“Well, hack-drivers don’t live forever.”
“Maybe that’s right,” the thickset man conceded, “but, just the same, it’ll always be a surprise to me if I don’t.”
Spade stared ahead at nothing and thereafter, until the chauffeur tired of making conversation, replied with uninterested yeses and noes.
At a drugstore in Burlingame the chauffeur learned how to reach Ancho Avenue. Ten minutes later he stopped the sedan near a dark corner, turned off the lights, and waved his hand at the block ahead. “There she is,” he said. “She ought to be on the other side, maybe the third or fourth house.”
Spade said, “Right,” and got out of the car. “Keep the engine going. We may have to leave in a hurry.”
He crossed the street and went up the other side. Far ahead a lone streetlight burned. Warmer lights dotted the night on either side where houses were spaced half a dozen to a block. A high thin moon was cold and feeble as the distant streetlight. A radio droned through the open windows of a house on the other side of the street.
In