The Dain Curse

by Dashiell Hammett

  “It’s a fight, huh?” I said from the door.

  She took her hands out of her hair.

  “I won’t die?” The question was a whimper between edge-to-edge teeth.

  “Not a chance.”

  She sobbed and lay down. I straightened the covers over her. She complained that there was a lump in her throat, that her jaws and the hollows behind her knees ached.

  “Regular symptoms,” I assured her. “They won’t bother you much, and you’ll miss the cramps.”

  Fingernails scratched the door. Gabrielle jumped up in bed, crying:

  “Don’t go away again.”

  “No farther than the door,” I promised, and went to it.

  MacMan was there.

  “That Mexican Mary,” he whispered, “was hiding in the bushes watching you and the woman. I spotted her when she came out, and tailed her across to the road below. She stopped the limousine and talked with the woman—five-ten minutes. I couldn’t get near enough to hear any of it.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “In the kitchen. She came back. The woman in the heap went on. Mickey says the Mex is packing a knife and is going to make grief for us. Reckon he’s right?”

  “He generally is,” I said. “She’s strong for Mrs. Collinson, and doesn’t think we mean her any good. Why in hell can’t she mind her own business? It adds up that she peeped and saw Mrs. Haldorn wasn’t for us, figured she was for Mrs. Collinson, and braced her. I hope Mrs. Haldorn had sense enough to tell her to behave. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do but watch her. No use giving her the gate: we’ve got to have a cook.”

  When MacMan had gone Gabrielle remembered we had had a visitor, and asked me about it, and about the shot she heard and my scratched face.

  “It was Aaronia Haldorn,” I told her; “and she lost her head. No harm done. She’s gone now.”

  “She came here to kill me,” the girl said, not excitedly, but as if she knew certainly.

  “Maybe. She wouldn’t admit anything. Why should she kill you?”

  I didn’t get an answer to that.

  It was a long bad night. I spent most of it in the girl’s room, in a leather rocker dragged in from the front room. She got perhaps an hour and a half of sleep, in three installments. Nightmares brought her screaming out of all three. I dozed when she let me. Off and on through the night I heard stealthy sounds in the hall—Mary Nunez watching over her mistress, I supposed.

  Wednesday was a longer and worse day. By noon my jaws were as sore as Gabrielle’s, from going around holding my back teeth together. She was getting the works now. Light was positive, active pain to her eyes, sound to her ears, odors of any sort to her nostrils. The weight of her silk nightgown, the touch of sheets over and under her, tortured her skin. Every nerve she had yanked every muscle she had, continually. Promises that she wasn’t going to die were no good now: life wasn’t nice enough.

  “Stop fighting it, if you want,” I said. “Let yourself go. I’ll take care of you.”

  She took me at my word, and I had a maniac on my hands. Once her shrieks brought Mary Nunez to the door, snarling and spitting at me in Mex-Spanish. I was holding Gabrielle down in bed by the shoulders, sweating as much as she was.

  “Get out of here,” I snarled back at the Mexican woman.

  She put a brown hand into the bosom of her dress and came a step into the room. Mickey Linehan came up behind her, pulled her back into the hall, and shut the door.

  Between the high spots, Gabrielle lay on her back, panting, twitching, staring at the ceiling with hopeless suffering eyes. Sometimes her eyes closed, but the jerking of her body didn’t stop.

  Rolly came down from Quesada that afternoon with word that Fitzstephan had come sufficiently alive to be questioned by Vernon. Fitzstephan had told the district attorney that he had not seen the bomb, had seen nothing to show when, where, and how it came into the room; but that he had an indistinct memory of hearing a tinkling, as of broken glass falling, and a thud on the floor close to him just after Fink and I had left the room.

  I told Rolly to tell Vernon I’d try to get over to see him the next day, and to hang on to Fink. The deputy sheriff promised to deliver the message, and left. Mickey and I were standing on the porch. We didn’t have anything to say to each other, hadn’t all day. I was lighting a cigarette when the girl’s voice came from indoors. Mickey turned away, saying something with the name of God in it.

  I scowled at him and asked angrily:

  “Well, am I right or wrong?”

  He glared back at me, said, “I’d a damned sight rather be wrong,” and walked away.

  I cursed him and went inside. Mary Nunez, starting up the front stairs, retreated towards the kitchen when she saw me, walking backwards, her eyes watching me crazily. I cursed her and went upstairs to where I had left MacMan at the girl’s door. He wouldn’t look at me, so I made it unanimous by cursing him.

  Gabrielle spent the balance of the afternoon shrieking, begging, and crying for morphine. That evening she made a complete confession:

  “I told you I didn’t want to be evil,” she said, wadding the bedclothes in feverish hands. “That was a lie. I did. I’ve always wanted to, always have been. I wanted to do to you what I did to the others; but now I don’t want you: I want morphine. They won’t hang me: I know that. And I don’t care what else they do to me, if I get morphine.”

  She laughed viciously and went on:

  “You were right when you said I brought out the worst in men because I wanted to. I did want to; and I did—except, I failed with Doctor Riese, and with Eric. I don’t know what was the matter with them. But I failed with both of them, and in failing let them learn too much about me. And that’s why they were killed. Joseph drugged Doctor Riese, and I killed him myself, and then we made Minnie think she had. And I persuaded Joseph to kill Aaronia, and he would have done it—he would have done anything I asked—if you hadn’t interfered. I got Harvey to kill Eric for me. I was tied to Eric—legally—a good man who wanted to make a good woman of me.”

  She laughed again, licking her lips.

  “Harvey and I had to have money, and I couldn’t—I was too afraid of being suspected—get enough from Andrews; so we pretended I had been kidnapped, to get it that way. It was a shame you killed Harvey: he was a glorious beast. I had that bomb, had had it for months. I took it from father’s laboratory, when he was making some experiments for a moving picture company. It wasn’t very large, and I always carried it with me—just in case. I meant it for you in the hotel room. There was nothing between Owen and me—that was another lie—he didn’t love me. I meant it for you, because you were—because I was afraid you were getting at the truth. I was feverish, and when I heard two men go out, leaving one in your room, I was sure the one was you. I didn’t see that it was Owen till too late—till I had opened the door a little and thrown the bomb in. Now you’ve got what you want. Give me morphine. There’s no reason for your playing with me any longer. Give me morphine. You’ve succeeded. Have what I’ve told you written out: I’ll sign it. You can’t pretend now I’m worth curing, worth saving. Give me morphine.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh, asking:

  “And aren’t you going to confess to kidnapping Charlie Ross and blowing up the Maine?”

  We had some more hell—a solid hour of it—before she exhausted herself again. The night dragged through. She got a little more than two hours’ sleep, a half-hour gain over the previous night. I dozed in the chair when I could.

  Sometime before daylight I woke to the feel of a hand on my coat. Keeping my breathing regular, I pushed my eyelids far enough apart to squint through the lashes. We had a very dim light in the room, but I thought Gabrielle was in bed, though I couldn’t see whether she was asleep or awake. My head was tilted back to rest on the back of the chair. I couldn’t see the hand that was exploring my inside coat-pocket, nor the arm that came down over my shoulder; but they smelled of the kitchen, so I knew they were brown
.

  The Mexican woman was standing behind me. Mickey had told me she had a knife. Imagination told me she was holding it in her other hand. Good judgment told me to let her alone. I did that, closing my eyes again. Paper rustled between her fingers, and her hand left my pocket.

  I moved my head sleepily then, and changed a foot’s position. When I heard the door close quietly behind me, I sat up and looked around. Gabrielle was sleeping. I counted the bindles in my pocket and found that eight of them had been taken.

  Presently Gabrielle opened her eyes. This was the first time since the cure started that she had awakened quietly. Her face was haggard, but not wild-eyed. She looked at the window and asked:

  “Isn’t day coming yet?”

  “It’s getting light.” I gave her some orange juice. “We’ll get some solid food in you today.

  “I don’t want food. I want morphine.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’ll get food. You won’t get morphine. Today won’t be like yesterday. You’re over the hump, and the rest of it’s down-hill going, though you may hit a couple of rough spots. It’s silly to ask for morphine now. What do you want to do? Have nothing to show for the hell you’ve been through? You’ve got it licked now: stay with it.”

  “Have I—have I really got it licked?”

  “Yeah. All you’ve got to buck now is nervousness, and the memory of how it felt to have a skinful of hop.”

  “I can do it,” she said. “I can do it because you say I can.”

  She got along fine till late in the morning, when she blew up for an hour or two. But it wasn’t so bad, and I got her straightened out again. When Mary brought up her luncheon I left them together and went downstairs for my own.

  Mickey and MacMan were already at the dining room table. Neither of them spoke a word—to one another or to me—during the meal. Since they kept quiet, I did.

  When I went back upstairs, Gabrielle, in a green bathrobe, was sitting in the leather rocker that had been my bed for two nights. She had brushed her hair and powdered her face. Her eyes were mostly green, with a lift to the lower lids as if she was hiding a joke. She said with mock solemnity:

  “Sit down. I want to talk seriously to you.”

  I sat down.

  “Why did you go through all this with me—for me?” She was really serious now. “You didn’t have to, and it couldn’t have been pleasant. I was—I don’t know how bad I was.” She turned red from forehead to chest. “I know I was revolting, disgusting. I know how I must seem to you now. Why—why did you?”

  I said:

  “I’m twice your age, sister; an old man. I’m damned if I’ll make a chump of myself by telling you why I did it, why it was neither revolting nor disgusting, why I’d do it again and be glad of the chance.”

  She jumped out of her chair, her eyes round and dark, her mouth trembling.

  “You mean—?”

  “I don’t mean anything that I’ll admit,” I said; “and if you’re going to parade around with that robe hanging open you’re going to get yourself some bronchitis. You ex-hopheads have to be careful about catching cold.”

  She sat down again, put her hands over her face, and began crying. I let her cry. Presently she giggled through her fingers and asked:

  “Will you go out and let me be alone all afternoon?”

  “Yeah, if you’ll keep warm.”

  I drove over to the county seat, went to the county hospital, and argued with people until they let me into Fitzstephan’s room.

  He was ninety per cent bandages, with only an eye, an ear, and one side of his mouth peeping out. The eye and the half-mouth smiled through linen at me, and a voice came through:

  “No more of your hotel rooms for me.” It wasn’t a clear voice because it had to come out sidewise, and he couldn’t move his jaws; but there was plenty of vitality in it. It was the voice of a man who meant to keep on living.

  I smiled at him and said:

  “No hotel rooms this time, unless you think San Quentin’s a hotel. Strong enough to stand up under a third-degree, or shall we wait a day or two?”

  “I ought to be at my best now,” he said. “Facial expressions won’t betray me.”

  “Good. Now here’s the first point: Fink handed you that bomb when he shook hands with you. That’s the only way it could have got in without my seeing it. His back was to me then. You didn’t know what he was handing you, but you had to take it, just as you have to deny it now, or tip us off that you were tied up with the Holy Grail mob, and that Fink had reasons for killing you.”

  Fitzstephan said: “You say the most remarkable things. I’m glad he had reasons, though.”

  “You engineered Riese’s murder. The others were your accomplices. When Joseph died the blame was put all on him, the supposed madman. That’s enough to let the others out, or ought to be. But here you are killing Collinson and planning God knows what else. Fink knows that if you keep it up you’re going to let the truth out about the Temple murder, and he’ll swing with you. So, scared panicky, he tries to stop you.”

  Fitzstephan said: “Better and better. So I killed Collinson?”

  “You had him killed—hired Whidden and then didn’t pay him. He kidnapped the girl then, holding her for his money, knowing she was what you wanted. It was you his bullet came closest to when we cornered him.”

  Fitzstephan said: “I’m running out of exclamatory phrases. So I was after her? I wondered about my motive.”

  “You must have been pretty rotten with her. She’d had a bad time with Andrews, and even with Eric, but she didn’t mind talking about them. But when I tried to learn the details of your wooing she shuddered and shut up. I suppose she slammed you down so hard you bounced, and you’re the sort of egoist to be driven to anything by that.”

  Fitzstephan said: “I suppose. You know, I’ve had more than half an idea at times that you were secretly nursing some exceptionally idiotic theory.”

  “Well, why shouldn’t I? You were standing beside Mrs. Leggett when she suddenly got that gun. Where’d she get it? Chasing her out of the laboratory and down the stairs wasn’t in character—not for you. Your hand was on her gun when that bullet hit her neck. Was I supposed to be deaf, dumb, and blind? There was, as you agreed, one mind behind all Gabrielle’s troubles. You’re the one person who has that sort of mind, whose connection with each episode can be traced, and who has the necessary motive. The motive held me up: I couldn’t be sure of it till I’d had my first fair chance to pump Gabrielle—after the explosion. And another thing that held me up was my not being able to tie you to the Temple crowd till Fink and Aaronia Haldorn did it for me.”

  Fitzstephan said: “Ah, Aaronia helped tie me? What has she been up to?” He said it absent-mindedly, and his one visible gray eye was small, as if he was busy with other thoughts behind it.

  “She’s done her best to cover you up by gumming the works, creating confusion, setting us after Andrews, even trying to shoot me. I mentioned Collinson just after she’d learned that the Andrews false-trail was no good. She gave me a half-concealed gasp and sob, just on the off-chance that it’d lead me astray, overlooking no bets. I like her: she’s shifty.”

  “She’s so headstrong,” Fitzstephan said lightly, not having listened to half I had said, busy with his own thoughts. He turned his head on the pillow so that his eye looked at the ceiling, narrow and brooding.

  I said: “And so ends the Great Dain Curse.”

  He laughed then, as well as he could with one eye and a fraction of a mouth, and said:

  “Suppose, my boy, I were to tell you I’m a Dain?”

  I said: “Huh?”

  He said: “My mother and Gabrielle’s maternal grandfather were brother and sister.”

  I said: “I’ll be damned.”

  “You’ll have to go away and let me think,” he said. “I don’t know yet what I shall do. Understand, at present I admit nothing. But the chances are I shall insist on the curse, shall use it to save my dear neck
. In that event, my son, you’re going to see a most remarkable defense, a circus that will send the nation’s newspapers into happy convulsions. I shall be a Dain, with the cursed Dain blood in me, and the crimes of Cousin Alice and Cousin Lily and Second-cousin Gabrielle and the Lord knows how many other criminal Dains shall be evidence in my behalf. The number of my own crimes will be to my advantage, on the theory that nobody but a lunatic could have committed so many. And won’t they be many? I’ll produce crimes and crimes, dating from the cradle.

  “Even literature shall help me. Didn’t most reviewers agree that The Pale Egyptian was the work of a sub-Mongolian? And, as I remember, the consensus was that my Eighteen Inches bore all the better known indications of authorial degeneracy. Evidence, son, to save my sweet neck. And I shall wave my mangled body at them—an arm gone, a leg gone, parts of my torso and face—a ruin whose crimes and high Heaven have surely brought sufficient punishment upon him. And perhaps the bomb shocked me into sanity again, or, at least, out of criminal insanity. Perhaps I’ll even have become religious. It’ll be a splendid circus. It tempts me. But I must think before I commit myself.”

  He panted through the uncovered half of his mouth, exhausted by his speech, looking at me with a gray eye that held triumphant mirth.

  “You’ll probably make a go of it,” I said as I prepared to leave. “And I’m satisfied if you do. You’ve taken enough of a licking. And, legally, you’re entitled to beat the jump if ever anybody was.”

  “Legally entitled?” he repeated, the mirth going out of his eye. He looked away, and then at me again, uneasily. “Tell me the truth. Am I?”

  I nodded.

  “But, damn it, that spoils it,” he complained, fighting to keep the uneasiness out of his eye, fighting to retain his usual lazily amused manner, and not making such a poor job of it. “It’s no fun if I’m really cracked.”

  When I got back to the house in the cove, Mickey and MacMan were sitting on the front steps. MacMan said, “Hello,” and Mickey said: “Get any fresh woman-scars while you were away? Your little playmate’s been asking for you.” I supposed from this—from my being readmitted to the white race—that Gabrielle had had a good afternoon.