to half a million?”
Spade narrowed his eyes. “Then you think the dingus is worth two million?”
Gutman smiled serenely. “In your own words, why not?” he asked.
Spade emptied his glass and set it on the table. He put his cigar in his mouth, took it out, looked at it, and put it back in. His yellow-grey eyes were faintly muddy. He said: “That’s a hell of a lot of dough.”
The fat man agreed: “That’s a hell of a lot of dough.” He leaned forward and patted Spade’s knee. “That is the absolute rock-bottom minimum—or Charilaos Konstantinides was a blithering idiot—and he wasn’t.”
Spade removed the cigar from his mouth again, frowned at it with distaste, and put it on the smoking-stand. He shut his eyes hard, opened them again. Their muddiness had thickened. He said: “The—the minimum, huh? And the maximum?” An unmistakable sh followed the x in maximum as he said it.