“Are you going to marry Iva?” she asked, looking down at his pale brown hair.
“Don’t be silly,” he muttered. The unlighted cigarette bobbed up and down with the movement of his lips.
“She doesn’t think it’s silly. Why should she—the way you’ve played around with her?”
He sighed and said: “I wish to Christ I’d never seen her.”
“Maybe you do now.” A trace of spitefulness came into the girl’s voice. “But there was a time.”
“I never know what to do or say to women except that way,” he grumbled, “and then I didn’t like Miles.”
“That’s a lie, Sam,” the girl said. “You know I think she’s a louse, but I’d be a louse too if it would give me a body like hers.”
Spade rubbed his face impatiently against her hip, but said nothing.
Effie Perine bit her lip, wrinkled her forehead, and, bending over for a better view of his face, asked: “Do you suppose she could have killed him?”
Spade sat up straight and took his arm from her waist. He smiled at her. His smile held nothing but amusement. He took out his lighter, snapped on the flame, and applied it to the end of his cigarette. “You’re an angel,” he said tenderly through smoke, “a nice rattlebrained angel.”
She smiled a bit wryly. “Oh, am I? Suppose I told you that your Iva hadn’t been home many minutes when I arrived to break the news at three o’clock this morning?”