They stopped at the desk long enough for Luke to "fix it so we'll get a ring if he comes in," and went up to Cairo's room.
Cairo's bed was smooth and trim, but paper in wastebasket, unevenly drawn blinds, and a couple of rumpled towels in the bathroom showed that the chambermaid had not yet been in that morning.
Cairn's luggage consisted of a square trunk, a valise, and a gladstone bag.
His bathroom-cabinet was stoekcd with cosmetics—boxes, cans, jars, and bottles of powders, creams, ungents, perfumes, lotions, and tonics.
Two suits and an overcoat hung in the closet over three pairs of carefully treed shoes.
The valise and smaller bag were unlocked.
Luke had the trunk unlocked by the time Spade had finished searching elsewhere.
"Blank so far," Spade said as they dug down into the trunk.
They found nothing there to interest them.
"Any particular thing we're supposed to be looking for?" Luke asked as he locked the trunk again.
"No.
He's supposed to have come here from Constantinople.
I'd like to know if he did.
I haven't seen anything that says he didn't."
"What's his racket?"
Spade shook his head.
"That's something else I'd like to know."
He crossed the room and bent down over the wastebasket.
"Well, this is our last shot."
He took a newspaper from the basket.
His eyes brightened when he saw it was the previous day's Call.
It was folded with the classified-advertising-page outside.
He opened it, examined that page, and nothing there stopped his eyes.
He turned the paper over and looked at the page that had been folded inside, the page that held financial and shipping news, the weather, births, marriages, divorces, and deaths.
From the lower left-hand corner, a little more than two inches of the bottom of the second column had been torn out.
Immediately above the tear was a small caption Arrived Today followed by: 12:20 A.
M.—Capac from Astoria.
5:05 A.
M.—Helen P.
Drew from Greenwood.
5:06 A.
M.—Albarado from Bandon.
The tear passed through the next line, leaving only enough of its letters to make from Sydney inferable.
Spade put the Call down on the desk and looked into the wastebasket again.
He found a small piece of wrapping-paper, a piece of string, two hosiery tags, a haberdasher's sale-ticket for half a dozen pairs of socks, and, in the bottom of the basket, a piece of newspaper rolled into a tiny ball.
He opened the ball carefully, smoothed it out on the desk, and fitted it into the torn part of the Call.
The fit at the sides was exact, but between the top of the crumpled fragment and the inferable from Sydney half an inch was missing, sufficient space to have held announcement of six or seven boats' arrival.
He turned the sheet over and saw that the other side of the missing portion could have held only a meaningless corner of a stockbroker's advertisement.
Luke, leaning over his shoulder, asked:
"What's this all about?"
"Looks like the gent's interested in a boat."
"Well, there's no law against that, or is there?" Luke said while Spade was folding the torn page and the crumpled fragment together and putting them into his coat-pocket.
"You all through here now?"
"Yes.
Thanks a lot, Luke.
Will you give me a ring as soon as he comes in?"
"Sure."
Spade went to the Business Office of the Call, bought a copy of the previous day's issue, opened it to the shipping-news-page, and compared it with the page taken from Cairo's wastebasket.
The missing portion had read: 5:17 A.
M.—Tahiti from Sydney and Papeete.