Crime Stories

by Dashiell Hammett

  “Nothing,” she said and kissed him.

  Though the windows were wide the room was intolerably stuffy. She perspired. Accustomed to sleeping alone, every time she turned she bumped against Harry. He woke once or twice, talked drowsily, went back to sleep. The night dragged through.

  Rain was still falling in the morning. Mildred fidgeted in bed until Harry opened his eyes. He grinned jovially under his tousled hair. The stubble on his chin scraped her face when he kissed her.

  “Hell of a day,” he said lazily, looking at the gray windows. “What say we eat up here?”

  He telephoned for breakfast and got in bed again, to lie on his back with the ash from his cigarette sprinkling down on the sheets. She liked this, this lying beside him in the gray morning, with his rumpled hair and bearded cheek against her arm, smoke in little swirls overhead.

  When breakfast came she had an appetite for it, and her head did not ache so much. The boat connecting with her train left at five. They staid in the hotel room until after two. Then, the rain having stopped, they went for a walk, had dinner, and went to the ferry. Harry kissed her good-bye.

  Mildred took two of the pills on the boat and two more a little later. She had the porter make up her berth as soon as possible, got into it, and slept until daybreak. After she woke she took two more pills and tried to go back to sleep, but she could not lie still. A muscular pain in her side brought familiar fears. Crying a little, she tried to pray, but had to give it up: Harry’s face, and the face of the woman who had smoked in the cabaret, intruded. She turned on her other side and the pain diminished.

  She wondered what Harry was doing now, if she would ever see him again. She would get letters from him for a while anyway. The deception of the George Burns and wife, Los Angeles worried her. Hadn’t Harry really wanted to see her before he went away, or hadn’t he been able to come? But he had seemed glad. She had let him pay for everything after insisting on paying her own share. The miserable night on the train going to San Francisco . . . the sleepless night in the noisy hotel room . . . this night . . . she cried softly until time to get up.

  The train reached her station at seven-thirty, giving her time to go home for breakfast before reporting at the office. Kissing her mother, she found none of the elder woman’s hostility gone.

  “Well, I suppose you had a wonderful time,” her mother said bitterly.

  Mildred halted with a foot on the stairs.

  “Oh, it was lovely!” she cried.

  Her mother sniffed.

  Mildred changed into office clothes and went down to the kitchen for breakfast. Her mother set dishes before her in silence that held until Mildred began to eat.

  “I only hope”—the elder woman’s tone held nothing of hopefulness—“that you didn’t do anything to bring shame on your family.”

  Mildred put down the piece of toast she had been about to bite.

  “I should think you’d be ashamed to say such things to your own daughter, or even think them. You talk as if a person couldn’t have any fun without being—being what you mean. I had more fun than I ever had in my life before, and if you want to think things about me I can’t help it. Go ahead and think what you want. I’m glad I went. I had more fun than I ever had in my life before.”

  Hurrying down Park Street toward the office, Mildred repeated to herself, tentatively, “I had more fun than I ever had in my life before.”