Return of the Maltese Falcon by Max Allan Collins

Author:Max Allan Collins [Collins, Max Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781835414880
Publisher: Titan
Published: 2026-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Another Client

The next morning, coming in just after eight in a vested suit but no topcoat, Spade greeted Effie Perine with a weary smile. She met it with uplifted eyebrows and a modest grin.

“More Russian kick dancing today, Sam?”

The young tawny-haired girl was in a pink and white dress today and looked fresh and cheery.

Spade slung his hat on the coat tree. “It’s called a Prisyadka, my dotty darling. And, no—that line of inquiry is shut down.”

“How come?”

He sat on the edge of her desk and told her about his trip to the morgue the night before, and how the man on a cold slab had been a cold Kemidov.

“Oh dear,” Effie Perine said. “Are you going to tell the police?”

“I’d like to keep it to myself, but maybe. I’ll talk to Sid Wise about it.”

“Your attorney. Good idea.” Her boyish brow squinted in thought. “If the Russian neighborhoods are nix now, Sam, what next?”

He slipped off her desk. “Your boss is too much of an ignoramus himself to be sure.” He yawned, stretched. “Let me know if any paying customers drop by.”

“Will do,” she said, as Spade passed her on the way to his inner sanctum. Before he hit the light switch, he glanced at the Christmas tree, which now bore several strands of glowing flame-shaped electric lights, red and blue and green. Spade shook his head and smiled a little.

“The rattle-brained little angel,” he said to himself with a chuckle, then got behind the big scarred yellow desk and into the swivel-chair. A balmy breeze was plumping the buff drapes on the slightly open windows behind him.

He stared at nothing and without looking plucked a drawstring pouch of Bull Durham tobacco from one vest pocket and cigarette papers and lighter from the other. He selected a paper from its packet, which he returned to its nesting place before sifting tobacco into a curve of that paper, his thick fingers shaping the cigarette as if of their own deft volition. He licked the cigarette shut, twisted its ends, then placed it between his lips and fired it with the lighter. He drew deep on the roll-your-own.

“Merry Christmas, Miles,” Spade said softly to his absent and very dead partner through a wreath of expelled smoke. “I should have buried you under that goddamned tree.”

Effie Perine almost caught him talking to himself. Spade, not easily startled, was.

“Yes, sweetheart?” he said, and coughed cigarette smoke.

Her brown eyes were big, her vocal volume small. “You won’t believe this, Sam.”

“You might be surprised what I’d believe.”

The girl jerked a thumb over her shoulder as if she were hitchhiking. “You do have a walk-in customer,” she whispered. “And does he look like money.”

Spade sat up, his smile wolfish, the yellow-grey eyes alert. “Well, you know what to do, precious. Send him in. Send him in…”

The detective rested his cigarette in the brass ashtray and got to his feet. Effie Perine held open the connecting door and the prospective client entered, a well-made man whose

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