The Dashiell Hammett Megapack: 20 Classic Stories Read online

  I didn’t argue, didn’t deny anything, but told the sergeant:

  “I’m working with Detective Sergeant O’Gar on a job. I want to talk to him over the phone and then I want you to take all three of us down to the detective bureau.”

  Tennant objected to that, of course; not because he expected to gain anything, but on the off-chance that he might. The white-haired sergeant looked from one of us to the other in puzzlement. Me, with my skinned face and split lip; Tennant, with a red lump under one eye where my first wallop had landed; and the girl, with most of the clothes above the waistline ripped off and a bruised cheek.

  “It has a queer look, this thing,” the sergeant decided aloud, “and I shouldn’t wonder but what the detective bureau was the place for the lot of you.”

  One of the policemen went into the hall with me, and I got O’Gar on the phone at his home. It was nearly ten o’clock by now, and he was preparing for bed.

  “Cleaning up the Gilmore murder,” I told him. “Meet me at the Hall. Will you get hold of Kelly, the patrolman who found Gilmore, and bring him down there? I want him to look at some people.”

  “I will that,” O’Gar promised, and I hung up.

  The “wagon” in which the three policemen had answered Cara Kenbrook’s call carried us down to the Hall of Justice, where we all went into the captain of detectives’ office. McTighe, a lieutenant, was on duty.

  I knew McTighe, and we were on pretty good terms, but I wasn’t an influence in local politics, and Tennant was. I don’t mean that McTighe would have knowingly helped Tennant frame me; but with me stacked up against the assistant city engineer, I knew who would get the benefit of any doubt there might be.

  My head was thumping and roaring just now, with knots all over it where the girl had beaned me. I sat down, kept quiet, and nursed my head while Tennant and Cara Kenbrook, with a lot of details that they had not wasted on the uniformed men, told their tale and showed their injuries.

  Tennant was talking—describing the terrible scene that had met his eyes when, drawn by the girl’s screams, he had rushed into her apartment—when O’Gar came into the office. He recognized Tennant with a lifted eyebrow, and came over to sit beside me.

  “What the hell is all this?” he muttered.

  “A lovely mess,” I whispered back. “Listen—in that nickel gun on the desk there’s an empty shell. Get it for me.”

  He scratched his head doubtfully, listened to the next few words of Tennant’s yarn, glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, and then went over to the desk and picked up the revolver.

  McTighe looked at him—a sharp, questioning look.

  “Something on the Gilmore killing,” the detective-sergeant said, breaking the gun.

  The lieutenant started to speak, changed his mind, and O’Gar brought the shell over and handed it to me.

  “Thanks,” I said, putting it in my pocket. “Now listen to my friend there. It’s a good act, if you like it.”

  Tennant was winding up his history.

  “…Naturally a man who tried a thing like that on an unprotected woman would be yellow, so it wasn’t very hard to handle him after I got his gun away from him. I hit him a couple of times, and he quit—begging me to stop, getting down on his knees. Then we called the police.”

  McTighe looked at me with eyes that were cold and hard. Tennant had made a believer of him, and not only of him—the police-sergeant and his two men were glowering at me. I suspected that even O’Gar—with whom I had been through a dozen storms—would have been half-convinced if the engineer hadn’t added the neat touches about my kneeling.

  “Well, what have you got to say?” McTighe challenged me in a tone which suggested that it didn’t make much difference what I said.

  “I’ve got nothing to say about this dream,” I said shortly. “I’m interested in the Gilmore murder—not in this stuff.” I turned to O’Gar. “Is the patrolman here?”

  The detective-sergeant went to the door, and called: “Oh, Kelly!”

  Kelly came in—a big, straight-standing man, with iron-gray hair and an intelligent fat face.

  “You found Gilmore’s body?” I asked.

  “I did.”

  I pointed at Cara Kenbrook.

  “Ever see her before?”

  His gray eyes studied her carefully.

  “Not that I remember,” he answered.

  “Did she come up the street while you were looking at Gilmore, and go into the house he was lying in front of?”

  “She did not.”

  I took out the empty shell O’Gar had got for me, and chucked it down on the desk in front of the patrolman.

  “Kelly,” I asked, “why did you kill Gilmore?”

  Kelly’s right hand went under his coat-tail at his hip.

  I jumped for him.

  Somebody grabbed me by the neck. Somebody else piled on my back. McTighe aimed a big fist at my face, but it missed. My legs had been suddenly kicked from under me, and I went down hard with men all over me.

  When I was yanked to my feet again, big Kelly stood straight up by the desk, weighing his service revolver in his hand. His clear eyes met mine, and he laid the weapon on the desk. Then he unfastened his shield and put it with the gun.

  “It was an accident,” he said simply.

  By this time the birds who had been manhandling me woke up to the fact that maybe they were missing part of the play—that maybe I wasn’t a maniac. Hands dropped off me, and presently everybody was listening to Kelly.

  He told his story with unhurried evenness, his eyes never wavering or clouding. A deliberate man, though unlucky.

  “I was walkin’ my beat that night, an’ as I turned the corner of Jones into Pine I saw a man jump back from the steps of a buildin’ into the vestibule. A burglar, I thought, an’ cat-footed it down there. It was a dark vestibule, an’ deep, an’ I saw somethin’ that looked like a man in it, but I wasn’t sure.

  “‘Come out o’ there!’ I called, but there was no answer. I took my gun in my hand an’ started up the steps. I saw him move just then, comin’ out. An’ then my foot slipped. It was worn smooth, the bottom step, an’ my foot slipped. I fell forward, the gun went off, an’ the bullet hit him. He had come out a ways by then, an’ when the bullet hit him he toppled over frontwise, tumblin’ clown the steps onto the sidewalk.

  “When I looked at him I saw it was Gilmore. I knew him to say ‘howdy’ to, an’ he knew me—which is why he must o’ ducked out of sight when he saw me comin’ around the corner. He didn’t want me to see him comin’ out of a buildin’ where I knew Mr. Tennant lived, I suppose, thinkin’ I’d put two an’ two together, an’ maybe talk.

  “I don’t say that I did the right thing by lyin’, but it didn’t hurt anybody. It was an accident, but he was a man with a lot of friends up in high places, an’—accident or no—I stood a good chance of bein’ broke, an’ maybe sent over for a while. So I told my story the way you people know it. I couldn’t say I’d seen anything suspicious without maybe puttin’ the blame on some innocent party, an’ I didn’t want that. I’d made up my mind that if anybody was arrested for the murder, an’ things looked bad for them, I’d come out an’ say I’d done it. Home, you’ll find a confession all written out—written out in case somethin’ happened to me—so nobody else’d ever be blamed. “That’s why I had to say I’d never seen the lady here. I did see her—saw her go into the buildin’ that night—the buildin’ Gilmore had come out of. But I couldn’t say so without makin’ it look bad for her; so I lied. I could have thought up a better story if I’d had more time, I don’t doubt, but I had to think quick. Anyways, I’m glad it’s all over.”

  * * * *

  Kelly and the other uniformed policeman had left the office, which now held McTighe, O’Gar, Cara Kenbrook, Ten
nant, and me. Tennant had crossed to my side, and was apologizing.

  “I hope you’ll let me square myself for this evening’s work. But you know how it is when somebody you care for is in a jam. I’d have killed you if I had thought it would help Cara—on the level. Why didn’t you tell us that you didn’t suspect her?”

  “But I did suspect the pair of you,” I said. “It looked as if Kelly had to be the guilty one; but you people carried on so much that I began to feel doubtful. For a while it was funny—you thinking she had done it, and she thinking you had, though I suppose each had sworn to his or her innocence. But after a time it stopped being funny. You carried it too far.”

  “How did you rap to Kelly?” O’Gar, at my shoulder, asked.

  “Miss Kenbrook was walking north on Leavenworth—and was halfway between Bush and Pine—when the shot was fired. She saw nobody, no cars, until she rounded the corner. Mrs. Gilmore, walking north on Jones, was about the same distance away when she heard the shot, and she saw nobody until she reached Pine Street. If Kelly had been telling the truth, she would have seen him on Jones Street. He said he didn’t turn the corner until after the shot was fired.

  “Either of the women could have killed Gilmore, but hardly both; and I doubted that either could have shot him and got away without running into Kelly or the other. Suppose both of them were telling the truth—what then? Kelly must have been lying! He was the logical suspect anyway—the nearest known person to the murdered man when the shot was fired.

  “To back all this up, he had let Miss Kenbrook go into the apartment building at three in the morning, in front of which a man had just been killed, without questioning her or mentioning her in his report. That looked as if he knew who had done the killing. So I took a chance with the empty-shell trick, it being a good bet that he would have thrown his away, and would think that—”

  McTighe’s heavy voice interrupted my explanation.

  “How about this assault charge?” he asked, and had the decency to avoid my eye when I turned toward him with the others.

  Tennant cleared his throat.

  “Er—ah—in view of the way things have turned out, and knowing that Miss Kenbrook doesn’t want the disagreeable publicity that would accompany an affair of this sort, why, I’d suggest that we drop the whole thing.” He smiled brightly from McTighe to me. “You know nothing has gone on the records yet.”

  “Make the big heap play his hand out,” O’Gar growled in my ear. “Don’t let him drop it.”

  “Of course if Miss Kenbrook doesn’t want to press the charge,” McTighe was saying, watching me out of the tail of his eye, “I suppose—”

  “If everybody understands that the whole thing was a plant,” I said, “and if the policemen who heard the story are brought in here now and told by Tennant and Miss Kenbrook that it was all a lie—then I’m willing to let it go at that. Otherwise, I won’t stand for a hush-up.”

  “You’re a damned fool!” O’Gar whispered. “Put the screws on them!”

  But I shook my head. I didn’t see any sense in making a lot of trouble for myself just to make some for somebody else—and suppose Tennant proved his story…

  So the policemen were found, and brought into the office again, and told the truth.

  And presently Tennant, the girl, and I were walking together like three old friends through the corridors toward the door, Tennant still asking me to let him make amends for the evening’s work.

  “You’ve got to let me do something!” he insisted. “It’s only right!”

  His hand dipped into his coat, and came out with a thick billfold.

  “Here,” he said, “let me—”

  We were going, at that happy moment, down the stone vestibule steps that lead to Kearny Street—six or seven steps there are.

  “No,” I said, “let me—”

  He was on the next to the top step, when I reached up and let go.

  He settled in a rather limp pile at the bottom.

  Leaving his empty-faced lady love to watch over him, I strolled up through Portsmouth Square toward a restaurant where the steaks come thick.

  THE MAN WHO KILLED DAN ODAMS

  When the light that came through the barred square foot of the cell’s one high window had dwindled until he could no longer clearly make out the symbols and initials his predecessors had scratched and penciled on the opposite wall, the man who had killed Dan Odams got up from the cot and went to the steel-slatted door.

  “Hey, chief!” he called, his voice rumbling within the narrow walls.

  A chair scraped across a floor in the front of the building, deliberate footsteps approached, and the marshal of Jingo came into the passage between his office and the cell.

  “I got something I want to tell you,” the man in the cell said.

  Then the marshal was near enough to see in the dim light the shiny muzzle of a short, heavy revolver threatening him from just in front of the prisoner’s right hip.

  Without waiting for the time-honored order the marshal raised his hands until their palms were level with his ears.

  The man behind the bars spoke in a curt whisper.

  “Turn around! Push your back against the door!”

  When the marshal’s back pressed against the bars a hand came up under his left armpit, pulled aside his unbuttoned vest, and plucked his revolver from its holster. “Now unlock this here door!”

  The prisoner’s own weapon had disappeared and the captured one had taken its place. The marshal turned around, lowered one hand, keys jingled in it, and the cell door swung open.

  The prisoner backed across the cell, inviting the other in with a beckoning flip of the gun in his hand. “Flop on the bunk, face-down.”

  In silence the marshal obeyed. The man who had killed Dan Odams bent over him. The long black revolver swept down in a swift arc that ended at the base of the prone official’s head.

  His legs jerked once, and he lay still.

  With unhurried deftness the prisoner’s fingers explored the other’s pockets, appropriating money, tobacco, and cigarette papers. He removed the holster from the marshal’s shoulder and adjusted it to his own. He locked the cell door behind him when he left.

  The marshal’s office was unoccupied. Its desk gave up two sacks of tobacco, matches, an automatic pistol, and a double handful of cartridges. The wall yielded a hat that sat far down on the prisoner’s ears, and a too-tight, too-long, black rubber slicker.

  Wearing them, he essayed the street.

  The rain, after three days of uninterrupted sovereignty, had stopped for the time. But Jingo’s principal thoroughfare was deserted—Jingo ate between five and six in the evening.

  His deep-set maroon eyes—their animality emphasized by the absence of lashes—scanned the four blocks of wooden-sidewalked street. A dozen automobiles were to be seen, but no horses.

  At the first corner he left the street and half a block below turned into a muddy alley that paralleled it. Under a shed in the rear of a poolroom he found four horses, their saddles and bridles hanging near by. He selected a chunky, well-muscled roan—the race is not to the swift through the mud of Montana—saddled it, and led it to the end of the alley.

  Then he climbed into the saddle and turned his back on the awakening lights of Jingo.

  Presently he fumbled beneath the slicker and took from his hip pocket the weapon with which he had held up the marshal: a dummy pistol of molded soap, covered with tinfoil from cigarette packages. He tore off the wrapping, squeezed the soap into a shapeless handful, and threw it away.

  The sky cleared after a while and the stars came out. He found that the road he was travelling led south. He rode all night, pushing the roan unrelentingly through the soft, viscid footing.

  At daylight the horse could go no farther without
rest. The man led it up a coulee—safely away from the road—and hobbled it beneath a clump of cottonwoods.

  Then he climbed a hill and sprawled on the soggy ground, his lashless red eyes on the country through which he had come: rolling hills of black and green and gray, where wet soil, young grass, and dirty snow divided dominion—the triple rule trespassed here and there by the sepia ribbon of county road winding into and out of sight.

  He saw no man while he lay there, but the landscape was too filled with the marks of man’s proximity to bring any feeling of security. Shoulder-high wire fencing edged the road, a footpath cut the side of a near-by hill, telephone poles held their short arms stiffly against the gray sky.

  At noon he saddled the roan again and rode on along the coulee. Several miles up he came to a row of small poles bearing a line of telephone wire. He left the coulee bottom, found the ranch house to which the wire ran, circled it, and went on.

  Late in the afternoon he was not so fortunate.

  With lessening caution—he had seen no wires for more than an hour—he rode across a hill to stumble almost into the center of a cluster of buildings. Into the group, from the other side, ran a line of wire.

  The man who had killed Dan Odams retreated, crossed to another hill, and as he dropped down, on the far side, a rifle snapped from the slope he had just quit.

  He bent forward until his nose was deep in the roan’s mane, and worked upon the horse with hand and foot. The rifle snapped again.

  He rolled clear of the horse as it fell, and continued to roll until bunch grass and sagebrush screened him from behind. Then he crawled straight away, rounded the flank of a hill, and went on.