Spade nodded, said, “How are you, Phels?” and then nodded at the two men who stood talking by a window.
The dead man lay with his mouth open. Some of his clothes had been taken off. His throat was puffy and dark. The end of his tongue showing in a corner of his mouth was bluish, swollen. On his bare chest, over the heart, a five-pointed star had been outlined in black ink and in the center of it a T.
Spade looked down at the dead man and stood for a moment silently studying him. Then he asked, “He was found like that?”
“About,” Tom said. “We moved him around a little.” He jerked a thumb at the shirt, undershirt, vest, and coat lying on a table. “They were spread over the floor.”
Spade rubbed his chin. His yellow-gray eyes were dreamy. “When?”
Tom said, “We got it at four-twenty. His daughter gave it to us.” He moved his head to indicate a closed door. “You'll see her.”
“Know anything?”
“Heaven knows,” Tom said wearily. “She's been kind of hard to get along with so far.” He turned to Dundy. “Want to try her again now?”
Dundy nodded, then spoke to one of the men at the window. “Start sifting his papers, Mack. He's supposed to've been threatened.”
Mack said, “Right.” He pulled his hat down over his eyes and walked towards a green secretaire in the far end of the room.
A man came in from the corridor, a heavy man of fifty with a deeply lined, grayish face under a broad-brimmed black hat. He said, “Hello, Sam,” and then told Dundy, “He had company around half past two, stayed just about an hour. A big blond man in brown, maybe forty or forty-five. Didn't send his name up. I got it from the Filipino in the elevator that rode him both ways.”
“Sure it was only an hour?” Dundy asked.
The gray-faced man shook his head. “But he's sure it wasn't more than half past three when he left. He says the afternoon papers came in then, and this man had ridden down with him before they came.” He pushed his hat back to scratch his head, then pointed a thick finger at the design inked on the dead man's breast and asked somewhat plaintively, “What the deuce do you suppose that thing is?”
Nobody replied. Dundy asked, “Can the elevator boy identify him?”
“He says he could, but that ain't always the same thing. Says he never saw him before.” He stopped looking at the dead man. “The girl's getting me a list of his phone calls. How you been, Sam?”
Spade said he had been all right. Then he said slowly, “His brother's big and blond and maybe forty or forty-five.”
Dundy's blue eyes were hard and bright. “So what?” he asked.
“You remember the Graystone Loan swindle. They were both in it, but Max eased the load over on Theodore and it turned out to be one to fourteen years in San Quentin.”
Dundy was slowly wagging his head up and down. “I remember now. Where is he?”
Spade shrugged and began to make a cigarette.
Dundy nudged Tom with an elbow. “Find out.”
Tom said, “Sure, but if he was out of here at half past three and this fellow was still alive at five to four—”
“And he broke his leg so he couldn't duck back in,” the gray-faced man said jovially.
“Find out,” Dundy repeated.
Tom said, “Sure, sure,” and went to the telephone.
Dundy addressed the gray-faced man: “Check up on the newspapers; see what time they were actually delivered this afternoon.”
The gray-faced man nodded and left the room.
The man who had been searching the secretaire said, “Uh-huh,” and turned around holding an envelope in one hand, a sheet of paper in the other.
Dundy held out his hand. “Something?”
The man said, “Uh-huh,” again and gave Dundy the sheet of paper.
Spade was looking over Dundy's shoulder.
It was a small sheet of common white paper bearing a penciled message in neat, undistinguished handwriting:
When this reaches you I will be too close for you to escape —this time. We will balance our accounts—for good.
The signature was a five-pointed star enclosing a T, the design on the dead man's left breast.
Dundy held out his hand again and was given the envelope. Its stamp was French. The address was typewritten:
MAX BLISS, ESQ.
AMSTERDAM APARTMENTS, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. U. S. A.
“Postmarked Paris,” he said, “the second of the month.” He counted swiftly on his fingers. “That would get it here today, all right.” He folded the message slowly, put it in the envelope, put the envelope in his coat pocket. “Keep digging,” he told the man who had found the message.
The man nodded and returned to the secretaire.
Dundy looked at Spade. “What do you think of it?”
Spade's brown cigarette wagged up and down with the words. “I don't like it. I don't like any of it.”
Tom put down the telephone. “He got out the fifteenth of last month,” he said. “I got them trying to locate him.”
Spade went to the telephone, called a number, and asked for Mr. Darrell. Then: “Hello, Harry, this is Sam Spade. . . . Fine. How's Lil? . .. Yes. … Listen, Harry, what does a five-pointed star with a capital T in the middle mean? . . . What? How do you spell it? … Yes, I see. . . . And if you found it on a body? . . . Neither do I. … Yes, and thanks. I'll tell you about it when I see you. . . .Yes, give me a ring. . . . Thanks. . . . 'By.”
Dundy and Tom were watching him closely when he turned from the telephone. He said, “That's a fellow who knows things sometimes. He says it's a pentagram with a Greek tau—t-a-u—in the middle; a sign magicians used to use. Maybe Rosicrucians still do.”
“What's a Rosicrucian?” Tom asked.
“It could be Theodore's first initial, too,” Dundy said.
Spade moved his shoulders, said carelessly, “Yes, but if he wanted to autograph the job it'd been just as easy for him to sign his name.”
He then went on more thoughtfully, “There are Rosicrucians at both San Jose and Point Loma. I don't go much for this, but maybe we ought to look them up.”
Dundy nodded.
Spade looked at the dead man's clothes o'n the table. “Anything in his pockets?”
“Only what you'd expect to find,” Dundy replied. “It's on the table there.”
Spade went to the table and looked down at the little pile of watch and chain, keys, wallet, address book, money, gold pencil, handkerchief, and spectacle case beside the clothing. He did not touch them, but slowly picked up, one at a time, the dead man's shirt, undershirt, vest, and coat. A blue necktie lay on the table beneath them. He scowled irritably at it. “It hasn't been worn,” he complained.
Dundy, Tom, and the coroner's deputy, who had stood silent all this while by the window—he was a small man with a slim, dark, intelligent face—came together to stare down at the unwrinkled blue silk.
Tom groaned miserably. Dundy cursed under his breath. Spade lifted the necktie to look at its back. The label was a London haberdasher's.
Spade said cheerfully, “Swell. San Francisco, Point Loma, San Jose, Paris, London.”
Dundy glowered at him.
The gray-faced man came in. “The papers got here at three-thirty, all right,” he said. His eyes widened a little. “What's up?” As he crossed the room towards them he said, “I can't find anybody that saw Blondy sneak back in here again.” He looked uncomprehendingly at the necktie until Tom growled, “It's brand-new”; then he whistled softly.
Dundy turned to Spade. “The deuce with all this,” he said bitterly. “He's got a brother with reasons for not liking him. The brother just got out of stir. Somebody who looks like his brother left here at half past three. Twenty-five minutes later he phoned you he'd been threatened. Less than half an hour after that his daughter came in and found him dead—strangled.” He poked a finger at the small, dark-faced man's chest. “Right?”
“Strangled,” the dark-faced man said precisely, “by a man. The hands were large.”
“O. K.” Dundy turned to Spade again. “We find a threatening letter. Maybe that's what he was telling you about, maybe it was something his brother said to him. Don't let's guess. Let's stick to what we know. We know he—”
The man at the secretaire turned around and said, “Got another one.” His mien was somewhat smug.
The eyes with which the five men at the table looked at him were identically cold, unsympathetic.
He, nowise disturbed by their hostility, read aloud:
Spade shook his head. “Point Loma's down that way,” he said.
He went over with Dundy to look at the letter. It was written in blue ink on white stationery of good quality, as was the address on the envelope, in a cramped, angular handwriting that seemed to have nothing in common with that of the penciled letter.
Spade said ironically, “Now we're getting somewhere.”
Dundy made an impatient gesture. “Let's stick to what we know,” he growled.
“Sure,” Spade agreed. “What is it?”
There was no reply.
Spade took tobacco and cigarette papers from his pocket. “Didn't somebody say something about talking to a daughter?” he asked.
“We'll talk to her.” Dundy turned on his heel, then suddenly frowned at the dead man on the floor. He jerked a thumb at the small, dark-faced man. “Through with it?”
“I'm through.”
Dundy addressed Tom curtly: “Get rid of it.” He addressed the gray-faced man: “I want to see both elevator boys when I'm finished with the girl.”
He went to the closed door Tom had pointed out to Spade and knocked on it.
A slightly harsh female voice within asked, “What is it?”
“Lieutenant Dundy. I want to talk to Miss Bliss.”
There was a pause; then the voice said, “Come in.”
Dundy opened the door and Spade followed him into a black, gray, and silver room, where a big-boned and ugly middle-aged woman in black dress and white apron sat beside a bed on which a girl lay.
The girl lay, elbow on pillow, cheek on hand, facing the big-boned, ugly woman. She was apparently about eighteen years old. She wore a gray suit. Her hair was blonde and short, her face firm-featured and remarkably symmetrical. She did not look at the two men coming into the room.
Dundy spoke to the big-boned woman, while Spade was lighting his cigarette: “We want to ask you a couple of questions, too, Mrs. Hooper. You're Bliss's housekeeper, aren't you?”
The woman said, “I am.” Her slightly harsh voice, the level gaze of her deep-set gray eyes, the stillness and size of her hands lying in her lap, all contributed to the impression she gave of resting strength.
“What do you know about this?”
“I don't know anything about it. I was let off this morning to go over to Oakland to my nephew's funeral, and when I got back you and the other gentlemen were here and—and this had happened.”
Dundy nodded, asked, “What do you think about it?”
“I don't know what to think,” she replied simply.
“Didn't you know he expected it to happen?”
Now the girl suddenly stopped watching Mrs. Hooper. She sat up in bed, turning wide, excited eyes on Dundy, and asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean what I said. He'd been threatened. He called up Mr. Spade”—he indicated Spade with a nod—“and told him so just a few minutes before he was killed.”
“But who—?” she began.
“That's what we're asking you,” Dundy said. “Who had that much against him?”
She stared at him in astonishment. “Nobody would—“
This time Spade interrupted her, speaking with a soft ness that made his words seem less brutal than they were.
“Somebody did.” When she turned her stare on him he asked, “You don't know of any threats?”
She shook her head from side to side with emphasis.
He looked at Mrs. Hooper. “You?”
“No, sir,” she said.
He returned his attention to the girl. “Do you know Daniel Talbot?”
“Why, yes,” she said. “He was here for dinner last night.”
“Who is he?” '
“I don't know, except that he lives in San Diego, and he and Father had some sort of business together. I'd never met him before.”
“What sort of terms were they on?” She frowned a little, said slowly, “Friendly.” Dundy spoke: “What business was your father in?”
“He was a financier.”
“You mean a promoter?”
“Yes, I suppose you could call it that.”
“Where is Talbot staying, or has he gone back to San Diego?”
“I don't know.”
“What does he look like?”
She frowned again, thoughtfully. “He's kind of large, with a red face and white hair and a white mustache.”
“Old?”
“I guess he must be sixty; fifty-five at least.”
Dundy looked at Spade, who put the stub of his cigarette in a tray on the dressing table and took up the questioning. “How long since you've seen your uncle?”
Her face flushed. “You mean Uncle Ted?”
He nodded.
“Not since,” she began, and bit her lip. Then she said, “Of course, you know. Not since he first got out of prison.”
“He came here?”
“Yes.”
“To see your father?”
“Of course.”
“What sort of terms were they on?”
She opened her eyes wide. “Neither of them is very demonstrative,” she said, “but they are brothers, and Father was giving him money to set him up in business again.”
“Then they were on good terms?”
“Yes,” she replied in the tone of one answering an unnecessary question.
“Where does he live?”
“On Post Street,” she said, and gave a number.
“And you haven't seen him since?”
“No. He was shy, you know, about having been in prison—” She finished the sentence with a gesture of one hand.
Spade addressed Mrs. Hooper: “You've seen him since?”
“No, sir.”
He pursed his lips, asked slowly, “Either of you know he was here this afternoon?”
They said, “No,” together.
“Where did-?”
Someone knocked on the door.
Dundy said, “Come in.”
Tom opened the door far enough to stick his head in. “His brother's here,” he said.
The girl leaning forward, called, “Oh, Uncle Ted!”
A big blond man in brown appeared behind Tom. He was sunburned to an extent that made his teeth seem whiter, his clear eyes bluer, than they were.
He asked, “What's the matter, Miriam?”
“Father's dead,” she said, and began to cry.
Dundy nodded at Tom, who stepped out of Theodore Bliss's way and let him come into the room.
A woman came in behind him, slowly, hesitantly. She was a tall woman in her late twenties, blonde, not quite plump. Her features were generous, her face pleasant and intelligent. She wore a 'small brown hat and a mink coat.
Bliss put an arm around his niece, kissed her forehead, sat on the bed beside her. “There, there,” he said awkwardly.
She saw the blonde woman, stared through her tears at her for a moment, then said, “Oh, how do you do, Miss
Barrow.”
The blonde woman said, “I'm awfully sorry to —” Bliss cleared his throat, and said, “She's Mrs. Bliss now.
We were married this afternoon.”
Dundy looked angrily at Spade. Spade, making a cigarette, seemed about to laugh.
Miriam Bliss, after a moment's surprised silence, said, “Oh, I do wish you all the happiness in the world.” She turned to her uncle while his wife was murmuring “Thank you” and said, “And you too, Uncle Ted.”