His mouth was open as when blood had spurted from it, but no more blood came from it, and all his long body was as still as the floor it lay on.
Spade said: "Lock the door."
While Effie Perine, her teeth chattering, fumbled with the corridordoor's lock Spade knelt beside the thin man, turned him over on his back, and ran a hand down inside his overcoat.
When he withdrew the hand presently it came out smeared with blood.
The sight of his bloody hand brought not the least nor briefest of changes to Spade's face.
Holding that hand up where it would touch nothing, he took his lighter out of his pocket with his other hand.
He snapped on the flame and held the flame close to first one and then the other of the thin man's eyes.
The eyes—lids, balls, irises, and pupils—remained frozen, immobile.
Spade extinguished the flame and returned the lighter to his pocket.
He moved on his knees around to the dead man's side and, using his one clean hand, unbuttoned and opened the tubular overcoat.
The inside of the overcoat was wet with blood and the double-breasted blue jacket beneath it was sodden, The jacket's lapels, where they crossed over the man's chest, and both sides of his coat immediately below that point, were pierced by soggy ragged holes.
Spade rose and went to the washbowl in the outer office.
Effie Perine, wan and trembling and holding herself upright by means of a hand on the corridor-door's knob and her back against its glass, whispered:
"Is—is he—?"
"Yes.
Shot through the chest, maybe half a dozen times."
Spade began to wash his hands.
"Oughtn't we—?" she began, but he cut her short:
"It's too late for a doctor now and I've got to think before we do anything."
He finished washing his hands and began to rinse the bowl.
"He couldn't have come far with those in him.
If he— Why in hell couldn't he have stood up long enough to say something?" He frowned at the girl, rinsed his hands again, and picked up a towel.
"Pull yourself together. For Christ's sake don't get sick on me now!"
He threw the towel down and ran fingers through his hair.
"We'll have a look at that bundle."
He went into the inner office again, stepped over the dead man's legs, and picked up the brown-paper-wrapped parcel.
When he felt its weight his eyes glowed. He put it on his desk, turning it over so that the knotted part of the rope was uppermost. The knot was hard and tight.
He took out his pocket-knife and cut the rope.
The girl had left the door and, edging around the dead man with her face turned away, had come to Spade's side.
As she stood there—hands on a corner of the desk—watching him pull the rope loose and push aside brown paper, excitement began to supplant nausea in her face.
"Do you think it is?" she whispered.
"We'll soon know," Spade said, his big fingers busy with the inner husk of coarse grey paper, three sheets thick, that the brown paper's removal had revealed. His face was hard and dull. His eyes were shining.
When he had put the grey paper out of the way he had an egg-shaped mass of pale excelsior, wadded tight.
His fingers tore the wad apart and then he had the foot-high figure of a bird, black as coal and shiny w'here its polish was not dulled by wood-dust and fragments of excelsior.
Spade laughed.
He put a hand down on the bird.
His wide-spread fingers had ownership in their curving.
He put his other arm around Effie Perine and crushed her body against his.
"We've got the damned thing, angel," he said.
"Ouch!" she said, "you're hurting me."
He took his arm away from her, picked the black bird up in both hands, and shook it to dislodge clinging excelsior.
Then he stepped back holding it up in front of him and blew dust off it, regarding it triumphantly.
Effie Perine made a horrified face and screamed, pointing at his feet.
He looked down at his feet.
His last backward step had brought his left heel into contact with the dead man's hand, pinching a quarter-inch of flesh at a side of the palm between heel and floor.
Spade jerked his foot away from the hand.
The telephone-bell rang.
He nodded at the girl.
She turned to the desk and put the receiver to her ear. She said:
"Hello. . . .