Spade sat up straight and blinked. He exclaimed incredulously: “Jesus, these women!” Then he laughed, relaxed, and asked: “Well, what did she see?”
Wise shook his head. “Nothing much. When he came home for dinner that evening he told her he had a date with a girl at the St. Mark, ragging her, telling her that was her chance to get the divorce she wanted. She thought at first he was just trying to get under her skin. He knew—”
“I know the family history,” Spade said. “Skip it. Tell me what she did.”
“I will if you’ll give me a chance. After he had gone out she began to think that maybe he might have had that date. You know Miles. It would have been like him to—”
“You can skip Miles’s character too.”
“I oughtn’t to tell you a damned thing,” the lawyer said. “So she got their car from the garage and drove down to the St. Mark, sitting in the car across the street. She saw him come out of the hotel and she saw that he was shadowing a man and a girl—she says she saw the same girl with you last night—who had come out just ahead of him. She knew then that he was working, had been kidding her. I suppose she was disappointed, and mad—she sounded that way when she told me about it. She followed Miles long enough to make sure he was shadowing the pair, and then she went up to your apartment. You weren’t home.”
“What time was that?” Spade asked.
“When she got to your place? Between half-past nine and ten the first time.”
“The first time?”
“Yes. She drove around for half an hour or so and then tried again. That would make it, say, ten-thirty. You were still out, so she drove back