Gutman cocked his head to the left and considered these questions. His eyes twinkled between puckered lids. Presently he gave his genial answer: “Well, sir, there are other means of persuasion besides killing and threatening to kill.”

“Sure,” Spade agreed, “but they’re not much good unless the threat of death is behind them to hold the victim down. See what I mean? If you try anything I don’t like I won’t stand for it. I’ll make it a matter of your having to call it off or kill me, knowing you can’t afford to kill me.”

“I see what you mean.” Gutman chuckled. “That is an attitude, sir, that calls for the most delicate judgment on both sides, because, as you know, sir, men are likely to forget in the heat of action where their best interest lies and let their emotions carry them away.”

Spade too was all smiling blandness. “That’s the trick, from my side,” he said, “to make my play strong enough that it ties you up, but yet not make you mad enough to bump me off against your better judgment.”

Gutman said fondly: “By Gad, sir, you are a character!”

Joel Cairo jumped up from his chair and went around behind the boy and behind Gutman’s chair. He bent over the back of Gutman’s chair and, screening his mouth and the fat man’s ear with his empty hand, whispered. Gutman listened attentively, shutting his eyes.

Spade grinned at Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Her lips smiled feebly in response, but there was no change in her eyes; they did not lose their numb stare. Spade turned to the boy: “Two to one they’re selling you out, son.”

The boy did not say anything. A trembling in his knees began to shake the knees of his trousers.

Spade addressed Gutman: “I hope you’re not letting yourself be influenced by the guns these pocket-edition desperadoes are waving.”