2

 

DEATH IN THE FOG

 

A TELEPHONE-BELL rang in darkness. When it had rung three times bed-springs

creaked, fingers fumbled on wood, something small and hard thudded on a carpeted

floor, the springs creaked again, and a man’s voice said:

 

“Hello. . . . Yes, speaking. . . . Dead? . . . Yes. . . . Fifteen minutes.

Thanks.”

 

A switch clicked and a white bowl hung on three gilded chains from the ceiling’s

center filled the room with light. Spade, barefooted in green and white checked

pajamas, sat on the side of his bed. He scowled at the telephone on the table

while his hands took from beside it a packet of brown papers and a sack of Bull

Durham tobacco.

 

Cold steamy air blew in through two open windows, bringing with it half a dozen

times a minute the Alcatraz foghorn’s dull moaning. A tinny alarm-clock,

insecurely mounted on a corner of Duke’s _Celebrated Criminal Cases of

America_—face down on the table—held its hands at five minutes past two.

 

Spade’s thick fingers made a cigarette with deliberate care, sifting a measured

quantity of tan flakes down into curved paper, spreading the flakes so that they