Nightmare Town Read online

  “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 blond 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 softness 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 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, blond, 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 blond woman, stared through her tears at her for a moment, then said, “Oh, how do you do, Miss Barrow.”

  The blond 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.”

  He patted her shoulder and squeezed her to him. He was looking questioningly at Spade and Dundy.

  “Your brother died this afternoon,” Dundy said. “He was murdered.”

  Mrs. Bliss caught her breath. Bliss’s arm tightened around his niece with a little jerk, but there was not yet any change in his face. “Murdered?” he repeated uncomprehendingly.

  “Yes.” Dundy put his hands in his coat pockets. “You were here this afternoon.”

  Theodore Bliss paled a little under his sunburn, but said, “I was,” steadily enough.

  “How long?”

  “About an hour. I got here about half-past two and—” He turned to his wife. “It was almost half-past three when I phoned you, wasn’t it?”

  She said, “Yes.”

  “Well, I left him right after that.”

  “Did you have a date with him?” Dundy asked.

  “No. I phoned his office”—he nodded at his wife—“and was told he’d left for home, so I came on up. I wanted to see him before Elise and I left, of course, and I wanted him to come to the wedding, but he couldn’t. He said he was expecting somebody. We sat here and talked longer than I had intended, so I had to phone Elise to meet me at the Municipal Building.”

  After a thoughtful pause, Dundy asked, “What time?”

  “That we met there?” Bliss looked inquiringly at his wife, who said
, “It was quarter to four.” She laughed a little. “I got there first and I kept looking at my watch.”

  Bliss said very deliberately, “It was a few minutes after four that we were married. We had to wait for Judge Whitefield—about ten minutes, and it was a few more before we got started—to get through with the case he was hearing. You can check it up—Superior Court, Part Two, I think.”

  Spade whirled around and pointed at Tom. “Maybe you’d better check it up.”

  Tom said, “Oke,” and went away from the door.

  “If that’s so, you’re all right, Mr. Bliss,” Dundy said, “but I have to ask you these things. Now, did your brother say who he was expecting?”

  “No.”

  “Did he say anything about having been threatened?”

  “No. He never talked much about his affairs to anybody, not even to me. Had he been threatened?”

  Dundy’s lips tightened a little. “Were you and he on intimate terms?”

  “Friendly, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Are you sure?” Dundy asked. “Are you sure neither of you held any grudge against the other?”

  Theodore Bliss took his arm free from around his niece. Increasing pallor made his sunburned face yellowish. He said, “Everybody here knows about my having been in San Quentin. You can speak out, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “It is,” Dundy said, and then, after a pause, “Well?”

  Bliss stood up, “Well, what?” he asked impatiently. “Did I hold a grudge against him for that? No. Why should I? We were both in it. He could get out; I couldn’t. I was sure of being convicted whether he was or not. Having him sent over with me wasn’t going to make it any better for me. We talked it over and decided I’d go it alone, leaving him outside to pull things together. And he did. If you look up his bank account you’ll see he gave me a check for twenty-five thousand dollars two days after I was discharged from San Quentin, and the registrar of the National Steel Corporation can tell you a thousand shares of stock have been transferred from his name to mine since then.”

  He smiled apologetically and sat down on the bed again. “I’m sorry. I know you have to ask things.”

  Dundy ignored the apology. “Do you know Daniel Talbot?” he asked.

  Bliss said, “No.”

  His wife said, “I do; that is, I’ve seen him. He was in the office yesterday.”

  Dundy looked her up and down carefully before asking, “What office?”

  “I am—I was Mr. Bliss’s secretary, and—”

  “Max Bliss’s?”

  “Yes, and a Daniel Talbot came in to see him yesterday afternoon, if it’s the same one.”

  “What happened?”

  She looked at her husband, who said, “If you know anything, for heaven’s sake tell them.”

  She said, “But nothing really happened. I thought they were angry with each other at first, but when they left together they were laughing and talking, and before they went Mr. Bliss rang for me and told me to have Trapper—he’s the bookkeeper—make out a check to Mr. Talbot’s order.”

  “Did he?”

  “Oh, yes. I took it in to him. It was for seventy-five hundred and some dollars.”

  “What was it for?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “If you were Bliss’s secretary,” Dundy insisted, “you must have some idea of what his business with Talbot was.”

  “But I haven’t,” she said. “I’d never even heard of him before.”

  Dundy looked at Spade. Spade’s face was wooden. Dundy glowered at him, then put a question to the man on the bed: “What kind of necktie was your brother wearing when you saw him last?”

  Bliss blinked, then stared distantly past Dundy, and finally shut his eyes. When he opened them he said, “It was green with—I’d know it if I saw it. Why?”

  Mrs. Bliss said, “Narrow diagonal stripes of different shades of green. That’s the one he had on at the office this morning.”

  “Where does he keep his neckties?” Dundy asked the housekeeper.

  She rose, saying, “In a closet in his bedroom. I’ll show you.”

  Dundy and the newly married Blisses followed her out.

  Spade put his hat on the dressing table and asked Miriam Bliss, “What time did you go out?” He sat on the foot of her bed.

  “To-day? About one o’clock. I had a luncheon engagement for one and I was a little late, and then I went shopping, and then—” She broke off with a shudder.

  “And then you came home at what time?” His voice was friendly, matter-of-fact.

  “Some time after four, I guess.”

  “And what happened?”

  “I f-found Father lying there and I phoned—I don’t know whether I phoned downstairs or the police, and then I don’t know what I did. I fainted or had hysterics or something, and the first thing I remember is coming to and finding those men here and Mrs. Hooper.” She looked him full in the face now.

  “You didn’t phone a doctor?”

  She lowered her eyes again. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t, if you knew he was dead,” he said casually.

  She was silent.

  “You knew he was dead?” he asked.

  She raised her eyes and looked blankly at him. “But he was dead,” she said.

  He smiled. “Of course; but what I’m getting at is, did you make sure before you phoned?”

  She put her hand to her throat. “I don’t remember what I did,” she said earnestly. “I think I just knew he was dead.”

  He nodded understandingly. “And if you phoned the police it was because you knew he had been murdered.”

  She worked her hands together and looked at them and said, “I suppose so. It was awful. I don’t know what I thought or did.”

  Spade leaned forward and made his voice low and persuasive. “I’m not a police detective, Miss Bliss. I was engaged by your father—a few minutes too late to save him. I am, in a way, working for you now, so if there is anything I can do—maybe something the police wouldn’t—” He broke off as Dundy, followed by the Blisses and the housekeeper, returned to the room. “What luck?”

  Dundy said, “The green tie’s not there.” His suspicious gaze darted from Spade to the girl. “Mrs. Hooper says the blue tie we found is one of half a dozen he just got from England.”

  Bliss asked, “What’s the importance of the tie?”

  Dundy scowled at him. “He was partly undressed when we found him. The tie with his clothes had never been worn.”

  “Couldn’t he have been changing clothes when whoever killed him came, and was killed before he had finished dressing?”

  Dundy’s scowl deepened. “Yes, but what did he do with the green tie? Eat it?”

  Spade said, “He wasn’t changing clothes. If you’ll look at the shirt collar you’ll see he must’ve had it on when he was choked.”

  Tom came to the door. “Checks all right,” he told Dundy. “The judge and a bailiff named Kittredge say they were there from about a quarter to four till five or ten minutes after. I told Kittredge to come over and take a look at them to make sure they’re the same ones.”

  Dundy said, “Right,” without turning his head and took the penciled threat signed with the T in a star from his pocket. He folded it so only the signature was visible. Then he asked, “Anybody know what this is?”

  Miriam Bliss left the bed to join the others in looking at it. From it they looked at one another blankly.

  “Anybody know anything about it?” Dundy asked.

  Mrs. Hooper said, “It’s like what was on poor Mr. Bliss’s chest, but—” The others said, “No.”

  “Anybody ever seen anything like it before?”

  They said they had not.

  Dundy said, “All right. Wait here. Maybe I’ll have something else to ask you after a while.”

  Spade said, “Just a minute. Mr. Bliss, how long have you known Mrs. Bliss?”


  Bliss looked curiously at Spade. “Since I got out of prison,” he replied somewhat cautiously. “Why?”

  “Just since last month,” Spade said as if to himself. “Meet her through your brother?”

  “Of course—in his office. Why?”

  “And at the Municipal Building this afternoon, were you together all the time?”

  “Yes, certainly.” Bliss spoke sharply. “What are you getting at?”

  Spade smiled at him, a friendly smile. “I have to ask things,” he said.

  Bliss smiled too. “It’s all right.” His smile broadened. “As a matter of fact, I’m a liar. We weren’t actually together all the time. I went out into the corridor to smoke a cigarette, but I assure you every time I looked through the glass of the door I could see her still sitting in the courtroom where I had left her.”

  Spade’s smile was as light as Bliss’s. Nevertheless, he asked, “And when you weren’t looking through the glass you were in sight of the door? She couldn’t’ve left the courtroom without your seeing her?”

  Bliss’s smile went away. “Of course she couldn’t,” he said, “and I wasn’t out there more than five minutes.”

  Spade said, “Thanks,” and followed Dundy into the living-room, shutting the door behind him.

  Dundy looked sidewise at Spade. “Anything to it?”

  Spade shrugged.

  Max Bliss’s body had been removed. Besides the man at the secrétaire and the gray-faced man, two Filipino boys in plum-colored uniforms were in the room. They sat close together on the sofa.

  Dundy said, “Mack, I want to find a green necktie. I want this house taken apart, this block taken apart, and the whole neighborhood taken apart till you find it. Get what men you need.”

  The man at the secrétaire rose, said, “Right,” pulled his hat down over his eyes, and went out.

  Dundy scowled at the Filipinos. “Which of you saw the man in brown?”

  The smaller stood up. “Me, sir.”

  Dundy opened the bedroom door and said, “Bliss.”

  Bliss came to the door.

  The Filipino’s face lighted up. “Yes, sir, him.”

  Dundy shut the door in Bliss’s face. “Sit down.”

  The boy sat down hastily.

  Dundy stared gloomily at the boys until they began to fidget. Then, “Who else did you bring up to this apartment this afternoon?”