“No, no witnesses,” Spade said and laughed pleasantly. “Sit down, Dundy. You haven’t finished your drink. Get your glass, Tom.”
Tom said: “No, thanks, Sam.”
Dundy sat down, but paid no attention to his glass of rum.
Spade filled his own glass, drank, set the empty glass on the table, and returned to his bedside-seat.
“I know where I stand now,” he said, looking with friendly eyes from one of the police-detectives to the other. “I’m sorry I got up on my hind legs, but you birds coming in and trying to put the work on me made me nervous. Having Miles knocked off bothered me, and then you birds cracking foxy. That’s all right now, though, now that I know what you’re up to.”
Tom said: “Forget it.”
The Lieutenant said nothing.
Spade asked: “Thursby die?”
While the Lieutenant hesitated Tom said: “Yes.”
Then the Lieutenant said angrily: “And you might just as well know it—if you don’t—that he died before he could tell anybody anything.”
Spade was rolling a cigarette. He asked, not looking up: “What do you mean by that? You think I did know it?”
“I meant what I said,” Dundy replied bluntly.
Spade looked up at him and smiled, holding the finished cigarette in one hand, his lighter in the other.
“You’re not ready to pinch me yet, are you, Dundy?” he asked.