The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

“You can skip Miles’s character too.”

“I oughtn’t to tell you a damned thing,” the lawyer said. “So she got their car from the garage and drove down to the St. Mark, sitting in the car across the street. She saw him come out of the hotel, and she saw that he was shadowing a man and a girl — she says she saw the same girl with you last night — who had come out just ahead of him. She knew then that he was working, had been kidding her. I suppose she was disappointed, and mad; she sounded that way when she told about it. She followed Miles long enough to be sure he was shadowing the pair, and then she went up to your rooms. You weren’t home.”

“What time was that?” Spade asked.

“When she got to your place? Between half past nine and ten, the first time.”

“The first time?”

“Yes. She drove around for half an hour or more after that, and then tried again. That would make it, say, ten-thirty. You were still out, so she drove back downtown and went to a movie to kill time until after midnight, when she thought she’d be more likely to find you in.”

Spade frowned. “She went to a movie at ten-thirty?”

“So she said. The one on Powell Street that stays open till one in the morning. She didn’t want to go home, she said, because she didn’t want to be there when Miles came home. That always made him mad, it seems, especially if it was around midnight. She stayed in the movie until it closed.” Wise’s words came out slower now and there was a sardonic glint in his tired eyes. “She says she had decided not to go back to your place then. She says she didn’t know whether you’d like having her drop in that late. So she went to Tait’s — the one on Ellis Street — had something to eat, and then went home, alone.”

Wise rocked back in his chair and waited for Spade to speak. Spade’s face was expressionless. He asked: “You believe her?”

“Don’t you?” Wise replied.

“How do I know? How do I know it isn’t something you fixed up between you to tell me?”

Wise smiled. “You don’t cash many checks for strangers, do you, Sammy?”

“Not basketfuls. Well, then what? Miles wasn’t home. It was at least two o’clock by then.”

“Miles wasn’t home,” Wise said. “That made her mad again, because he didn’t get home first to be made mad by her not being home first. So she took the car out of the garage again and went back to your place.”

“And I wasn’t home. I was down looking at Miles’s corpse. — ! What a swell lot of merry-go-round riding. What next?”

“She went home, and her husband was still not there, and while she was undressing your messenger came with the news of his death.”