The Glass Key

by Dashiell Hammett

  She stared at him with round eyes. “What?”

  “The letter,” he said, “the typewritten letter—three questions and no signature.”

  She lowered her eyes to avoid his and embarrassment disturbed, very slightly, her features. After a moment of hesitation she asked, “How did you know?” and opened her brown hand-bag.

  “Everybody in town’s had at least one,” he said carelessly. “Is this your first?”

  “Yes.” She gave him a crumpled sheet of paper.

  He straightened it out and read:

  Are you really too stupid to know that your father murdered your lover?

  If you do not know it, why did you help him and Ned Beaumont in their attempt to fasten the crime on an innocent man?

  Do you know that by helping your father escape justice you are making yourself an accomplice in his crime?

  Ned Beaumont nodded and smiled lightly. “They’re all pretty much alike,” he said. He wadded the paper in a loose ball and tossed it at the waste-basket beside the table. “You’ll probably get some more of them now you’re on the mailing-list.”

  Opal Madvig drew her lower lip in between her teeth. Her blue eyes were bright without warmth. They studied Ned Beaumont’s composed face.

  He said: “O’Rory’s trying to make campaign-material out of it. You know about my trouble with him. That was because he thought I’d broken with your father and could be paid to help frame him for the murder—enough at least to beat him at the polls—and I wouldn’t.”

  Her eyes did not change. “What did you and Dad fight about?” she asked.

  “That’s nobody’s business but ours, snip,” he said gently, “if we did fight.”

  “You did,” she said, “in Carson’s speakeasy.” She put her teeth together with a click and said boldly: “You quarreled when you found out that he really had—had killed Taylor.”

  He laughed and asked in a mocking tone: “Hadn’t I known that all along?”

  Her expression was not affected by his humor. “Why did you ask if I had seen the Observer?” she demanded. “What was in it?”

  “Some more of the same sort of nonsense,” he told her evenly. “It’s there on the table if you want to see it. There’ll be plenty of it before the campaign’s over: this is going to be that kind. And you’ll be giving your father a swell break by swallowing—” He broke off with an impatient gesture because she was no longer listening to him.

  She had gone to the table and was picking up the newspaper he had put down when she came in.

  He smiled pleasantly at her back and said: “It’s on the front page, An Open Letter to the Mayor.”

  As she read she began to tremble—her knees, her hands, her mouth—so that Ned Beaumont frowned anxiously at her, but when she had finished and had dropped the newspaper on the table and had turned to face him directly her tall body and fair face were statue-like in their immobility. She addressed him in a low voice between lips that barely moved to let the words out: “They wouldn’t dare say such things if they were not true.”

  “That’s nothing to what’ll be said before they’re through,” he drawled lazily. He seemed amused, though there was a suggestion of anger difficultly restrained in the glitter of his eyes.

  She looked at him for a long moment, then, saying nothing, turned towards the door.

  He said: “Wait.”

  She halted and confronted him again. His smile was friendly now, ingratiating. Her face was a tinted statue’s.

  He said: “Politics is a tough game, snip, the way it’s being played here this time. The Observer is on the other side of the fence and they’re not worrying much about the truth of anything that’ll hurt Paul. They—”

  “I don’t believe that,” she said. “I know Mr. Mathews—his wife was only a few years ahead of me at school and we were friends—and I don’t believe he’d say anything like that about Dad unless it was true, or unless he had good reason for thinking it true.”

  Ned Beaumont chuckled. “You know a lot about it. Mathews is up to his ears in debt. The State Central Trust Company holds both mortgages on his plant—one on his house too, for that matter. The State Central belongs to Bill Roan. Bill Roan is running for the Senate against Henry. Mathews does what he’s told to do and prints what he’s told to print.”

  Opal Madvig did not say anything. There was nothing to indicate that she had been at all convinced by Ned Beaumont’s argument.

  He went on, speaking in an amiable, persuasive tone: “This”—he flicked a finger at the paper on the table—“is nothing to what’ll come later. They’re going to rattle Taylor Henry’s bones till they think up something worse and we’re going to have this sort of stuff to read till election’s over. We might just as well get used to it now and you, of all people, oughtn’t to let yourself be bothered by it. Paul doesn’t mind it much. He’s a politician and—”

  “He’s a murderer,” she said in a low distinct voice.

  “And his daughter’s a chump,” he exclaimed irritably. “Will you stop that foolishness?”

  “My father is a murderer,” she said.

  “You’re crazy. Listen to me, snip. Your father had absolutely nothing to do with Taylor’s murder. He—”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said gravely. “I’ll never believe you again.”

  He scowled at her.

  She turned and went to the door.

  “Wait,” he said. “Let me—”

  She went out and shut the door behind her.

  VII

  Ned Beaumont’s face, after a grimace of rage at the closed door, became heavily thoughtful. Lines came into his forehead. His dark eyes grew narrow and introspective. His lips puckered up under his mustache. Presently he put a finger to his mouth and bit its nail. He breathed regularly, but with more depth than usual.

  Footsteps sounded outside his door. He dropped his appearance of thoughtfulness and walked idly towards the window, humming Little Lost Lady. The footsteps went on past his door. He stopped humming and bent to pick up the sheet of paper holding the three questions that had been addressed to Opal Madvig. He did not smooth the paper, but thrust it, crumpled in a loose ball as it was, into one of his bathrobe-pockets.

  He found and lit a cigar then and, with it between his teeth burning, stood by the table and squinted down through smoke at the front page of the Observer lying there.

  AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MAYOR

  SIR:

  The Observer has come into possession of certain information which it believes to be of paramount importance in clearing up the mystery surrounding the recent murder of Taylor Henry.

  This information is incorporated in several affidavits now in the Oberver’s safety-deposit box. The substance of these affidavits is as follows:

  That Paul Madvig quarreled with Taylor Henry some months ago over the young man’s attentions to his daughter and forbade his daughter to see Henry again.

  That Paul Madvig’s daughter nevertheless continued to meet Taylor Henry in a furnished room he had rented for that purpose.

  That they were together in this furnished room the afternoon of the very day on which he was killed.

  That Paul Madvig went to Taylor Henry’s home that evening, supposedly to remonstrate with the young man, or his father, again.

  That Paul Madvig appeared angry when he left the Henry residence a few minutes before Taylor Henry was murdered.

  That Paul Madvig and Taylor Henry were seen within half a block of each other, less than a block from the spot where the young man’s body was found, not more than fifteen minutes before his body was found.

  That the Police Department has not at present a single detective engaged in trying to find Taylor Henry’s murderer.

  The Observer believes that you should know these things and that the voters and taxpayers should know them. The Observer has no ax to grind, no motive except the desire to see justice done. The Observer will welcome an opportunity to hand these affidavits, as well as all
other information it has, to you or to any qualified city or state official and, if such a course can be shown an aid to justice, to refrain from publishing any or all of the details of these affidavits.

  But the Observer will not permit the information incorporated in these affidavits to be ignored. If the officials elected and appointed to enforce law and order in this city and state do not consider these affidavits of sufficient importance to be acted upon, the Observer will carry the matter to that higher tribunal, the People of this City, by publishing them in full.

  H. K. MATHEWS, Publisher

  Ned Beaumont grunted derisively and blew cigar-smoke down at this declaration, but his eyes remained somber.

  VIII

  Early that afternoon Paul Madvig’s mother came to see Ned Beaumont.

  He put his arms around her and kissed her on both cheeks until she pushed him away with a mock-severe “Do stop it. You’re worse than the Airedale Paul used to have.”

  “I’m part Airedale,” he said, “on my father’s side,” and went behind her to help her out of her sealskin coat.

  Smoothing her black dress, she went to the bed and sat on it.

  He hung the coat on the back of a chair and stood—legs apart, hands in bathrobe-pockets—before her.

  She studied him critically. “You don’t look so bad,” she said presently, “nor yet so good. How do you feel?”

  “Swell. I’m only hanging around here on account of the nurses.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me much, neither,” she told him. “But don’t stand there ogling me like a Cheshire cat. You make me nervous. Sit down.” She patted the bed beside her.

  He sat down beside her.

  She said: “Paul seems to think you did something very grand and noble by doing whatever it was you did, but you can’t tell me that if you had behaved yourself you would ever have got into whatever scrape you got into at all.”

  “Aw, Mom,” he began.

  She cut him off. The gaze of her blue eyes that were young as her son’s bored into Ned Beaumont’s brown ones. “Look here, Ned, Paul didn’t kill that whipper-snapper, did he?”

  Surprise opened Ned Beaumont’s eyes and mouth. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so,” the old woman said. “He’s always been a good boy, but I’ve heard that there’s some nasty hints going around and the Lord only knows what goes on in this politics. I’m sure I haven’t any idea.”

  Amazement tinged with humor was in the eyes with which Ned Beaumont looked at her bony face.

  She said: “Well, goggle at me, but I haven’t got any way of knowing what you men are up to, or what you do without thinking anything of it. It was a long while before ever you were born that I gave up trying to find out.”

  He patted her shoulder, “You’re a humdinger, Mom,” he said admiringly.

  She drew away from his hand and fixed him with severe penetrant eyes again. “Would you tell me if he had killed him?” she demanded.

  He shook his head no.

  “Then how do I know he didn’t?”

  He laughed. “Because,” he explained, “if he had I’d still say, ‘No,’ but then, if you asked me if I’d tell you the truth if he had, I’d say, ‘Yes.’ ” Merriment went out of his eyes and voice. “He didn’t do it, Mom.” He smiled at her. He smiled with his lips only and they were thin against his teeth. “It would be nice if somebody in town besides me thought he didn’t do it and it would be especially nice if that other one was his mother.”

  IX

  An hour after Mrs. Madvig’s departure Ned Beaumont received a package containing four books and Janet Henry’s card. He was writing her a note of thanks when Jack arrived.

  Jack, letting cigarette-smoke come out with his words, said: “I think I’ve got something, though I don’t know how you’re going to like it.”

  Ned Beaumont looked thoughtfully at the sleek young man and smoothed the left side of his mustache with a forefinger. “If it’s what I hired you to get I’ll like it well enough.” His voice was matter-of-fact as Jack’s. “Sit down and tell me about it.”

  Jack sat down carefully, crossed his legs, put his hat on the floor, and looked from his cigarette to Ned Beaumont. He said: “It looks like those things were written by Madvig’s daughter.”

  Ned Beaumont’s eyes widened a little, but only for a moment. His face lost some of its color and his breathing became irregular. There was no change in his voice. “What makes it look like that?”

  From an inner pocket Jack brought two sheets of paper similar in size and make, folded alike. He gave them to Ned Beaumont who, when he had unfolded them, saw that on each were three typewritten questions, the same three questions on each sheet.

  “One of them’s the one you gave me yesterday,” Jack said. “Could you tell which?”

  Ned Beaumont shook his head slowly from side to side.

  “There’s no difference,” Jack said. “I wrote the other one on Charter Street where Taylor Henry had a room that Madvig’s daughter used to come to—with a Corona typewriter that was there and on paper that was there. So far as anybody seems to know there were only two keys to the place. He had one and she had one. She’s been back there at least a couple of times since he was killed.”

  Ned Beaumont, scowling now at the sheets of paper in his hands, nodded without looking up.

  Jack lit a fresh cigarette from the one he had been smoking, rose and went to the table to mash the old cigarette in the ashtray there, and returned to his seat. There was nothing in his face or manner to show that he had any interest in Ned Beaumont’s reaction to their discovery.

  After another minute of silence Ned Beaumont raised his head a little and asked: “How’d you get this?”

  Jack put his cigarette in a corner of his mouth where it wagged with his words. “The Observer tip on the place this morning gave me the lead. That’s where the police got theirs too, but they got there first. I got a pretty good break, though: the copper left in charge was a friend of mine—Fred Hurley—and for a ten-spot he let me do all the poking around I wanted.”

  Ned Beaumont rattled the papers in his hand. “Do the police know this?” he asked.

  Jack shrugged. “I didn’t tell them. I pumped Hurley, but he didn’t know anything—just put there to watch things till they decide what they’re going to do. Maybe they know, maybe they don’t.” He shook cigarette-ash on the floor. “I could find out.”

  “Never mind that. What else did you turn up?”

  “I didn’t look for anything else.”

  Ned Beaumont, after a quick glance at the dark young man’s inscrutable face, looked down at the sheets of paper again. “What kind of dump is it?”

  “Thirteen twenty-four. They had a room and bath under the name of French. The woman that runs the place claims she didn’t know who they really were till the police came today. Maybe she didn’t. It’s the kind of joint where not much is asked. She says they used to be there a lot, mostly in the afternoons, and that the girl’s been back a couple of times in the last week or so that she knows of, though she could pop in and out without being seen easily enough.”

  “Sure it’s her?”

  Jack made a noncommittal gesture with one hand. “The description’s right.” He paused, then added carelessly as he exhaled smoke: “She’s the only one the woman saw since he was killed.”

  Ned Beaumont raised his head again. His eyes were hard. “Taylor had others coming there?” he asked.

  Jack made the noncommittal gesture once more. “The woman wouldn’t say so. She said she didn’t know, but from the way she said it I’d say it was a safe bet she was lying.”

  “Couldn’t tell by what’s in the place?”

  Jack shook his head. “No. There’s not much woman stuff there—just a kimono and toilet things and pajamas and stuff like that.”

  “Much of his stuff there?”

  “Oh, a suit and a pair of shoes and some underwear and pajamas and socks and so on.”

  �
�Any hats?”

  Jack smiled. “No hats,” he said.

  Ned Beaumont got up and went to the window. Outside darkness was almost complete. A dozen raindrops clung to the glass and as many more struck it lightly while Ned Beaumont stood there. He turned to face Jack again. “Thanks a lot, Jack,” he said slowly. His eyes were focused on Jack’s face in a dully absent-minded stare. “I think maybe I’ll have another job for you soon—maybe tonight. I’ll give you a ring.”

  Jack said, “Right,” and rose and went out.

  Ned Beaumont went to the closet for his clothes, carried them into the bathroom, and put them on. When he came out a nurse was in his room, a tall full-bodied woman with a shiny pale face.

  “Why, you’re dressed!” she exclaimed.

  “Yes, I’ve got to go out.”

  Alarm joined astonishment in her mien. “But you can’t, Mr. Beaumont,” she protested. “It’s night and it’s beginning to rain and Doctor Tait would—”

  “I know, I know,” he said impatiently, and went around her to the door.

  6

  THE OBSERVER

  I

  Mrs. Madvig opened her front door. “Ned!” she cried, “are you crazy? Running around on a night like this, and you just out of the hospital.”

  “The taxi didn’t leak,” he said, but his grin lacked virility. “Paul in?”

  “He went out not more than half an hour ago, I think to the Club. But come in, come in.”

  “Opal home?” he asked as he shut the door and followed her down the hall.

  “No. She’s been off somewhere since morning.”

  Ned Beaumont halted in the living-room doorway. “I can’t stay,” he said. “I’ll run on down to the Club and see Paul there.” His voice was not quite steady.