"Hello, Frank.
This is Sam Spade Can you let me have a car with a driver who'll keep his mouth shut? . . .
To go down the peninsula right away. . . .
Just a couple of hours. . . .
Right.
Have him pick me up at John's, Ellis Street, as soon as he can make it."
He called another number—his office's—held the receiver to his ear for a little while without saying anything, and replaced it on its hook.
He went to John's Grill, asked the waiter to hurry his order of chops, baked potato, and sliced tomatoes, ate hurriedly, and was smoking a cigarette with his coffee when a thick-set youngish man with a plaid cap set askew above pale eyes and a tough cheery face came into the Grill and to his table.
"All set, Mr. Spade.
She's full of gas and rearing to go."
"Swell."
Spade emptied his cup and went out with the thick-set man.
"Know' where Aneho Avenue, or Road, or Boulevard, is in Burlingame?"
"Nope, hut if she's there we can find her."
"Let's do that," Spade said as he sat beside the chauffeur in the dark Cadillac sedan.
"Twenty-six is the number we w'ant, and the sooner the better, but w'e don't want to pull up at the front door."
"Correct."
They rode half a dozen blocks in silence.
The chauffeur said:
"Your partner got knocked off, didn't he, Mr. Spade?"
"Uh-huh."
The chauffeur clucked.
"She's a tough racket.
You can have it for mine."
"Well, hack-drivers don't live forever."
"Maybe that's right," the thick-set man conceded, "but, just the same, it'll always be a surprise to me if I don't."
Spade stared ahead at nothing and thereafter, until the chauffeur tired of making conversation, replied with uninterested yeses and noes.
At a drug-store in Burlingame the chauffeur learned how to reach Ancho Avenue.
Ten minutes later he stopped the sedan near a dark corner, turned off the lights, and waved his hand at the block ahead.
"There she is," he said.
"She ought to be on the other side, maybe the third or fourth house."
Spade said,
"Right," and got out of the car.
"Keep the engine going.
We may have to lease in a hurry." He crossed the street and went up the other side. Far ahead a lone street-light burned. Warmer lights dotted the night on either side where houses were spaced half a dozen to a block. A high thin moon was cold and feeble as the distant street-light. A radio droned through the open window's of a house on the other side of the street.
In front of the second house from the corner Spade halted.
On one of the gateposts that were massive out of all proportion to the fence flanking them a 2 and a 6 of pale metal caught svhat light there was.
A square white card was nailed over them.
Putting his face close to the card, Spade could see that it was a For Sale or Rent sign.
There was no gate betw'een the posts.
Spade went up the cement walk to the house.
He stood still on the walk at the foot of the porch-steps for a long moment.
No sound came from the house.
The house w'as dark except for another pale square card nailed on its door.
Spade went up to the door and listened.
He could hear nothing.
He tried to look through the glass of the door.
There was no curtain to keep his gaze out, but inner darkness. FIe tiptoed to a window and then to another.
They, like the door, were uncurtained except by inner darkness.
He tried both windows.