, helping himself up with his hands on the arms of his chair.
He shook his head again and took an uncertain step forward.
He laughed thickly and muttered:
"God damn you."
Gutman jumped up and pushed his chair back.
His fat globes jiggled.
His eves w-ere dark holes in an oily pink face.
Spade swung his head from side to side until his dull eyes were pointed at—if not focused un—the door.
He took another uncertain step.
The fat man called sharply:
"Wilmer!"
A door opened and the boy came in.
Spade took a third step.
His face was grey now, with jaw-muscles standing out like tumors under his ears.
His legs did not straighten again after his fourth step and his muddy eyes were almost covered by their lids.
He took his fifth step.