The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

“In my hands, safely put away.”

Gutman smiled approvingly.

“Trust you for that, sir,” he said. “Well, now, sir, before we sit down to talk prices answer me this: How soon can you, or how soon are you willing to, produce the falcon?”

“A couple of days.”

The fat man nodded. “That is satisfactory. We — But I forget our nourishment.” He turned to the table, poured whiskey, squirted charged water into it, set a glass at Spade’s elbow and held his own aloft. “Well, sir, here’s to a fair bargain and a profit large enough for both of us.”

They drank. The fat man sat down. Spade asked: “What’s your idea of a fair bargain?”

Gutman held his glass to the light, looked at it as if he liked it, took another long drink, and said: “I have two proposals to make, sir, and either is fair. Take your choice. I will give you twenty-five thousand dollars when you deliver the falcon, and another twenty-five thousand as soon as I get to New York; or I will give you one quarter — twenty-five percent — of what I realize on the falcon. There you are, sir: an almost immediate fifty thousand dollars or a vastly greater sum within, say, a couple of months.”

Spade drank and asked:

“How much greater?”

“Vastly,” the fat man repeated. “Will you believe me if I name the amount that seems the probable minimum?”

“Why not?”

“What would you say, sir, to half a million?”

Spade narrowed his eyes. “Then you think the dingus is worth two million?”

Gutman smiled serenely. “In your own words, why not?” he asked.

Spade emptied his glass and set it on the table. He put his cigar in his mouth, took it out, looked at it, and put it back in. His yellow-gray eyes were faintly muddy. He said: “That’s a hell of a lot of dough.”

The fat man agreed: “That’s a hell of a lot of dough.” He leaned forward and patted Spade’s knee. “That is the absolute, rock-bottom minimum, or Charilaos Konstantinides was a blithering idiot, and he wasn’t.”

Spade removed the cigar from his mouth again, frowned at it with distaste, and put it on the smoking stand. He shut his eyes hard, opened them again. Their muddiness had thickened.

“The... the minimum, huh? And the maximum?” he asked. An unmistakable sh followed the X in maximum as he pronounced it.

“The maximum?” Gutman held his empty hand out, palm up. “I refuse to guess. You’d think me crazy. I don’t know. There’s no telling how high it could go, sir, and that’s the one and only truth about it.”

Spade pulled his sagging lower lip tight against the upper. He shook his head impatiently. A sharp frightened gleam awoke in his eyes, and was smothered by the deepening muddiness.

He stood up, helping himself with his hands on the arms of the chair. He shook his head again, took an uncertain step forward, laughed thickly, and muttered: “—damn you! The drops.”

Gutman jumped up and pushed his chair back. His fat jiggled. His eyes were dark holes in a bulbous pink face.

Spade swung his head slowly from side to side until his dull eyes were, if not focused on, at least pointed at the corridor door. He took another unsteady step.

The fat man called sharply: “Wilmer!”

A door opened and the boy came in.

Spade took a third step. His face was grayish now, with jaw muscles standing out like tumors under his ears. His legs did not straighten again after his fourth step, and his muddy eyes were almost covered by their lids.

He took the fifth step.

The boy walked over and stood close to Spade, a little in front of him, but not directly between man and door. The boy’s right hand was inside his coat over his heart. The corners of his mouth twitched.

Spade essayed his sixth step.

The boy’s leg darted out across Spade’s leg, in front. Spade tripped over the interfering leg and crashed face down on the floor.

The boy, keeping his right hand under his coat, looked down at Spade.

Spade tried to get up.

The boy drew his right foot far back, and kicked Spade’s temple.

The kick rolled Spade over on his side. Once more he tried to get up, could not, and went to sleep.