Spade nodded his blond satan’s head, frowned sympathetically, and
tightened his lips together.
“It was horrible,” Miss Wonderly said, trying to smile. “I couldn’t sit
there like that—waiting—not knowing what had happened to her, what
might be happening to her.” She stopped trying to smile. She shuddered.
“The only address I had was General Delivery. I wrote her another
letter, and yesterday afternoon I went to the Post Office. I stayed
there until after dark, but I didn’t see her. I went there again this
morning, and still didn’t see Corinne, but I saw Floyd Thursby.”
Spade nodded again. His frown went away. In its place came a look of
sharp attentiveness.
“He wouldn’t tell me where Corinne was,” she went on, hopelessly. “He
wouldn’t tell me anything, except that she was well and happy. But how
can I believe that? That is what he would tell me anyhow, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” Spade agreed. “But it might be true.”
“I hope it is. I do hope it is,” she exclaimed. “But I can’t go back
home like this, without having seen her, without even having talked to
her on the phone. He wouldn’t take me to her. He said she didn’t want to
see me. I can’t believe that. He promised to tell her he had seen me,
and to bring her to see me—if she would come—this evening at the
hotel. He said he knew she wouldn’t. He promised to come himself if she
wouldn’t. He—”
She broke off with a startled hand to her mouth as the door opened.
* * * * *
The man who had opened the door came in a step, said, “Oh, excuse me!”
hastily took his brown hat from his head, and backed out.
“It’s all right, Miles,” Spade told him. “Come in. Miss Wonderly, this
is Mr. Archer, my partner.”
Miles Archer came into the office again, shutting the door behind him,
ducking his head and smiling at Miss Wonderly, making a vaguely polite
gesture with the hat in his hand. He was of medium height, solidly
built, wide in the shoulders, thick in the neck, with a jovial
heavy-jawed red face and some grey in his close-trimmed hair. He was
apparently as many years past forty as Spade was past thirty.
Spade said: “Miss Wonderly’s sister ran away from New York with a fellow
named Floyd Thursby. They’re here. Miss Wonderly has seen Thursby and
has a date with him tonight. Maybe he’ll bring the sister with him. The
chances are he won’t. Miss Wonderly wants us to find the sister and get
her away from him and back home.” He looked at Miss Wonderly. “Right?”
“Yes,” she said indistinctly. The embarrassment that had gradually been
driven away by Spade’s ingratiating smiles and nods and assurances was
pinkening her face again. She looked at the bag in her lap and picked
nervously at it with a gloved finger.
Spade winked at his partner.
Miles Archer came forward to stand at a corner of the desk. While the
girl looked at her bag he looked at her. His little brown eyes ran their
bold appraising gaze from her lowered face to her feet and up to her
face again. Then he looked at Spade and made a silent whistling mouth of
appreciation.
Spade lifted two fingers from the arm of his chair in a brief warning
gesture and said:
“We shouldn’t have any trouble with it. It’s simply a matter of having a
man at the hotel this evening to shadow him away when he leaves, and
shadow him until he leads us to your sister. If she comes with him, and
you persuade her to return with you, so much the better. Otherwise—if
she doesn’t want to leave him after we’ve found her—well, we’ll find a
way of managing that.”
Archer said: “Yeh.” His voice was heavy, coarse.
Miss Wonderly looked up at Spade, quickly, puckering her forehead
between her eyebrows.
“Oh, but you must be careful!” Her voice shook a little, and her lips
shaped the words with nervous jerkiness. “I’m deathly afraid of him, of
what he might do. She’s so young and his bringing her here from New York
is such a serious—Mightn’t he—mightn’t he do—something to her?”
Spade smiled and patted the arms of his chair.
“Just leave that to us,” he said. “We’ll know how to handle him.”
“But mightn’t he?” she insisted.
“There’s always a chance.” Spade nodded judicially. “But you can trust
us to take care of that.”
“I do trust you,” she said earnestly, “but I want you to know that he’s
a dangerous man. I honestly don’t think he’d stop at anything. I don’t
believe he’d hesitate to—to kill Corinne if he thought it would save
him. Mightn’t he do that?”
“You didn’t threaten him, did you?”
“I told him that all I wanted was to get her home before Mama and Papa
came so they’d never know what she had done. I promised him I’d never
say a word to them about it if he helped me, but if he didn’t Papa would
certainly see that he was punished. I—I don’t suppose he believed me,
altogether.”
“Can he cover up by marrying her?” Archer asked.
The girl blushed and replied in a confused voice: “He has a wife and
three children in England. Corinne wrote me that, to explain why she had
gone off with him.”
“They usually do,” Spade said, “though not always in England.” He leaned
forward to reach for pencil and pad of paper. “What does he look like?”
“Oh, he’s thirty-five years old, perhaps, and as tall as you, and either
naturally dark or quite sunburned. His hair is dark too, and he has
thick eyebrows. He talks in a rather loud, blustery way and has a
nervous, irritable manner. He gives the impression of being—of
violence.”
Spade, scribbling on the pad, asked without looking up: “What color
eyes?”
“They’re blue-grey and watery, though not in a weak way. And—oh,
yes—he has a marked cleft in his chin.”
“Thin, medium, or heavy build?”
“Quite athletic. He’s broad-shouldered and carries himself erect, has
what could be called a decidedly military carriage. He was wearing a
light grey suit and a grey hat when I saw him this morning.”
“What does he do for a living?” Spade asked as he laid down his pencil.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“What time is he coming to see you?”
“After eight o’clock.”
“All right, Miss Wonderly, we’ll have a man there. It’ll help if—”
“Mr. Spade, could either you or Mr. Archer?” She made an appealing
gesture with both hands. “Could either of you look after it personally?
I don’t mean that the man you’d send wouldn’t be capable, but—oh!—I’m
so afraid of what might happen to Corinne. I’m afraid of him. Could you?
I’d be—I’d expect to be charged more, of course.” She opened her
handbag with nervous fingers and put two hundred-dollar bills on Spade’s
desk. “Would that be enough?”
“Yeh,” Archer said, “and I’ll look after it myself.”
Miss Wonderly stood up, impulsively holding a hand out to him.
Reader notes
Loading reader notes…