XVIII

Spade laughed, grunted, “Jesus, you’re a pip!” and cuffed the side of Cairo’s face with an open hand, knocking him over against the table. Cairo regained his balance and sprang at Spade the third time. Spade stopped him with both palms held out on long rigid arms against his face. Cairo, failing to reach Spade’s face with his shorter arms, thumped Spade’s arms.

“Stop it,” Spade growled. “I’ll hurt you.”

Cairo cried, “Oh, you big coward!” and backed away from him.

Spade stooped to pick up Cairo’s pistol from the floor, and then the boy’s. He straightened up holding them in his left hand, dangling them upside-down by their trigger-guards from his forefinger.

Gutman had put the boy in the rocking chair and stood looking at him with troubled eyes in an uncertainly puckered face. Cairo went down on his knees beside the chair and began to chafe one of the boy’s limp hands.

Spade felt the boy’s chin with his fingers. “Nothing cracked,” he said. “We’ll spread him on the sofa.” He put his right arm under the boy’s arm and around his back, put his left forearm under the boy’s knees, lifted him without apparent effort, and carried him to the sofa.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy got up quickly and Spade laid the boy there. With his right hand Spade patted the boy’s clothes, found his second pistol, added it to the others in his left hand, and turned his back on the sofa. Cairo was already sitting beside the boy’s head.

Spade clinked the pistols together in his hand and smiled cheerfully at Gutman. “Well,” he said, “there’s our fall-guy.”

Gutman’s face was grey and his eyes were clouded. He did not look at Spade. He looked at the floor and did not say anything.