Gutman interlaced his fingers over his belly and rocked his chair. His voice, like his smile, was frankly rueful. “You are an uncommonly difficult person to get the best of,” he said. “I begin to think that we made a mistake in not letting you alone from the very first. By Gad, I do, sir!”

Spade moved his hand carelessly. “You haven’t done so bad. You’re staying out of jail and you’re getting the falcon. What do you want?” He put his cigarette in a corner of his mouth and said around it: “Anyhow you know where you stand now. Why did he kill Thursby?”

Gutman stopped rocking. “Thursby was a notorious killer and Miss O’Shaughnessy’s ally. We knew that removing him in just that manner would make her stop and think that perhaps it would be best to patch up her differences with us after all, besides leaving her without so violent a protector. You see, sir, I am being candid with you?”

“Yes. Keep it up. You didn’t think he might have the falcon?”

Gutman shook his head so that his round cheeks wobbled. “We didn’t think that for a minute,” he replied. He smiled benevolently. “We had the advantage of knowing Miss O’Shaughnessy far too well for that and, while we didn’t know then that she had given the falcon to Captain Jacobi in Hong Kong to be brought over on the Paloma while they took a faster boat, still we didn’t for a minute think that, if only one of them knew where it was, Thursby was the one.”

Spade nodded thoughtfully and asked: “You didn’t try to make a deal with him before you gave him the works?”

“Yes, sir, we certainly did. I talked to him myself that night. Wilmer had located him two days before and had been trying to follow him to wherever he was meeting Miss O’Shaughnessy, but Thursby was too crafty for that even if he didn’t know he was being watched. So that