"Can you make it all right?" he asked.
"Or shall I carry you?"
She shook her head against his shoulder.
"I'll he—all right—when I— get where—I can—sit down."
They rode up to Spade's floor in the elevator and went around to his apartment.
She left his arm and stood beside him—panting, both hands to her breast—while he unlocked his door.
He switched on the passageway light. They went in.
He shut the door and, with his arm around her again, took her back towards the living-room.
When they were within a step cf the living-room-door the light in the living-room went on.
The girl cried out and clung to Spade.
Just inside the living-room-door fat Gutman stood smiling benevolently at them.
The boy Wilmer came out of the kitchen behind them.
Black pistols were gigantic in his small hands.
Cairo came from the bathroom.
He too had a pistol.
Gutman said:
"Well, sir, we're all here, as you can see for yourself.
Now let's come in and sit down and be comfortable and talk."
XVIII.The Fall-Guy
Spade, with his arms around Brigid O'Shaughnessy, smiled meagerly over her head and said:
"Sure, we'll talk."
Gutman's bulbs jounced as he took three waddling backward steps away from the door.
Spade and the girl went in together.
The boy and Cairo followed them in.
Cairo stopped in the doorway.
The boy put away one of his pistols and came up close behind Spade.
Spade turned his head far around to look down over his shoulder at the boy and said:
"Get away.
You're not going to frisk me."
The boy said:
"Stand still.
Shut up."
Spade's nostrils went in and out with his breathing.
His voice was level.
"Get away.
Put your paw on me and I'm going to make you use the gun.
Ask your boss if he wants me shot up before we talk."
"Never mind, Wilmer," the fat man said.
He frowned indulgently at Spade.
"You are certainly a most headstrong individual.
Well, let's be seated."
Spade said,
"I told you I didn't like that punk," and took Brigid O'Shaughnessy to the sofa by the windows.
They sat close together, her head against his left shoulder, his left arm around her shoulders.
She had stopped trembling, had stopped panting. The appearance of Gutman and his companions seemed to have robbed her of that freedom of personal movement and emotion that is animal, leaving her alive, conscious, but quiescent as a plant.
Gutman lowered himself into the padded rocking chair.
Cairo chose the armchair by the table.
The boy Wilmer did not sit down.
He stood in the doorway where Cairo had stood, letting his one visible pistol hang down at his side, looking under curling lashes at Spade's body.
Cairo put his pistol on the table beside him.