"You and the police haven't been hitting it off so well, have you?"
Spade made a negligent gesture with the fingers of his right hand.
"Nothing serious," he said lightly.
"Dundy gets too enthusiastic."
The door opened to admit two men.
The one to whom Spade said,
"Hello, Thomas!" was a sunburned stocky man of thirty in clothing and hair of a kindred unruliness.
He clapped Spade on the shoulder with a freckled hand, asked,
"How's tricks?" and sat down beside him.
The second man was younger and colorless.
He took a seat a little apart from the others and balanced a stenographer's notebook on his knee, holding a green pencil over it.
Spade glanced his way, chuckled, and asked Bryan:
"Anything I say will be used against me?"
The District Attorney smiled.
"That always holds good."
He took his glasses off, looked at them, and set them on his nose again.
He looked through them at Spade and asked:
"Who killed Thursby?"
Spade said:
"I don't know."
Bryan rubbed his black eyeglass-ribbon between thumb and fingers and said knowingly:
"Perhaps you don't, but you certainly could make an excellent guess."
"Maybe, but I wouldn't."
The District Attorney raised his eyebrows.
"I wouldn't," Spade repeated. He was serene.
"My guess might be excellent, or it might be crummy, but Mrs. Spade didn't raise any children dippy enough to make guesses in front of a district attorney, an assistant district attorney, and a stenographer."
"Why shouldn't you, if you've nothing to conceal?"
"Everybody," Spade responded mildly, "has something to conceal."
"And you have—?"
"My guesses, for one thing."
The District Attorney looked down at his desk and then up at Spade.
He settled his glasses more firmly on his nose. He said:
"If you'd prefer not having the stenographer here we can dismiss him.
It was simply as a matter of convenience that I brought him in."
"I don't mind him a damned hit," Spade replied.
"I'm willing to have anything I say put down and I'm willing to sign it."
"We don't intend asking you to sign anything," Bryan assured him,
"I wish you wouldn't regard this as a formal inquiry at all.
And please don't think I've any belief—much less confidence—in those theories the police seem to have formed."
"No?"
"Not a particle."
Spade sighed and crossed his legs.
"I'm glad of that."
He felt in his pockets for tobacco and papers.
"What's your theory?"
Bryan leaned forward in his chair and his eyes were hard and shiny as the lenses over them.
"Tell me who Archer was shadowing Thursby for and I'll tell you who killed Thursby."
Spade's laugh was brief and scornful.
"You're as wrong as Dundy," he said.
"Don't misunderstand me, Spade," Bryan said, knocking on the desk with his knuckles.