The Glass Key

by Dashiell Hammett

  “Made any progress since I saw you last? Turned up anything new on it?”

  Farr shook his head. His eyes were wary.

  Ned Beaumont smiled without warmth. “Still taking it slow on some of the angles?”

  The District Attorney squirmed in his chair. “Well, yes, of course, Ned.”

  Ned Beaumont nodded approvingly. His eyes were shiny with malice. His voice was a taunt: “Is the Ben Ferriss angle one of them that you’re taking it slow on?”

  Farr’s blunt undershot mouth opened and shut. He rubbed his lips together. His eyes, after their first startled widening, became devoid of expression. He said: “I don’t know whether there’s anything at all in Ferriss’s story or not, Ned. I don’t guess there is. I didn’t even think enough of it to tell you about it.”

  Ned Beaumont laughed derisively.

  Farr said: “You know I wouldn’t hold out anything on you and Paul, anything that was important. You know me well enough for that.”

  “We knew you before you got nerves,” Ned Beaumont replied. “But that’s all right. If you want the fellow that was in the car with Ferriss you can pick him up right now in room 417 at the Majestic.”

  Farr was staring at his green desk-set, at the dancing nude figure holding an airplane aloft between two slanting pens. His face was lumpy. He said nothing.

  Ned Beaumont rose from his chair smiling with thin lips. He said: “Paul’s always glad to help the boys out of holes. Do you think it would help if he’d let himself be arrested and tried for the Henry murder?”

  Farr did not move his eyes from the green desk-set. He said doggedly: “It’s not for me to tell Paul what to do.”

  “There’s a thought!” Ned Beaumont exclaimed. He leaned over the side of the desk until his face was near the District Attorney’s ear and lowered his voice to a confidential key. “And here’s another one that goes with it. It’s not for you to do much Paul wouldn’t tell you to do.”

  He went out grinning, but stopped grinning when he was outside.

  8

  THE KISS-OFF

  I

  Ned Beaumont opened a door marked East State Construction & Contracting Company and exchanged good-afternoons with the two young ladies at desks inside, then he passed through a larger room in which there were half a dozen men to whom he spoke and opened a door marked Private. He went into a square room where Paul Madvig sat at a battered desk looking at papers placed in front of him by a small man who hovered respectfully over his shoulder.

  Madvig raised his head and said: “Hello, Ned.” He pushed the papers aside and told the small man: “Bring this junk back after awhile.”

  The small man gathered up his papers and, saying, “Certainly, sir,” and, “How do you do, Mr. Beaumont?” left the room.

  Madvig said: “You look like you’d had a tough night, Ned. What’d you do? Sit down.”

  Ned Beaumont had taken off his overcoat. He put it on a chair, put his hat on it, and took out a cigar. “No, I’m all right. What’s new in your life?” He sat on a corner of the battered desk.

  “I wish you’d go see M’Laughlin,” the blond man said. “You can handle him if anybody can.”

  “All right. What’s the matter with him?”

  Madvig grimaced. “Christ knows! I thought I had him lined up, but he’s going shifty on us.”

  A somber gleam came into Ned Beaumont’s dark eyes. He looked down at the blond man and said: “Him too, huh?”

  Madvig asked slowly, after a moment’s deliberation: “What do you mean by that, Ned?”

  Ned Beaumont’s reply was another question: “Is everything going along to suit you?”

  Madvig moved his big shoulders impatiently, but his eyes did not lose their surveying stare. “Nor so damned bad either,” he said. “We can get along without M’Laughlin’s batch of votes if we have to.”

  “Maybe,” Ned Beaumont’s lips had become thin, “but we can’t keep on losing them and come out all right.” He put his cigar in a corner of his mouth and said around it: “You know we’re not as well off as we were two weeks ago.”

  Madvig grinned indulgently at the man on his desk. “Jesus, you like to sing them, Ned! Don’t anything ever look right to you?” He did not wait for a reply, but went on placidly: “I’ve never been through a campaign yet that didn’t look like it was going to hell at some time or other. They don’t, though.”

  Ned Beaumont was lighting his cigar. He blew smoke out and said: “That doesn’t mean they never will.” He pointed the cigar at Madvig’s chest. “If Taylor Henry’s killing isn’t cleared up pronto you won’t have to worry about the campaign. You’ll be sunk whoever wins.”

  Madvig’s blue eyes became opaque. There was no other change in his face. His voice was unchanged. “Just what do you mean by that, Ned?”

  “Everybody in town thinks you killed him.”

  “Yes?” Madvig put a hand up to his chin, rubbed it thoughtfully. “Don’t let that worry you. I’ve had things said about me before.”

  Ned Beaumont smiled tepidly and asked with mock admiration: “Is there anything you haven’t been through before? Ever been given the electric cure?”

  The blond man laughed. “And don’t think I ever will,” he said.

  “You’re not very far from it right now, Paul,” Ned Beaumont said softly.

  Madvig laughed again. “Jesus Christ!” he scoffed.

  Ned Beaumont shrugged. “You’re not busy?” he asked. “I’m not taking up your time with my nonsense?”

  “I’m listening to you,” Madvig told him quietly. “I never lost anything listening to you.”

  “Thank you, sir. Why do you suppose M’Laughlin’s wiggling out from under?”

  Madvig shook his head.

  “He figures you’re licked,” Ned Beaumont said. “Everybody knows the police haven’t tried to find Taylor’s murderer and everybody thinks it’s because you killed him. M’Laughlin figures that’s enough to lick you at the polls this time.”

  “Yes? He figures they’d rather have Shad running the city than me? He figures being suspected of one murder makes my rep worse than Shad’s?”

  Ned Beaumont scowled at the blond man. “You’re either kidding yourself or trying to kid me. What’s Shad’s reputation got to do with it? He’s not out in the open behind his candidates. You are and it’s your candidates who’re responsible for nothing being done about the murder.”

  Madvig put his hand to his chin again and leaned his elbow on the desk. His handsome ruddy face was unlined. He said: “We’ve been talking a lot about what other people figure, Ned. Let’s talk about what you figure. Figure I’m licked?”

  “You probably are,” Ned Beaumont said in a low sure voice. “It’s a cinch you are if you sit still.” He smiled. “But your candidates ought to come out all right.”

  “That,” Madvig said phlegmatically, “ought to be explained.”

  Ned Beaumont leaned over and carefully knocked cigar-ash into the brass spittoon beside the desk. Then he said, unemotionally: “They’re going to cross you up.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why not? You’ve let Shad take most of the riffraff from behind you. You’re counting on the respectable people, the better element, to carry the election. They’re getting leery. Well, your candidates make a grandstand-play, arrest you for murder, and the respectable citizens—delighted with these noble officials who are brave enough to jail their own acknowledged boss when he breaks the law—trample each other to death in their hurry to get to the polls and elect the heroes to four more years of city-administering. You can’t blame the boys much. They know they’re sitting pretty if they do it and out of work if they don’t.”

  Madvig took his hand from his chin to ask: “You don’t count much on their loyalty, do you, Ned?”

  Ned Beaumont smiled. “Just as much as you do,” he replied. His smile went away. “I’m not guessing, Paul. I went in to see Farr this afternoon. I had to walk in, crash the gate—he tried to dodge
me. He pretended he hadn’t been digging into the killing. He tried to stall me on what he’d found out. In the end he dummied up on me.” He made a disdainful mouth. “Farr, the guy I could always make jump through hoops.”

  “Well, that’s only Farr,” Madvig began.

  Ned Beaumont cut him short. “Only Farr, and that’s the tip-off. Rutlege or Brody or even Rainey might clip you on their own, but if Farr’s doing anything it’s a pipe he knows the others are with him.” He frowned at the blond man’s stolid face. “You can stop believing me any time you want to, Paul.”

  Madvig made a careless gesture with the hand he had held to his chin. “I’ll let you know when I stop,” he said. “How’d you happen to drop in on Farr?”

  “Harry Sloss called me up today. It seems he and Ben Ferriss saw you arguing with Taylor in China Street the night of the murder, or claim they did.” Ned Beaumont was looking with eyes that held no particular expression at the blond man and his voice was matter-of-fact. “Ben had gone to Farr with it. Harry wanted to be paid for not going. There’s a couple of your Club-members reading the signs. I’ve been watching Farr lose his nerve for some time, so I went in to check him up.”

  Madvig nodded. “And you’re sure he’s knifing me?”

  “Yes.”

  Madvig got up from his chair and went to the window. He stood there, hands in trousers-pockets, looking through the glass for perhaps three minutes while Ned Beaumont, sitting on the desk, smoked and looked at the blond man’s wide back. Then, not turning his head, Madvig asked: “What’d you say to Harry?”

  “Stalled him.”

  Madvig left the window and came back to the desk, but he did not sit down. His ruddiness had deepened. Otherwise no change had come into his face. His voice was level. “What do you think we ought to do?”

  “About Sloss? Nothing. The other monkey’s already gone to Farr. It doesn’t make much difference what Sloss does.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant about the whole thing.”

  Ned Beaumont dropped his cigar into the spittoon. “I’ve told you. If Taylor Henry’s murder isn’t cleared up pronto you’re sunk. That’s the whole thing. That’s the only thing worth doing anything about.”

  Madvig stopped looking at Ned Beaumont. He looked at a wide vacant space on the wall. He pressed his full lips together. Moisture appeared on his temples. He said from deep in his chest: “That won’t do. Think up something else.”

  Ned Beaumont’s nostrils moved with his breathing and the brown of his eyes seemed dark as the pupils. He said: “There isn’t anything else, Paul. Any other way plays into the hands of either Shad or Farr and his crew and either of them will ruin you.”

  Madvig said somewhat hoarsely: “There must be an out, Ned. Think.”

  Ned Beaumont left the desk and stood close in front of the blond man. “There isn’t. That’s the only way. You’re going to take it whether you like it or not, or I’m going to take it for you.”

  Madvig shook his head violently. “No. Lay off.”

  Ned Beaumont said: “That’s one thing I won’t do for you, Paul.”

  Then Madvig looked Ned Beaumont in the eyes and said in a harsh whisper: “I killed him, Ned.”

  Ned Beaumont drew a breath in and let it out in a long sigh.

  Madvig put his hands on Ned Beaumont’s shoulders and his words came out thick and blurred. “It was an accident, Ned. He ran down the street after me when I left, with a cane he’d picked up on the way out. We’d had—there’d been some trouble there and he caught up with me and tried to hit me with the stick. I don’t know how it happened, but pulling it away from him I hit him on the head with it—not hard—it couldn’t’ve been very hard—but he fell back and smashed his head on the curb.”

  Ned Beaumont nodded. His face had suddenly become empty of all expression except hard concentration on Madvig’s words. He asked in a crisp voice that matched his face: “What happened to the cane?”

  “I took it away under my overcoat and burned it. After I knew he was dead I found it in my hand, when I was walking down to the Club, so I put it under my overcoat and then burned it.”

  “What kind of cane was it?”

  “A rough brown one, heavy.”

  “And his hat?”

  “I don’t know, Ned. I guess it was knocked off and somebody picked it up.”

  “He had one on?”

  “Yes, sure.”

  Ned Beaumont brushed a side of his mustache with a thumb-nail. “You remember Sloss’s and Ferriss’s car passing you?”

  Madvig shook his head. “No, though they may have.”

  Ned Beaumont frowned at the blond man. “You gummed things up plenty by running off with the stick and burning it and keeping quiet all this time,” he grumbled. “You had a clear self-defense plea.”

  “I know, but I didn’t want that, Ned,” Madvig said hoarsely. “I want Janet Henry more than I ever wanted anything in my life and what chance would I have then, even if it was an accident?” Ned Beaumont laughed in Madvig’s face. It was a low laugh and bitter. He said: “You’d have more chance than you’ve got now.”

  Madvig, staring at him, said nothing.

  Ned Beaumont said: “She’s always thought you killed her brother. She hates you. She’s been trying to play you into the electric chair. She’s responsible for first throwing suspicion on you with anonymous letters sent around to everybody that might be interested. She’s the one that turned Opal against you. She was in my rooms this morning telling me this, trying to turn me. She—”

  Madvig said: “That’s enough.” He stood erect, a big blond man whose eyes were cold blue disks. “What is it, Ned? Do you want her yourself or is it—” He broke off contemptuously. “It doesn’t make any difference.” He jerked a thumb carelessly at the door. “Get out, you heel, this is the kiss-off.”

  Ned Beaumont said: “I’ll get out when I’ve finished talking.”

  Madvig said: “You’ll get out when you’re told to. You can’t say anything I’ll believe. You haven’t said anything I believe. You never will now.”

  Ned Beaumont said: “Oke.” He picked up his hat and overcoat and went out.

  II

  Ned Beaumont went home. His face was pale and sullen. He slouched down in one of the big red chairs with a bottle of Bourbon whisky and a glass on the table beside him, but he did not drink. He stared gloomily at his black-shod feet and bit a finger-nail. His telephone-bell rang. He did not answer it. Twilight began to displace day in the room. The room was dusky when he rose and went to the telephone.

  He called a number. Then: “Hello, I’d like to speak to Miss Henry, please.” After a pause that he spent whistling tunelessly under his breath, he said: “Hello, Miss Henry?… Yes.… I’ve just come from telling Paul all about it, about you.… Yes, and you were right. He did what you counted on his doing.…” He laughed. “You did. You knew he’d call me a liar, refuse to listen to me, and throw me out, and he did all of it.… No, no, that’s all right. It had to happen.… No, really.… Oh, it’s probably permanent enough. Things were said that can’t easily be unsaid.… Yes, all evening, I think.… That’ll be fine.… All right. ’By.”

  He poured out a glass of whisky then and drank it. After that he went into his darkening bedroom, set his alarm-clock for eight o’clock, and lay down fully clothed on his back on the bed. For a while he looked at the ceiling. Then he slept, breathing irregularly, until the alarm rang.

  He got up sluggishly from his bed and, switching on lights, went into the bathroom, washed his face and hands, put on a fresh collar, and started a fire in the living-room fireplace. He read a newspaper until Janet Henry arrived.

  She was excited. Though she at once began to assure Ned Beaumont that she had not foreseen the result of his telling Paul about her visit, had not counted on it, elation danced frankly in her eyes and she could not keep smiles from curving her lips while they shaped the apologetic words.

  He said: “It doesn’t matter. I’d’
ve had to do it if I’d known how it was going to turn out. I suppose I did know down underneath. It’s one of those things. And if you’d told me it would happen I’d only’ve taken that for a challenge and would’ve jumped to it.”

  She held her hands out to him. “I’m glad,” she said. “I won’t pretend I’m not.”

  “I’m sorry,” he told her as he took her hands, “but I wouldn’t have gone a step out of my way to avoid it.”

  She said: “And now you know I’m right. He did kill Taylor.” Her eyes were inquisitive.

  He nodded. “He told me he did.”

  “And you’ll help me now?” Her hands pressed his. She came closer to him.

  He hesitated, frowning down at her eager face. “It was self-defense, or an accident,” he said slowly. “I can’t—”

  “It was murder!” she cried. “Of course he’d say it was self-defense!” She shook her head impatiently. “And even if it was self-defense or an accident, shouldn’t he be made to go into court and prove it like anybody else?”

  “He’s waited too long. This month he’s kept quiet would be against him.”

  “Well, whose fault was that?” she demanded. “And do you think he would have kept quiet so long if it had been self-defense?”

  He nodded with slow emphasis. “That was on your account. He’s in love with you. He didn’t want you to know he’d killed your brother.”

  “I do know it!” she cried fiercely. “And everybody’s going to know it!”

  He moved his shoulders a little. His face was gloomy.

  “You won’t help me?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Why? You’ve quarreled with him.”

  “I believe his story. I know it’s too late for him to put it across in court. We’re through, but I won’t do that to him.” He moistened his lips. “Let him alone. It’s likely they’ll do it to him without your help or mine.”

  “I won’t,” she said. “I won’t let him alone until he’s been punished as he deserves.” She caught her breath and her eyes darkened. “Do you believe him enough to risk finding proof that he lied to you?”