Spade leaned against the pushing hand, grinned wolfishly, and asked: “Going to strong-arm me, Tom?”
Tom grumbled, “Aw, for God’s sake,” and took his hand away.
Dundy clicked his teeth together and said through them: “Let us in.”
Spade’s lip twitched over his eyetooth. He said: “You’re not coming in. What do you want to do about it? Try to get in? Or do your talking here? Or go to hell?”
Tom groaned.
Dundy, still speaking through his teeth, said: “It’d pay you to play along with us a little, Spade. You’ve got away with this and you’ve got away with that, but you can’t keep it up forever.”
“Stop me when you can,” Spade replied arrogantly.
“That’s what I’ll do.” Dundy put his hands behind him and thrust his hard face up towards the private detective’s. “There’s talk going around that you and Archer’s wife were cheating on him.”
Spade laughed. “That sounds like something you thought up yourself.”
“Then there’s not anything to it?”
“Not anything.”
“The talk is,” Dundy said, “that she tried to get a divorce out of him so’s she could put in with you, but he wouldn’t give it to her. Anything to that?”
“No.”
“There’s even talk,” Dundy went on stolidly, “that that’s why he was put on the spot.”