We found a plentiful supply of clothing in the apartment, some of which the manager positively identified as Rockfield’s. The police department experts found a lot of masculine fingerprints that we hoped were his.
We couldn’t find anybody in adjoining apartments who had heard the racket that must have been made by the murder.
We decided that Mrs. Chappell had probably been killed as soon as she was brought to the apartment—no later than the night of her disappearance, anyhow.
“But why?” Chappell demanded dumbfoundedly.
“Playing safe. You wouldn’t know till after you’d come across. She wasn’t feeble. It would be hard to keep her quiet in a place like this.”
A detective came in with the package of hundred-dollar bills Chappell had placed under the brick-pile the previous night.
I went down to headquarters with Callahan to question the men stationed at a nearby apartment-window to watch the vacant lot. They swore up and down that nobody—“not as much as a rat”—could have approached the brick-pile without being seen by them. Callahan’s answer to that was a bellowed “The Hell they couldn’t—they did!”
I was called to the telephone. Chappell was on the wire. His voice was hoarse.
“The telephone was ringing when I got home,” he said, “and it was him.”
“Who?”
“Death and Co., he said. That’s what he said, and he told me that it was my turn next. That’s all he said. ‘This is Death and Co., and it’s your turn next.’”
“I’ll be right out,” I said. “Wait for me.”
I told Callahan and the others what Chappell had told me.
Callahan scowled. “—,” he said, “I guess we’re up against another of those — damned nuts!”
Chappell was in a bad way when I arrived at his house. He was shivering as if with a chill and his eyes were almost idiotic in their fright.
“It’s—it’s not only that—that I’m afraid,” he tried to explain. “I am—but it’s—I’m not that afraid—but—but with Louise—and—it’s the shock and all. I—”
“I know,” I soothed him. “I know. And you haven’t slept for a couple of days. Who’s your doctor? I’m going to phone him.”
He protested feebly, but finally gave me his doctor’s name.
The telephone rang as I was going towards it. The call was for me, from Callahan.
“We’ve pegged the fingerprints,” he said triumphantly. “They’re Dick Moley’s. Know him?”
“Sure,” I said, “as well as you do.”
Moley was a gambler, gunman, and grifter-in-general with a police record as long as his arm.
Callahan was saying cheerfully: “That’s going to mean a fight when we find him, because you know how tough that — is. And he’ll laugh while he’s being tough.”
“I know,” I said.
I told Chappell what Callahan had told me. Rage came into his face and voice when he heard the name of the man accused of killing his wife.
“Ever hear of him?” I asked.
He shook his head and went on cursing Moley in a choked, husky voice.
I said: “Stop that. That’s no good. I know where to find Moley.”
His eyes opened wide. “Where?” he gasped.
“Want to go with me?”
“Do I?” he shouted. Weariness and sickness had dropped from him.
“Get your hat,” I said, “and we’ll go.”
He ran upstairs for his hat and down with it.
He had a lot of questions as we went out and got into his car. I answered most of them with: “Wait, you’ll see.”
But in the car he went suddenly limp and slid down in his seat.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I can’t,” he mumbled. “I’ve got to—help me into the house—the doctor.”
“Right,” I said, and practically carried him into the house.
I spread him on a sofa, had a maid bring him water, and called his doctor’s number. The doctor was not in.
When I asked him if there was any other particular doctor he wanted he said weakly: “No, I’m all right. Go after that—that man.”
“All right,” I said.
I went outside, got a taxicab, and sat in it.
Twenty minutes later a man went up Chappell’s front steps and rang the bell. The man was Dick Moley, alias Harrison M. Rockfield.
He took me by surprise. I had been expecting Chappell to come out, not anyone to go in. He had vanished indoors and the door was shut by the time I got there.
I rang the bell savagely.
A heavy pistol roared inside, twice.
I smashed the glass out of the door with my gun and put my left hand in, feeling for the latch.
The heavy pistol roared again and a bullet hurled splinters of glass into my cheek, but I found the latch and worked it.
I kicked the door back and fired once straight ahead at random. Something moved in the dark hallway then and without waiting to see what it was I fired again, and when something fell I fired at the sound.
A voice said: “Cut it out. That’s enough. I’ve lost my gun.”
It wasn’t Chappell’s voice. I was disappointed.
Near the foot of the stairs I found a light-switch and turned it on. Dick Moley was sitting on the floor at the other end of the hallway holding one leg.
“That damned fool maid got scared and locked this door,” he complained, “or I’d’ve made it out back.”
I went nearer and picked up his gun. “Get you anywhere but the leg?” I asked.
“No. I’d’ve been all right if I hadn’t dropped the gun when it upset me.”
“You’ve got a lot of ifs,” I said. “I’ll give you another one. You’ve got nothing to worry about but that bullet-hole if you didn’t kill Chappell.”
He laughed. “If he’s not dead he must feel funny with those two .44s in his head.”
“That was — damned dumb of you,” I growled.
He didn’t believe me. He said: “It was the best job I ever pulled.”
“Yeah? Well, suppose I told you that I was only waiting for another move of his to pinch him for killing his wife?”
He opened his eyes at that.
“Yeah,” I said, “and you have to walk in and mess things up. I hope to — they hang you for it.” I knelt down beside him and began to slit his pants-leg with my pocket-knife.
“What’d you do? Go in hiding after you found her dead in your rooms because you knew a guy with your record would be out of luck, and then lose your head when you saw in the extras this afternoon what kind of a job he’d put up on you?”
“Yes,” he said slowly, “though I’m not sure I lost my head. I’ve got a hunch I came pretty near giving the — — — —— what he deserved.”
“That’s a swell hunch,” I told him. “We were ready to grab him. The whole thing had looked phoney. Nobody had come for the money the first night, but it wasn’t there the next day, so he said. Well, we only had his word for it that he had actually put it there and hadn’t found it the next night. The next night, after he had been told the place was watched he left the money there, and then he wrote the note saying Death & Company knew he’d gone to the police. That wasn’t public news, either. And then her being killed before anybody knew she was kidnaped. And then tying it to you when it was too dizzy—no, you are dizzy, or you wouldn’t have pulled this one. Anyhow we had enough to figure he was wrong, and if you’d let him alone we’d have pulled him, put it in the papers, and waited for you to come forth and give us what we needed to clear you and swing him.” I was twisting my necktie around his leg above the bullet-hole. “But that’s too sensible for you. How long you been playing around with her?”
“A couple of months,” he said, “only I wasn’t playing. I meant
it.”
“How’d he happen to catch her there alone?”
He shook his head. “He must’ve followed her there that afternoon when she was supposed to be going to the theater. Maybe he waited outside until he saw me go out. I had to go downtown, but I wasn’t gone an hour. She was already cold when I came back.” He frowned. “I don’t think she’d’ve answered the doorbell, though maybe—or maybe he’d had a duplicate made of the key she had.”
Some policemen came in: the frightened maid had had sense enough to use the telephone.
“Do you think he planned it that way from the beginning?” Moley asked.
I didn’t. I thought he had killed his wife in a jealous rage and later thought of the Death and Co. business.
About the Author
Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) charted a gritty new direction for American crime fiction, crafting true-to-life stories as brash as they are exacting. In 1922, he began writing fiction based on his experience as a private detective, and he pioneered the tough-minded, action-heavy, realistic style that became known as hardboiled. Among his best-known works are Red Harvest (1929), The Maltese Falcon (1930), The Glass Key (1931), The Thin Man (1934), and the Collected Case Files of the Continental Op, most of which were published in Black Mask magazine.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“Foreword” Copyright © 2016 Julie M. Rivett; “Introduction” Copyright © 2016 by Richard Layman; “Fly Paper” Copyright © 1929, “The Farewell Murder” and “Death and Company” Copyright © 1930 by Pro-Distributors; renewed by Pro-Distributors as agent for Dashiell Hammett, whose interest was conveyed by will in 1984 to the Dashiell Hammett Literary Property Trust. All Rights Reserved.
Cover design by Jamie Keenan
978-1-5040-3603-0
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