“I wouldn’t be too surprised,” he told her, grinning so that the edges of his jaw-teeth were visible, “to know what to do next.”
“And that would be?” She transferred her attention from the sandwich to his face. “That’s what I wanted to know: what would you do next?”
He shook his head.
Mockery rippled in a smile on her face. “Something wild and unpredictable?”
“Maybe. But I don’t see what you’ve got to gain by covering up now. It’s coming out bit by bit anyhow. There’s a lot of it I don’t know, but there’s some of it I do, and some more that I can guess at, and, give me another day like this, I’ll soon be knowing things about it that you don’t know.”
“I suppose you do now,” she said, looking at her sandwich again, her face serious. “But—oh!—I’m so tired of it, and I do so hate having to talk about it. Wouldn’t it—wouldn’t it be just as well to wait and let you learn about it as you say you will?”
Spade laughed. “I don’t know. You’ll have to figure that out for yourself. My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery. It’s all right with me, if you’re sure none of the flying pieces will hurt you.”
She moved her bare shoulders uneasily, but said nothing. For several minutes they ate in silence, he phlegmatically, she thoughtfully. Then she said in a hushed voice: “I’m afraid of you, and that’s the truth.”
He said: “That’s not the truth.”
“It is,” she insisted in the same low voice. “I know two men I’m afraid of and I’ve seen both of them tonight.”