buy more than with ten dollars of talk.” Silent laughter shook his bulbs. When their commotion stopped he said more seriously, yet not altogether seriously: “There are more of us to be taken care of now.” He moved his twinkling eyes and his fat head to indicate Cairo. “And—well, sir, in short—the situation has changed.”
While Gutman talked Spade had tapped the edges of the ten bills into alignment and returned them to their envelope, tucking the flap in over them. Now, with forearms on knees, he sat hunched forward, dangling the envelope from a corner held lightly by finger and thumb down between his legs. His reply to the fat man was careless: “Sure. You’re together now, but I’ve got the falcon.”
Joel Cairo spoke. Ugly hands grasping the arms of his chair, he leaned forward and said primly in his high-pitched thin voice: “I shouldn’t think it would be necessary to remind you, Mr. Spade, that though you may have the falcon yet we certainly have you.”
Spade grinned. “I’m trying to not let that worry me,” he said. He sat up straight, put the envelope aside—on the sofa—and addressed Gutman: “We’ll come back to the money later. There’s another thing that’s got to be taken care of first. We’ve got to have a fall-guy.”
The fat man frowned without comprehension, but before he could speak Spade was explaining: “The police have got to have a victim—somebody they can stick for those three murders. We—”
Cairo, speaking in a brittle excited voice, interrupted Spade. “Two—only two—murders, Mr. Spade. Thursby undoubtedly killed your partner.”
“All right, two,” Spade growled. “What difference does that make? The point is we’ve got to feed the police some—”
Now Gutman broke in, smiling confidently, talking with good-natured assurance: “Well, sir, from what we’ve seen and heard of you I don’t