The boy lowered his paper and looked around, moving with a purposeful sort of slowness, as of a more natural swiftness restrained. He looked with small hazel eyes under somewhat long curling lashes at Spade’s chest. He said, in a voice as colorless and composed and cold as his young face: “What?”
“Where is he?” Spade was busy with his cigarette.
“Who?”
“The fairy.”
The hazel eyes’ gaze went up Spade’s chest to the knot of his maroon tie and rested there. “What do you think you’re doing, Jack?” the boy demanded. “Kidding me?”
“I’ll tell you when I am.” Spade licked his cigarette and smiled amiably at the boy. “New York, aren’t you?”
The boy stared at Spade’s tie and did not speak. Spade nodded as if the boy had said yes and asked: “Baumes rush?”
The boy stared at Spade’s tie for a moment longer, then raised his newspaper and returned his attention to it. “Shove off,” he said from the side of his mouth.
Spade lighted his cigarette, leaned back comfortably on the divan, and spoke with good-natured carelessness: “You’ll have to talk to me before you’re through, sonny—some of you will—and you can tell G. I said so.”
The boy put his paper down quickly and faced Spade, staring at his necktie with bleak hazel eyes. The boy’s small hands were spread flat over his belly. “Keep asking for it and you’re going to get it,” he said, “plenty.” His voice was low and flat and menacing. “I told you to shove off. Shove off.”