Gutman held his glass up to the light, looked affectionately at it, took another long drink, and said: “I have two proposals to make, sir, and either is fair. Take your choice. I will give you twenty-five thousand dollars when you deliver the falcon to me, and another twenty-five thousand as soon as I get to New York; or I will give you one quarter—twenty-five percent—of what I realize on the falcon. There you are, sir: an almost immediate fifty thousand dollars or a vastly greater sum within, say, a couple of months.”
Spade drank and asked: “How much greater?”
“Vastly,” the fat man repeated. “Who knows how much greater? Shall I say a hundred thousand, or a quarter of a million? Will you believe me if I name the sum that seems the probable minimum?”
“Why not?”
The fat man smacked his lips and lowered his voice to a purring murmur. “What would you say, sir,