The Maltese falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Spade. I am ready to pay five thousand dollars for the figure's return, but surely it is natural enough that I should try first to spare the owner that expense if possible."
    "Who is he?"
    Cairo shook his head and smiled. "You will have to forgive my not answering that question."
    "Will I?" Spade leaned forward smiling with tight lips. "I've got you by the neck, Cairo. You've walked in and tied yourself up, plenty strong enough to suit the police, with last night's killings. Well, now you'll have to play with me or else."
    Cairo's smile was demure and not in any way alarmed. "I made somewhat extensive inquiries about you before taking any action," he said, "and was assured that you were far too reasonable to allow other considerations to interfere with profitable business relations."
    Spade shrugged. "Where are they?" he asked.
    "I have offered you five thousand dollars for-"
    Spade thumped Cairo's wallet with the backs of his fingers and said: "There's nothing like five thousand dollars here. You're betting your eyes. You could come in and say you'd pay me a million for a purple elephant, but what in hell would that mean?"
    "I see, I see," Cairo said thoughtfully, screwing up his eyes. "You wish some assurance of my sincerity." He brushed his red lower lip with a fingertip. "A retainer, would that serve?"
    "It might."
    Cairo put his hand out towards his wallet, hesitated, withdrew the hand, and said: "You will take, say, a hundred dollars?"
    Spade picked up the wallet and took out a hundred dollars. Then he frowned, said, "Better make it two hundred," and did.
    Cairo said nothing.
    "Your first guess was that I had the bird," Spade said in a crisp voice when he had put the two hundred dollars into his pocket and had dropped the wallet on the desk again. "There's nothing in that. What's your second?"
    "That you know where it is, or, if not exactly that, that you know it is where you can get it."
    Spade neither denied nor affirmed that: he seenied hardly to have heard it. He asked: "What sort of proof can you give me that your man is the owner?"
    "Very little, unfortunately. There is this, though: nobody else can give you any authentic evidence of ownership at all. And if you know as much about the affair as I suppose-or I should not be here-you know that the means by which it was taken from him shows that his right to it was more valid than anyone else's-certainly more valid than Thursby's."
    "What about his daughter?" Spade asked.
    Excitement opened Cairo's eyes and mouth, turned his face red, made his voice shrill. "He is not the owner!"
    Spade said, "Oh," mildly and ambiguously.
    "Is he here, in San Francisco, now?" Cairo asked in a less shrill, but still excited, voice.
    Spade blinked his eyes sleepily and suggested: "It might be better all around if we put our cards on the table."
    Cairo recovered composure with a little jerk. "I do not think it would be better." His voice was suave now. "If you know more than I, I shall profit by your knowledge, and so will you to the extent of five thousand dollars. If you do not then I have made a mistake in coming to you, and to do as you suggest would be simply to make that mistake worse."
    Spade nodded indifferently and waved his hand at the articles on the desk, saying: "There's your stuff"; and then, when Cairo was returning them to his pockets: "It's understood that you're to pay my expenses while I'm getting this black bird for you, and five thousand dollars when it's done?"
    "Yes, Mr. Spade; that is, five thousand dollars less whatever moneys have been advanced to you-five thousand in all."
    "Right. And it's a legitimate proposition." Spade's face was solemn except for wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. "You're not hiring me to do any murders or burglaries for you, but simply to get it back if possible in an honest and lawful way."
    "If possible," Cairo agreed. His face also was solemn except for the eyes. "And in any event with discretion." He rose and picked up his hat. "I