“Schoolgirl manner,” he explained, “stammering and blushing and all that.”
She blushed and replied hurriedly, not looking at him: “I told you this afternoon that I’ve been bad—worse than you could know.”
“That’s what I mean,” he said. “You told me that this afternoon in the same words, same tone. It’s a speech you’ve practiced.”
After a moment in which she seemed confused almost to the point of tears she laughed and said: “Very well, then, Mr. Spade, I’m not at all the sort of person I pretend to be. I’m eighty years old, incredibly wicked, and an iron-molder by trade. But if it’s a pose it’s one I’ve grown into, so you won’t expect me to drop it entirely, will you?”
“Oh, it’s all right,” he assured her. “Only it wouldn’t be all right if you were actually that innocent. We’d never get anywhere.”
“I won’t be innocent,” she promised with a hand on her heart.
“I saw Joel Cairo tonight,” he said in the manner of one making polite conversation.
Gaiety went out of her face. Her eyes, focused on his profile, became frightened, then cautious. He had stretched his legs out and was looking at his crossed feet. His face did not indicate that he was thinking about anything.
There was a long pause before she asked uneasily:
“You—you know him?”
“I saw him tonight.” Spade did not look up and he maintained his light conversational tone. “He was going to see George Arliss.”
“You mean you talked to him?”