Spade & Archer

30 Miles Archer

Mabel — Wise, Merican & Wise’s redheaded receptionist — opened the door of Sid Wise’s private office. Wise was behind his desk with his usual cigar; Spade sat beside the desk, his back toward the windowed side wall, smoking a cigarette.

“Mr. Archer is here,” Mabel said.

Miles Archer came in. She left, closing the door behind her. Archer removed his brown hat, ducked his head slightly in greeting. Spade, still seated, nodded. Wise stood up.

“Sid Wise. A pleasure, sir.” He held out his hand. They shook. Wise gestured Archer toward the straight-backed chair across the desk from him. “I hear that you and Sam may be going into business together.”

“No maybe about it,” said Archer in his coarse, heavy, confident voice.

He wore a brown vested cashmere-blend suit; his brown hair was now shot with gray. Spade gestured with his cigarette.

“Sit down, Miles. We’ve got papers to sign.”

The appraising look in Archer’s small brown eyes did not match the habitual joviality in his red heavy-jawed face. He finally put his hat on the edge of the desk and sat down, took a cigarette from a flat nickel and silver cigarette case. He tapped it against the case, put it between thick lips pulled taut.

Sid Wise leaned forward to squirt flame against the cigarette tip from his desktop lighter. He sat back again, took three sheets of legal paper from a folder. He handed both Spade and Archer one of the carbons, kept the original himself. He went down the document line by line, looking up at them often to make sure they were getting it.

“What we have here is a simple partnership agreement. No corporation is being formed, so it is not a complicated document. At the top, today’s date, October twelfth, nineteen twenty-eight. Below that—”

Spade gave a short laugh that again touched only his mouth, leaving the rest of his bony face nearly sullen. “Almost the anniversary of the arrival and docking of the San Anselmo seven years ago.”

Sid Wise jerked his head up sharply to look at Spade with speculation in his eyes. Miles Archer just dragged on his cigarette with a look between puzzlement and impatience. Wise lowered his gaze, continued with the articles of agreement.

“Article one lays out the understanding between the two parties: no salaries, just a fifty-fifty split right down the line. All net income and all expenses are shared equally.”

“We work our own cases, or we work together on cases as needed,” Spade told Archer. “Ten bucks comes in, you get five, I get five no matter who does the work or whose client it comes from.”

“Article two states that expenses consist of Effie Perine’s salary and rent of the Samuel Spade office, hereinafter to be referred to as the Spade and Archer office, in the Hunter-Dulin Building at one hundred eleven Sutter Street. The rent covers utilities — water, heat, and electricity. Incidental expenses will be paid out of petty cash.”

“What about field expenses?” Then Archer guffawed loudly, jarringly. “You know — booze, bribes, and biddies?”

“We get as much cash up front as we can, and treat taxis, ferries, rental cars, hotels, and informants as expenses coming on top of that. Booze and biddies, Miles — you’re on your own.”

“In the event of the death of one partner,” said Sid Wise, “the partnership is automatically dissolved.” He looked from one to the other. “Any other questions or comments?”

“Nope,” said Spade. Archer was silent.

Spade and Archer signed and dated all three copies, with Wise signing as witness. They all stood, they all shook hands. Spade and Archer left Wise’s office together. Spade’s hat remained behind on the floor beside his chair.

As they waited for the elevator outside the Wise, Merican & Wise office Spade said, “Better celebrate tonight. Because tomorrow night—”

“Yeah. I’ll be on the docks. Undercover.” Archer added the last word with relish, as if looking forward to it.

The elevator arrived, Spade shook his head in apparent chagrin.

“Left my hat in Sid’s office. Give Iva my regards, Miles.” Archer, grinning from ear to ear, said, “I’ll give Iva my own regards, Sam. She won’t know what fell on her tonight.”

“Of course she won’t.” Spade grinned wolfishly.

When Sam Spade reentered Sid Wise’s office, the diminutive attorney was abstractedly chewing on a fingernail while staring out the window at the Sutter Hotel across the street. Spade picked up his hat, put it on the corner of the desk.

Wise spoke tonelessly without turning. “The San An selmo. Still chasing ghosts, Sam?”

“St. Clair McPhee, Devlin St. James. Whatever name he uses he’s no ghost, Sid.”

“After all this time he might as well be.”

“We’ll see about that.” Then Spade drew a deep, dismissive breath, gestured at the office door through which Miles Archer had departed. “So what do you think of him, Sid?”

Only then did Wise swivel his chair around to face Spade.

“Same as you do, Sammy. He’s dumb as a post and greedy as a lawyer.”

“Here lies a lawyer, an honest man.”

“Why’d they bury them in the same grave? I’ve heard that one.” Wise retrieved his half-smoked cigar from the ashtray. He relit it, carefully turning it to get it burning evenly again. “I don’t trust him, Sam.”

“Nor do I, but he’s damned good at what he does. He turned up a lot of Commies for the Burns Agency in Seattle.”

“How many were Commies just because he said they were?”

Spade nodded to that thoughtfully. Wise blew out a cloud of fragrant cigar smoke.

“I hear he’s got a blond wife that’s a knockout.” He added deadpan, “Originally from Spokane.”

“Yeah, I knew her up there,” Spade said shortly.

“You don’t need him, Sam, but now you’re stuck with him for a year. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I’ve got an expensive suite of offices in the heart of the financial district, Sid. Half the politicians and the big rich in this town would like to see me in jail, but every once in a while they need me because I’m the only one they can trust to sweep up the breakage and keep my mouth shut.”

“If you’d had too much work for one man you could have just hired extra ops from Continental. You didn’t have to take in Archer as a partner. Three years ago when he hinted around at it you turned him down flat. Now...”

Spade leaned back in his chair, feathered smoke through his nostrils, said, “The Blue Book union. The boys who got control of the docks and crushed the trade unions after the war.”

“They hate your guts, you hate their guts. You’re trying to tell me that they want to hire you?”

“Not directly. But last week I was summoned by Ralph Toomey at Matson Shipping. He was speaking for the Industrial Association, the bankers and industrialists and oilcompany and shipping-company executives who really run this burg and who set up the Blue Book union in the first place.”

“Nobody’s going to be able to take them down, Sam. They belong to the exclusive clubs, they helped found the opera, the symphony, they fund the Community Chest and Stanford and the Boy Scouts and the Y.M.C.A. and the California Historical Society.”

“All noble causes.” Spade deepened his sardonic voice to proclaim in ringing orator’s tones, “ ‘We have succeeded in making San Francisco a free city where capital can safely invest.’ ” In his own voice he added, “Toomey said that right now there’s the most wide-scale pilfering and theft on the docks that the port’s ever seen. They want it kept quiet but they want it stopped.”

Wise was thoughtful. “Sounds like a perfectly legitimate investigation to me, Sam.”

“Maybe. But since I’m too well known on the waterfront to go undercover myself on the docks these days, Toomey ‘recommended’ I take on Miles Archer as a partner. Burns used Miles undercover in Seattle to ferret around, glad-hand people, get them talking, then turned them in as Commies. Toomey said he’s heard only good things about him.”

“As blatant as that?”

“As blatant as that. Between the lines no Archer, no job. So Miles is going down on the docks undercover tomorrow night for Spade and Archer.”

“And Iva Archer has nothing to do with this?”

“Nothing.”

“What if she thinks she does?”

“I can’t help what people think.”

Wise held up wide-open defensive hands. “I wouldn’t be doing my job as your lawyer if I didn’t ask these things.”

“Yeah.” Spade retrieved his hat, stood up. “Remember from high school, Sid? Shakespeare? ‘First.... let’s kill all the lawyers’?”

He chuckled at his joke. Sid Wise didn’t.

31 At the Warehouse

Effie Perine came around Spade’s desk to fish the tobacco sack and cigarette papers out of his vest pocket. She made a paper trough, sprinkled flakes into it, expertly pulled the drawstring at the top of the sack with her teeth. As she did she glanced at the bare-topped desk across the room.

“We haven’t seen much of the new partner around here since he started,” she said.

“He’s working down on the docks nights, sleeping days.”

“Leaving poor little Iva all alone in that big apartment.”

“Enough of that, snip. You sound like Sid Wise.” She licked the seam, smoothed the cigarette, twisted the ends, placed one of them between Spade’s lips, went back around the desk, and sat down in the oaken armchair.

“I don’t like that woman, Sam. She’s too blonde and too good-looking and she’s got too good a figure.” She added snidely, “For her age. I hear she’s been talking about divorce.”

“You women,” said Spade, shaking his head. He picked a flake of tobacco off his lower lip. “Leave me out of it.”

“Will she?”

Spade’s face got sullen. “She’ll have to.”

The door opened. Miles Archer came in. He was dressed for the docks: watch cap, heavy mackinaw, waterproof khaki pants over heavy work boots.

“Mr. Archer,” said Effie with a smile, then added cheerily, “I’ll get those papers typed up for you to sign, Mr. Spade.”

“Thanks, sweetheart.”

Archer turned to watch Effie go through the door. When he turned back to Spade his eyes gleamed wetly. But all he did was sit down in the client’s chair Effie Perine had vacated and say, “I’ve got my foot in the door, Sam.”

“In just four nights?” Spade spoke with what seemed like admiration. “Does that mean you know who’s doing it? Where they’re storing the stolen goods? Are they in it for the money? Or for something else?”

“Of course for the money. This ain’t nickel-and-dime stuff, Sam. This is big-time, organized thievery.”

Spade said thoughtfully, “Maybe someone in the labor movement wants to disrupt the status quo, like the Wobblies kept trying to do up in Seattle after the union movement got squashed by all those ex-servicemen coming home needing jobs.”

“The Wobblies were just a Commie front anyway,” said Archer darkly. “Things are different down here. But maybe you’ve got something at that, Sam. My first night, a Commie named Robbie Brix I got blackballed in Seattle shows up at the Blue Book shape-up.” The small brown eyes again became almost beady. He hitched his chair closer. “And he gets hired. Night work under the lights on a freighter with a tight turnaround schedule. A known Commie. When his shift ends he leaves real quick, like he has a date. A date at four in the morning? So the next night I follow him. Just a couple blocks.”

“He spot you?”

“You kidding?” Archer sat back in his chair, lit a cigarette, blew out smoke, preened. “I been doing this a long time. Next night I picked him up where I’d left him the first night, followed him another couple blocks, dropped him again. Last night I tracked him to a warehouse where Green dead-ends up against the side of Telegraph Hill.”

“Small two-story red brick, pre-quake, loading dock and a big overhead door? In the one-hundred-block stub just off Sansome?”

“You got it. There were lights on inside.”

“Right across the Embarcadero from the cotton warehouse on Piers fifteen and seventeen,” mused Spade. “That’s where a lot of the dry goods have been disappearing from.”

“Anyway, I climbed up on the loading dock. I could hear voices, like maybe Brix was reporting to someone, but I couldn’t make out any words for sure. Then four men came out so quick I just had time to jump off the side of the dock without them seeing me. One gave money to Brix before they all went off together. Too risky to tail ’em. So I snuck a gander in a window. Place was crammed to the rafters with goods — just the sort of stuff’s been disappearing from the docks.”

“Could you identify the men if you saw ’em again?”

“Sure, all of ’em.”

“That’s great work, Miles. Think you should drop Brix for now? He knows you. He sees you, your cover’s gone. We’ll know where to find him if we need him. Instead, try to spot any of the others tonight, especially the one who paid Brix the money.”

“That works.” Archer stood, stretched, yawned. “All I wanna do is go home and make the little lady glad to see me.”

After Miles Archer had departed, Spade rolled and smoked three more cigarettes. The phone rang twice while he did. He ignored it. Finally, he took a clipboard from the deep drawer of his desk, carried it into the outer office.

Effie Perine was opening the morning’s mail with an ornate bronze Greek dagger. The porcelain designs on the metal scabbard included a two-headed green eagle and a peacock of many colors, both outlined in thin curved metal strips.

“Be careful you don’t stick yourself with that thing.”

She showed him the blade. “It’s dull as a spoon. But it makes a good letter opener.”

“Easy enough to sharpen it up. From a secret admirer?”

“From Penny. Years ago. I found it in a drawer at home the other day and...” Her voice faltered. “I just...”

“Yeah.” He laid a hand on her shoulder. His eyes were bleak. He gestured at the opened mail. “Anything interesting?”

“Not in the mail.” She set aside the dagger, recovered. “But there were two calls. Richardson wanting a progress report and a woman who sounded Chinese wanting an appointment.”

“She leave a name?”

“No. But her voice... Remember three years ago, the student who said her name was Mai-lin Choi?”

“I never laid eyes on her, but yeah, I remember. If she calls again let’s have her in to take a look at her. And tell Richardson the thief is his stepson, and does he want us to pursue it any further. We can get the goods on the kid right enough, but it’ll be hard to keep the law out of it.”

Effie Perine made a note on her shorthand pad.

Spade said, “Miles makes it sound like he’s close to breaking the theft ring.”

“That was quick.” She sounded slightly disbelieving.

“Yeah, too quick. Too easy.” He took his hat and topcoat off the rack. “I’m going to go snoop around, see if what he told me makes sense. Oh, and call Ray Kentzler at Bankers’ Life, ask can he get a line on who owns a two-story red brick warehouse on the Green Street stub between Sansome and Telegraph Hill.”

The morning fog was still seething over the bay, kept in motion by a biting wind through the Gate. The warehouse, built against the vertical slate face of Telegraph Hill, was locked up tight. The side windows were ten feet off the ground and covered with butcher paper on the inside. The double overhead door on the concrete loading dock had a huge new padlock that nothing short of a hardened-steel long-handled chain cutter could touch. It had no window. The access door beside it had an inset Yale lock and its window was reinforced with crisscrossed wires.

Spade found multiple fresh truck-tire tracks in the dust-covered street in front of the building. He clambered up on the dock, cupped his hands on the window of the access door, but its glass also was covered with butcher paper on the inside.

“Hey, what d’ya think you’re doing? Get away from there.”

A beefy red-faced Irish cop was puffing up Green Street toward him, nightstick in hand. Spade waved his clipboard, dropped nimbly down off the chest-high loading dock. He put the clipboard under one arm to dust off his hands, offered one of them to the cop.

“Ray Kentzler, Bankers’ Life. We carry the fire insurance on this building.”

“Fire insurance? The place’s been empty for months.”

“Still an asset.” Spade said nothing of the recent tire tracks in the dust. “We got a report of some kids trying to get inside. I had to make sure the building was secure.”

The cop shook his head. “Kids,” he said.

They walked side by side back toward the Embarcadero. Spade turned north, walking, pausing thoughtfully. He walked. Stopped, frowning. Caught a bus down the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building, where he had lunch, then went to his office. Effie Perine was out for her own lunch; as usual, she had left half a dozen message slips on his desk.

Three caught Spade’s eye: Ray Kentzler had called back to say that tracking the warehouse owner would take a day or two. Richardson said to suspend the investigation into the activities of his stepson. And the Chinese-sounding woman maybe named Mai-lin Choi had called back for an appointment with Spade at 9 the next morning.

32 Mai-lin Choi

Effie Perine came in and shut the door, leaned back against it. Spade looked up from the papers on his desk.

“Any word from Ray Kentzler on that warehouse ownership?”

“Nothing. But your nine o’clock appointment is here.”

Interest sparked Spade’s eyes. He stubbed out his latest cigarette. “By all means, sweetheart, send her in.”

She went back out, there was a murmur of voices, then she opened the door again and stepped aside.

“Miss Mai-lin Choi.”

She was perhaps twenty-two, tall and full-bosomed for a Chinese woman, Western in bearing. Her hair, of indeterminate length, was jet-black, worked into a large bun at the back of her head. She wore an untrimmed felt hat, a tan tailored frock with a contrasting pongee collar and a matching silk ribbon tie. Her shoes were the latest flat-heeled style.

Spade stood, gestured at the client chair.

“Please, Miss Choi, sit down.”

Instead, she remained standing for several moments, frankly judging him with black barely slanted eyes. Only then did she sit, turning her legs to one side so her feet were not flat on the floor. It was a graceful pose.

“You were recommended to me three years ago,” she said. Her voice was strong but smooth, her English impeccable, with only the slightest singsong rhythm to suggest her heritage. Her nose was quite aquiline, her cheekbones exquisite, her skin a pale gold. “Now you have been recommended again.”

Spade moved his head in a small bow, smiling slightly.

“Three years ago it was my pastor in Hawaii. Here, now, it is the Reverend Sabbath Zhu Pomeroy of St. John’s Methodist Church in Chinatown. He has become my spiritual adviser.”

“I will look forward to meeting him. Now, my secretary said you have a problem I might be able to help you with.”

“You are a strong man? A steadfast man?”

Spade came forward in his chair, put his elbows on the desk with his hard, bony chin between his fists. He looked at her keenly, appraising her as she had him moments previously.

“You mean as a detective?”

“And as a man. Reverend Zhu states that you have the reputation of being devious and often untruthful, but that you protect your clients’ interests at all costs. He said he could not be sure if you are also honorable.”

“Honorable. Not a word gets used very often in my profession.” He sobered abruptly. “OK, I know what Reverend Zhu has to say. What do you have to say?”

“I was a student three years ago, now I am not. Because the Chinese Exclusion Act some forty-odd years ago barred all Chinese except teachers and students and diplomats and the clergy, this time I am in this country illegally. You have heard the term paper daughter?”

“Sure. If I got it right, a Chinese American citizen can visit a wife back in China for long periods, when he comes back declare the number and gender of the kids born to him in China. All would be eligible for American citizenship if they came to this country. But if he says he’s got more than he does—”

“—then there are slots, which often are illegally sold later to young Chinese trying to get into this country. I have bought such an identity to seek two men. I cannot know how long it will take to find them, or what dangers might be involved.”

“So you feel someone might try to stop you?” Her black eyes bored into his. “One cannot be sure.”

“Fair enough.” Spade drew a pad and pencil toward himself. “Who are these men and what do they do? Last seen where and when? Do you have photographs of them?”

“Charles Boothe and Fritz Lea. I was four years old in nineteen ten, living in poverty in Japan. When I came here three years ago, before I had to leave I could only learn that Charles Boothe was a retired banker with strong ties to military circles in New York. In nineteen ten he was living here in California. I could learn very little more about him. I do not have his photograph.”

Spade poised his pencil. “What about Fritz Lea?”

“I know even less about him, but I do have a photograph.” She took an envelope from her Spanish-leather pouch bag and handed it to Spade. “This is how he looked in nineteen ten.”

It was a faded posed head-and-torso photograph of a young-looking man with soft blond hair parted in the middle, clean features, a short nose, direct eyes with a hint of dreaminess in them, a wide, well-shaped but determined mouth. He looked cool and collected and barely into his thirties. Lea wore some sort of military uniform with gold leaf around the collar. An eight-pointed gold star depended from a gold chain around his throat.

Spade studied the photograph, chuckled. “Your Fritz Lea looks like quite a lad.”

“He was an amateur strategist who dreamed of changing the world map by making China a land of economic expansion.”

“In whose army was he commissioned?”

“I have no idea. Perhaps my father’s. My real father, of whom I am the unacknowledged, illegitimate daughter.” She gave a small fatalistic shrug. “In traditional China marriage is a social contract. My father’s first wife was a peasant woman from his village. An arranged marriage. She gave him three children, one a son to carry on the line, as was her duty, then moved to Hawaii. He ensured her subsistence, as was his duty, while he traveled. I was born in Japan to a servant. Of course my father could not acknowledge me.”

“And your father is...”

“Dead. Three years ago. In Peking. What is important is that he was with Charles Boothe and Fritz Lea here in San Francisco in nineteen ten. I must talk with these two men.”

“If they’re still around and still alive,” said Spade. “A lot can happen in eighteen years. Why do you want to find them?”

“I will tell you everything if you are successful.”

“I’m sure you will, but meanwhile let’s be perfectly clear. First, without this information I might do more harm than good, a bull-in-a-china-shop sort of thing.” Spade picked up his tobacco and papers from the blotter and began constructing a cigarette. “Second, I need to know this is a legitimate investigation. You’re not hiring me to break any laws, anything like that.”

“You have my assurances of that. And those of Reverend Zhu if needed.” She drifted up from her chair. “I am staying in a house on Old Chinatown Lane. Miss Perine has the address and phone number. Now I must go. After we discuss your fee.”

“So she really has a case.”

“Yeah, if you could call it that.” Spade hooked one hip over the front corner of Effie Perine’s desk. “Our Mai-lin is a very cool article, or pretends to be. She said she’ll tell me why she’s looking for these two guys after I find them. When I threw in some nonsense about legality, she brought up the Reverend Sabbath Zhu Pomeroy. ‘Spiritual adviser’ suggests a spiritual con game to me. Not unknown even among the organized religions.” He bowed slightly. “Except for the Greek Orthodox Church, of course. And she was very cagey about who her real father was.”

“Is that important?”

“Yeah. She let slip he was trying to raise an army. Call Charles Barber at Golden Gate Trust, ask if he’s ever heard of Boothe. Then leave a message for Mickey Linehan at Continental that I’ll be attending the services at his place tonight.”

Sam Spade was the only passenger left when the Stockton Street cable car reached the turnaround in the 500 block of Greenwich. Above the Greenwich Street stub the steep, brushy side of Telegraph Hill gleamed with moisture.

Spade went downhill off Grant on Edith Alley. In the middle of the block he went up the steps to a two-story frame building and rang the bell for the lower flat. The door was opened on a narrow hallway filled with the hulking, loose-faced Mickey Linehan. His right hand waved a half-empty glass.

“We started without you,” he said.

“I’ll catch up,” said Spade.

Male voices, light, smoke, the clink of chips, the rasp of bottle on glass, the smell of cigarettes, came from an open doorway halfway down the short hall. In the middle of a front room that overlooked Edith Alley was an oaken table littered with ashtrays, chips, bottles. Around it were five hardwood chairs.

“See whut the cat drug in!” exclaimed Mickey jovially.

Three heads turned. Two of the men were Woody Robinson and Phil Haultain. The third was a thick-bodied square-faced man with reddish close-cropped curly hair, a strong chin, a determined mouth turned down at the corners, and hard, direct eyes under slightly beetling brows. Mickey swung an arm.

“These two bums you know.” He gestured at the third man. “Rusty McCoy, our new Continental op.”

“The last I heard you were on Jack Manion’s Chinatown squad looking for pails with false bottoms full of opium.”

“Now I’m cleaning these guys at poker,” said McCoy.

“Easier than cleaning up Chinatown,” agreed Spade. “How is Jack these days?”

“Tough as ever. Still goes to Mass every morning at Old St. Mary’s Church. Still Uncle Jack to all the decent people of Chinatown. He always had good things to say about you, Sam.”

“Let’s quit jawing and play some poker,” said Mickey.

It was five-card stud, nothing wild. An hour in, Spade asked Mickey, “You ever hear of a guy named Fritz Lea?”

“Should I of?”

“His name cropped up in a case I’m on. Can you take a look through the files and let me know if Continental has a line on him? Last seen in San Francisco around nineteen ten.”

“Since you just let me bluff you out of a ten-buck pot with a measly pair of treys, sure,” said Mickey, grinning.

Another hour later Spade and McCoy were in the kitchen chipping ice for their drinks from the block in the old-fashioned zinc-lined cooler. Spade spoke casually.

“Rusty, you ever run across a pastor down in Chinatown, Methodist I think, name of Reverend Sabbath Zhu Pomeroy?”

“Of mixed blood is he, then, with a name like that?”

“I think so, but I’ve never met him.”

McCoy stood, glass in hand, looking thoughtful.

“A half-Chinese Methodist pastor...” He shook his head. “Nope. I never heard of him. Is he in trouble?”

“Not with me,” said Spade. “Again, his name came up.”

“Maybe he’s come to the big city from the Chinese community in Sacramento, or Fresno, or Salinas, or maybe Watsonville.”

“Maybe so,” agreed Spade.

The game broke up about midnight.

33 Hunting Harry

Spade and Archer met outside Marquand’s Restaurant below the Geary Theatre. Above them was a sign, CABARET AND DANCING, but at a little before noon patrons were going in only for food, not entertainment. The two detectives shook hands as if casual acquaintances, took a corner booth, where there was little chance of being overheard. Archer leaned in and talked quietly, intensely, while seeming to study his menu.

“I think I’ve got a line on the ringleader of the group, Sam. The one who paid Robbie Brix for information. They did it again last night. Again, inside. But I was at the window watching when he gave Brix some more cash. I keep snooping around, but he only ever shows up at the warehouse so I can’t point him out to anybody.”

“You try tailing him?”

“Too risky. He’s a little guy, wary as a fox.”

Their meat loaf came. They started eating.

“So he’s probably blacklisted for union activity. You think it’s lefty union guys trying to bring down the system who’re behind the pilfering, Miles?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Archer judiciously.

“They don’t seem in any hurry to move the stolen goods out of that warehouse, do they? The paymaster has an Aussie accent.”

“Aussie accent? Little guy, you said? How old?”

“Twenty-nine, thirty. Wiry. Lean face. Bloodhound eyes.”

“Good work, Miles.” Spade smiled with the lower part of his face. “Keep it up.”

“I just had lunch with Miles. Anything from anybody?”

Effie Perine followed him into his office, open notebook in hand. He sat down in his swivel chair and tossed tobacco sack and papers on his desk. She sat down, started making his cigarette, talking as she did.

“Charles Barber isn’t having any luck at all in finding Boothe, the retired banker.”

“I should have put young Henny on him. The beautiful Mai-lin Choi would appeal to his romantic nature.”

“I’d think running California-Citizens Bank for the Widow Eberhard would leave him no time for romance or derring-do.” She handed him the cigarette. “How did the services go?”

“Mickey Linehan will run Fritz Lea through the files at Continental. The game was to welcome Rusty McCoy, a new op who used to be with Jack Manion’s Chinatown squad. I went to the game to ask him if he’d ever heard of Reverend Sabbath Zhu. He hadn’t.” He paused, lighter in hand. “Rusty said maybe he’s from Watsonville or Fresno or Sacramento, but...”

“You make him sound more mysterious than Mai-lin herself.”

“Maybe he is. Manion’s squad knows most things going on in Chinatown.” He gestured with the lighter. “Anything else?”

“Ray Kentzler called to say that you owe him a lunch. The warehouse at the foot of Green Street is owned by the Shipowners’ and Merchants’ Tugboat Company.”

Spade stopped, lighter halfway to his cigarette.

“Hmph. Charles Barber’s on the board of directors at the Tugboat Company. Be an angel, call him back and ask him if they’re leasing the warehouse out to anyone.”

She wrote in her notebook. “Is something the matter, Sam?”

“Yeah, I think maybe there is, but let’s find out for sure about that warehouse first.” He stood, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray before realizing he hadn’t lit it yet. “If I’m not back by closing time leave any messages on my desk.”

He paused in the hallway outside the office for a moment, staring at the new gold leaf lettering that had just replaced Samuel Spade on the glass panel of the door:

Spade stood at his ease, watching and smoking a cigarette while a crane lifted a load of netted cargo from one of the holds of the Admiral Line’s steamship Admiral Peoples. Stevedores were on the dock to transfer the goods to an airless-tire Kleiber truck, built locally in San Francisco.

The craggy-faced foreman, named Stan Delaney, came limping over. Sharp wind off the bay stirred Delaney’s thick white hair. They shook hands.

Spade said, “I’m looking for Harry Brisbane. I owe him some money from a poker game, and I thought he said he was working here.”

“Yeah, for California Stevedore and Ballast, but he hasn’t been to work for a week, ten days.” He yelled at a longshoreman steering a platform truck with a pallet of wooden crates to the waiting Kleiber. “Johnny! Where’s Harry living these days?”

It was a narrow two-story building in the 500 block of Harrison. Apartment 1B had a penciled BRISBANE stuck in the name slot on a torn piece of paper. Spade’s knuckles tattooed the door.

“Yeah, yeah, for Chrissake, gimme a chance, will ya?”

After a few moments the door was opened and Harry Brisbane peered out. He was standing on one foot. The other foot had a cast on it. His eyes lit up.

“Hey, Sam! C’mon in.”

He backed awkwardly away so Spade could go in past him. Harry hopped around him one-footed to flop back into a broken-down easy chair in one corner of the living room. The flat smelled of cooked food and enforced confinement.

“I heard you were home, but I didn’t know you were laid up.” Spade brought a hand holding a pint of liquor out of his topcoat pocket. “But I came prepared, just in case.”

“Bless you, mate.” Harry jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “There’s ice and glasses, water in the tap, and ginger ale in the icebox if you’re a sissy about your drinks.”

Ten minutes later they were tinking glasses and tossing off bootleg whiskey.

“I haven’t seen you since you were lookin’ for that rich guy’s kid. What’s that been? Six years?”

“Seven,” said Spade. “I’m working for the Industrial Association, and some thin, wiry guy named Harry with an Aussie accent came up during the investigation.”

The pleasure went out of Harry’s bloodhound eyes, replaced by something like disappointment. “You gunning for me, Sam?”

“If I was, I wouldn’t have told you my client’s name.” He gestured at the cast. “What happened?”

“Broke my foot two weeks ago. I was working in the hold of an Admiral freighter, standing on a pile of cases while we sent a load out. Two cases slid, my foot got jammed between ’em. I couldn’t afford to lay off so I stuck it out for two days, but I couldn’t work in the hold no more. Stan Delaney put me up on deck, but I couldn’t even stand that. So I finally went to the sawbones and filed a claim.”

“I hear the company union doesn’t like injury claims.”

“Yeah, but my foot had gotten swollen up so bad I just couldn’t limp around anymore.” Harry spread his arms wide. “So now I’m getting twenty-five bucks a week under workmen’s compensation. That’s more than I can make most weeks working on the docks.”

“What happens when the compensation runs out?”

“I’ll probably go on the Blue Book’s blacklist again.”

Spade went out to the kitchen for ice. He made new drinks, said, “I thought you were already blacklisted.”

“Not blacklisted. Just not ever able to get work. Closed shop, they called it. Couple a months after you was lookin’ for that rich guy’s kid they got bighearted and let me back in. But in nineteen twenty-four we tried to set up the I.L.A. union again. We had maybe four hundred members but no contracts.”

Spade lit a cigarette. “Why did they care? Without contracts you weren’t going to take any business away from them.”

“ ‘Cause we marched in the Labor Day parade that year, I guess. The company and union officials was standing along the parade route on Market between the Ferry Building and City Hall writing down names. Anyway, they got mine. But the union reps was so busy playing cards and chasing women and making money they couldn’t bother with small fry like me. So I finally got back in, started getting regular work with California Stevedore and Ballast.” He gestured at the cast. “Then this.” He brightened. “At least my rent here is only fifteen bucks a month.”

Spade finished his drink, checked his watch.

“You know a Wobblie from Seattle named Robbie Brix?”

Harry shook his head. “And if he was down here on the docks, I’d know about him, Sam.”

“What I thought. I’ve been investigating the dock pilfering, and that’s where your description came up.” He grinned crookedly. “I can believe a lot of things about you, Harry, but being a thief isn’t one of them.” He finally stood up. “But you can see why I had to talk to you.”

“Wouldn’t be doin’ your job if you didn’t. But I haven’t been out and around for ten days, not with this cast.”

It was after dark when Spade trudged up Hyde Street from a westbound Geary streetcar. Miles Archer’s dark sedan was parked squarely in front of 891 Post. Iva Archer’s head was silhouetted behind the wheel by the midblock streetlight. By the time he got to the auto and had opened her door, his lips had turned up into a smile.

“Hello, precious,” he said.

“I’ve been waiting for over an hour for you to get home.”

“I thought you’d be resting up.” Spade smiled again, insincerely. “Miles always seems in a hurry to get home.”

She swung her legs out and put both feet on the pavement. This maneuver rode her skirt up well above her silk-clad knees.

“That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. Since Miles became your partner, I haven’t seen much of you.”

“Because he’s my partner.”

“Men!” she snorted. “They have such silly ideas.” There was lingering asperity in her voice, but her blue eyes had softened. “Can I come up?”

“Sure,” he said, “you look like you could use a drink.”

He escorted her across the sidewalk to the street door, keys in hand. They rode the elevator in silence, went down the hall to his apartment without touching.

But inside the apartment, with the door closed, Iva was suddenly in his arms, pressed against him, mouth open and hungry for his. When they finally parted, Spade turned on the lights.

“Now I think we both need that drink.”

When they were seated on the sofa, drinks in hand, she complained, “Sam, he’s doing just what he used to do to me up in Spokane. He’s been out four nights in a row, this is the fifth. He doesn’t come home until dawn, and he won’t tell me what he’s doing or where he is. When I ask he just laughs and says maybe he’s partying with some new girlfriend. I know that isn’t true, at least I think it isn’t, but it just drives me crazy.”

Spade put his arm across the back of the sofa behind her, squeezed her far shoulder. She leaned her head against him.

“We’ve got a big new client. Miles is working undercover, nights, trying to get a line on things.”

She laughed and made a dismissive gesture. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

She slid out from under his arm, stood, put her drink on the arm of the sofa. Spade stood also.

“Leaving so soon, Iva?” he asked politely.

Instead of answering, she crossed the room, opened the closet door, and swung the wall bed out and down. She let herself fall back on it, chuckled deep in her strong, rounded throat.

“I just wanted to be sure Miles wouldn’t be home tonight.” She sat up. “Come and undress me, lover. I can’t wait.”

Spade moved toward her, turning off the white overhead bowl light as he did.

34 Just a Son of a Bitch

Henny Barber was out of the swivel chair in his modest office on the ground floor of California-Citizens Bank. He wrung Spade’s hand with enthusiasm, hiked himself up to sit on the edge of his desk, careless of the crease in his conservative banker’s dark blue woolen worsted suit.

“Your father tells me you’re running the place these days.”

“Don’t you believe it, Mr. Spade! Pater likes to brag about me, but it’s Aunt Ev’s show. She’s grabbed Uncle Collin’s office and comes in once or twice a week for a couple of hours. I keep things going day to day, but she’s in control.”

“She always struck me as a woman who likes to make sure she knows what’s going on with her money,” said Spade.

“Is she!” exclaimed Henny. “Want a cigar?”

Spade shook his head, getting out tobacco and papers while Henny clipped and lit his cigar.

“Can you get me into the Bohemian Club library?” Spade asked. “I want to do a little reading up on Chinese history.”

“Pater can.”

“OK, set it up.” Spade lit up. “The bank making money?”

“Tons of it. If you have the routine down and don’t make any crazy investments or shaky loans, it’s all so darned easy.”

“Ever dream of the exotic South Seas anymore?”

“The South Seas!” Henny threw his arms wide. “All the time. Maybe I could open a Cal-Cit Bank branch in Tahiti!”

“Bored, huh?” Spade blew smoke toward the ceiling. “I’m going to change all that. I want you to find a retired New York banker named Charles Boothe, last seen in San Francisco in nineteen ten.”

Henny’s face fell. “A retired banker? That’s no challenge. A couple of phone calls and—”

“Your old man couldn’t find him.”

Interest came back to Henny’s face.

“Boothe was last seen in the company of a Fritz Lea and an unnamed Chinese gentleman. My client is named Mai-lin Choi, a couple of years younger than you are. She’s the Chinese gent’s beautiful, mysterious, unacknowledged illegitimate daughter. She’s counting on me to find Boothe and Lea for her. I’m counting on you to find Boothe for me.”

Henny was off the desk and on his feet, eyes alight.

“I’m your man, Mr. Spade!” Then he added craftily, “But only if I get an introduction to the mysterious Mai-lin Choi.”

Spade leaned over the plump redheaded girl at the switchboard while he put his hand on her shoulder.

“Think you can get my office on that dingus, Mabel?”

“For you, anything, Mr. Spade.”

“Better not let Sid hear you talking that way.”

She giggled and flicked a toggle on the switchboard, got central. She pointed at one of the phones on her desk, said, “It’s ringing, Mr. Spade.”

Spade picked up the phone with his right hand, put the receiver to his ear with his left hand in time to hear Effie Perine’s invariable “Spade and Archer Investigations.”

“It’s me, sweetheart,” he told the mouthpiece. “I’m at Sid Wise’s office now. Before I go in, have we heard anything more from Charles Barber on that warehouse?”

“Nobody is leasing it from the Tugboat Company. They’ve had it standing empty for months.”

Spade nodded, hung up the receiver, and left Mabel giggling again as he went down the inner corridor to the frosted-glass door at the far end. Sid Wise was behind his immense paper-and-file covered desk, moodily smoking a cigar. He was in shirt and vest, his suit coat draped over the back of his swivel chair. He waved a hand at the files.

“I hope you won’t be long, Sam,” he said rudely. “I’m up to my ears in work.”

Spade sat down. “I’ve got things to tell you.”

Sid Wise groaned audibly, then tented his fingers in front of his chin. Spade outlined Miles Archer’s reported work on their case for the Industrial Association, ending with the lunch at Marquand’s. Wise looked puzzled.

“Where’s the problem? I think we’ve misjudged our man.”

“Except that most of it is a passel of lies,” said Spade.

A sudden, attentive frown appeared on Wise’s tired olive-hued face. He hitched his chair around to better face Spade. His high, sometimes almost shrill voice had dropped almost an octave.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Like I told you, Miles said he spotted a Commie from Seattle named Robbie Brix getting hired at a Blue Book shape-up. Night work under the lights. When his shift ended, Miles followed him for two blocks, dropped him so he wouldn’t get wise. Two more blocks the second night. Third night he tracked Brix all the way to the warehouse at the foot of Green Street.”

“Sounds like good investigative technique to me.”

“And it gets better. Lights on inside the warehouse at four in the morning. Four men came out, one of them paid Brix some money. When they were gone, Miles looked in a window. The place was loaded to the rafters with goods.”

“The stuff being stolen on the docks. Just like he said.”

Spade smiled thinly.

“The overhead loading door doesn’t have a window. The door beside it has a window, but it is covered with butcher paper on the inside. The other windows are ten feet off the ground and covered on the inside with butcher paper too. Yesterday Miles told me he saw another payoff to Brix the night before. Through one of those windows.”

“Which are all covered with butcher paper.”

“Yeah. Miles also described the man he said was paying Robbie Brix for information about the goods that later were disappearing. Harry Brisbane, right down to the Aussie accent. Except Miles couldn’t have seen him paying anybody any money on Green Street. Harry’s been laid up at home for two weeks with a broken foot, and never heard of anybody named Robbie Brix.”

“You trust Brisbane?”

“He’s a straight shooter. And the warehouse is owned by the Shipowners’ and Merchants’ Tugboat Company and they haven’t leased it out to anyone else.”

“But they’re one of your clients. It just doesn’t figure.”

“There’s a way it does. Through the Blue Book and Miles.”

Wise blew out a breath and scratched his head. Flakes of dandruff settled on his shoulders. “I told you not to take him on as a partner. Are you going to confront him with it?”

“No. I’ll just try to keep him off anything that might hurt Spade and Archer, then kick him out at the end of our year.” Spade shook his head. “In business with him for less than a week, and I find out he’s a son of a bitch.”

At the Continental office Spade asked for Mickey Linehan. The op was out in the field, but he’d left an envelope. In Bush’s Coffee Shop in the 700 block of Market, Spade got a grilled-cheese sandwich and black coffee, ate and drank while scanning the single sheet of paper with Linehan’s scrawl on it.

Effie Perine said, “Miss Choi called asking for a report.”

“Tell her to come by first thing in the morning.” He hooked a hip over the corner of Effie Perine’s desk. “How straight do you think she’s being with us?”

“She acts as if she’s telling you everything you need to know, but — but she’s—”

“—not your typical Chinese woman? Almost more like a white woman?” When she nodded, he said, “Do you know any agents out at the immigration station on Angel Island?”

“I was in grammar school with an American-born Chinese boy named Ray Chong Fat who’s a translator out there.”

“See can he find out if Mai-lin passed through the station in the last year or so, how long she was detained and questioned. She says she’s been here for maybe a month, but was that when she got to Angel Island or when she was cleared for entry into San Francisco? For the Chinese, clearance can take weeks, months.”

Effie Perine was making pothooks in her notebook. “You think she’s lying about who she is and how she got here, Sam?”

“I don’t think anything yet. I just need to know.” He stood up. “Ask Chong Fat about the Reverend Sabbath Zhu Pomeroy too. Being a clergyman, he wouldn’t have had any trouble getting in. But there’d still have to be a record of his entry.”

35 Ah, the Money

Spade’s suit coat was over the back of his chair. Morning sunlight laid a bar of filtered gold across the desktop. Mai-lin Choi came in, much more Chinese than on her first visit. Gone was the haughtiness of face, the sternness of eye. She gestured to emphasize her clothing.

“You like?” she asked in a singsong voice.

She wore the sort of loose-fitting washable frock that a maid could buy for sixty-nine cents. Her shapeless slippers would make plop-plop sounds as she walked. The jacket she draped over the back of the chair was dark, warm, shapeless, standard dress for cold foggy days on upper Grant Avenue.

“Soon I will be going to talk to people in Chinatown. If I am small and humble with eyes downcast, dressed cheaply, they will feel at ease and talk to me. Otherwise...”

“Otherwise,” Spade said in a passable falsetto, “no savvy.”

She seemed to suddenly tire of the game.

“What do you have to tell me?” she asked.

“Nothing on Charles Boothe yet. But Fritz Lea spent six years in Joliet prison in Illinois, nineteen fourteen through nineteen nineteen, for a phony timber-stock scam. He next surfaced working a bank fraud in New York in nineteen twenty-two. It was nol-prossed, lack of evidence. In nineteen twenty-six he was indicted in Los Angeles on a counterfeit bearer-bond scheme that was again dismissed for lack of evidence. Who are you going to be talking to in Chinatown?”

“Methodists whose parents helped my real father when he came to San Francisco the first time. They were children then, but I am hoping they will remember personal anecdotes about him.”

Spade leaned back in his swivel chair, hands interlocked behind his head. He appeared totally at ease.

“Why are you looking for Boothe and Lea eighteen years later?”

She checked the wall clock behind Miles Archer’s unoccupied desk, looked at Spade out of the corners of her slightly slanted eyes. “Look at the time! I must go.”

Spade nodded pleasantly as she started to rise.

“I’ll have Effie return your retainer on your way out.”

She settled back in her chair. “Because of the money. I shall remain until I find it, or find out there is none.”

“Ah,” said Spade, “the money,” as if they had already been discussing it. “How much money?”

“A great deal, raised for my father’s... political aims.”

“I have a banker friend who could check up on it for us.” Spade chuckled. “Give him one look at you, he’d do anything for you. He’s a romantic.”

“It will not be in a bank. It will be in cash.”

“Buried treasure?” asked Spade in a joking voice. “Perhaps even that.” Spade frowned, stubbed out a cigarette. “What do you mean by a great deal of money?”

“Perhaps as much as a quarter of a million American.”

“And your father died in Peking three years ago.”

“You are indeed clever of mind, Mr. Spade. And yes, my father was indeed the great Chinese patriot Sun Yat-sen.” Her eyes flashed. “Liang Qichao had defected to reformism, and the young radicals, who had despised my father, then made him their standard-bearer.”

“Let’s go talk with these people of yours in Chinatown.”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “I will ask Reverend Zhu, their pastor, to accompany us. He will have influence with them.” Spade bowed her out of the office, stopped beside Effie Perine’s desk. “Now she claims that her real father was Sun Yat-sen. Tomorrow I meet the famous Reverend Sabbath Zhu Pomeroy.”

“Why is he so important?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart. I have a feeling about him. Meanwhile, ring up Ralph Toomey at Matson Shipping, tell him I need an up-to-date list of the goods stolen on the docks in the past month.” As she got busy with the telephone Spade said, “Have we heard anything from Miles today?”

She held up a finger, said, “Mr. Spade would like an appointment with Mr. Toomey at his earliest convenience.” She covered the mouthpiece, to Spade said, “Nothing so far,” uncovered the mouthpiece, said, “A half hour would be perfect.”

“When Miles calls in, don’t tell him about my appointment with Toomey.”

Ralph Toomey’s ornate corner office at Matson Shipping looked kitty-corner across the 200 block of Market to the old Hansford Building. Dominating the office was a huge rolltop desk pockmarked with green-felt-lined pigeonholes. In a corner of the room was a green secrétaire with an inlaid top.

Toomey got out of his big leather chair to shake Spade’s hand and gesture him into an armchair, also leather, that smelled of saddle soap. Toomey was in his sixties, white-haired, well barbered, his nails manicured, with a broad, bony face, an unforgiving mouth, and direct blue eyes. He had captained his own five-master around the Horn before the turn of the century, was still thick in the arms and broad in the shoulders, and was not at all dwarfed by his massive padded swivel chair.

“How is Miles working out, Spade?”

“He may have a line on where the stolen goods are being stored. That’s why I want that list. Do you have ideas of who the thieves might be? Union agitators, maybe?”

“Personally, I don’t care who they are, just so long as you stop them without any publicity.” He shrugged his big shoulders. “At this point that is paramount. No publicity. Of course the Longshoremen’s Association, the Blue Book people, would love it to be Harry Brisbane and his ilk, but I don’t think so.”

Spade put a hint of skepticism in his voice. “Why’s that?”

“Harry was a crewman on one of the last ships I captained. Just a kid then, but an honest kid. They tried to bribe him in twenty-four, but he wasn’t having any of that.”

“Who was it offered him the money?”

“I don’t remember. Probably Stan Hagar. He’s Blue Book union heart and soul. Hates Harry Brisbane and the I.L.A. union.” Toomey shoved an envelope across the desk. “Here’s your list of stolen goods.”

36 Bound Feet, Natural Feet

Sam Spade was on his way out the door at 7 in the morning when his phone rang. He went back inside to pick it up and answered it standing. Effie Perine sounded sleepy but smug.

“The Angel Island is leaving for the immigration station from the Nippon Yusen Kaisha Line Pier Twenty-four at eight thirty. Ray Chong Fat has fixed it so they’ll think you’re a customs official named Nick Charles who needs a translator.”

“Thanks, sweetheart. I’ll bring a bulging briefcase and try to look official.”

Spade changed into a heavy coat and pulled on a woolen knit cap. Twenty minutes later he was walking onto Pier 24 at the foot of Harrison.

Two dozen Japanese men and women were boarding the 144-foot steamer. Spade towered over most of them by nearly a foot. At the head of the gangplank an officious man with a clipboard singled him out.

“State your name and business.”

“Nick Charles,” said Spade. “Special customs agent to—”

“Oh, sure.” The man made a check beside an item on his clipboard. “A translator named Ray Chong Fat will be waiting for you at the immigration station.”

It was a short trip; Angel Island lies in Richardson Bay between Tiburon and San Francisco, an irregular rocky oval covered with trees and vegetation and rimmed with pale sandy beaches. Spade stood at the railing, rolling and smoking cigarettes and watching the island materialize out of the fog.

After the luggage was stored in the shed at the end of the long curving immigration pier at China Cove, the passengers trooped toward the administration building, set back and up from the beach. A slender black-haired dish-faced Chinese man Effie Perine’s age fell into step with Spade.

“Mr. Charles? Ray Chong Fat. I hope I can translate those documents for you.” He lowered his voice. “You’re helping a paper daughter named Mai-lin Choi who passed through here?”

“If she did.”

“She did. I was the translator at her interrogations.”

The immigration station was a vast complex of fifty buildings, dominated by a sprawling two-story administration building, with tan walls and a peaked tile roof. Farther up the slope were the detention barracks, the power plant, and the hospital.

The day was gray, blustering, the fog still swirling, the wind off the bay stabbing at their backs as they walked. As they mounted the steps of the administration building, Chong Fat shivered in his skimpy Immigration Service uniform and said abruptly, “Thirty percent of all Chinese immigrants are deported without ever setting foot in America.”

“So seventy percent make it in. Not bad odds.”

The administration building smelled of damp paper and stale coffee and disinfectant. It was cold and echoing, with linoleum-covered floors and rows of tiny cubicles. In one, a dull-eyed emaciated Chinese youth in a rumpled jacket and unmatched pants was sitting in a hard-backed chair at a glass-topped table. Across from him were two middle-aged Americans in dark suits and ties, one balding with glasses, the other black haired with a small precise mustache. No one was speaking.

Chong Fat led Spade up creaking wooden stairs to a small office on the second floor. He sat down behind the desk while Spade drew up a chair across from him. Chong Fat gestured at Spade’s briefcase, spoke almost in a whisper.

“You brought papers to spread across the desk?”

“Sure. Did you find any record of the Reverend Sabbath Zhu Pomeroy ever passing through?”

“No record,” said Chong Fat, still low voiced.

He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and brought out a folder, took out a bulky transcript marked “Mai-lin Choi.” As Spade half-hid it among his jumble of meaningless papers on the desk, he said loudly, “I hope you can translate this for me.”

Spade started reading the transcript, making squiggles on a pad to make it look like he was taking notes as Chong Fat talked in a high, hesitant voice to sound like he was translating into English the characters he was reading in Chinese.

Spade read:

Spade finished, slid the transcript back to Chong Fat, who returned it to its folder and quickly put it back in the drawer.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Chong Fat,” said Spade in a loud, hearty voice, gathering up his meaningless papers. “You have saved the Customs Service a week of hard work.”

When Spade entered the office, Effie Perine was still there even though it was well after 6 o’clock. She was all business. “Mai-lin and Reverend Zhu will meet you at St. John’s Methodist Church, Washington and Stockton, tomorrow at one p.m.”

“Good. Those interrogations out on Angel Island are mainly nonsense — who lived in the fourth house in your row, did his wife have bound feet or natural feet?”

“They weren’t able to trap her or confuse her?”

“They never came close. She’s smart and quick-witted enough to be Sun Yat-sen’s daughter. Everything she told us checks out. We can’t say the same for Zhu. No record.”

“You said clergymen come and go as they like.”

“He still would have had to pass through Immigration and Customs. So he either got here illegally or was born here. When Miles comes in tomorrow, tell him to meet me at the Green Street warehouse at midnight. Tonight, grab your coat, I’ll buy you dinner at Julius Castle. Anything you want on the menu.”

37 Reverend Pastor Sabbath Zhu

Spade climbed up Washington from Grant Avenue to Stockton Street on the upper edge of Chinatown. Late-fall sunshine flooded the street. St. John’s Methodist Church was sheathed in shingles, topped with a witch-hat shingle tower. Mai-lin Choi and a slender, slightly stooped whipcord man wearing a minister’s dark suit awaited Spade between carved ornamental wooden gates.

“Mr. Spade,” said Mai-lin formally, “this is the Reverend Pastor Sabbath Zhu Pomeroy. Reverend Zhu, Mr. Samuel Spade.”

They shook hands. Zhu’s long fingers were bony but strong. His mixed blood was most apparent in his shiny black hair and in the hint of a slant in dark eyes behind thick horn-rimmed glasses. He peered at Spade for a long, intent moment.

“I recommended you to Miss Choi for your competence as a detective, not for your truthfulness or sense of honor.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks.” Spade gestured at the little church behind them. “You’re the pastor here?”

“Oh, no, assistant pastor only. And only very recently that. I chose it as our meeting place because it is here that I first heard Sun Yat-sen speak.”

Mai-lin gave a visible start. “You met my father?”

“Only heard him speak. It was enough. Let us go inside.”

Light from the tall windows flooded the interior. At the front were the pulpit, the organ, and two tiers of risers for the choir at Sunday services. Pastor Zhu gestured Mai-lin into a pew halfway up the broad central aisle, slid in beside her. Spade stood in the aisle facing them, his back to the altar, one hand resting on the back of the pew ahead of theirs.

“After my ordination I first was sent to one of the Chinese churches in the valley. Then, eventually, I was assigned here. It was the fulfillment of all my dreams.”

“Because you heard Sun Yat-sen speak here?”

“Exactly. He arrived here on April sixth, nineteen oh four, traveling under false papers that declared him to have been born in Hawaii and thus eligible for American citizenship.”

Mai-lin said hotly, “Employees of the Customs Service who were members of the Society to Protect the Emperor recognized my father and denounced him. He was detained for several weeks.”

Reverend Zhu said, “It was cooperation between the Chinese pastor of this little Methodist church and his local converts, along with the efforts of the head of a local Triad, that brought enough pressure to finally get Sun Yat-sen admitted.”

The door at their backs opened. An aged Chinese woman, carrying bags and sacks and made shapeless by a black coat, came past them to edge her way into the front pew on the opposite side. She sat down wearily, distributing her bags around her.

“They had a ‘grand meeting’ at this church. Your father spoke. I was here, a boy of nine, right in this very pew.” Zhu began to declaim in a booming orator’s voice that made the old woman turn painfully to look at him, then away. “ ‘America, we need your help because you are the pioneers of Western civilization. Because you are a Christian nation. Because we intend to model our new government after yours. Above all, because you are the champions of liberty and democracy.’ ”

Mai-lin was silent, as if transfixed by her father’s words. Spade’s face had become almost stupid in its lack of expression.

Before the quake Grant had been known as Dupont Gai, Street of a Thousand Lanterns. The two-block climb from the Bush Street Gate to California was then lined with gambling clubs and brothels with half-opened window shutters through which scantily clad Caucasian whores raucously called their prices at passersby. The cribs had burned in the ’06 fire; they had been replaced by bazaars and restaurants and import houses and warehouses.

On the southeast and southwest corners of Grant and California were the Sing Fat Company and its competitor, the Sing Chong Company. Both were four-storied, with ornate balconies and decorations and pagoda-style towers.

“Sing Fat means Living Riches,” said Sabbath Zhu, “and Sing Chong, Living Prosperity.”

In a white-tiled butcher shop in the next block an aged Chinese man with a wispy Confucius goatee and timeless eyes was using a gleaming cleaver to section a whole pig roasted to a deep mahogany color. On hooks behind his head hung a dozen smoked ducks.

The next building was the Chow Chong Trading Company. Its spotless windows featured carved ivory and teak statues, porcelain bowls and vases, bronze temple bells. The display cases were filled with silk, lacquer, embroidery, and cloisonné. The air was heavy with sandalwood and camphor-wood. A dozen Westerners were shopping, browsing, buying.

A woman in a form-fitting floor-length silk gown approached them. She had a serene narrow face, hair that could have been lacquered itself, and dignity in her bearing.

Mai-lin spoke to her in Cantonese. Her face suddenly became animated. She replied excitedly, with many hand gestures. She looked over at Reverend Zhu, seemed to study him deeply, then bowed even more deeply, started to go on in Chinese.

Reverend Zhu said in a gentle voice, “Please, in English.” He gestured at Spade. “So our Western guest will be able to follow the conversation.”

She switched to only very slightly singsong English.

“I am Moon-fong Li. You honor me by your presence.”

She led them past a silk curtain and around silk-paneled screens to a small room, seated them around a hardwood table. An aged retainer in traditional dress brought a delicate teapot and four exquisite handleless bowls on doughnutlike saucers. Moon-fong Li went to the door with him, stood with her hand on his arm, speaking earnestly in low tones. He bowed, departed. She returned to fill their cups with steaming tea, spring-water-clear, pale amber, delicate of taste.

“When your father was released from detention in nineteen oh four he was taken directly to my parents’ home under cover of night. My brother, Yee-chum Li, was twelve. I was eight.”

A sudden youthful smile lit up Moon-fong Li’s features, momentarily replacing dignity with delight.

“When Sun Yat-sen had to move about Chinatown we always had to make sure he was well hidden in various parishioners’ homes. It was great fun for us as little children, even though we felt the weight of responsibility because our parents told us that Sun Yat-sen would be the savior of our homeland.”

“Why did he have to hide out?” asked Spade, sipping tea. “He had officially been admitted to the United States.”

Mai-lin said, “He was being dogged by imperial agents of the Manchus.” To Moon-fong Li she said, “Did you meet my father again upon his return to San Francisco in nineteen ten?”

“No, but my brother did. He was eighteen then, a man.”

Reverend Zhu said, “Am I correct in my belief that your father had to counter the fund-raising activies of Kang Youwei, his rival for the loyalty of the American Cantonese?”

“Yes.” Mai-lin turned to Spade. “Kang Youwei was the founder of the Society to Protect the Emperor. It was his people who denounced my father to Immigration in nineteen oh four. They did not wish to unseat the Manchu dynasty, but to preserve it.”

Moon-fong Li said, “I took the liberty of sending our retainer to my brother’s restaurant to tell him you might wish to speak with him. Yee-chum Li’s on Waverly Place.”

The scents of ginger, hot peppers, and herbs followed them up Sacramento Street. Outside an import shop they had to step around a wet wooden tub filled with fuzzy-looking sea snails.

At the corner of Waverly Place, Spade, Mai-lin, and Pastor Zhu went down a set of worn steps to a basement. A black-spotted inset mirror above the heavy double doors reflected their yellowish distorted images. When the moonfaced girl of five who stood on the cashier’s stool behind a glass-topped counter saw them she leaped down and ran to the back of the restaurant.

Within moments a woman who was obviously her mother came from the kitchen, drying her hands on a dish towel. She stopped before them, bowed to Mai-lin, spoke in English.

“Daughter of Sun Yat-sen, we are honored by your presence.”

Mai-lin answered in Cantonese, also bowing. The woman looked keenly at Reverend Zhu, after a moment bowed, bowed to Spade, and turned to the little girl.

“Sweet Flower, go tell your father that Mai-lin Choi is here with two others.”

The girl scampered off. The woman threaded her way across the white tiled floor between round close-set tables jammed with Chinese men and women using chopsticks to shovel rice into their mouths from white porcelain bowls held just below their chins. The low-ceilinged room rang with the clatter of cutlery and high-pitched conversations in Cantonese.

She ushered them into a booth with curtains that could be closed for privacy. A skinny waiter with buck teeth in a seamed face brought a pot of green tea and small white handleless cups with green gilt-outlined dragons writhing around their sides. He departed, pulling the curtains closed behind him.

“You see how they acknowledge my father and honor his memory?” asked Mai-lin with pride in her voice.

Rings squealed on a brass rod as the curtain was drawn back. The waiter set down steaming bowls of chicken clear soup, platters of startlingly green chow yuk, pork fried rice, sweet-and-sour pork, and almond duck steaming under its almond-dusted sauce.

The curtain was drawn shut again. They picked up their chopsticks. Mai-lin started to speak, but Spade stopped her with a tiny shake of his head. He made sure their conversation was limited to the niceties observed among people who have been thrown together for a common cause but are essentially strangers.

As they were finishing, the skinny waiter appeared to clear the table and bring a fresh pot of tea and delicate almond cakes. He left the curtain open. A slender, muscular Chinese man about Spade’s age appeared. The family resemblance to Moon-fong Li was unmistakable: high cheekbones, a well-shaped mouth, an almost aquiline nose, piercing jet-black eyes under heavy brows. He was handsome in the way that his sister was beautiful.

“I am Yee-chum Li. Welcome to my eating establishment.” He nodded slightly to Pastor Zhu. He slid in beside Spade; the curtain was pulled closed by unseen hands. Yee-chum fixed Mai-lin with an almost hypnotic gaze. “I revered your father. He was one of the few great men I have known in my lifetime.”

“Your sister said that you met with him when he returned to Chinatown in nineteen ten,” said Mai-lin.

“Yes. What do you know of his activities at that time?”

“I know my father was involved with two men, Charles Boothe and Fritz Lea. I know Boothe was a banker and Lea an adventurer. I know they were trying to raise money for an army. Beyond that I know very little. I seek knowledge.”

“I warned your father about Boothe and Lea, but I was only eighteen and my voice was not heard.”

Mai-lin poured tea for all of them. Reverend Zhu asked, “Warned Sun Yat-sen about them why?”

“Lea at first was a ‘general’ in the entourage of Kang Youwei, Sun’s rival, and inspected and trained cadets across the United States. He dreamed of bringing down the government of China, taking over, and dividing the spoils. So when Kang’s fortunes began to wane in nineteen oh nine, Lea co-opted Sun Yat-sen.”

Spade leaned back, took out papers and tobacco, raised his eyebrows. Yee-chum nodded. Spade started making a cigarette.

“Sun Yat-sen couldn’t see that for himself?”

“His idealism blinded him. Their plan was simple — on paper. ‘General’ Fritz Lea and ‘President’ Sun Yat-sen brought in a retired banker named Charles Boothe because he had links to military circles in New York whose members had weapons.” He focused on Mai-lin. “These arms would be stockpiled in western Guangdong Province until the insurrection occurred. Lea would be commander in chief; Boothe, ‘exclusive financial agent for overseas,’ would raise the money as loans from his banker associates in New York.”

“How much money?” asked Spade.

“They calculated a budget of three and a half million dollars American.”

“On what collateral?”

“A special role for investors would be reserved in the economic reconstruction of China. They would be rewarded by the future republican regime as customs commissioners and postal administrators, by concessions of commercial monopolies, and with mining rights in Manchuria.”

“And they all lived happily ever after,” grunted Spade.

Mai-lin was confused. “But if they had it all set up—”

“Boothe couldn’t raise the money,” said Yee-chum. “After that he just disappeared.”

“What about Fritz Lea?” asked Mai-lin.

“He turned up in London after the revolution, when your father was seeking the support of America and the European powers so he would have Western backing to impose his own authority on his compatriots. Lea acted as an intermediary between Sun and the International Banking Consortium to divert funds intended for the Manchu dynasty to the new republic.”

“Did it work?” asked Spade.

“No. They remained neutral. But just the rumors that Sun had been in touch with Western leaders was enough to get him elected president, and he proclaimed a new government, the Republic of China, on January first, nineteen twelve. For forty-five days he headed the provisional government at Nanking, then stepped aside for the former imperial general Yuan Shikai.”

“And Fritz Lea?”

“He too dropped out of sight.” He turned to Mai-lin. “Your father’s republic was all too soon replaced by a military dictatorship, then by Chiang Kai-shek. That was the end of your father’s dream. I hope that I have been able to help you understand him better, Miss Choi.”

“I feel more confused than ever.”

They departed Yee-chum Li’s restaurant and the three of them stood on the corner of Waverly Place. Reverend Zhu offered his hand to each of the other two in turn, said, “I must return to my pastoral duties.” He headed up Sacramento, leaving them alone.

After dark Chinatown wore a different, slightly sinister aspect. The fog was swirling, the wind cold; the streetlights were haloed, their illumination dimmed. Only the sound of heels on the pavement betrayed the presence of hurrying pedestrians. A group of adventurous tourists, overcoats clutched about them, was being told lies by their guide, about the mysterious labyrinths below the Chinatown streets.

Spade said, “I’ll walk you back to your room.”

Mai-lin walked slowly, watching her feet. “Why did you not want us to talk about Lea and Boothe while we ate?”

“Did you notice the old waiter came to whisk our plates away just when we were finished eating? There’s a narrow passageway behind the booths. Someone can stand there and hear things you might not want him to hear.”

A few drops of rain splatted down. A blue-denimed waiter hurried by with someone’s hot dinner from some restaurant.

“Tell me again how Zhu got in touch with you,” said Spade.

“He heard from the Methodist church in Hawaii that I was coming to look for Boothe and Lea and asked if he could help me in any way.” She looked over at him. “Why do I trust you even when you’re trying to turn me against Moon-fong Li and Yee-chum Li and even Reverend Sabbath Zhu himself?”

“Maybe it’s because you trust everyone. Or maybe it’s because I don’t trust anyone,” said Spade. “Good night, Mai-lin.”

38 I’m Working for You, Remember?

Spade doglegged over to Green from Sansome in the rain. As he turned into the Green Street stub, a car swooshed by, splattering him with muddy water. Miles Archer’s sedan was parked on Green, empty. Spade climbed up to the warehouse loading dock. The wind-danced streetlight skittered his shadow in shifting praying mantis shapes against the red brick wall. Just at midnight Archer’s dark, heavy shape materialized from the shadows to trudge up the concrete steps.

“You had to pick the worst damn storm of the year for it,” Archer complained in his rather hoarse voice.

“I have a list of the stolen goods from Toomey at Matson,” said Spade. “We’ll do an inventory of whatever we find in the warehouse. Hold the light.”

Archer shone the hand torch on the heavy brass padlock on the overhead door. The third key Spade tried worked. He laid the open lock on the concrete.

They heaved the overhead up enough to slide underneath it, let it drop back. Inside was utter blackness and relative silence. Archer swept the torch around. The warehouse was crammed to the rafters with cartons, crates, boxes, and barrels.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he chortled in coarse delight.

Spade gave half the list to Archer, tossed his raincoat over a barrel of molasses, compared the numbers on the barrel with those on his list; made a check mark. Seventy minutes later he had checked every item on his list. Archer emerged from behind a tall stack of wooden crates of industrial nuts and bolts, flush faced and with a rip in the knee of his trousers.

“Damned nail!” But he held up his list in triumph. “Every one of them, Sam. It’ll be all over the papers. Spade and Archer bust dockside theft ring led by lefty union agitator.”

“I’m not sure our clients want publicity. And I’m not sure union agitators are behind it.”

“Our clients’d be fools not to, it’s what they hired us for. And I saw the Aussie guy paying off Brix myself. Twice.”

“So you say, Miles. So you say.”

By 7:30 in the morning the rain had blown by, taking the fog with it and leaving choppy water and blue skies and bright sunlight behind. Spade pushed open the heavy warped hardwood door of the cavernous concrete-block building on Pier 19 that housed the so-called Blue Book union.

Inside were half a dozen desks messy with paperwork, dirt-grimed windows that looked dimly out across the bay toward the army garrison on Alcatraz. Heavy-bodied men in rough clothes crowded the room, all talking and laughing at once. Others, in suits and ties, tried to work at the desks despite the din of the longshoremen’s voices. The air was heavy with cigar smoke and the faint but harsh smell of cheap booze.

Spade leaned over a littered desk where a hulk-shouldered man in a woolen tweed suit was counting money into a green tin box.

“Stan Hagar around?”

The money counter looked up. His nose had been bent to one side by a board or a brick. His face was heavy and needed a shave. It would always need a shave. His eyes were brown, dead.

“Who’s askin’?”

“Sam Spade. I want to see him on business.”

The union man tossed the last of the money into the box, closed the lid. Picked up a half-smoked cigar smoldering in a brass bowl he was using as an ashtray. He stuck the stogie between thick lips that wore a permanent sneer.

“What kinda business?”

Spade leaned close to him. “My own.”

The cigar chomper shrugged. “In back. Corner office.”

Most of the offices were little more than cubicles with interior windows and glass panels in the doors. Spade could see Hagar alone in a large corner office that actually had a window, talking on the phone. He went in without knocking, shut the door behind him. Hagar looked up in surprise mixed with annoyance.

“What the hell do you think you’re... Oh. You. Spade.”

As the detective sat down in the room’s spare chair, Hagar said into the telephone, “I’ll call you back,” and hung up.

Hagar had worked the docks and showed it in a knuckle-scarred face, scarred-knuckled hands, and a heavy body running to fat now that he was behind a desk. But there was slyness there.

“What’re ya doin’ here, Spade?”

“I’m working for you, remember? I’m here to report.”

“I deal with Miles Archer. He should be here, not you.”

“That would be clever since he’s undercover on the docks.” Spade leaned across the desk. “Last night we confirmed where the stolen goods are being warehoused.”

“Good! We told Miles what we wanted done and he’s done it. A damned good man. He gets his bonus when he puts the finger on Harry Brisbane as the man behind the thefts.”

“Yes, the bonus,” said Spade thoughtfully. He stood. “I wouldn’t move too quick on this, Hagar. Miles might report to you, but I report to the Industrial Association.”

Ralph Toomey stood up behind his big rolltop desk.

“My secretary tells me you have something to report.”

Spade’s face was flat, his eyes hooded. “You hired me to find out who was stealing on the docks and to put a stop to it. Without publicity, you said. I’m doing it — my own way.”

Toomey sat back down, abstractedly waving him to the leather armchair across the desk from his own.

“I know you’re an independent son of a bitch, Spade. But the Industrial Association is footing the bills for Spade and Archer.” He frowned, twiddled a pencil between his fingers. “That list of goods I gave you help?”

“Broke the case. Last night Miles and I went into a warehouse on Green Street. The goods are there. They checked against the list.”

Toomey leaned forward, suddenly smiling. “That’s good work, Spade. I like it.”

“So Miles gets his bonus.”

“What bonus?” demanded Toomey. “For what?”

“Stan Hagar said something about it, that’s all.”

“You talked with Hagar?” demanded Toomey. “Is that wise? You’re supposed to be undercover.”

Spade shrugged.

“The case is finished, Toomey. Hagar says he has verbal descriptions that match Harry, right down to the Aussie accent, of him paying money to a known Communist agitator and being at the warehouse on at least two occasions in the past week.”

Toomey said, “I wouldn’t have thought that Harry would—”

“Nor would he. He’s been laid up at home for three weeks with a broken foot. The warehouse is owned by the Shipowners’ and Merchants’ Tugboat Company. I’m assuming that you don’t know Hagar set up the dock-pilferage thing to frame Harry Brisbane to take the fall as the ringleader of the thieves.”

“I sure as hell didn’t until you walked in, and I’m not sure I know it now.” Toomey was starting to get red in the face. His big hands twitched into loose fists. “And I don’t know what the hell you think you’re getting at, Spade. Shipowners’ and Merchants’ are members of our Industrial Association. They would not store stolen goods in their warehouse—”

“I checked with Charles Barber, who’s on their board of directors. The warehouse had been standing empty for months. But before he went with the Blue Book, Hagar was Shipowners’ and Merchants’ office manager. My take is that he lined up some Blue Book longshoremen he trusted to start organized pilfering on the docks after hours and had them store the goods in the Green Street warehouse without the Shipowners’ and Merchants’ Tugboat people knowing about it. Then he came to the Industrial Association with a sad tale of massive thievery on the docks.”

Spade paused to start rolling a cigarette. Toomey stared at him, then lit a cigar, laid it smoldering on his ashtray, and crossed to the green secrétaire in the corner. He returned with two snifters of cognac.

“Success to crime,” said Spade. They toasted, drank. Reawakened anger made Toomey slam a fist on the desk.

“Came to me, Spade! Asked me to hire private detectives to look into it since we didn’t want any publicity. And then recommended Miles Archer as a good man to go undercover. So Archer was in on it from the start.”

“No.” Spade told his lie with a face totally devoid of animation. “Miles is a good detective but he hates Commies, so Hagar was able to lead him around by the nose.”

Toomey drained his snifter. “Well, by God, I’m going to blow ’em out of the water!”

“What about the publicity?”

Toomey slumped back in his big leather swivel, looking deflated. For the first time he used Spade’s first name.

“What do I do, Sam? If this should get to the newspapers, the Industrial Association will be torn apart.”

“You pay Spade and Archer for our investigative work. I keep my mouth shut; I make sure Miles keeps his mouth shut. You have Stan Hagar in and tell him he shuts down his bogus theft ring just as quietly as he set it up and gets the stolen goods back to their owners the same way. Quietly. Once the newspapers forget about thievery on the docks, you get Hagar fired.”

When Spade got back to his office, Effie Perine told him, “Henny Barber called. He thinks he’s located Charles Boothe.”

39 Horse Liniment

They’d taken the Golden Gate auto ferry from the Hyde Street pier to Sausalito, had driven north to San Rafael, then on to the little town of Fairfax cupped in the wooded hills a few miles to the west. The top of Henny’s Austin was down; Spade had the open backseat of the little upright saloon car to himself. Mai-lin was huddled close to Henny in the too-big leather coat he gallantly had given her.

At 3 p.m., Henny stopped at the south end of Pastori Road, one hundred yards from the railroad station. Ahead was a wooden bridge over a meandering stream, flanked by white wooden slat fences like those at horse ranches. At the far end was a gate.

“Used to be Pastori’s Hotel,” said Spade. “Built around an outdoor dining area with the big oak tree in the middle of it. Once they winched a piano up into the tree and Irving Berlin climbed up and played it for one of their dances. Three years ago the Emporium department store bought it up to turn it into a country club for its employees.”

“That’s how I found Charles Boothe,” said Henny. “I was at lunch with Pater at the Bohemian Club. The manager of the Emporium heard us mention Boothe and told us a retired banker named Charles Boothe was accountant for their country club.”

They used the turnaround in front of the main building, stopped, and Spade got out. The grounds were beautifully land scaped, with a manicured lawn perfect for croquette matches. Whiskey jays squawked raucously in the flanking hardwoods.

“You folks wait here for me,” said Spade.

A pleasant-faced woman in her forties, hair cut short in the current fashion and a sheaf of menus under her arm, greeted Spade in the open, airy front dining room. The room was bright with ferns and round paper Chinese lanterns.

“May I help you?”

“I’m looking for your accountant.”

“Mr. Boothe?” She consulted an enameled Ball watch on a chain around her neck. “He’s probably in his cabin.” She raised her voice. “Hank? Do you know if Charles is around?”

Hank was in his forties, bearded, dressed casually.

“Left ten minutes ago, Mrs. Hendrix.” He looked at Spade without enthusiasm. “Charlie doesn’t like to be bothered.”

“We’re a little protective of Charles,” said Mrs. Hendrix. “He’s got a stiff leg, and for a time he was...”

“A boozer?” asked Spade.

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” she lied. She led Spade out the rear entrance. Bees buzzed lazily in honeysuckle vines draped to the ground. She pointed past a row of buildings. “The cottage at the far end. You can drive down there.”

The little cabin was of the same architecture as the main building, with two white-framed windows on each side and one in the rear. Low hedges shielded it, shade trees overhung it. The three of them crowded onto the narrow-roofed front veranda. Spade knocked on the door. There was no response.

“Mr. Boothe?”

After a long pause there was the sound of approaching uneven footsteps. The door opened.

Boothe was in his late sixties, as tall as Spade. His face would have once been rubicund, but now his nose was W. C. Fields’s, bulbous and red veined; his watery blue eyes behind rimless glasses had no answers, only questions. His free hand held an ebony cane. One leg was obviously stiff.

“Yes?”

Mai-lin stepped forward, bowed slightly to him.

“You were an associate of my father, Sun Yat-sen.”

“Even if true, there’s nothing to talk about.”

Boothe started to close the door, but Spade pushed past him into the cabin’s spacious main room. It had a round table, four chairs, and a double daybed that would open out into a bed at night. Beside the daybed was a floor lamp with an oval shade on a swivel that could serve as a reading lamp, and a bookcase crammed with adventure novels, mostly for kids.

Boothe stood stiffly, his back to the table. Spade chuckled.

“A Child’s Garden of Verses?”

“The books came with the cabin,” said Boothe quickly. “A woman and her two little daughters lived here before me.”

“Mmm-hmm. Let’s talk about Sun Yat-sen’s money.”

Strangely, Spade’s words seemed to lessen Boothe’s hostility.

“A young journalist from one of the San Francisco papers came round shortly after Sun Yat-sen’s death. He thought there might be a story in it. There wasn’t. Apart from him, nobody’s wanted to talk about those fund-raising days for years.”

“What was his name? What did he look like?”

“Slender. Dark hair. Fine features.” Boothe made a dismissive gesture. “There really was no story. I was unable to raise the money that Sun needed. It all came to naught.”

“Unable to raise all of the money,” said Spade.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Boothe glanced toward Mai-lin. “I’m sorry, but your father was an impossible man. He did not ever really trust Fritz and myself.”

“He was wise not to,” said Spade.

“What ever happened to Lea?” asked Henny.

Boothe’s eyes went vague. “I have no idea.”

Mai-lin was disbelieving. “Are you saying you didn’t know that he turned up after the revolution, in nineteen twelve, in London?”

“Oh, I knew that of course.” He gave a wry drinker’s chuckle. “Then I lost track of him, lost a leg, lost interest.”

“Miss Choi has it on good authority that you raised a quarter of a million bucks that’s never been accounted for.”

“Errant nonsense! The Emporium paid a quarter million to Adele Pastori for this property in nineteen twenty-five, and that was one of the largest real estate transactions in Marin County’s history.” His mouth tightened. “What good authority?”

Mai-lin said, “A few years ago the pastor of my Methodist congregation in Hawaii received a communication from the pastor of St. John’s Church in Chinatown. It told of a rumor that in nineteen ten a quarter of a million dollars had been raised for my father’s cause by you and Mr. Lea but was never turned over to him.”

“It’s all lies. Nothing but damnable lies.”

“Maybe a drink would help you remember.” Spade stood up abruptly. “We’re through here.”

A silent Henny drove up Main Street, recently renamed Broadway, in the gathering dusk. The water cart had been by, sprinkling the road and laying the dust. Mai-lin was huddled beside Henny as if exhausted.

“Stop here,” said Spade.

Across the street, at 19 Broadway, warm light came through the windows of the Fairfax Hotel and Restaurant. Henny twisted around on the car seat to face Spade.

“I don’t approve of some of the things you said and did back there, Mr. Spade. You were very unpleasant and—”

“I’m doing what she hired me to do. Ask her.”

“It’s all so... mixed up.” Mai-lin put a hand on Henny’s arm. “I went to Mr. Spade because he is the kind of man who can find out for me those things I thought I needed to know.”

Henny looked sheepish. “Heck, I’m sorry, Mr. Spade.”

Spade got out, said, “Go back to the city; I’ll catch the train to Sausalito.”

He crossed the ill-lit street to the two-story brick building. Light from the hotel lobby fell on a man of twenty-five leaning against the corner of the entryway in shirtsleeves. He had wise guy eyes and black hair slicked back with a lot of pomade.

Spade said, “Last time I saw you was in Wop Healy’s joint.”

“It got a little too hot for me over there across the bay.”

“I need a bottle of horse liniment, Slick.”

“Whiskey or rye? It all comes out of the same bathtub.”

“Just so it’s got alcohol in it.”

40 Buried Treasure?

Spade went back across the bridge and walked on the grassy verge of the road. There was no moon. Light came from Boothe’s cabin through lowered shades. Spade’s skeleton key silently opened the back door. On his way through the kitchen he picked up two water glasses from the sideboard.

Boothe was lying fully clothed on the daybed, his stiff leg stretched out straight. He was reading a newspaper by the light of the floor lamp.

Spade said cheerily, “Young Spade, bearing booze.”

He set down the glasses on the table, set a bottle of whiskey beside them. Boothe struggled to a sitting position.

“I–I don’t drink,” he faltered, his eyes on the bottle.

“Sure you don’t.” Spade sat, poured whiskey into the glasses. Boothe maneuvered himself into a chair.

Spade pushed a glass toward him. “I need the whole story. “About the money. About Fritz Lea. About Sun Yat-sen.”

They drank, Boothe greedily. Light came immediately into his eyes. He sighed, smacked his lips.

“I’ve spent a lot of years trying to drown the memories of our lost treasure.”

“We’ve got all night.”

“It didn’t take all night, but it took the bottle and the best part of four hours to get his story. He’s a foxy old gent.”

It was 8 in the morning. Spade was in his swivel chair, Effie Perine was in the armchair across from him. He tossed papers and tobacco pouch on the desk, leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head while she made him a cigarette.

“He finally admitted that, yes, money was raised and, yes, it was indeed a quarter of a million.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I think I do,” he said softly. “A quarter million was nowhere near enough to fund Sun Yat-sen’s revolution, so they didn’t tell him about it. They just banked it for themselves.”

“Mai-lin was so sure it wasn’t in any bank.”

“In a way she’s right. In nineteen twelve, before he went to London, Lea pulled the money from the bank and buried it. Literally. He didn’t trust Boothe to leave it alone until he got back. He wouldn’t say where he’d hidden it.”

“I guess he never did get back,” she mused softly.

“Maybe before nineteen fourteen, when he went to jail. Anyway, Boothe says he never saw him again, never knew where he hid the money.”

The sound of the hall door opening brought Effie Perine to her feet. Spade said, “Of course everything Boothe told me last night might be a pack of lies.”

Spade was stubbing out his cigarette when she returned.

“There’s a man says his name is Magnus Lindholm and he wants to consult with you. He’s a giant.”

“A giant? Send him in, darling.”

She opened the door and stood in the opening with her hand still on the knob. “Won’t you come in, Mr. Lindholm?”

Lindholm was indeed a giant, seven feet tall, with a massive square head and dark, quick eyes. He wore a dark brown woolen worsted suit and was removing a sand-colored Bond Street hat with one ham-size hand as he came in.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Lindholm?”

Lindholm filled the oaken armchair beside the desk. The upper half of his heavy face was ruddy and jovial, the lower half set, almost concrete colored, the mouth a hard line.

“I have been in your beautiful city for a week, Mr. Spade, seeking word of some... associates, yes, that is the word, associates of mine in a, shall we say, venture, whom I believe planned to come here from...” He looked keenly at Spade. “I have heard that you are a man who is unusually well-informed about what goes on in San Francisco.”

Spade opened his hands in a deprecating manner, saying nothing quite forcefully. Lindholm nodded as if he had spoken.

“I have found no trace of my associates.”

Spade’s face became gravely attentive. His voice was husky. “And you wish to hire me to... what? Find them?”

“Perhaps that. Or perhaps a man like yourself has already been approached by them on this matter?”

His voice made it a question. Spade smiled reprovingly. The telephone rang once before it was picked up by Effie Perine in the outer office. Neither man paid any attention to it.

“There’s nothing in your idea that I might already have run across them.” Spade drew a pad toward himself, picked up a pencil. “But if they’re here, I can find them.”

Lindholm pushed himself upright, using his hands on the arms of the chair as well as his legs. He took out a wallet with cyrillic letters embossed in the leather and laid three twenty-dollar bills on the desktop. He gave a slight bow.

“As a consultation fee. I will be in touch.”

The huge man turned and left the office. Spade followed him out to the reception room and Effie Perine.

“He left without a word. Should I open a file on him?”

“He’s involved in some shady enterprise with some other shady characters who plan to cut him out of things. Or maybe the enterprise is theirs alone. He thought I might have run across them. When he realized I hadn’t he decided he’d said too much. Did you notice anything else odd about him, apart from his size?”

“The skin color of the upper and lower halves of his face didn’t match.”

“Yeah, ruddy above, almost gray below. Recent razor nicks from shaving off a thick beard to make it difficult for anyone who knew him to identify him. No, no file on him. His name isn’t Lindholm and he’s no Swede and he won’t be back.” Spade pointed at the phone. “Anything important?”

“Miles is on his way in.”

Miles Archer stood at the corner of Spade’s desk, hands in the pockets of his brown woolen pants, teetering slightly on his heels, a dissatisfied look on his face. Finally he went over to his own desk and sat down facing Spade.

“Well, you called that one right, Sam.”

“What do you mean, Miles?” Spade was too busy rolling a cigarette to look up. Archer took out his own pack.

“I did damn good work on that Green Street warehouse, and what did it get me? No publicity. Nothing in the newspapers. And then when I went to make my final report to Stan Hagar at the Longshoremen’s Association, he just said the matter was closed.”

“You’re going to get your bonus, aren’t you?”

Miles started slightly at mention of the bonus. When Spade said nothing more about it he added quickly, obliquely, “Well, yeah, but with the publicity we’d get—”

“So what are you bellyaching about?” Both men lit up. “I told you the Industrial Association wanted two things: the looting on the docks stopped. We stopped it — you stopped it. And they wanted it kept under wraps. It is. Dead and buried. Between you and me, Miles, it was a setup from the beginning.”

Archer looked suddenly uneasy. “A setup?”

“Stan Hagar set up raids on the Industrial Association’s warehouses so Harry Brisbane would get blamed for them. Spade and Archer was hired as window dressing. But the big boys downtown got wind of the scheme and put a stop to it. Right now we’re sitting pretty. We did what we were hired to do. We’ll get our money, and in a month or two Hagar will be gone.” He stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette. “Along with anyone they find out was playing his games along with him.”

Miles Archer went silent again.

“Meanwhile, I need to get a line on Mai-lin Choi’s ‘spiritual adviser,’ calls himself Reverend Sabbath Zhu Pomeroy.”

“Half-breed, with a name like that?”

“Probably,” said Spade with apparent indifference. “Zhu is in his thirties, five eight, one hundred forty, thin face, sleepy-looking dark eyes just slightly slanted, heavy eyeglasses with black horn-rims. Shiny black hair. Formerly assigned to some Methodist Chinese church in the Valley.” Again a thoughtful pause. “After all that night work I thought you might want to get out of town, into the country for a couple — three days, make a round of the Valley towns, see what you can dig up on him.”

“Yeah, good idea.” Archer’s eyes lit up. “Expenses?”

“Within reason.”

Archer was energized. He ground out his cigarette, stood.

“You’ll see me back here Friday with the goods.”

“That’s swell, Miles. I knew I could count on you.”

Spade remained behind his desk after Archer’s departure, his lip slightly curled. Then he went through the reception area and on out, telling Effie Perine as he passed by her desk that he was going to St. John’s Methodist Church in Chinatown.

41 I’ve Got a Business to Run

Henny Barber had Mai-lin Choi out on the dance floor in the crowded New Shanghai Café on Grant Avenue, whirling her around and around to the music of the live band. He was dressed in a custom-tailored suit, she in a silk party dress. Spade, seated alone at their table, noted with a wry grin that Henny was the better dancer of the two. The number ended; they returned flushed and laughing. Henny leaned across the table to Spade.

“So Boothe says he doesn’t know where Lea hid the money.”

“Yeah, if you believe him.” Spade looked at Mai-lin. “What does Reverend Zhu think about it all, Miss Choi?”

“He feels if there was any money, it will never be found.”

“We’re not going to give up so easily,” declaimed Henny.

The fog was in, haloing the streetlights, dulling the night sounds of the city. Spade got off a streetcar at California and Locust on the edge of Laurel Heights, walked up a slanting half block to a narrow row house. Vague light showed through the lowered shades of the front room windows.

Spade stood looking moodily at the house, then climbed the three steps to the stoop. He rang the bell. The door opened, Iva Archer’s backlit face peered out at him. Her soft red lips parted in a smile.

“Come in, quickly, Sam. The neighbors.”

She drew him inside, raised her face hungrily for his kiss. She wore a rose-colored crepe de chine negligee open enough to show a silk chemise cut low in the bodice to emphasize her bosom.

Spade took off topcoat and hat, tossed them on the couch.

“I could use a drink.”

“There’s one waiting — in the bedroom.” She led him toward the rear of the house, talking rapidly, breathlessly. “You were so clever to dream up some meaningless out-of-town investigation to keep Miles away for two days and nights!”

They went into the bedroom; she shut the door behind them. Candles glowed on the dresser and on the bedside table.

She turned to him, already opening her negligee.

Spade had his chair turned toward the window so he could smoke a cigarette while gazing across the narrow court beside the Hunter-Dulin building. The door was flung open and Dundy came in wearing a black overcoat, his black derby jammed down tight on his head. Tom Polhaus came in behind him, half a head taller than his superior, filling the doorway.

Spade lounged back in his swivel chair. “Why don’t you act like a gentleman, Dundy, and take off your hat?”

“We won’t be here that long, Spade.” Dundy’s eyes were alight. “You’re coming with us over to Marin County.”

“The last time you hauled me across the bay it all came to naught for you.”

Dundy crowded up to the desk. Tom followed, slower, shaking his head as he usually did at these encounters.

“There’s been a death at the Emporium Country Club over in Fairfax. Their accountant, a fellow named Charles Boothe. Don’t try to tell me you didn’t know him, because—”

“I knew him.”

“Get your hat. You’re coming with us.”

Spade winked at Tom Polhaus. “Why don’t you tell your boyfriend he needs a warrant to take me anywhere.”

“Aw, c’mon, Sam, we’re just—”

“When and how did Boothe die?”

“Sometime last night,” said Polhaus. “The housekeeper at the administration building, a Mrs. Hendrix, looked through his window and saw him lying on the floor and called the Fairfax town cop. He called us and asked us to bring you over there.”

“That’s when. How?”

“Someone was roughing him up and his heart gave out.”

Dundy snapped, “The town cop, Andy Peri, dug up a Slick Hansen who sold you a bottle of bootleg night before last, and Mrs. Hendrix said that on that same night you’d been drinking with Boothe. I can get a material-witness warrant—”

But Spade had come out from behind the desk.

“See how easy it is when you ask nice, Lieutenant?”

They were waiting on the front veranda of the Emporium Country Club when the Fairfax policeman, Andrew Peri, arrived on a motorcycle. He was in uniform, complete with a badge and a Sam Browne belt across his chest, his pant legs protected by shiny leggings. He had a square face with a stern mouth and a cop’s eyes under his uniform cap. He took Spade to a table away from the others.

“I figured I had to talk with you, Mr. Spade. You’re the only stranger who spoke with Boothe recently that anyone here knows about, and you were with him night before last.”

“You don’t have to handle this bird with kid gloves,” said Dundy, hustling over to their table. “If he cracks wise, I’ll take over and get what we need out of him.”

“Thanks for getting Mr. Spade here, Lieutenant, but I think I can handle it.” To Spade he said, “I talked with the sheriff before you folks got here, and he told me you’d helped him out on a couple of cases and let him get the credit. I got no reason to think you came back again last night, but I gotta ask.”

“Sure you do. I was dining and dancing with a client and his lady friend at the New Shanghai Café in Chinatown.”

“That seems straight enough. Give me their names, then let’s go over and view the body and the crime scene.”

A dozen residents of the country club were milling around outside Boothe’s cabin. On the veranda the pleasant-faced Mrs. Hendrix, pale and all but wringing her hands, was obviously glad to be relieved of her watchdog duty.

Inside, there was an unpleasant scorched smell on the air. One of the chairs was overturned by the table, with a big serving spoon beside it. The body of Charles Boothe was sprawled near the bed. He was shoeless, with a sock on his right foot. His left arm was outstretched above his head, pointing toward the bookshelf. Half a dozen books had been pulled out and were scattered about on the floor.

“Looks like he was attacked over near the table,” rumbled Tom Polhaus. “After the attacker left he must of come around enough to crawl to the bookshelf to try and get to his feet.”

“Not on that foot,” said Spade.

“Good God in heaven!” cried Mrs. Hendrix, who had ventured in through the front door.

The bottom of Boothe’s bare left foot was blackened and blistered around ovals of angry red raw flesh. Dundy went down on one knee to get at a book wedged under the body. He turned the book upside down, open, and shook it vigorously. No papers fell out. He snorted with laughter as he tossed it on the bed.

“Hell, just a kid’s adventure story. Treasure Island.”

Tom Polhaus also leafed quickly through it, as if looking for handwritten notations in the margins, then dropped it on the bed. From outside came the sound of an approaching vehicle. A long shiny black Buick sedan with side curtains pulled up.

“Coroner’s here,” said Peri. “Guess you all better clear out so him and me can get on with our official duties.”

Spade casually picked up Treasure Island and walked out, pausing a dozen yards away from the cabin to put it under his arm and work on a cigarette. Tom Polhaus came up behind him.

“Ain’t that evidence, Sam?”

“Of what? I loved this story when I was a kid, thought I’d read it again.” He chuckled sardonically and held the book out to Polhaus. “But of course if it’s evidence...”

“Aw hell, Sam,” said Tom. An almost crafty light entered his eyes. “What were you over here to talk with Boothe about?”

“Nothing that was going to get him killed.” He clapped Polhaus on the shoulder. “I’ve got a business to run, Tom. Take me back to the city and I’ll buy you pickled pigs’ feet at Big John’s Hof Brau.”

42 Death by Fire

On Friday morning Spade looked up, stopped leafing through Treasure Island, and said offhandedly, “Hello, Miles. When did you get back?”

“Late last night.” Archer went to his desk, sat down, said, “I’ve gotta do my expense account on the trip.”

“Try to hold it down on the bribes, booze, and biddies.”

“You kidding?” Archer guffawed. “Over in those Valley towns you can’t sin if you want to. Anyway, Zhu turned up in Sacramento maybe three years ago with a diploma from an outfit advertising in the back of a magazine, saying he was a minister of God.”

“Aimee Semple McPherson, look out,” chuckled Spade.

“The Chinese Methodist church in Fresno took him on as assistant pastor. He stayed a year. He looks clean to me.”

“Good. He has a lot of influence on our client; I just wanted to make sure he’s a right ghee, that’s all.”

Spade got his hat, stopped at Effie Perine’s desk.

“Call Doc Naughton out at the U.C. Med School, sweetheart.”

She picked up the phone. “Do I tell him where it hurts?”

“Just tell him I’m curious.”

Spade walked up Parnassus to the Hooper Foundation for Medical Research. The sky was gray and the wind whipped the tails of his overcoat. He had to hold his hat on his head, had to chafe his hands together after entering the imposing granite building.

James Naughton met Spade in the doctors’ lounge and poured coffee. He was a big man with ice-chip blue eyes, a Guards mustache, and a marked British accent. He radiated authority and confidence.

“I suggested we meet here, Samuel, because I have surgery in a few minutes and Effie said you were suffering from nothing more dangerous than a terminal case of medical curiosity.”

Spade said, “I seem to remember, from that time I took that wart off your back, that cosmetic surgery is your field.”

“Took the wart off my back?” Naughton chuckled. “A good way to describe excising a blackmailer. So?”

“I seem to remember you telling me that the ancient Egyptians reconstructed lips, noses, and ears with skin grafts and that the ancient Greeks and Romans perfected the technique to include eyelids.”

“You’ve got a good memory, Samuel. A first-century Roman physician named Aulus Cornelius Celsus did indeed report making excisions in the skin of the eyelids to relax them. During the Middle Ages plastic surgery was banned as unethical and godless, but during the Renaissance many of those ancient surgical procedures and techiques were rediscovered.”

Naughton checked his watch.

“In eighteen eighteen a German doctor, Karl Ferdinand von Graefe, called operations to repair deformities caused by cancer in the eyelids blepharoplasty. He laid the foundations for the work done by surgeons like myself on men disfigured in the Big War.”

“You ever get asked to try and change a Chinese woman’s eyelids to make her look less Asian and more Western?”

Naughton leaned back, shook his head. “No. Chinese American women are generally too conservative to want something like that. But two years ago in Boston a Japanese man in love with a girl from Iowa wanted a doctor to Westernize his features so he’d be acceptable to the girl’s good God-fearing conservative Midwest folks. The doc cut the eye corners so the slant was gone and tightened the man’s pendulous lower lip.”

Spade started to dig out tobacco and papers, thought better of it, drank coffee instead. “How’d it work out for them?”

“The patient changed his name to William White and married his true love.”

“One more question, Doc. Could a white woman, say, have that surgery done in reverse? Get an operation to make her look like she was Chinese? Or half Chinese? From Hawaii maybe?”

“Intriguing. Just a matter of removing the superior palpe-bral fold of the Caucasian eyelid to give the eye the slanted look of the typical Chinese.” He checked his watch a final time, said “Damn,” then said, “I met a doctor from Sacramento at a medical convention three years ago who said he had a Caucasian patient wanted him to do something like that.”

“What was the doctor’s name?” asked Spade quickly.

“I don’t remember. He died in a fire a few months later.”

Spade climbed the sweeping marble staircase to the second floor of San Francisco’s Main Library, across the Civic Center Plaza from City Hall. In the newspapers and periodicals room he told a sweet-faced lady librarian whose name plate read THERESA MCGOVERN, “I’m interested in out-of-town newspapers.”

“Current newspapers are on the racks along the walls. If you need back issues I can bring them to you. Library patrons aren’t allowed in the periodicals stacks.”

“I’m looking for the death of a Sacramento-area doctor by fire during the last three months of nineteen twenty-five or maybe early nineteen twenty-six.”

She came back scant minutes later with a sheaf of folded newspapers. She shook her head sadly.

“The poor man. A wife and family and a good practice, then to die when some arsonist burned his office to the ground.”

Spade thanked her, then added, “You make it look so easy that maybe you can dig up some information on one other thing.”

“You just name it,” smiled Theresa.

“Red Rock Island.”

Effie Perine was bent over her desk, studying the horoscope in one of the afternoon newspapers.

“I see a handsome stranger in your life,” said Spade.

She tossed the paper aside with a rueful grin. “Don’t I wish.” She opened her pad. “Tom Polhaus left word that the autopsy on Charles Boothe showed his heart gave out when he was being tortured.” She shivered. “A nasty way to go, Sam.”

“Yeah. Call Mai-lin, darling, set up an appointment here for tomorrow morning. Tell her that dead men sometimes speak.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning Charles Boothe left me a message.” As she reached for her phone, he added, “I have to go over to Marin. Cook up something for Miles to do so he won’t come barging into the office tomorrow morning.”

Afternoon fog flowed down over the brushy hills that ringed Sausalito to bring cold, wet air and cut off the weak winter sunshine. Benny Ruiz was at the Sausalito yacht harbor sitting on the hatch cover of his fishing boat, the Portagee, using a long curved needle to repair a fishnet. Half a dozen crab pots were stacked on the deck. The boat smelled of fish scales and tar and, very faintly, bootleg booze from Canada.

A smile lit up Benny’s round, slightly concave face. His heavy lips opened in a smile.

“Hey, Sam!” He was wearing his usual black sweater and black peacoat. A Greek fisherman’s cap was tipped back on his head. “You got any more English gold you want found?”

“Fresh out, Benny.” Spade put his backside against the gunwale, gestured at the net. “No more bootlegging?”

Benny put down his needle.

“The competition’s gotten so fierce that a lot of us Portagees are going back to fishing almost full-time. Don’t pay so good, but it ain’t so hard on the nerves.”

A seagull swooped down to land on the top of the cabin. Benny threw a scrap of rope at him.

“You know the waters around Red Rock Island, Benny?”

“Back of my hand. It’s only twenty minutes from here even for this old scow.” Benny laid an affectionate hand on the hatch cover. “When I was a kid we’d go out there moonlit nights, try to shoot us some rabbits. Thing we could never figure out, how did they get there in the first place? It’s really deep water out there, maybe fifty, sixty feet — I took soundings once.”

“There any rabbits left?”

“Not many.” Benny tossed aside the net. “No foxes or nothing can get at them, but there’s not much vegetation for ’em to eat, and only rainwater or fog or dew on the rocks for ’em to drink. Only other wildlife is seabirds and bats that hang around those old manganese mining tunnels.”

“I need you to take me out there tomorrow night, late. Don’t let anybody know about it, Benny. Not anybody.”

“Anybody asks, I’m going out after a load of hootch.”

It was 1 a.m. Sam Spade was merely a bulky shape in Effie Perine’s chair. The flexible arm of her adjustable desk lamp was twisted so its circle of light in the otherwise dark office illuminated a smoldering cigarette, a butt-heaped ashtray, Treasure Island, its front endpaper skillfully and carefully laid open, and Spade’s big hands holding a folded, soiled, amateurishly drawn map.

The hands laid down the map and picked up the ornate Greek dagger Effie Perine used as a letter opener. The right hand began pressing the blunted bronze point against the left palm, idly at first, then hard. The point was so rounded it did not make the slightest indentation. The right thumb tested what should have been the cutting edge of the dagger’s thick six-inch tapered almost-oval blade. It drew no blood.

Spade dumped the ashtray, folded the map, and put it into his suit-coat pocket. He slid the dagger into its symbol-laden scabbard and thrust it into the pocket with the map. His movements brought his thoughtful face into the oval of light. He picked up Treasure Island, turned out the light, and left.

43 Red Rock Island

Effie Perine closed the door and said, “Miss Choi is here. She’s not alone. Henny Barber is with her.”

“That boy is plenty smitten. Sabbath Zhu?”

“No Sabbath Zhu.”

“Then by all means have them in, sweetheart. And sit in yourself. Don’t bother with your shorthand pad.”

“So that’s the way it is.”

“That’s the way it is.”

Henny Barber said almost aggressively, “That Fairfax policeman came around asking all sorts of impertinent questions about Charles Boothe’s death. He said nothing about a message. Why haven’t we heard anything about it until now? Mai-lin has the right to know everything.”

“Henny. Please.” Her tone was of fond exasperation. She leaned forward intently. “Mr. Spade, did our going there that day have anything to with... what happened to Mr. Boothe?”

“Hard to say one way or the other. Nobody followed us there, that’s for sure.” His voice became ironic. “So, no, I’d say you can’t take the blame for that one.”

“Thank God.” She leaned back, looking suddenly exhausted.

“He knew that I didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t know where Lea had hidden the money he pulled from the bank. So I thought the books pulled out of the bookcase and scattered around on the floor were some sort of message. They weren’t. But one of them was under his body, clutched in his hand.”

“That was the message?”

“Not quite.” He looked at each of them in turn. “You know anything about Red Rock Island?”

“No,” said Mai-lin in a puzzled voice.

“Yes,” said Effie Perine. “It’s a six-acre knob of dirt and rock in the bay off the Richmond shoreline, eight miles from Fisherman’s Wharf. We had a picnic there once. My father said Russian and Aleut fur hunters after sea otter used to camp there in the early eighteen hundreds.”

“Manganese,” said Henny suddenly. “Wasn’t it found to be rich in manganese? That’s why it’s called Red Rock. And didn’t speculators dig all sorts of tunnels and mine a lot of ore?”

“Two hundred tons,” said Spade. “And Norwegian and Swedish sailors loaded their ships with it, calling it ballast. Only when they got back to Europe they sold it to paint manufacturers. Our government owned Red Rock then and put a stop to it.”

“What does this have to do with Charles Boothe?”

“Everything, Henny. The early Spanish explorers called it Moleta Island after the pigment in the rock. In eighteen twenty-seven Captain Frederick Beechey of the Royal Navy charted it as Molate Island — he got the Spaniards’ name for it wrong. Then it was called Golden Rock because of legends that pirates had buried their treasure there. Then—”

“And then later it was called Treasure Island because of those same legends!” exclaimed Effie Perine.

Spade had gotten elaborately busy constructing a cigarette.

“The book Boothe was holding on to was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. That’s the clue Boothe managed to leave for me.”

“So the money is buried on Red Rock,” said Mai-lin.

“Don’t get your hopes up. It’s a long shot at best.”

“And there have to be dozens of tunnels on that island,” said Henny in a dispirited voice.

“Except that Dundy did his usual slipshod investigation of the murder,” said Spade. “He saw it was a kid’s adventure book and dismissed it. But Boothe had hidden a map of Red Rock between the front cover and the endpaper. With a tunnel marked.”

Henny was on his feet. “Where’s the map?”

“In my safe,” said Spade. “And there it stays until tomorrow night. And then it’ll be just Mai-lin and me.” He studied the girl’s face intently. “Just us, Mai-lin. You don’t tell anyone else. Not anyone. You got that?”

After a long pause she said, “I’ve got it, Mr. Spade.”

Effie Perine returned to Spade’s office after seeing the couple out. “What do you really think of it all, Sam?”

“I think there’s nothing there to find. Boothe probably made the fake map to sell but never got any takers. Or maybe Fritz Lea lied to Boothe. Or maybe dug it up himself. Or maybe a weekend treasure hunter found it. Anyway, I don’t believe there’s any pot of gold at the end of this particular rainbow.”

She stuck a cigarette between his lips, lit it with the desk lighter. “Then why did you say you’d take her out there?”

“She’s my client. This is what she wants.”

“Do you think she’ll tell Sabbath Zhu about it?”

“I hope not. Zhu came up clean in Miles’s investigation, but I still don’t trust that bird.”

“Miles or Zhu?”

“Miles I trust as an op. Zhu I don’t trust at all.”

“Be careful, Sam. I–I have a bad feeling about this, like I did when Penny...” A shiver ran through her slim body. “You aren’t planning something tricky and... dangerous, are you?”

“I’m a big boy now,” said Spade. “I know what I’m doing.”

Thick ropes of white and silent fog were rolling in from the Pacific through the Golden Gate. Alcatraz was gone, as were Sausalito and the lights marking the East Bay towns of Berkeley, Emeryville, and Oakland. The air was wet, heavy, cold.

Spade stood wide legged on a slatted wooden dock at the end of Gas House Cove in the Marina Yacht Harbor. He wore a woolen cap, a waterproof coat, waterproof pants tucked into vulcanized boots. Water slopped up between the slats and over his boots.

The headlights of the few passing cars on Marina Boulevard were haloed in mist, their sounds muted. Henny Barber’s Austin turned off Laguna Street and stopped above the pier. The windshield was closed; Spade could just make out the two dark shapes close together on the front seat. At the same moment came the slow chug-chug-chug of Benny Ruiz’s fishing boat. Spade caught the line Benny tossed and tied it around the hand railing with a slipknot that could be undone with a sharp jerk.

“Good timing,” he called and jumped down into the boat.

By the light of the metal-caged bulb at the head of the ramp, Henny and Mai-lin edged cautiously down toward the Portagee, Henny with an arm hooked through hers as if he had already found his precious treasure. They were bundled up in heavy slickers, Mai-lin’s with an attached hood.

Spade held out a hand to help her down off the dock. He said to Henny, “See you back here in two or three hours,” but Henny was already crowding on behind Mai-lin.

“Not on your life. I’m coming with.” Mai-lin had moved off a few feet, staring out into the fog, subdued, only her small face visible within the encircling rain hood. Henny lowered his voice. “I don’t care about the treasure, only about Mai-lin.”

“What about your folks?”

“What about them? They’ll accept her, or I’ll talk Aunt Ev into opening a branch bank in Hong Kong.”

Spade raised his voice. “Mai-lin.” As she came back toward them he jerked the mooring line to undo the knot. Benny backed the boat off. “Did you tell Sabbath Zhu about tonight?”

“You don’t have the right to ask her that,” said Henny.

Ruiz swung the Portageés prow toward the narrow yacht harbor entrance. The dock disappeared into the mist behind them, leaving only the telltale glow of the caged bulb above the ramp.

Mai-lin raised her head. The imperious daughter of Sun Yat-sen was staring at Spade through dark slanted eyes.

“Sabbath Zhu was a great help to me. I had to tell him. What harm is done? I know you do not trust him, but he did not even want to come. He does not approve of what we are doing.”

“A fool for a client,” said Spade in apparent bitterness.

44 Chapter and Verse

Benny was in the wheelhouse flanked by Mai-lin and Henny, his broad, coarse face underlit by the binnacle light, his eyes probing the opaque gray blanket of fog. Spade was forward, checking the gear he’d be taking ashore.

From every direction came the warning cries of the ferries and tugs braving the fog. Underlying all of them was the periodic baying of the Alcatraz foghorn.

“The hound of the Baskervilles,” said Henny.

Mai-lin shivered, asked Benny, “How are you able to tell where you’re going when you can’t see?”

“The bells,” said Benny. “The whistles. The horns. I can tell them apart the same way that Henny can tell a ten-buck bill from a fifty. I started in on my old man’s fishing boat when I was twelve. I know this bay.” Off to their right a foghorn bellowed mournfully. “You can’t see it, but that’s Alcatraz.”

Spade looked in at them, his big hands gripped the frame on either side of the doorway. His face was beaded with moisture.

“All set,” he told them.

“Red Rock,” said Benny.

They could hear waves breaking almost gently against an invisible foreshore. The engine was already in neutral: they were drifting with the tide. Henny, holding Mai-lin’s arm again, said in a low voice, “I think I can see the shape of the island.”

“You’d make a good bootlegger,” said Ruiz.

Spade’s muffled voice came from the prow. “Your romantic adventure. Next best thing to stowing away to the South Seas.”

“Better,” said Henny, pulling Mai-lin closer to him.

“Now that we’re here,” she said in a subdued voice, “I almost wish we weren’t.”

The craft turned toward the darker shadow of Red Rock, now visible through the fog. Spade lit the carbide lamp Benny had supplied. It was a compact model with folding handles and a seven-inch highly polished nickel-plated reflector, better out here in the fog than any flashlight or hand torch.

The prow grated gently on gravel. Spade swung his legs over the gunwale, dropped down onto sand hard packed by the waves. He reached back in for shovel and lamp, stepped free of the boat.

Then he put a boot against the prow and shoved, hard, swinging the boat at an angle to the shore. At the same time Benny put the engine in gear to an outraged shout from

Henny Barber. Spade turned the carbide lamp their way. Henny was dragging a bewildered Mai-lin forward, but it was too late. The fog closed in around their shadowy figures, and they were gone.

A half an hour later Spade was shining his light into a tunnel mouth when a sardonic voice spoke from behind him.

“We meet again, Spade.” He started to spin toward the voice. It warned, “Slowly. Very slowly.”

Spade obeyed, turning slowly, hands out well from his sides. His lamp showed him Sabbath Zhu. In Zhu’s hand was a Colt 1911 automatic, most of its bluing worn off by the years.

“I can’t believe she told you we were coming out here,” Spade said in a disgusted voice.

“She trusts me. I thought she would be with you; I could square accounts with everyone at once.” Already his slightly singsong Chinese accent was slipping, as if he knew it no longer mattered. His thick glasses glinted with his head jerk. “Put the shovel down. Carefully. Slowly.” Spade did. “Good. Now set the lamp on that rock... Good.”

He continued his instructions. “Lay the map on the ground with a small rock on it to hold it down... Move back ten feet... Shed the heavy coat, roll up the sleeves of your shirt, empty your pockets on top of the discarded coat...”

“No weapons of any sort, not even a pocketknife,” Sabbath Zhu marveled. “A sad mistake on your part.”

“I don’t like guns. They go off at the wrong time or not at all. All I thought I’d need was a shovel and the map.”

Zhu was studying the map while keeping an eye on Spade. He crinkled the paper, said almost abstractedly, “Boothe’s?”

“He’d hidden it between the front cover and the endpaper of Stevenson’s Treasure Island. It was found under his body.”

“And the police missed it?”

“Dundy, what d’ya expect? Why don’t you take off those specs? They’re just clear glass anyway.”

“You’re right.” Zhu tossed aside the eyeglasses, rubbed his delicately slanted eyes. “I won’t be needing them anymore after tonight. When did you first become suspicious of me?”

“The first time Mai-lin mentioned Sabbath Zhu, spiritual adviser. I wondered why you’d recommended me to her even though you thought I was of questionable honesty.”

“I knew too much about you for a man who’d never met you?”

“Or too little. At the Chinatown Methodist church you said you were assistant pastor but you didn’t take us into a meeting room. With Moon-fong Li and Yee-chum it became obvious you didn’t know more than a few words of Cantonese. They were members of your supposed church, yet they didn’t know you but were too polite to say so. I checked with the pastor of St. John’s. He’d never heard of you. You never came through the Angel Island Immigration Station, so you were American born.”

Zhu gave an airy shrug. “None of it matters anymore now. Reverend Pastor Sabbath Zhu will mysteriously disappear. Along with Sam Spade, of course. I’ll find a doctor to reverse the blepharoplasty and then—”

“Then kill him, like you did the doctor in Sacramento.”

That seemed to shake him slightly. “You’ve been busy.”

“Yeah. Chapter and verse.” Spade added without apparent emotion, “Back in nineteen twenty-one St. Clair McPhee masterminded the San Anselmo gold-bullion robbery and disappeared with seventy-five thousand dollars in British pounds after murdering four men in Sausalito. In nineteen twenty-five Devlin St. James murdered Collin Eberhard and Penny Chiotras and went on the run. He disappeared from an eastbound train from Oakland. One of the stops was Sacramento, and St. James had run his scam on Cal-Cit Bank from Sacramento. When I started to suspect that Sabbath Zhu was also St. Clair McPhee and Devlin St. James I sent my partner to Sacramento to snoop around.”

“You are quick, aren’t you?” Zhu said with admiration.

“Not quick enough.” Spade’s voice was rueful. “Always some religious connection. St. Clair. St. James. Sabbath Zhu.”

“My old man was a tent-show minister in the Midwest. Guy C. Menafee, rector, director, and protector.” Sudden hatred flooded his voice. “The sanctimonious bastard.”

Spade ignored this. “When I found the map in Treasure Island, I knew the reporter who interviewed Boothe after Sun’s death in nineteen twenty-five had to be you. I figure that’s where you first sniffed out that quarter million. When I found out about the dead doctor in Sacramento, I wanted to take you apart, see what made you tick.” Bitterness entered his voice. “I didn’t know Mai-lin was going to spill her guts to you.”

“You should have.” He gave a short laugh. “Her spiritual adviser, remember? Why do you think I recommended you to Mai-lin in the first place? Because I knew if any man could find out where Lea and Boothe had hidden Sun Yat-sen’s money, it would be you. Now, at long last, I get to take you apart and see what makes you tick.” He made an abrupt gesture with the pistol. “Pick up your shovel. I’ll follow with the lantern.”

The tunnel was hewn through the rock, twisting and turning, going up and then down, following the vein of manganese deep into Red Rock’s belly. It was wide enough and deep enough so they could move through it upright. The walls dripped with moisture. The light drove black clouds of chittering bats out of the tunnel past them.

Beyond an abrupt right-angle turn, the lamp showed a very slight dip in the tunnel floor, as if someone had dug there not too many years before.

Zhu exclaimed from behind Spade, “Stop here!”

Spade stuck his shovel upright in the depression. Zhu placed the lamp on a convenient knob of rock, staying far enough back so he could not be hit with the shovel, could not have a shovelful of earth thrown into his face.

“What are you waiting for?” he demanded hoarsely. “Dig!”

Spade was staring at him keenly. “You’ve got it,” he said. “Gold fever. Greed. And more. The killing lust. I saw a lot of it in the war. Men who like to kill. What if the map’s a phony, Zhu? What if there is no treasure?”

“Then you’ll just be digging your own grave.”

“Won’t I be doing that anyway?”

His thin lips curled. “Of course. To repay me for seven long years of frustration caused by your meddling.”

“Dig your own hole,” Spade said.

Zhu brought up his .45. “Don’t they say that where there’s life, there’s hope?”

Spade dug. The dirt was moist, loose, easily shoveled. What rocks there were came free easily, to be tossed on the growing pile to one side of the hole.

Once Zhu said, “Be sure to dig it wide enough and long enough for a grave.”

“Go to hell,” said Spade.

But he dug on, chest deep in the hole. Even in shirtsleeves, he was caked with dirt, and sweat ran down his face in rivulets, gleaming in the light of the lantern that would stay alive on one charge of carbide for four hours. They had been on the island for less than three.

Spade drove his shovel down again — to the clank of metal on metal. With a surprised exclamation, he dug feverishly, throwing dirt in every direction. Then he dropped to his knees, almost out of Zhu’s sight, digging like a dog with his hands.

“Jesus!” he exclaimed. “It’s a chest! It’s got to be the quarter million dollars!” His arms were buried almost to the elbows in the dirt. He panted, “I... never actually thought...”

Zhu set the lamp on the pile of dirt, dropped to his knees to stare down at Spade.

“Let me see it. Let me see the money!”

Spade leaned back. The lamp threw his shadow huge and black and cruel against the side of the hole. The chest could be seen, half uncovered, but its tipped-back lid kept Zhu from seeing what was within. Spade’s hands reached down into it.

“Here’s your treasure,” said Spade.

He sprang erect, driving with both feet against the bottom of the hole, his right arm slamming hard against Zhu’s lower belly what he had buried in the chest two nights before. The arm ripped upward in a disemboweling thrust. Before any blood could get through Zhu’s thick clothing, Spade had stepped aside so the stricken man’s body could roll in on top of the chest.

Zhu ended up on his back, his terrified eyes staring up at Spade through the gloom of the grave.

“For Penny,” said Spade. “And for all the others.”

Zhu’s mouth worked as if he had something vital to say. But life left his body before he could speak.

Spade filled in the hole, tromped down the earth over it. Then he burned the map.

45 I Was Counting on It

“So you’re saying there was no treasure,” said Sid Wise.

Spade, Mai-lin, and Henny were grouped around the lawyer’s big desk. Crystal-clear winter sunlight through the windows laid a white-gold oblong across the stacked files on the blotter. Henny was sitting very close to Mai-lin, their hands touching. Spade, lounged back in his chair, was placidly smoking a cigarette. He shrugged, then jabbed the cigarette toward them.

“I don’t know. But I warned you. I told you I thought there was no buried money, that there never had been.”

Henny grunted. “Even so, that was a crummy trick you played on us, stranding us on the boat that way.”

“Benny said he entertained you with bootleg stories.” Spade reached inside his breast pocket, took out a folded sheet of old, crisp paper. He held it out. “Here’s Boothe’s map, Mai-lin. You can keep it as a souvenir.” To Henny he added, “Of your great adventure. Or you can go back to Red Rock with it.”

Mai-lin picked up the map, stared at it, then went to tear it in half. But Henny took it from her hands.

“If there is a treasure out there you should have it.”

Mai-lin shrugged, then said to Spade contritely, “I’m sorry I told Sabbath Zhu about Red Rock, even though I knew he had no intention of going there. I know it made you very angry.”

“I was counting on it,” said Spade obscurely.

“How do you really feel about there being no money, Miss Choi?”

She smiled at Sid Wise.

“When I realized it had all been a — a sort of dream, I felt only relief. My father repudiated me, never gave me anything. I thought finding the money would...” She shook her head. “But I’ve realized that I don’t need anything from him.”

“But if it’s there we’ll find it,” insisted Henny. “And if it isn’t” — he almost preened — “you’ll always have me.”

“Who supported you down through the years?” asked Wise.

“My father’s brother. Not through any affection — he hardly knew me. He financed most of my father’s ventures too, during the early years. Then my father’s son from his first marriage took over. Again, I was a family duty for a Chinese Christian.”

They all fell suddenly silent at the same time. Sid Wise patted his files with open palms.

“Then I think we’re through here. No legal entanglements and I’ve got a pile of work to do, so...”

They were all on their feet. Shook hands all around. As they started out, Wise said casually, “Oh, Sam, I need to talk to you for just a minute about the Creighton case.”

Spade came back in, shut the door, sat down again in his favorite chair. He started making another cigarette.

Wise said, “You can fob off a story about a map between the endpapers of a book to those children, but I know different.”

“How’s that?” asked Spade without much interest.

“I happened to run into Tom Polhaus in court yesterday,” said Wise in a careful voice. “He told me how Dundy tossed Treasure Island aside and how he himself went through the book page by page looking for marks or notations. He didn’t find anything.”

“That still doesn’t mean there wasn’t a map hidden in it.”

Wise stared at him keenly for a long moment.

“You’re a very different man from that twenty-seven-year-old kid who shoved a crumpled-up newspaper into my hand in our old office building over Remedial Loans. Harder. Colder.”

“A lot has happened to both of us, Sid. We grew up.”

“Sure, but.” Sid Wise paused. “I don’t know what happened out there on Red Rock the other night, but—”

“I didn’t find any treasure.”

“You found something.” Wise was silent while he trimmed and lit a cigar. “What do you think will happen with the girl?”

“She’ll be fine. She’s got Henny Barber.”

“What will his folks say about him and a Chinese girl?”

“They’ll come around. She’s beautiful and smart — smart as a Greek girl, and that’s plenty smart. She’s of good blood, even if from the wrong side of the bed. She’ll make Henny the kind of wife an important banker needs. Maybe they’ll go to Hong Kong and open a branch bank like he keeps talking about. Or they’ll take the map to Red Rock Island and maybe find a treasure.”

“I guess you’re right.” Studying his cigar, Wise added, “But what if they follow that map and find something buried besides Sun Yat-sen’s money?”

Spade chuckled. “Maybe there were two maps. Maybe there was one hidden in Treasure Island, the one they have now, and maybe there was another map, a fake one, somebody else made.”

Sid Wise’s sharp features became very tight. Then he nodded. He had to clear his throat before speaking.

“Then you don’t think Sabbath Zhu will make any trouble?”

“I think Sabbath Zhu has already moved on.”

When Spade came into the office the next morning, Effie Perine gave him a strange look. But all she said was, “How did the conference go at Sid’s office yesterday?”

“Everyone healthy, wealthy, and wise. Any messages?”

Instead of answering, she said, “And what did you do to my knife? I almost cut myself opening the mail yesterday.”

“Which knife?”

“You know very well which knife.” She ruefully displayed it. “The Greek knife that...” She fumbled her words for a moment, then rallied. “That Penny gave me all those years ago.”

Spade shrugged. “I just sharpened it up a bit. They always say a dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one.”

She thrust it under his nose.

“What’s this smear on the blade?”

“Rust.”

“It’s a bronze blade. Bronze doesn’t rust.”

“Then it’s paint.”

“You know very well it isn’t.”

He shrugged again, started toward his office, paused.

“What I do know, Effie, is that Penny, if she were still around, wouldn’t mind a little rust on the blade of that knife.”

He went into his office and shut the door.

A half hour later, Spade was smoking behind his desk when Effie Perine came in. He looked up at her.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

She finished shutting the door behind her, leaned against it, and said, “There’s a girl wants to see you. Her name’s Wonderly.”

“A customer?”

“I guess so. You’ll want to see her anyway: she’s a knockout.”

“Shoo her in, darling,” said Spade. “Shoo her in.”