The tear passed through the next line, leaving only enough of its letters to make “from Sydney” inferable.
Spade put the Call down on the desk and looked into the wastebasket again. He found a small piece of wrapping paper, a piece of string, two hosiery tags, a haberdasher’s sale-ticket for half a dozen pairs of socks, and, in the bottom of the basket, a piece of newspaper rolled into a tiny ball.
He opened the ball carefully, smoothed it out on the desk, and fitted it into the torn part of the Call . The fit at the sides was exact, but between the top of the crumpled fragment and the inferable “from Sydney” half an inch was missing, sufficient space to have held announcement of six or seven boats’ arrival. He turned the sheet over and saw that the other side of the missing portion could have held only a meaningless corner of a stockbroker’s advertisement.
Luke, leaning over his shoulder, asked: “What’s this all about?”
“Looks like the gent’s interested in a boat.”
“Well, there’s no law against that, or is there?” Luke said while Spade was folding the torn page and the crumpled fragment together and putting them into his coat-pocket. “You all through here now?”
“Yes. Thanks a lot, Luke. Will you give me a ring as soon as he comes in?”
“Sure.”
Spade went to the Business Office of the Call , bought a copy of the previous day’s issue, opened it to the shipping news page, and compared it with the page taken from Cairo’s wastebasket. The missing portion had read:
He read the list slowly and when he had finished he underscored “Hong Kong” with a fingernail, cut the list of arrivals from the paper with his