Crime Stories

by Dashiell Hammett

  Nick: “Not today, honey. I’ve been up all night and—”

  Nora: “How about tomorrow?”

  Nick: “Well, you’d better phone me in the morning. I’ve been so—”

  Nora: “I know what’s the matter. That awful rich woman you married won’t let you out. Tell me, Nickie, is she really as ghastly as everybody says?”

  Nick: “She’s not as ghastly as everybody says.”

  Nora, after a moment’s struggle to stay in character: “Hold the line a minute, Nickie. I hear Papa coming in his rowboat and I know he’d love to talk to you.” She hangs up gently.

  In the living room, Nick makes a face at the telephone and hangs up, then goes over to straighten out a disagreement between a couple of his guests, after which he goes into the bedroom.

  Nora, at the telephone, is saying: “Will you ring my living room again, please?”

  Nick: “Who are you this time? That cooch dancer I used to run around with in Juarez? You have to do that with a Greek accent.”

  Nora puts the phone down and turns toward him, then gasps and looks over his shoulder. Nick spins around.

  Church is coming into the room from the fire-escape, one hand in his coat pocket as if pointing a pistol at Nick.

  Church: “I got no time to waste. Get your hands up.”

  Nick puts them up, backing away until he is against the door leading to Lois’s room. Church walks over to him.

  Church: “I missed connections and need getaway money. Come across.”

  Nick, somewhat loudly: “How much do you need, Church?”

  Church: “I’ll take what you’ve got.” He runs his hand over Nick’s clothes, finds his wallet, and takes it. He is very careless, giving Nick ample opportunity to grab him, but Nick makes no move in that direction.

  Nora, watching her husband in proud anticipation at first, begins to look puzzled as he makes no attempt to disarm Church, even when Church’s attention is centered on counting the money in the wallet.

  Church, too, seems puzzled. He stands there awkwardly for a moment, until it is apparent that Nick is not going to grab him; then he says: “If you’re smart, you’ll wait five minutes before you blow any whistles,” and goes out the window and up the fire-escape.

  Nick, still standing with his back to Lois’s door, says in a clear voice: “I never saw anybody trying so hard to get caught as this Sam Church. And now look at the clown, going up the fire-escape in broad daylight.”

  Nora, who has been looking at Nick with almost tearful disillusionment, asks: “But why would anybody want to get caught?”

  Nick: “Maybe because he thinks he could beat the rap now—and then he couldn’t be tried again no matter what came out later.”

  Nora: “But—”

  Nick: “That’s the law. What fooled all of us was our not thinking there was anything serious between him and Smitty, that they were just playing around.” Nick is sweating.

  Nora: “But what’s—”

  Nick: “They’re a couple of no-goods, but what I’ve got hold of now shows they’re certainly two people in love with each other, if two people ever were. Wait till he gets off the fire-escape. I’ll show you a—”

  There is a sound of a shot from outside.

  Nick starts and goes to the window. Nora goes with him. On the sidewalk below, Church is lying dead. Not far from him stands Smitty, staring at him. Near her on the sidewalk is a pistol. Dum-Dum is running away; as he reaches the corner a policeman jumps out and grabs him.

  As Nick and Nora see these things from the window, Lois joins them, asking: “I heard a shot—what is it?”

  Nora leads Lois away from the window, then exclaims, “Nickie!” and the three of them go into the living room.

  There is a mad scramble of departing guests; thugs are grabbing their ticket-kiddies and hurriedly departing. Vogel, coming in, is caught in a jam of departers, and his glasses are knocked off and broken. He takes another pair from an inner pocket and puts them on.

  Schultz and Jensen are standing guard over a child sleeping on a sofa. Nick and Nora do not see the child’s face, though Lois does. Jensen assures them: “This is our job and we’re sticking with it, no matter who gets killed where.”

  Police begin to come in, bringing Smitty, Dum-Dum, and Ella Waters. VanSlack and Guild arrive. Vogel does not try to leave. Mrs. Bellam and Freddie try to go, but are detained.

  VanSlack takes Nick into the bedroom and, after a bit of preliminary hemming and hawing, says: “Look here, Mr. Charles. You kidded me unmercifully about suspecting you, but I want to tell you right now that if Church did come here to make good his threats in connection with your wife and child and you killed him, I don’t think any jury in the world would or should convict you.”

  Nick: “Let’s go back with the others. They’ll think we’re talking about them.” He returns to the living room, followed by VanSlack.

  Guild is questioning Smitty: “What were you doing around here anyhow?”

  Smitty: “I knew Sam was coming to see Nick Charles and I wanted to head him off.”

  Guild: “Why?”

  Smitty: “I knew Sam would be up to some trick too slick for his own good and I knew he’d wind up in trouble—but I never expected this.”

  Guild: “How’d you know he was coming here?”

  Smitty: “Dum-Dum told me.”

  Guild turns to Dum-Dum, who has been crying since he came in. He does not sob and his face is not contorted; it’s simply that tears keep running down his cheeks.

  Guild: “Come on—talk.”

  Dum-Dum: “Mr. Church told me he coming here. He did not say why. I did not ask. When Miss Smitty ask me, I tell her, and then I am sorry when she get excited, and I afraid she come over and butt in maybe, so I come to maybe stop her.”

  Guild: “And then what?”

  Dum-Dum: “I just had seen her and was going cross the street to talk to her—a truck get in my way—and when it pass I see her—and Mr. Church.”

  Guild: “Didn’t you hear the shot?”

  Dum-Dum: “No, sir. I am dodging noisy truck.”

  Guild, to Smitty: “What did you see?”

  Smitty: “I heard the shot, I think, though I didn’t know what it was at the time.”

  Guild: “I didn’t ask you what you heard. What did you see?”

  Smitty: “Just—I looked up and there was Sam falling down right in front of me. I didn’t know who it was at the time. I—I don’t think I knew until the copper grabbed me.”

  Guild: “Oh, you didn’t? And you didn’t know about the gun you dropped?”

  Smitty: “I didn’t drop that gun. I heard it fall right after he fell, but I didn’t drop it.”

  Guild turns to Ella Waters: “And what’s your unlikely story, Hilda?”

  Ella, turning to Nick and Nora: “My name’s really not Ella Waters. I took that after I got out of jail for shoplifting, but I was honestly trying to go straight, but I knew the police wouldn’t believe it after Colonel MacFay was killed, and would find out from my fingerprints who I was, so I ran away; but I felt bad about it and was coming back to tell you about it, because I knew you’d understand, when there was all that excitement downstairs and a policeman that knew me grabbed me and brought me up here, but I—”

  Guild stops her by putting a hand over her mouth, growling: “You still talk more and say less than anybody I ever ran into.” He turns to Vogel: “And what were you here for, Diamond-Back?”

  Vogel: “I had a couple of questions I wanted to ask Charles.”

  Guild: “Such as for instance?”

  Vogel: “Is that monkey Church really dead?”

  Guild: “He’ll never be any deader. Somebody shot him off the fire-escape from below with a .38, and if the slug hadn’t done the job, the fall would—he must’ve dropped twenty stories.”

  Vogel: “Okay. I didn’t trust that guy, and when it looked like he was going out of his way to do folks a favor I thought I’d better come over and see w
hat I could angle out of Charles.”

  Guild: “Could you come to the point now—you can fill in the details afterwards.”

  Vogel: “You’re getting it all. I got a place I run uptown that gets a high-class trade that wouldn’t want their connections to know they’re there. Get what I mean? Or do you want me to wait till I can talk through a lawyer?”

  Guild: “I get it. You don’t admit you run gambling joints.”

  Vogel: “That’s right. Last night there was—say—a bank vice-president in my place and a couple of other customers like that—big and respectable—and Sam Church comes in and sits in with them for an hour or two—including the time MacFay was being killed down on the Island. Well, when I see in the morning papers that coppers are hunting for him, I don’t feel so good about it, and I don’t think my customers are going to feel so hot either—having to give him that kind of alibi. And just when I’m stewing about it, he phones and says tell them not to worry. He knows what it’ll cost them to come to the front for him, and he says even if he’s picked up and things look pretty black, he won’t call on them unless it’s only that between him and the chair—so they can sleep pretty, because he don’t think things’ll ever get that far.”

  VanSlack: “I don’t understand. Do you mean he had an alibi—a genuine one?”

  Nick: “That’s what he means. And he didn’t want to use it—yet. A man who saw Church going into Vogel’s last night was slugged all over Harlem by Church’s friends for trying to tell me about it.”

  VanSlack: “That’s incredible.”

  Nick: “Not as incredible as if Church had killed MacFay, after going to all that trouble before and after to advertise himself as the murderer and coming here trying to get himself pinched.”

  VanSlack: “But if he were innocent—”

  Nick: “I didn’t say he was innocent. I’m saying—drew all the attention to himself while his accomplice did the dirty work—and when the accomplice thought Church was working a double cross, the accomplice killed Church.”

  Dum-Dum draws a deep breath, stops crying, smiles as if to himself.

  VanSlack, looking at Smitty and Dum-Dum: “But they have alibis, too.”

  Nick: “So then they didn’t kill MacFay, huh? Maybe Dum-Dum’s knife that didn’t do the killing had Asta’s tooth prints in it from when he pulled it out of the wall of the cottage yesterday—huh?”

  Guild: “All right. Who did it?”

  Van Slack: “Yes, who?”

  Nick, aside to Nora, indicating VanSlack and Guild: “A couple of schoolboys,” then: “Didn’t you think it was funny that nobody heard any sounds of a struggle before the shot at MacFay’s—in spite of the signs of a row in which a lamp had been upset and his arm broken—though all of us had heard noises of people moving around afterwards?”

  VanSlack: “I don’t know. That is—what do you mean?”

  Nick: “Let me show you a trick.” He sets up the electric-cord-gun-paper-water trick as it was used by the murderer, saying as he arranges it: “I figured this out by myself, but I had an electrician check up the details for me. Lend me a gun, somebody . . . Will you switch on the lights . . . Get me a glass of water, etc.”

  The trick works perfectly, even to blowing out the fuses. Nick takes a bow as they all stare at him.

  Dum-Dum, who has been held tightly by a policeman up to this point, takes advantage of the policeman’s attention being on the trick to suddenly dive across the floor after the pistol that has been hurled into a corner by the recoil, grab it, and begin shooting. Nick has leapt upon Dum-Dum, grappling with him, so that the bullets go wild. As he succeeds in disarming Dum-Dum, a policeman knocks the Cuban cold.

  VanSlack, bewildered: “But he had an alibi.”

  Nick: “Then he’s still got it. All he was trying to do just now was to kill the accomplice that killed his Mr. Church.”

  VanSlack: “And who is that?”

  Nick looks at VanSlack and at the others who are impatiently awaiting his reply.

  Nick: “You people haven’t been paying any attention to what I’m saying or doing. Listen to me now. There was no struggle in MacFay’s room. He was stunned—probably with a blow from the hilt of the knife—then his throat was cut and his wrist broken, and it’s easy enough to break a dead man’s wrist—to pretend there was a struggle in which the lamp and stuff was upset. The trick I just showed you gave the murderer between five and ten minutes to get an alibi before the water soaked through and set the gun off. Get it?”

  Nora: “But who, Nick?”

  Nick: “Who is the only person that used that particular alibi?”

  Nora stares at Nick in bewilderment.

  Nick, answering his own question: “Lois, of course. Everybody else had real alibis or none at all.” He steps close to Lois, speaking swiftly:

  “Church, the engineer, planned it, and you carried it through; that’s why he needed Smitty to stooge for him, so folks wouldn’t suspect him of being mixed up with any other woman. You were friends with Church and Dum-Dum; that’s why your dog was friends with them and let them come and go on the grounds as they wanted, and that’s why your dog stood up with his paws on his killer’s shoulders—as the prints showed—and let his throat get cut.”

  Lois: “But why should I kill Papa?”

  Nick: “For money. But don’t interrupt the maestro when he’s exposing criminals. I don’t get the Horn killing exactly, unless he had found out you killed MacFay and you told him I had you cold or would have when I came back from getting the knife from the dog. He’d have covered you up and would have tried to kill me for those millions he would have when he married you. You had to get him going quick, because once he saw it was Church’s knife you’d used, he’d have seen through you. So you put me on the spot, even moving around so I had to turn my back toward where he was standing, and then pushed me off the spot so there was nothing for me to do but kill him in self-defense.”

  Lois: “But Papa gave me everything I wanted. He—”

  Nick: “That wasn’t your kind of life and he looked good for years. Your kind of life was the Linda Mills life you had been leading ever since you got old enough to sneak out after the folks went to bed.”

  Lois: “Linda Mills?”

  Nick: “Yes—L. M. for Linda Mills and Lois MacFay. Linda Mills, the girl whose description fits you with allowance for makeup and flashy clothes. Linda Mills, who sleeps without pillows, just as you do. Linda Mills, in whose apartment there is a scorched spot beside the bed and a bullet hole in the wall where the lamp-trick was rehearsed. Linda Mills, who disappeared a couple of weeks ago when you and Church started planning MacFay’s murder.”

  Lois stares stonily at him.

  Nick: “This is going to be easy enough to prove, you know. We’ll make you up for the people who knew you as Linda Mills and see what they say. Or maybe you’d rather be left alone with Dum-Dum after he comes to.”

  Lois: “But he can’t think I killed Sam Church. They said he was shot from the street.”

  Nick: “Nonsense. They said he was shot from below. Well, he ran up the fire-escape from here, and you leaned out the window and shot him from below, and dropped the gun down after him.”

  Lois: “But why?”

  Nick: “Why? I’m still hoarse from standing close to your door bellowing that he was trying to get himself arrested and tried, so he would be in the clear forever after, and in a spot to shake you down if he wanted to double-cross you; and telling you how nuts he was about Smitty and—”

  Smitty: “That’s a lie and you know it.”

  Nick: “I don’t know anything. Anyhow I thought it would sound good at the time. I didn’t know how sweetness here would kill Church, but I wanted to stir her up as much as I could.”

  Lois, horrified: “Sam wasn’t—” Then she pulls herself together, shrugs slightly, says: “Can I talk to you and Nora alone?”

  VanSlack and Guild look at Nick, who nods.

  Guild: “Okay, but slap he
r down if she gets funny.”

  Nick, Nora, and Lois go into the bedroom and shut the door.

  Lois to Nick, coolly: “You’re right. I’m Linda Mills at heart. I hated having to play Little Red Riding Hood to that horrible old man. So when Sam was fooling around trying to find a way of getting money out of him and picked me up, we found out we talked the same language. I’m not sorry for any of it—except your lying to me about Sam and Smitty—it was a chance and I took it. Having to get rid of Horn that way—and you guessed it right—made things tough—gummed the works pretty bad—but what could I do? Then when I thought Sam was crossing me up for that big tramp—well, I let him have it. I’d always figured he was safe because he was nuts about me, but—oh, well, I still think you gave me a raw deal on that, but the chances are he was playing me for a sap anyway, even if not with Smitty. So far, so good or bad, whichever way you look at it. What I’m getting at is, I’ll make a deal with you.”

  Nick: “What’ll you give us? The moon?

  Lois, calmly: “You like that brat of yours, don’t you?”

  Nick and Nora stare at her, alarmed.

  Lois: “Let me walk out of here and I’ll send the kid back in an hour.”

  Nick and Nora start for the door together, then Nick checks himself and says to Nora: “You look. I’ll stay here with angel.”

  Nora goes into the living room and looks at the sleeping child. It is not Nicky. Paying no attention to the others in the room, she runs back to Nick, leaving the door open. She cannot speak, but one look at her tells Nick the child is gone. He grabs Lois by the shoulders.

  Lois, wincing, but smiling coolly: “Now you know. Make up your minds. Try to send me to the chair, or get your child back all in one piece. Whichever you like best.”

  As the others start to come in from the living room, there is a terrific pounding on the corridor door. A policeman opens it.

  Into the room comes an enormous unkempt woman carrying Nick Jr. under one arm, holding one of Creeps’s friends by the ear with her other hand.

  Woman, loudly and angrily: “My beautiful Raphael. Give me back my beautiful Raphael and take this toad-frog you try to palm off on me. Where is my lovely boy?”