“Too hard for me,” I confessed, while trying to find which of my hats and caps would sit least heavily upon my bruised head. “Dexter knew I was hunting for one of his sister’s former lovers, of course. And he must have thought I knew a whole lot more than I do, or he wouldn’t have made that raw play—tipping my mitt to Smith right in front of me.
“It may be that after Dexter lost his head and made that break on the ferry, Smith figured that I’d be on to him soon, if not right away; and so he’d take a desperate chance on putting me out of the way. But we’ll know all about it in a little while,” I said, as we went down to the waiting taxi and set out for Gantvoort’s.
“You ain’t counting on Smith being in sight, are you?” the detective-sergeant asked.
“No. He’ll be holed up somewhere until he sees how things are going. But Madden Dexter will have to be out in the open to protect himself. He has an alibi, so he’s in the clear so far as the actual killing is concerned. And with me supposed to be dead, the more he stays in the open, the safer he is. But it’s a cinch that he knows what this is all about, though he wasn’t necessarily involved in it. As near as I could see, he didn’t go out on deck with Smith and me tonight. Anyway he’ll be home. And this time he’s going to talk—he’s going to tell his little story!”
Charles Gantvoort was standing on his front steps when we reached his house. He climbed into our taxi and we headed for the Dexters’ apartment. We didn’t have time to answer any of the questions that Gantvoort was firing at us with every turning of the wheels.
“He’s home and expecting you?” I asked him.
“Yes.”
Then we left the taxi and went into the apartment building.
“Mr. Gantvoort to see Mr. Dexter,” he told the Philippine boy at the switchboard.
The boy spoke into the phone.
“Go right up,” he told us.
At the Dexters’ door I stepped past Gantvoort and pressed the button.
Creda Dexter opened the door. Her amber eyes widened and her smile faded as I stepped past her into the apartment.
I walked swiftly down the little hallway and turned into the first room through whose open door a light showed.
And came face to face with Smith!
We were both surprised, but his astonishment was a lot more profound than mine. Neither of us had expected to see the other; but I had known he was still alive, while he had every reason for thinking me at the bottom of the bay.
I took advantage of his greater bewilderment to the extent of two steps toward him before he went into action.
One of his hands swept down.
I threw my right fist at his face—threw it with every ounce of my 180 pounds behind it, re-enforced by the memory of every second I had spent in the water and every throb of my battered head.
His hand, already darting down for his pistol, came back up too late to fend off my punch.
Something clicked in my hand as it smashed into his face, and my hand went numb.
But he went down—and lay where he fell.
I jumped across his body to a door on the opposite side of the room, pulling my gun loose with my left hand.
“Dexter’s somewhere around!” I called over my shoulder to O’Gar, who with Gantvoort and Creda, was coming through the door by which I had entered. “Keep your eyes open!”
I dashed through the four other rooms of the apartment, pulling closet doors open, looking everywhere—and I found nobody.
Then I returned to where Creda Dexter was trying to revive Smith, with the assistance of O’Gar and Gantvoort.
The detective-sergeant looked over his shoulder at me.
“Who do you think this joker is?” he asked.
“My friend Mr. Smith.”
“Gantvoort says he’s Madden Dexter.”
I looked at Charles Gantvoort, who nodded his head.
“This is Madden Dexter,” he said.
VIII
“I hope you swing!”
We worked upon Dexter for nearly ten minutes before he opened his eyes.
As soon as he sat up we began to shoot questions and accusations at him, hoping to get a confession out of him before he recovered from his shakiness—but he wasn’t that shaky.
All we could get out of him was:
“Take me in if you want to. If I’ve got anything to say I’ll say it to my lawyer, and to nobody else.”
Creda Dexter, who had stepped back after her brother came to, and was standing a little way off, watching us, suddenly came forward and caught me by the arm.
“What have you got on him?” she demanded, imperatively.
“I wouldn’t want to say,” I countered, “but I don’t mind telling you this much. We’re going to give him a chance in a nice modern court-room to prove that he didn’t kill Leopold Gantvoort.”
“He was in New York!”
“He was not! He had a friend who went to New York as Madden Dexter and looked after Gantvoort’s business under that name. But if this is the real Madden Dexter then the closest he got to New York was when he met his friend on the ferry to get from him the papers connected with the B. F. & F. Iron Corporation transaction; and learned that I had stumbled upon the truth about his alibi—even if I didn’t know it myself at the time.”
She jerked around to face her brother.
“Is that on the level?” she asked him.
He sneered at her, and went on feeling with the fingers of one hand the spot on his jaw where my fist had landed.
“I’ll say all I’ve got to say to my lawyer,” he repeated.
“You will?” she shot back at him. “Well, I’ll say what I’ve got to say right now!”
She flung around to face me again.
“Madden is not my brother at all! My name is Ives. Madden and I met in St. Louis about four years ago, drifted around together for a year or so, and then came to Frisco. He was a con man—still is. He made Mr. Gantvoort’s acquaintance six or seven months ago, and was getting him all ribbed up to unload a fake invention on him. He brought him here a couple of times, and introduced me to him as his sister. We usually posed as brother and sister.
“Then, after Mr. Gantvoort had been here a couple times, Madden decided to change his game. He thought Mr. Gantvoort liked me, and that we could get more money out of him by working a fancy sort of badger-game on him. I was to lead the old man on until I had him wrapped around my finger—until we had him tied up so tight he couldn’t get away—had something on him—something good and strong. Then we were going to shake him down for plenty of money.
“Everything went along fine for a while. He fell for me—fell hard. And finally he asked me to marry him. We had never figured on that. Blackmail was our game. But when he asked me to marry him I tried to call Madden off. I admit the old man’s money had something to do with it—it influenced me—but I had come to like him a little for himself. He was mighty fine in lots of ways—nicer than anybody I had ever known.
“So I told Madden all about it, and suggested that we drop the other plan, and that I marry Gantvoort. I promised to see that Madden was kept supplied with money—I knew I could get whatever I wanted from Mr. Gantvoort. And I was on the level with Madden. I liked Mr. Gantvoort, but Madden had found him and brought him around to me; and so I wasn’t going to run out on Madden. I was willing to do all I could for him.
“But Madden wouldn’t hear of it. He’d have got more money in the long run by doing as I suggested—but he wanted his little handful right away. And to make him more unreasonable he got one of his jealous streaks. He beat me one night!
“That settled it. I made up my mind to ditch him. I told Mr. Gantvoort that my brother was bitterly opposed to our marrying, and he could see that Madden was carrying a grouch. So he arranged to send Madden East on that steel business, to get him out of the way u
ntil we were off on our wedding trip. And we thought Madden was completely deceived—but I should have known that he would see through our scheme. We planned to be gone about a year, and by that time I thought Madden would have forgotten me—or I’d be fixed to handle him if he tried to make any trouble.
“As soon as I heard that Mr. Gantvoort had been killed I had a hunch that Madden had done it. But then it seemed like a certainty that he was in New York the next day, and I thought I had done him an injustice. And I was glad he was out of it. But now—”
She whirled around to her erstwhile confederate.
“Now I hope you swing, you big sap!”
She spun around to me again. No sleek kitten, this, but a furious, spitting cat, with claws and teeth bared.
“What kind of looking fellow was the one who went to New York for him?”
I described the man I had talked to on the train.
“Evan Felter,” she said, after a moment of thought. “He used to work with Madden. You’ll probably find him hiding in Los Angeles. Put the screws on him and he’ll spill all he knows—he’s a weak sister! The chances are he didn’t know what Madden’s game was until it was all over.”
“How do you like that?” she spat at Madden Dexter. “How do you like that for a starter? You messed up my little party, did you? Well, I’m going to spend every minute of my time from now until they pop you off helping them pop you!”
And she did, too—with her assistance it was no trick at all to gather up the rest of the evidence we needed to hang him. And I don’t believe her enjoyment of her three-quarters of a million dollars is spoiled a bit by any qualms over what she did to Madden. She’s a very respectable woman now, and glad to be free of the con-man.
Black Mask, 1 January 1924
From the Author of “The Tenth Clew”
Thanks for the check for “The Tenth Clew.”
And I want to plead guilty to a bit of cowardice in connection with the story. The original of Creda Dexter didn’t resemble a kitten at all. She looked exactly like a bull-pup—and she was pretty in the bargain!
Except for her eyes, I never succeeded in determining just what was responsible for the resemblance, but it was a very real one.
When, however, it came to actually putting her down on paper, my nerve failed me. “Nobody will believe you if you write a thing like that,” I told myself. “They’ll think you’re trying to spoof them.” So, for the sake of plausibility, I liked about her!
Sincerely,
Dashiell Hammett
San Francisco
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 by Julie M. Rivett; “Introduction” Copyright © 2016 by Richard Layman; “It” and “Bodies Piled Up” (“House Dick”) Copyright © 1923, “The Tenth Clew” Copyright © 1924 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
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