Gutman opened his eyes. Cairo stopped whispering and stood erect behind the fat man’s chair.
Spade said: “I’ve practiced taking them away from both of them, so there’ll be no trouble there. The punk is—”
In a voice choked horribly by emotion the boy cried, “All right!” and jerked his pistol up in front of his chest.
Gutman flung a fat hand out at the boy’s wrist, caught the wrist, and bore it and the gun down while Gutman’s fat body was rising in haste from the rocking chair. Joel Cairo scurried around to the boy’s other side and grasped his other arm. They wrestled with the boy, forcing his arms down, holding them down, while he struggled futilely against them. Words came out of the struggling group: fragments of the boy’s incoherent speech—“right … go … bastard … smoke”—Gutman’s “Now, now, Wilmer!” repeated many times; Cairo’s “No, please, don’t” and “Don’t do that, Wilmer.”
Wooden-faced, dreamy-eyed, Spade got up from the sofa and went over to the group. The boy, unable to cope with the weight against him, had stopped struggling. Cairo, still holding the boy’s arm, stood partly in front of him, talking to him soothingly. Spade pushed Cairo aside gently and drove his left fist against the boy’s chin. The boy’s head snapped back as far as it could while his arms were held, and then came forward. Gutman began a desperate “Here, what—?” Spade drove his right fist against the boy’s chin.
Cairo dropped the boy’s arm, letting him collapse against Gutman’s great round belly. Cairo sprang at Spade, clawing at his face with the curved stiff fingers of both hands. Spade blew his breath out and pushed the Levantine away. Cairo sprang at him again. Tears were in Cairo’s eyes and his red lips worked angrily, forming words, but no sound came from between them.