The Glass Key

by Dashiell Hammett

  He frowned at her in mock indignation.

  She frowned at him. Her frown was genuine. “Did your car really break down?” she demanded, “or did you come here to see them on the same dull business that’s making them so stupidly mysterious? You did. You’re another one of them.”

  He laughed. He asked: “It wouldn’t make any difference why I came if I changed my mind after seeing you, would it?”

  “No—o—o”—she was suspicious—“but I’d have to be awfully sure you had changed it.”

  “And anyway,” he promised lightly, “I won’t be mysterious about anything. Haven’t you really got an idea of what they’re all eating their hearts out about?”

  “Not the least,” she replied spitefully, “except that I’m pretty sure it must be something very stupid and probably political.”

  He put his free hand up and patted one of hers. “Smart girl, right on both counts.” He turned his head to look at O’Rory and Mathews. When his eyes came back to hers they were shiny with merriment. “Want me to tell you about it?”

  “No.”

  “First,” he said, “Opal thinks her father murdered Taylor Henry.”

  Opal Madvig made a horrible strangling noise in her throat and sprang up from the footstool. She put the back of one hand over her mouth. Her eyes were open so wide the whites showed all around the irises and they were glassy and dreadful.

  Rusty lurched to his feet, his face florid with anger, but Jeff, leering, caught the boy’s arm. “Let him alone,” he rasped good-naturedly “He’s all right.” The boy stood straining against the apish man’s grip on his arm, but did not try to free himself.

  Eloise Mathews sat frozen in her chair, staring without comprehension at Opal.

  Mathews was trembling, a shrunken grey-faced sick man whose lower lip and lower eyelids sagged.

  Shad O’Rory was sitting forward in his chair, finely modeled long face pale and hard, eyes like blue-grey ice, hands gripping chair-arms, feet flat on the floor.

  “Second,” Ned Beaumont said, his poise nowise disturbed by the agitation of the others, “she—”

  “Ned, don’t!” Opal Madvig cried.

  He screwed himself around on the floor then to look up at her.

  She had taken her hand from her mouth. Her hands were knotted together against her chest. Her stricken eyes, her whole haggard face, begged mercy of him.

  He studied her gravely awhile. Through window and wall came the sound of rain dashing against the building in wild gusts and between gusts the bustling of the near-by river. His eyes, studying her, were cool, deliberate. Presently he spoke to her in a voice kind enough but aloof: “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  “Please don’t,” she said hoarsely.

  He moved his lips in a thin smile that his eyes had nothing to do with and asked: “Nobody’s supposed to go around talking about it except you and your father’s other enemies?”

  She put her hands—fists—down at her sides, raised her face angrily, and said in a hard ringing voice: “He did murder Taylor.”

  Ned Beaumont leaned back against his hand again and looked up at Eloise Mathews. “That’s what I was telling you,” he drawled. “Thinking that, she went to your husband after she saw the junk he printed this morning. Of course he didn’t think Paul had done any killing: he’s just in a tough spot—with his mortgages held by the State Central, which is owned by Shad’s candidate for the Senate—and he has to do what he’s told. What she—”

  Mathews interrupted him. The publisher’s voice was thin and desperate. “Now you stop that, Beaumont. You—”

  O’Rory interrupted Mathews. O’Rory’s voice was quiet, musical. “Let him talk, Mathews,” he said. “Let him say his say.”

  “Thanks, Shad,” Ned Beaumont said carelessly, not looking around, and went on: “She went to your husband to have him confirm her suspicion, but he couldn’t give her anything that would do that unless he lied to her. He doesn’t know anything. He’s simply throwing mud wherever Shad tells him to throw it. But here’s what he can do and does. He can print in tomorrow’s paper the story about her coming in and telling him she believes her father killed her lover. That’ll be a lovely wallop. ‘Opal Madvig Accuses Father of Murder; Boss’s Daughter Says He Killed Senator’s Son!’ Can’t you see that in black ink all across the front of the Observer?”

  Eloise Mathews, her eyes large, her face white, was listening breathlessly, bending forward, her face above his. Wind-flung rain beat walls and windows. Rusty filled and emptied his lungs with a long sighing breath.

  Ned Beaumont put the tip of his tongue between smiling lips, withdrew it, and said: “That’s why he brought her up here, to keep her under cover till the story breaks. Maybe he knew Shad and the boys were here, maybe not. It doesn’t make any difference. He’s getting her off where nobody can find out what she’s done till the papers are out. I don’t mean that he’d’ve brought her here, or would hold her here, against her will—that wouldn’t be very bright of him the way things stack up now—but none of that’s necessary. She’s willing to go to any lengths to ruin her father.”

  Opal Madvig said, in a whisper, but distinctly: “He did kill him.”

  Ned Beaumont sat up straight and looked at her. He looked solemnly at her for a moment, then smiled, shook his head in a gesture of amused resignation, and leaned back on his elbows.

  Eloise Mathews was staring with dark eyes wherein wonder was predominant at her husband. He had sat down. His head was bowed. His hands hid his face.

  Shad O’Rory recrossed his legs and took out a cigarette. “Through?” he asked mildly.

  Ned Beaumont’s back was to O’Rory. He did not turn to reply: “You’d hardly believe how through I am.” His voice was level, but his face was suddenly tired, spent.

  O’Rory lit his cigarette. “Well,” he said when he had done that, “what the hell does it all amount to? It’s our turn to hang a big one on you and we’re doing it. The girl came in with the story on her own hook. She came here because she wanted to. So did you. She and you and anybody else can go wherever they want to go whenever they want to.” he stood up. “Personally, I’m wanting to go to bed. Where do I sleep, Mathews?”

  Eloise Mathews spoke, to her husband: “This is not true, Hal.” It was not a question.

  He was slow taking his hands from his face. He achieved dignity saying: “Darling, there is a dozen times enough evidence against Madvig to justify us in insisting that the police at least question him. That is all we have done.”

  “I did not mean that,” his wife said.

  “Well, darling, when Miss Madvig came—” He faltered, stopped, a grey-faced man who shivered before the look in his wife’s eyes and put his hands over his face again.

  V

  Eloise Mathews and Ned Beaumont were alone in the large ground-floor room, sitting, in chairs a few feet apart, with the fireplace in front of them. She was bent forward, looking with tragic eyes at the last burning log. His legs were crossed. One of his arms was hooked over the back of his chair. He smoked a cigar and watched her surreptitiously.

  The stairs creaked and her husband came half-way down them. He was fully clothed except that he had taken off his collar. His necktie, partially loosened, hung outside his vest. He said: “Darling, won’t you come to bed? It’s midnight.”

  She did not move.

  He said: “Mr. Beaumont, will you—?”

  Ned Beaumont, when his name was spoken, turned his face towards the man on the stairs, a face cruelly placid. When Mathews’s voice broke, Ned Beaumont returned his attention to his cigar and Mathews’s wife.

  After a little while Mathews went upstairs again.

  Eloise Mathews spoke without taking her gaze from the fire. “There is some whisky in the chest. Will you get it?”

  “Surely.” He found the whisky and brought it to her, then found some glasses. “Straight?” he asked.

  She nodded. Her round breasts were moving the red silk of her dre
ss irregularly with her breathing.

  He poured two large drinks.

  She did not look up from the fire until he had put one glass in her hand. When she looked up she smiled, crookedly, twisting her heavily rouged exquisite thin lips sidewise. Her eyes, reflecting red light from the fire, were too bright.

  He smiled down at her.

  She lifted her glass and said, cooing: “To my husband!”

  Ned Beaumont said, “No,” casually and tossed the contents of his glass into the fireplace, where it sputtered and threw dancing flames up.

  She laughed in delight and jumped to her feet. “Pour another,” she ordered.

  He picked the bottle up from the floor and refilled his glass.

  She lifted hers high over her head. “To you!”

  They drank. She shuddered.

  “Better take something with it or after it,” he suggested.

  She shook her head. “I want it that way.” She put a hand on his arm and turned her back to the fire, standing close beside him. “Let’s bring that bench over here.”

  “That’s an idea,” he agreed.

  They moved the chairs from in front of the fireplace and brought the bench there, he carrying one end, she the other. The bench was broad, low, backless.

  “Now turn off the lights,” she said.

  He did so. When he returned to the bench she was sitting on it pouring whisky into their glasses.

  “To you, this time,” he said and they drank and she shuddered.

  He sat beside her. They were rosy in the glow from the fireplace.

  The stairs creaked and her husband came down them. He halted on the bottom step and said: “Please, darling!”

  She whispered in Ned Beaumont’s ear, savagely: “Throw something at him.”

  Ned Beaumont chuckled.

  She picked up the whisky-bottle and said: “Where’s your glass?”

  While she was filling their glasses Mathews went upstairs.

  She gave Ned Beaumont his glass and touched it with her own. Her eyes were wild in the red glow. A lock of dark hair had come loose and was down across her brow. She breathed through her mouth, panting softly. “To us!” she said.

  They drank. She let her empty glass fall and came into his arms. Her mouth was to his when she shuddered. The fallen glass broken noisily on the wooden floor. Ned Beaumont’s eyes were narrow, crafty. Hers were shut tight.

  They had not moved when the stairs creaked. Ned Beaumont did not move then. She tightened her thin arms around him. He could not see the stairs. Both of them were breathing heavily now.

  Then the stairs creaked again and, shortly afterwards, they drew their heads apart, though they kept their arms about one another. Ned Beaumont looked at the stairs. Nobody was there.

  Eloise Mathews slid her hand up the back of his head, running her fingers through his hair, digging her nails into his scalp. Her eyes were not now altogether closed. They were laughing dark slits. “Life’s like that,” she said in a small bitter mocking voice, leaning back on the bench, drawing him with her, drawing his mouth to hers.

  They were in that position when they heard the shot.

  Ned Beaumont was out of her arms and on his feet immediately. “His room?” he asked sharply.

  She blinked at him in dumb terror.

  “His room?” he repeated.

  She moved a feeble hand. “In front,” she said thickly.

  He ran to the stairs and went up in long leaps. At the head of the stairs he came face to face with the apish Jeff, dressed except for his shoes, blinking sleep out of his swollen eyes. Jeff put a hand to his hip, put the other hand out to stop Ned Beaumont, and growled: “Now what’s all this?”

  Ned avoided the outstretched hand, slid past it, and drove his left fist into the apish muzzle. Jeff staggered back snarling. Ned Beaumont sprang past him and ran towards the front of the building. O’Rory came out of another room and ran behind him.

  From downstairs came Mrs. Mathews’s scream.

  Ned Beaumont flung a door open and stopped. Mathews lay on his back on the bedroom-floor under a lamp. His mouth was open and a little blood had trickled from it. One of his arms was thrown out across the floor. The other lay on his chest. Over against the wall, where the outstretched arm seemed to be pointing at it, was a dark revolver. On a table by the window was a bottle of ink—its stopper upside down beside it—a pen, and a sheet of paper. A chair stood close to the table, facing it.

  Shad O’Rory pushed past Ned Beaumont and knelt beside the man on the floor. While he was there Ned Beaumont, behind him, swiftly glanced at the paper on the table, then thrust it into his pocket.

  Jeff came in, followed by Rusty, naked.

  O’Rory stood up and spread his hands apart in a little gesture of finality. “Shot himself through the roof of the mouth,” he said. “Finis.”

  Ned Beaumont turned and went out of the room. In the hall he met Opal Madvig.

  “What, Ned?” she asked in a frightened voice.

  “Mathews has shot himself. I’ll go down and stay with her till you get some clothes on. Don’t go in there. There’s nothing to see.” He went downstairs.

  Eloise Mathews was a dim shape lying on the floor beside the bench.

  He took two quick steps towards her, halted, and looked around the room with shrewd cold eyes. Then he walked over to the woman, went down on one knee beside her, and felt her pulse. He looked at her as closely as he could in the dull light of the dying fire. She gave no sign of consciousness. He pulled the paper he had taken from her husband’s table out of his pocket and moved on his knees to the fireplace, where, in the red embers’ glow, he read:

  I, Howard Keith Mathews, being of sound mind and memory, declare this to be my last will and testament:

  I give and bequeath to my beloved wife, Eloise Braden Mathews, her heirs and assigns, all my real and personal property, of whatever nature or kind.

  I hereby appoint the State Central Trust Company the sole executor of this will.

  In witness whereof I have hereunto subscribed my name this …

  Ned Beaumont, smiling grimly, stopped reading and tore the will three times across. He stood up, reached over the fire-screen, and dropped the torn pieces of paper into the glowing embers. The fragments blazed brightly a moment and were gone. With the wrought-iron shovel that stood beside the fire he mashed the paper-ash into the wood-coals.

  Then he returned to Mrs. Mathews’s side, poured a little whisky into the glass he had drunk from, raised her head, and forced some of the liquor between her lips. She was partly awake, coughing, when Opal Madvig came downstairs.

  VI

  Shad O’Rory came down the stairs. Jeff and Rusty were behind him. All of them were dressed. Ned Beaumont was standing by the door, in rain-coat and hat.

  “Where are you going, Ned?” Shad asked.

  “To find a phone.”

  O’Rory nodded. “That’s a good enough idea,” he said, “but there’s something I want to ask you about.” He came the rest of the way down the stairs, his followers close behind him.

  Ned Beaumont said: “Yes?” He took his hand out of his pocket. The hand was visible to O’Rory and the men behind him, but Ned Beaumont’s body concealed it from the bench where Opal sat with arms around Eloise Mathews. A square pistol was in the hand. “Just so there won’t be any foolishness. I’m in a hurry.”

  O’Rory did not seem to see the pistol, though he came no nearer. He said, reflectively: “I was thinking that with an open ink-bottle and a pen on the table and a chair up to it it’s kind of funny we didn’t find any writing up there.”

  Ned Beaumont smiled in mock astonishment. “What, no writing?” He took a step backwards, towards the door. “That’s a funny one, all right. I’ll discuss it with you for hours when I come back from phoning.”

  “Now would be better,” O’Rory said.

  “Sorry.” Ned Beaumont backed swiftly to the door, felt behind him for the knob, found it, and had the door open
. “I won’t be gone long.” He jumped out and slammed the door.

  The rain had stopped. He left the path and ran through tall grass around the other side of the house. From the house came the sound of another door slamming in the rear. The river was audible not far to Ned Beaumont’s left. He worked his way through underbrush towards it.

  A high-pitched sharp whistle, not loud, sounded somewhere behind him. He floundered through an area of soft mud to a clump of trees and turned away from the river among them. The whistle came again, on his right. Beyond the trees were shoulder-high bushes. He went among them, bending forward from the waist for concealment, though the night’s blackness was all but complete.

  His way was uphill, up a hill frequently slippery, always uneven, through brush that tore his face and hands, caught his clothing. Three times he fell. He stumbled many times. The whistle did not come again. He did not find the Buick. He did not find the road along which he had come.

  He dragged his feet now and stumbled where there were no obstructions and when presently he had topped the hill and was going down its other slope he began to fall more often. At the bottom of the hill he found a road and turned to the right on it. Its clay stuck to his feet in increasing bulk so that he had to stop time after time to scrape it off. He used his pistol to scrape it off.

  When he heard a dog bark behind him he stopped and turned drunkenly to look back. Close to the road, fifty feet behind him, was the vague outline of a house he had passed. He retraced his steps and came to a tall gate. The dog—a shapeless monster in the night—hurled itself at the other side of the gate and barked terrifically.

  Ned Beaumont fumbled along an end of the gate, found the catch, unfastened it, and staggered in. The dog backed away, circling, feinting attacks it never made, filling the night with clamor.

  A window screeched up and a heavy voice called: “What the hell are you doing to that dog?”