Spade, left arm around Brigid O’Shaughnessy, opened the corridor door. Lieutenant Dundy, Detective-sergeant Tom Polhaus, and two other detectives were there.
Spade said: “Hello, Tom. Get them?”
Polhaus said: “Got them.”
“Swell. Come in. Here’s another one for you.” Spade pressed the girl forward. “She killed Miles. And I’ve got some exhibits—the boy’s guns, one of Cairo’s, a black statuette that all the hell was about, and a thousand-dollar bill that I was supposed to be bribed with.” He looked at Dundy, drew his brows together, leaned forward to peer into the Lieutenant’s face, and burst out laughing. “What in hell’s the matter with your little playmate, Tom? He looks heartbroken.” He laughed again. “I bet, by God! when he heard Gutman’s story he thought he had me at last.”
“Cut it out, Sam,” Tom grumbled. “We didn’t think—”
“Like hell he didn’t,” Spade said merrily. “He came up here with his mouth watering, though you’d have sense enough to know I’d been stringing Gutman.”
“Cut it out,” Tom grumbled again, looking uneasily sidewise at his superior. “Anyways we got it from Cairo. Gutman’s dead. The kid had just finished shooting him up when we got there.”
Spade nodded. “He ought to have expected that,” he said.
Effie Perine put down her newspaper and jumped out of Spade’s chair when he came into the office at a little after nine o’clock Monday morning.
He said: “Morning, angel.”