Nightmare Town Read online

  She put a hand out to detain him, but instead of speaking she stared thoughtfully at her dangling wrist-scarf and worked her lips together.

  Guild lit another cigarette and waited with no appearance of impatience.

  Presently she shrugged her bare shoulders and said: “It doesn’t make any difference.” She turned her head to look uneasily behind her. “But will you—will you do something for me before you go? Go through the house and see that everything is all right. I’m—I’m nervous, upset.”

  “Sure,” he said readily, and then, suggestively: “If you’ve got anything to tell me, the sooner the better for both of us.”

  “No, no, there’s nothing,” she said. “I’ve told you everything.”

  “All right. Have you got a flashlight?”

  She nodded and brought him one from the next room.

  —

  WHEN GUILD RETURNED to the living-room Elsa Fremont was standing where he had left her. She looked at his face and anxiety went out of her eyes. “It was silly of me,” she said, “but I do thank you.”

  He put the flashlight on the table and felt for his cigarettes. “Why’d you ask me to look?”

  She smiled in embarrassment and murmured: “It was a silly notion.”

  “Why’d you bring me home with you?” he asked.

  She stared at him with eyes in which fear was awakening. “Wh-what do you mean? Is there—?”

  He nodded.

  “What is it?” she cried. “What did you find?”

  He said: “I found something wrong down in the cellar.”

  Her hand went to her mouth.

  “Your brother,” he said.

  She screamed: “What?”

  “Dead.”

  The hand over her mouth muffled her voice: “K-killed?”

  He nodded. “Suicide, from the looks of it. The gun could be the one the girl was killed with. The—” He broke off and caught her arm as she tried to run past him toward the door. “Wait. There’s plenty of time for you to look at him. I want to talk to you.”

  She stood motionless, staring at him with open, blank eyes.

  He said: “And I want you to talk to me.”

  She did not show she had heard him.

  He said: “Your brother did kill Columbia Forrest, didn’t he?”

  Her eyes held their blank stare. Her lips barely moved. “You fool, you fool,” she muttered in a tired, flat voice.

  He was still holding her arm. He ran the tip of his tongue over his lips and asked in a low, persuasive tone: “How do you know he didn’t?”

  She began to tremble. “He couldn’t’ve,” she cried. Life had come back to her voice and face now. “He couldn’t’ve.”

  “Why?”

  She jerked her arm out of his hand and thrust her face up toward his. “He couldn’t’ve, you idiot. He wasn’t there. You can find out where he was easily enough. You’d’ve found out long before this if you’d had any brains. He was at a meeting of the Boxing Commission that afternoon, seeing about a permit or something for Sammy. They’ll tell you that. They’ll have a record of it.”

  The dark man did not seem surprised. His blue eyes were meditative under brows drawn a little together. “He didn’t kill her, but he committed suicide,” he said slowly and with an air of listening to himself say it. “That don’t make sense too.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The book has been a long time in making its way to publication, and much is owed to the kindness and encouragement of friends and colleagues: Glenn Lord, Walker Martin, Robert Weinberg, Gordon R. Dickson, David Drake, T. E. D. Klein, Judy Zelazny, Isidore Haiblum, Richard Layman, Otto Penzler, Larry Segriff, William F. Nolan, and Kay McCauley.

  We are also grateful to our good and patient agents, Kassandra Duane and Joy Harris; and to New York bookseller Jon White for his knowledgeable assistance in locating individual stories in rare old magazines and books.

  We are indebted as well to Martin Asher of Vintage Books and Sonny Mehta of Alfred A. Knopf for their continued support of this book over the rather lengthy period of time from agreement to publication. Edward Kastenmeier gave the best kind of editing one could ask for: exacting, insightful, and replete with good critiques and suggestions.

  Finally, a salute to Ellery Queen is very much in order. He was a great connoisseur of the art of the mystery and the detective short story, and his belief in and publishing of Dashiell Hammett’s short works for almost twenty years is a lasting achievement.

  THE EDITORS

  PUBLICATION HISTORY

  “House Dick,” “The Second-Story Angel,” “The Man Who Killed Dan Odams,” “Night Shots,” “Afraid of a Gun,” “Zigzags of Treachery,” “One Hour,” “Death on Pine Street,” “Tom, Dick, or Harry,” and “The Assistant Murderer”: copyright 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926 by Pro-Distributors Company, Inc.; copyrights renewed 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954 by Popular Publications, Inc., and assigned to Lillian Hellman as successor to Dashiell Hammett. Orginally appeared in Black Mask magazine.

  “Who Killed Bob Teal?”: copyright 1924 by New Metropolitan Fiction, Inc. Renewed 1952 by Dashiell Hammett. Originally appeared in True Detective Stories.

  “Nightmare Town”: copyright 1924 by Frank A. Munsey Publications; copyright renewed 1952 by Popular Publications, Inc., and assigned to Lillian Hellman as successor to Dashiell Hammett. Originally appeared in Argosy All-Story Weekly.

  “Ruffian’s Wife”: copyright 1925 by Dashiell Hammett; copyright renewed 1953 by Dashiell Hammett. Originally appeared in Sunset magazine.

  “A Man Called Spade,” “Too Many Have Lived,” and “They Can Only Hang You Once”: copyright 1932 by P. F. Collier; copyrights renewed 1960 by Dashiell Hammett. Originally appeared in The American Magazine.

  “Two Sharp Knives” and “His Brother’s Keeper”: copyright 1934 by P. F. Collier; copyrights renewed 1962 by Josephine Marshall and Mary Jane Miller. Originally appeared in Colliers magazine.

  “A Man Called Thin”: copyright © 1961 by Davis Publications, Inc.; copyright renewed 1989 by Davis Publications, Inc. Originally appeared in Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine.

  “The First Thin Man”: copyright © 1975 by City Publishing Company, Inc. Reprinted here by permission of Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents, Inc., and the Literary Property Trustees under the Will of Lillian Hellman. Originally appeared in City Magazine.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE EDITORS

  Kirby McCauley is a New York literary agent who has edited six anthologies, including the award-winning Dark Forces.

  Ed Gorman is a novelist and short story writer, and the editor or coeditor of many anthologies, including The Fine Art of Murder with Martin H. Greenberg. He is the recipient of the Shamus Award for best private detective short story.

  Martin H. Greenberg is coeditor of The Fine Art of Murder and of numerous other anthologies. He has won awards from both the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Mystery Writers of America, including the Edgar Award for Life Achievement.

  ____________

  William F. Nolan is a biographer and fiction writer. He is the author of Hammett: A Life at the Edge and is at work on a new biography of Dashiell Hammett.

  BOOKS BY DASHIELL HAMMETT

  “Dashiell Hammett…is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer.”—The Boston Globe

  THE BIG KNOCKOVER

  The Continental Op’s one joy is doing his job, and in The Big Knockover this entails taking on a gang of modern-day bootleggers, a vice-ridden hell’s acre in the Arizona desert, and the bank job to end all bank jobs, along with such assorted grifters as Babe McCloor, Bluepoint Vance, Alphabet Shorty McCoy, and the Dis-and-Dat Kid.

  Crime Fiction/0-679-72259-9

  THE CONTINENTAL OP

  Short, thick-bodied, mulishly stubborn, and indifferent to pain, Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op was the prototype for generations of tough-guy detectives. In these stories the Op unravels a murder with too many clues and tangles with a crooked
-eared gunman called the Whosis Kid.

  Crime Fiction/0-679-72258-0

  THE DAIN CURSE

  Miss Gabrielle Dain Leggett is young, wealthy, and addicted to morphine and religious cults. She has an unfortunate effect on the people around her: they have a habit of dying violently. Is Gabrielle the victim of a family curse? Or is the truth about her weirder and infinitely more dangerous? The Dain Curse is one of the Continental Op’s most bizarre cases and a tautly crafted masterpiece of suspense.

  Crime Fiction/0-679-72260-2

  THE GLASS KEY

  In this tour de force of detective fiction, Paul Madvig aspires to something better: the heiress to a dynasty of political purebreds. Did he want her badly enough to commit murder, or is one of his numerous enemies trying to frame him?

  Crime Fiction/0-679-72262-9

  THE MALTESE FALCON

  A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A grifter named Joel Cairo, a fat man named Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman. These are the ingredients of a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.

  Crime Fiction/0-679-72264-5

  RED HARVEST

  When the last honest citizen of Poisonville is murdered, the Continental Op stays on to punish the guilty—even if that means taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.

  Crime Fiction/0-679-72261-0

  THE THIN MAN

  Nick and Nora Charles are Dashiell Hammett’s most enchanting creations, a rich, glamorous couple who solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis.

  Crime Fiction/0-679-72263-7

  WOMAN IN THE DARK

  A young, frightened, foreign woman appears at the door of an isolated house. The man and woman inside take her in. Other strangers appear in pursuit of the girl. Menace is in the air. Originally published in 1933, Hammett’s Woman in the Dark shows the author at the peak of his narrative powers. With an introduction by Robert B. Parker, the author of the celebrated Spenser novels.

  Crime Fiction/0-679-72265-3

  VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD

  Available at your local bookstore or call toll-free to order:

  1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).

  An unprecedented publishing event

  The authorized prequel to The Maltese Falcon

  Spade & Archer

  by Joe Gores

  We know what P.I. Sam Spade is about from the first pages of The Maltese Falcon: straight talk, no favors, a protective shell he wears like a second skin. We know that his late partner, Miles Archer, was a son of a bitch; that Spade is sleeping with Archer’s wife, Iva; that his tomboyish secretary, Effie, is the only innocent in his life. What we don’t know is how Spade became who he is.

  Now, Spade & Archer completes the picture.

  Available in hardcover from Knopf

  $24.00 • 288 pages • 978-0-307-26464-0

  _______________________

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