The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Spade did not look at the pistol. He raised his arms and, leaning back in his chair, intertwined the fingers of his two hands behind his head; but his eyes, holding no particular expression, remained focused on Cairo’s dark face.

Cairo coughed a little apologetic cough and smiled nervously with lips that had lost some of their redness. His dark eyes were humid and bashful and very earnest.

“I intend to search your office, Mr. Spade,” he said. “I warn you that if you attempt to prevent me I shall certainly shoot you.”

“Go ahead.” Spade’s voice was as empty of expression as his face.

“You will please stand,” the man with the pistol instructed him at whose thick chest the pistol was aimed. “I shall have to make sure that you are not armed.”

Spade stood up, pushing the chair back with his calves as he straightened his legs.

Cairo went around behind him. He changed the pistol from his right hand to his left. He lifted Spade’s coat tail and looked under it. Holding the pistol close to Spade’s back, he put his right hand around Spade’s side and patted his chest.

The Levantine face was then no more than six inches below and behind Spade’s right elbow.

Spade’s elbow dropped as Spade spun to the right. Cairo’s face jerked back not far enough: Spade’s right heel on the patent-leathered toes anchored the smaller man in the elbow’s path. The elbow struck him beneath the cheekbone, staggering him so that he must have fallen had he not been held by Spade’s foot on his foot.

Spade’s elbow went on past the astonished face and straightened when Spade’s hand struck down at the pistol. Cairo let go the pistol the instant that Spade’s fingers touched it. The pistol was small in Spade’s hand.

Spade took his foot off Cairo’s to complete his about-face. With his left hand Spade gathered together the smaller man’s coat lapels — the ruby-set green tie bunching out over his knuckles — while his right hand stowed the captured pistol away in a coat pocket. Spade’s yellow-gray eyes were somber. His face was wooden except for a trace of sullenness around the mouth.

Cairo’s face was twisted with pain and chagrin. There were tears in his dark eyes. His skin was the complexion of polished lead except where the elbow had reddened his cheek.

Spade by means of his grip on the Levantine’s lapels turned him slowly and pushed him back until he was standing close in front of the chair he had lately occupied. A puzzled look replaced the look of pain in the lead-colored face.

Then Spade smiled. His smile was gentle, even dreamy.

His right shoulder lifted a few inches. His bent right arm was driven up by the shoulder’s lift. Fist, wrist, forearm, crooked elbow, and upper arm seemed all one rigid piece, with only the limber shoulder giving them motion. The fist struck Cairo’s face, covering for a moment one side of his chin, a corner of his mouth, and most of his cheek between cheek bone and jaw bone.

Cairo shut his eyes and was unconscious.

Spade lowered the limp body into the chair, where it lay with sprawled arms and legs, the head lolling back against the chair’s back, the mouth open.

Spade emptied the unconscious man’s pockets one by one, working methodically, moving the lax body when necessary, making a pile of the pocket’s contents on the desk. When the last pocket had been turned out he returned to his own chair, rolled and lighted a cigarette, and began to examine his spoils. He examined them with grave and unhurried thoroughness.

There was a large wallet of dark soft leather. The wallet contained three hundred and sixty-five dollars in United States bills of several sizes; three five-pound notes; a much-viséd Greek passport bearing Cairo’s name and portrait; five folded sheets of pinkish onion skin paper covered with what seemed to be Arabic writing; a raggedly clipped newspaper account of the finding of Archer’s and Thursby’s bodies; a postcard photograph of a dusky woman with bold cruel eyes and a tender drooping mouth; a large silk handkerchief, yellow with age and somewhat cracked along its folds; an American Express receipt for a package sent that day to Constantinople; and a thin sheaf of Mr. Joel Cairo’s engraved cards.

Besides the wallet and its contents there were three gaily colored silk handkerchiefs, fragrant of chypre; a platinum Longines watch on a platinum and red gold chain, attached at the other end to a small pear-shaped pendant of some white metal, which rattled when shaken and was intricately carved and inlaid with black and green in overlapping geometrical patterns; a handful of United States, British, French, and Chinese coins; a ring holding half a dozen keys; a silver-and-onyx fountain pen; a metal comb in a leatherette case; a nail file in a leatherette case; a small street guide to San Francisco; a ticket for an orchestra seat at the Geary that evening; a Southern Pacific baggage check; a half-filled package of violet pastilles; a Shanghai insurance broker’s business card; and four sheets of Hotel Belvedere writing paper, on one of which was written in small precise letters Samuel Spade’s name and his business and residential addresses.