The Hunter and Other Stories

by Dashiell Hammett

  Despite occasional misfires and notoriously erratic work habits, Hammett’s timely and unique talent was a magnet for Hollywood’s early filmmakers. In 1931 and 1932 Hammett reported potential writing assignments for George Bancroft for Paramount, Wallace Beery for MGM, Ronald Colman for United Artists, for Gloria Swanson, and for Universal. Among the extant works in Hammett’s archive are a handful of unfinished screen treatments that are likely products of those aborted negotiations.

  Hammett’s draft of “The Devil’s Playground” dates to those heady years—when he was a hot property and current and cultural events had aroused Hollywood’s interest in China. The Sino-Japanese War, Grace Zaring Stone’s popular novel The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1930), and Pearl Buck’s Pulitzer Prize–winning The Good Earth (1931) sent Hollywood’s filmmakers scrambling for high oriental drama. It’s easy to imagine Hammett’s sweeping romantic adventure playing opposite Shanghai Express, Red Dust, Roar of the Dragon, or War Correspondent—all set in China and released in 1932. The typescript that follows is an amalgam of two overlapping drafts. Repetitious passages have been omitted and names have been regularized.

  THE KISS-OFF

  I

  A high school is letting hundreds of youngsters out into a street. A girl of 16 waits for a boy of the same age. His clothes are old and neat; hers are newer and a bit gaudy. They are happy together in a quiet, casual way. They go to shooting gallery where boy works after school. Girl remains behind until the proprietor has left boy in charge, and then joins him. She shoots at targets with pistol; is a terrible shot. The boy shoots, seeming to pay little attention to what he is doing, but putting his bullets where he wants them. After a while she persuades him to show his skill again. Proprietor returns in middle of exhibition and gives boy hell for wasting cartridges. The girl runs away.

  II

  The girl goes home to a shabby furnished flat—not a tenement. Her mother—a frail woman with a weak once-pretty face—is in the kitchen cooking. The girl’s step-father—Tom Cooley—is sitting with white-stockinged feet on the dining-room table, reading a newspaper. He is a fleshy man of forty-something with a round, good-natured face and a jovial manner. He looks at the clock and asks the girl where she has been since school let out. She won’t tell him. He scowls, insists. The girl keeps quiet. Her manner isn’t defiant—just spiritlessly stubborn. He twists her arm, threatens her with a fist (but keeps his feet on the table); she won’t tell. He grins at her with paternal pride, pats her cheek, gives her a half-dollar, and praises her: “Good kid! Don’t never tell nobody nothing!”

  The girl helps her mother get the meal on the table. Cooley good-naturedly helps himself to the choicest and largest portion of each dish. After the meal he prepares to go out. The girl’s mother puts his shoes on and laces them for him; the girl brings him collar, tie, and coat.

  III

  Tom Cooley goes to the building where Blackie lives, a large middle-class apartment building with dim corridors. Turning a corner of the corridor toward Blackie’s apartment, Cooley stops, peeps. Agnes—Blackie’s woman—is letting Jack Willis out of Blackie’s apartment. Agnes is young, tall, hard, beautiful, reckless. Willis is a hard-faced, handsome, tall, debonair man in evening clothes. Cooley watches them. Willis draws Agnes through the door with him, pulling the door partly shut to screen them from inside, and puts his arm around her. The door is yanked open from the inside by Blackie. He is larger than Willis, tougher, and mad. His fist starts for Willis—and stops. Willis has stepped back, put a hand in an overcoat pocket, and is covering Blackie with the gun that is there. Willis says suavely: “You’re making too much dough out of my booze to pick a fight with me, Blackie.” Blackie says: “Yeah, but don’t make me forget it.” He puts out a big hand, takes Agnes by the neck, and pushes her indoors. Willis lifts the gun in his pocket again, hesitates, shrugs, and turns away. Blackie goes in and closes the door.

  Cooley runs down the corridor a little distance and then comes back, whistling as he walks, looking innocent. He meets Willis at the bend in the corridor and greets him cheerfully. Willis speaks to him, goes on, turns to look thoughtfully at him, and then calls him back. “Tom,” he says, “I’ve been thinking that if anything happened to Blackie, and you could hold his mob together, I’d be willing to do business with you. You could handle the customers better than he—your disposition’s better.” Cooley purses his lips, scratches his chin, and holds out a fat hand. “That’s eggs in the coffee with me, chief,” he says. They shake hands, and Cooley goes on to Blackie’s apartment. Blackie opens the door. Agnes is getting up from the floor, holding her jaw with one hand. She goes into the bedroom to sulk and rage on the bed. Blackie and Tom Cooley go into the living room where Slim—Blackie’s bodyguard—is sitting in front of a bottle. Both Blackie and Slim like Cooley—everybody does. Cooley encourages Blackie to drown his anger with the stuff in the bottle, and sees that Slim drinks with him. Slim doesn’t need much urging. Blackie has to go out, to collect payment for a shipment from a cabaret owner. He asks Cooley to wait till he gets back, and keep an eye on Agnes, telling of his suspicion that she and Willis are cheating on him. Cooley pretends surprise. Black and Slim go away afoot, Slim strolling a little behind Blackie. Neither of them are drunk, but they’ve got fair edges on.

  IV

  As soon as they are gone Agnes comes out of the bed-room, takes a shot or two from the bottle, and walks the floor, cursing Blackie. Cooley eggs her on, until she says she’s going to kill Blackie some day. “Suppose he don’t live that long?” he suggests. She looks sharply at him, sees he means something, and they go into conference; and then he phones the girl—his step-daughter. The girl takes an automatic from a bureau drawer, puts it in a handbag—almost too small to hold it—and goes to meet her step-father in alley behind Blackie’s apartment. Cooley takes the gun and tells her to wait. She waits submissively. He posts himself in court running from alley to street, beside apartment building.

  While Blackie was conducting his business with the cabaret proprietor, Slim had taken more drinks, and now he’s definitely tight. On the return trip he lags nearly a block behind Blackie. When Blackie passes the court where Cooley is hiding, Cooley shoots him down. A pedestrian on the other side of the street sees him, but it is too dark for the pedestrian to know anything except that a man did the shooting. Slim, staggering up, sees half a dozen men running down the court and shoots at and misses all of them—until a garbage-can trips him and he goes down.

  Cooley runs down the court to the alley—where he has left the girl—and gives her the gun, saying: “Chuck it in the river. If you get nabbed, dummy up and I’ll see you through.” Then he runs behind apartment building, scrambling up the rear fire-escape to Blackie’s apartment. The girl stuffs the gun into the too-small bag again, runs up to cross street, and then strolls down it. A policeman runs around the corner and asks her if she has seen a man. She says, “No.” The policeman—having been told by the pedestrian and Slim that the killer was a man—hurries away hunting for him.

  V

  Agnes helps Cooley through the window from the fire-escape, fans him cool, gives him a cigar she has kept burning—with a long ash, as if it had been smoked peacefully by a man sitting still—and they sit down to a half-played pinochle game—a picture of peace when the police arrive. The police don’t really suspect them, but they search them and the apartment, finding nothing. Outside, other police are searching alley and court with flashlight, hunting for clews, finding nothing except the empty shells Cooley’s gun had ejected. Agnes, Cooley, and Slim are taken to headquarters for questioning, but purely as a matter of routine.

  The girl with the gun has safely got through to the bridge over the river, but there she is picked up by two detectives returning from the scene of the shooting, who happen to spot the bulging outline of the gun in the too-small handbag when she passes under a street light. They take her to headquarters and give her everything they’ve got in the way of third-degrees; but she dummi
es up and stays dummied up, refusing to tell them who she is, refusing to open her mouth. The police bring Cooley, Agnes, and Slim into the room where the girl is, to see if any of them know her. Cooley cries: “My God, my little daughter!” and begs her to talk, to tell the police everything, not to break her dear mother’s heart, and so on. He even weeps real tears; but he keeps two fingers of his right hand crossed where she can see them. He is shown the gun and instantly identifies it as his—kept in his bureau drawer.

  They fail to get anything out of the girl. Cooley, talking the affair over with the police and an assistant district attorney, after they have left the girl, helps them arrive at a theory that some boy-friend of hers killed Blackie—they know it wasn’t a girl—and slipped her the gun to chuck in the river. Cooley admits sadly that he hadn’t been very strict with her—not as strict as if she’d been his daughter instead of his step-daughter—and she had probably got in with a bad crowd. “This younger generation,” he says, “ain’t got much respect for law and order.” He agrees that the best thing for her would be a reform school till she’s of age. He, Slim, and Agnes leave headquarters, Cooley jerking his head toward the building in which they have left the girl, and telling the others: “She’s a good kid. It’s all in knowing how to raise them.”

  VI

  Blackie’s mob meets—with Willis—in Blackie’s apartment, and agree to string along with Cooley. They don’t suspect him. They suspect Willis, but business is business and there’s no profit in taking a dead man’s part. Agnes packs her clothes and goes away with Willis.

  Cooley goes away with Slim—his bodyguard now—strolling a little behind him. They come to the shooting gallery where the boy is—in the proprietor’s absence—practicing. Cooley is impressed by the boy’s skill. So, in another way, is the proprietor, who has just come around the corner on the other side of the street. Cooley, beckoning to Slim, goes to the gallery and has Slim try his marksmanship. Slim is a fair shot, sometimes scoring, sometimes not. Cooley offers the boy a drink from his flask. The boy doesn’t drink. Cooley asks him: “Want a job?” The boy says: “Got one.” The proprietor, who has arrived now, says: “No, you ain’t. I’ve told you before, them cartridges cost money, and, besides, you showing off that-away makes people ashamed to shoot in front of you.” (The boy doesn’t look into anybody’s face. The closest he comes to it is to look at their chests. He moves very deliberately, holding himself rather rigid, and has a cool, unsmiling, poker face.) The boy comes through the gate in the counter. Cooley holds out a couple of bills to him. The boy pockets them. Cooley, under cover of the counter and his coat, gives the boy an automatic. The boy pockets it. Cooley says: “All you got to do is go along behind me and see that nothing happens.” Slim cuts in, protesting. Cooley tells him good-naturedly: “You drink too much and don’t shoot enough, Slim. Look what you let happen to poor Blackie.” Slim drops his hand to his pocket and glares at the boy. The boy looks at the handkerchief blossoming out of Slim’s breast pocket, on the left side, over his heart; stares coldly at it. Slim looks from the boy to the handkerchief, to the target he and Cooley had watched the boy shoot at, back at the boy again, fidgets; rubs his lips with his tongue, and goes away. The boy follows Cooley down the street.

  VII

  After nearly five years in reform school, the girl—now of age—is turned loose, and comes home to Cooley’s house. Cooley has prospered. His house is a large, ornate affair in a good neighborhood, expensively furnished, but never kept clean. Cooley still sits around collarless and shoeless; he scratches his matches on the wallpaper or the top of a mahogany table or whatever happens to be nearest; and he’s as cheerful as ever. The boy, now the Roscoe Kid (it’ll have to be explained to the customers, of course, that a “roscoe” is a gun), doesn’t look any older than he did before. His clothes are better, but still very quiet and neatly worn; and he keeps pretty much to himself, holding himself apart from his associates. (Out of his skill with a gun, and his pride in it, has grown a self-respect that the others haven’t.) The girl’s five years in school have hardened her: in place of her former lack of spirit is now something that the Kid doesn’t like. He looks into her eyes when she first comes in, sees the thing he doesn’t like, and thereafter looks at her as he looks at the rest of the world—no higher than the chest. A frowsy plump woman in a soiled dressing gown is lying on a chaise longue eating chocolates and reading a magazine when the girl comes in. The girl looks inquiringly at her. Cooley says: “That’s Pansy. Your Ma died on me.”

  The girl thinks the Kid is giving her the go-by because he considers her still a school-girl, and because of her clothes. She gets money from Cooley and goes shopping, returning to the house all gaudied up. Willis is there. He falls for her immediately and she cracks wise with him, trying to impress the Kid; but the wiser she acts, the more the Kid draws back into his shell. Willis suggests that Cooley ought to throw a party that night to celebrate the girl’s being sprung, and Cooley agrees. Willis, leaving, asks Cooley if it’s all right for him to make a play for the girl. Cooley says it’s all right with him.

  The girl goes upstairs, puzzled by her lack of success with the Kid. Passing his room, she hears him moving around, peeps in. He’s sweeping the floor. She sees that his room is clean, neat, and orderly—the only one in the house that is. She sees, then, where she has gone wrong with him. She goes to her room, leaving the door open, and, after changing to quieter clothes, begins cleaning up the room. When he passes her door she asks him to lend her the broom, to help her move the furniture so she can sweep out the couple of years’ accumulation of dirt that has been swept under bed, dressers, etc. She’s quiet and demure now, and by the time they’ve finished with the room she has got him looking into her face again—they are once more as they were before she was sent over. She asks him about his shooting—reminding him of when they used to go to the gallery after school. He takes her down to the cellar where he has a private gallery laid out. She shoots, and is as bad a shot as ever. He shoots, and is as good as ever, or better. She’s got him now: he puts down his gun as if he didn’t like it, and says to her: “You and I don’t belong here. This racket’s all right for the rest of them, but not for us. Let’s give it the kiss-off—get out of it—find something straight.” The girl kisses him as Pansy calls down the stairs that it’s time to dress for the party.

  At the party that night the girl—between having her liberty and having the Kid—is too happy to be quiet: she’s got to blow off. But the Kid is no good at celebrating: he doesn’t drink; he’s too quiet, reserved, especially among all these people he doesn’t like very much. Willis is good at celebrating, and he’s after the girl. Willis doesn’t mean anything to her except somebody to blow off steam with, until she sees that the Kid has become sullenly jealous. He’s stopped looking into her face when she talks to him. She begins to get angry with him; Willis leads her on; she starts drinking and playing up stronger to Willis to infuriate the Kid. The further she goes with Willis, the more the Kid draws back in his shell, and the angrier that makes her; until, finally, when she’s had a few more drinks, she tells, as a swell joke, about the Kid asking her to give the racket the kiss-off and go straight with him.

  Willis smiles, uneasily, when she tells it, but nobody else does. They know the Kid too well to laugh at him. Embarrassed and angered by the way her joke has flopped, the girl throws herself at Willis, putting her arms around his neck, putting her mouth up toward his. His mouth starts down toward hers, and stops. The Kid is standing close to them, staring at Willis’s chest—at the left side. Willis tries to make himself go through with it—kiss the girl—but can’t. He loosens her arms from his neck, smiling apologetically, and goes out of the room. The Kid, looking at nobody, goes upstairs.

  Cooley follows Willis to the front door. Willis says: “Make the Kid lay off. You said I could have her.” Cooley, smiling, tries to soothe Willis, but refuses to interfere. Willis says, as he had said to Blackie: “You’re making too much dough out of my
booze to pick a fight with me, Tom.” Cooley nods amiably, adding: “And with the Kid walking behind me—on good terms with me—I’ll live to spend it.” Willis leaves. The party breaks up. When the others have gone Cooley says to the girl: “What swell ideas you got—boobing the Roscoe Kid! Ever try patting an electric fan?” The girl, more sick than tight now, frightened at what she has done, goes up to the Kid’s room.

  He’s packing his bag. She tries to apologize, but he cuts her off and goes down with his bag, telling Cooley he’s through—leaving. Cooley tries to talk him out of it, fails, asks him to wait five minutes. Cooley goes up to the girl’s room and tells her she’ll have to square herself with the Kid. She says she tried, but it was no good. He insists that she can if she tries hard enough, but she sticks to it that it’s hopeless.

  Downstairs, the Kid waits till the five minutes are up, then starts for the street door. The noise of Cooley beating the girl stops him. He goes upstairs and tells Cooley he’ll stay. Cooley goes out of the girl’s room leaving them there together.

  At his own apartment, Willis tells Agnes to get her stuff together and get out the next day. Then he phones Slim, who comes there. Willis tells him: “Slim, I’ve been thinking that if anything happened to Cooley, and you could handle his mob—hold them together—I’d be willing to do business with you.” Slim says: “The Roscoe Kid would have to be taken care of first, and that ain’t a job I’d want.” Willis argues with him, dazzles him with the thought of the money that Cooley makes, that Slim could make in his place; and Slim finally agrees, on condition that Willis take part in the removal. They plan it together—with Agnes, in the next room, listening in. Willis phones a dive keeper, and has him phone Cooley and ask him to come to his place. Then Willis and Slim go out to collect some assistants and spring their trap.