The Russian’s Hand
The boy lay on his back on the sofa, a small figure that was—except for its breathing—altogether corpselike to the eye. Joel Cairo sat beside the boy, bending over him, rubbing his cheeks and wrists, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, whispering to him, and peering anxiously down at his white still face.
Brigid O’Shaughnessy stood in an angle made by table and wall. One of her hands was flat on the table, the other to her breast. She pinched her lower lip between her teeth and glanced furtively at Spade whenever he was not looking at her. When he looked at her she looked at Cairo and the boy.
Gutman’s face had lost its troubled cast and was becoming rosy again. He had put his hands in his trousers-pockets. He stood facing Spade, watching him without curiosity.
Spade, idly jingling his handful of pistols, nodded at Cairo’s rounded back and asked Gutman: “It’ll be all right with him?”
“I don’t know,” the fat man replied placidly. “That part will have to be strictly up to you, sir.”
Spade’s smile made his v-shaped chin more salient. He said: “Cairo.”
The Levantine screwed his dark anxious face around over his shoulder.
Spade said: “Let him rest awhile. We’re going to give him to the police. We ought to get the details fixed before he comes to.”