“And the others?”
Dundy pulled down the corners of his mouth. “Let us in.” He nodded significantly at the doorway in which Spade stood.
Spade frowned and shook his head.
Dundy’s mouth-corners lifted in a smile of grim satisfaction. “There must’ve been something to it,” he told Tom.
Tom shifted his feet and, not looking at either man, mumbled: “God knows.”
“What’s this?” Spade asked. “Charades?”
“All right, Spade, we’re going.” Dundy buttoned his overcoat. “We’ll be in to see you now and then. Maybe you’re right in bucking us. Think it over.”
“Uh-huh,” Spade said, grinning. “Glad to see you any time, Lieutenant, and whenever I’m not busy I’ll let you in.”
A voice in Spade’s living-room screamed: “Help! Help! Police! Help!” The voice, high and thin and shrill, was Joel Cairo’s.
Lieutenant Dundy stopped turning away from the door, confronted Spade again, and said decisively: “I guess we’re going in.”
The sounds of a brief struggle, of a blow, of a subdued cry, came to them.
Spade’s face twisted into a smile that held little joy. He said, “I guess you are,” and stood out of the way.
When the police-detectives had entered he shut the corridor door and followed them back to the living-room.