“But I didn’t,” she said, pausing between words as if she were selecting them with great care, “have time to finish talking to him.” She stopped frowning at her knees and looked at Spade with clear candid eyes. “We were interrupted almost before we had begun.”
Spade lighted his cigarette and laughed his mouth empty of smoke. “Want me to phone him and ask him to come back?”
She shook her head, not smiling. Her eyes moved back and forth between her lids as she shook her head, maintaining their focus on Spade’s eyes. Her eyes were inquisitive.
Spade put an arm across her back, cupping his hand over the smooth bare white shoulder farthest from him. She leaned back into the bend of his arm. He said: “Well, I’m listening.”
She twisted her head around to smile up at him with playful insolence, asking: “Do you need your arm there for that?”
“No.” He removed his hand from her shoulder and let his arm drop down behind her.
“You’re altogether unpredictable,” she murmured.
He nodded and said amiably: “I’m still listening.”
“Look at the time!” she exclaimed, wriggling a finger at the alarm-clock perched atop the book saying two-fifty with its clumsily shaped hands.
“Uh-huh, it’s been a busy evening.”
“I must go.” She rose from the sofa. “This is terrible.”
Spade did not rise. He shook his head and said: “Not until you’ve told me about it.”