Cairo took his hands from his face and his eyes bulged. He stammered: “You are—?” Amazement coming with full comprehension made him speechless.
Gutman patted his fat hands together. His eyes twinkled. His voice was a complacent throaty purring: “For seventeen years I have wanted that little item and have been trying to get it. If I must spend another year on the quest—well, sir—that will be an additional expenditure in time of only”—his lips moved silently as he calculated—“five and fifteen-seventeenths percent.”
The Levantine giggled and cried: “I go with you!”
Spade suddenly released the girl’s wrist and looked around the room. The boy was not there. Spade went into the passageway. The corridor door stood open. Spade made a dissatisfied mouth, shut the door, and returned to the living-room. He leaned against the doorframe and looked at Gutman and Cairo. He looked at Gutman for a long time, sourly. Then he spoke, mimicking the fat man’s throaty purr: “Well, sir, I must say you’re a swell lot of thieves!”
Gutman chuckled. “We’ve little enough to boast about, and that’s a fact, sir,” he said. “But, well, we’re none of us dead yet and there’s not a bit of use thinking the world’s come to an end just because we’ve run into a little setback.” He brought his left hand from behind him and held it out towards Spade, pink smooth hilly palm up. “I’ll have to ask you for that envelope, sir.”
Spade did not move. His face was wooden. He said: “I held up my end. You got your dingus. It’s your hard luck, not mine, that it wasn’t what you wanted.”