“Which way did she go?”
“At the Ferry? I don’t know. Maybe upstairs, or towards the stairs.”
“Take the newspaper with her?”
“Yeah, she had it tucked under her arm when she paid me.”
“With the pink sheet outside, or one of the white?”
“Hell, Cap, I don’t remember that.”
Spade thanked the chauffeur, said, “Get yourself a smoke,” and gave him a silver dollar.
Spade bought a copy of the Call and carried it into an office-building-vestibule to examine it out of the wind.
His eyes ran swiftly over the front page headlines and over those on the second and third pages. They paused for a moment under Suspect Arrested as Counterfeiter on the fourth page, and again on page five under Bay Youth Seeks Death with Bullet . Pages six and seven held nothing to interest him. On eight 3 Boys Arrested as S.F. Burglars after Shooting held his attention for a moment, and after that nothing until he reached the thirty-fifth page, which held news of the weather, shipping, produce, finance, divorce, births, marriages, and deaths. He read the list of dead, passed over pages thirty-six and thirty-seven—financial news—found nothing to stop his eyes on the thirty-eighth and last page, sighed, folded the newspaper, put it in his coat-pocket, and rolled a cigarette.
For five minutes he stood there in the office-building-vestibule smoking and staring sulkily at nothing. Then he walked up to Stockton Street, hailed a taxicab, and had himself driven to the Coronet.