warmth. “With every bull in town working overtime trying to pile up grief for me a little more won’t hurt. I won’t even know it’s there.”
Polhaus’s ruddiness deepened. He said: “That’s a swell thing to say to me.”
Spade picked up his knife and fork and began to eat. Polhaus ate.
Presently Spade asked: “See the boat on fire in the bay?”
“I saw the smoke. Be reasonable, Sam. Dundy was wrong and he knows it. Why don’t you let it go at that?”
“Think I ought to go around and tell him I hope my chin didn’t hurt his fist?”
Polhaus cut savagely into his pig’s foot.
Spade said: “Phil Archer been in with any more hot tips?”
“Aw, hell! Dundy didn’t think you shot Miles, but what else could he do except run the lead down? You’d’ve done the same thing in his place, and you know it.”
“Yes?” Malice glittered in Spade’s eyes. “What made him think I didn’t do it? What makes you think I didn’t? Or don’t you?”
Polhaus’s ruddy face flushed again. He said: “Thursby shot Miles.”
“You think he did.”
“He did. That Webley was his, and the slug in Miles came out of it.”
“Sure?” Spade demanded.
“Dead sure,” the police-detective replied. “We got hold of a kid—a bellhop at Thursby’s hotel—that had seen it in his room just that