Nightmare Town

by Dashiell Hammett

  Millar’s thin mouth tightened and his brows drew together with obstinate reticence.

  “I thought we settled that point, Rush. I told you—”

  Alec Rush frowned at his client with jovial, though frightful exasperation.

  “I know what you told me,” he interrupted. “But that was then and this is now. The thing’s coming unwound on me, and I can see just enough to get myself tangled up if I don’t watch Harvey. I found your mysterious man, talked to him. He was following Mrs. Landow, right enough. According to the way he tells it, he’s been hired to kill her.”

  Millar leaped from his chair to lean over the yellow desk, his face close to the detective’s.

  “My God, Rush, what are you saying? To kill her?”

  “Now, now! Take it easy. He’s not going to kill her. I don’t think he ever meant to. But he claims he was hired to do it.”

  “You’ve arrested him? You’ve found the man who hired him?”

  The detective squinted up his bloodshot eyes and studied the younger man’s passionate face.

  “As a matter of fact,” he croaked calmly when he had finished his examination, “I haven’t done either of those things. She’s in no danger just now. Maybe the lad was stringing me, maybe he wasn’t, but either way he wouldn’t have spilled it to me if he meant to do anything. And when it comes right down to it, Mr. Millar, do you want him arrested?”

  “Yes! That is—” Millar stepped back from the desk, sagged limply down on the chair again, and put shaking hands over his face. “My God, Rush, I don’t know!” he gasped.

  “Exactly,” said Alec Rush. “Now here it is. Mrs. Landow was Jerome Falsoner’s niece and heir. She worked for your trust company. She married Landow the morning her uncle was found dead. Yesterday Landow visited the building where Madeline Boudin lives. She was the last person known to have been in Falsoner’s rooms before he was killed. But her alibi seems to be as air-tight as the Landows’. The man who claims he was hired to kill Mrs. Landow also visited Madeline Boudin’s building yesterday. I saw him go in. I saw him meet another woman. A shoplifter, the second one. In her rooms I found a photograph of Hubert Landow. Your dark man claims he was hired twice to kill Mrs. Landow—by two women neither knowing the other had hired him. He won’t tell me who they are, but he doesn’t have to.”

  The hoarse voice stopped and Alec Rush waited for Millar to speak. But Millar was for the time without a voice. His eyes were wide and despairingly empty. Alec Rush raised one big hand, folded it into a fist that was almost perfectly spherical, and thumped his desk softly.

  “There it is, Mr. Millar,” he rasped. “A pretty tangle. If you’ll tell me what you know, we’ll get it straightened out, never fear. If you don’t—I’m out!”

  Now Millar found words, however jumbled.

  “You couldn’t, Rush! You can’t desert me—us—her! It’s not—You’re not—”

  But Alec Rush shook his ugly pear-shaped head with slow emphasis.

  “There’s murder in this and the Lord knows what all. I’ve got no liking for a blindfolded game. How do I know what you’re up to? You can tell me what you know—everything—or you can find yourself another detective. That’s flat.”

  Ralph Millar’s fingers picked at each other, his teeth pulled at his lips, his harassed eyes pleaded with the detective.

  “You can’t, Rush,” he begged. “She’s still in danger. Even if you are right about that man not attacking her, she’s not safe. The women who hired him can hire another. You’ve got to protect her, Rush.”

  “Yeah? Then you’ve got to talk.”

  “I’ve got to—? Yes, I’ll talk, Rush. I’ll tell you anything you ask. But there’s really nothing—or almost nothing—I know beyond what you’ve already learned.”

  “She worked for your trust company?”

  “Yes, in my department.”

  “Left there to be married?”

  “Yes. That is—No, Rush, the truth is she was discharged. It was an outrage, but—”

  “When was this?”

  “It was the day before the—before she was married.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “She had—I’ll have to explain her situation to you first, Rush. She is an orphan. Her father, Ben Falsoner, had been wild in his youth—and perhaps not only in his youth—as I believe all the Falsoners have been. However, he had quarreled with his father—old Howard Falsoner—and the old man had cut him out of the will. But not altogether out. The old man hoped Ben would mend his ways, and he didn’t mean to leave him with nothing in that event. Unfortunately he trusted it to his other son, Jerome.

  “Old Howard Falsoner left a will whereby the income from his estate was to go to Jerome during Jerome’s life. Jerome was to provide for his brother, Ben, as he saw fit. That is, he had an absolutely free hand. He could divide the income equally with his brother, or he could give him a pittance, or he could give him nothing, as Ben’s conduct deserved. On Jerome’s death the estate was to be divided equally among the old man’s grandchildren.

  “In theory, that was a fairly sensible arrangement, but not in practice—not in Jerome Falsoner’s hands. You didn’t know him? Well, he was the last man you’d ever trust with a thing of that sort. He exercised his power to the utmost. Ben Falsoner never got a cent from him. Three years ago Ben died, and so the girl, his only daughter, stepped into his position in relation to her grandfather’s money. Her mother was already dead. Jerome Falsoner never paid her a cent.

  “That was her situation when she came to the trust company two years ago. It wasn’t a happy one. She had at least a touch of the Falsoner recklessness and extravagance. There she was: heiress to some two million dollars—for Jerome had never married and she was the only grandchild—but without any present income at all, except her salary, which was by no means a large one.

  “She got in debt. I suppose she tried to economize at times, but there was always that two million dollars ahead to make scrimping doubly distasteful. Finally, the trust company officials heard of her indebtedness. A collector or two came to the office, in fact. Since she was employed in my department, I had the disagreeable duty of warning her. She promised to pay her debts and contract no more, and I suppose she did try, but she wasn’t very successful. Our officials are old-fashioned, ultra-conservative. I did everything I could to save her, but it was no good. They simply would not have an employee who was heels over head in debt.”

  Millar paused a moment, looked miserably at the floor, and went on:

  “I had the disagreeable task of telling her her services were no longer needed. I tried to—It was awfully unpleasant. That was the day before she married Landow. It—” He paused and, as if he could think of nothing else to say, repeated, “Yes, it was the day before she married Landow,” and fell to staring miserably at the floor again.

  Alec Rush, who had sat as still through the recital of this history as a carven monster on an old church, now leaned over his desk and put a husky question:

  “And who is this Hubert Landow? What is he?”

  Ralph Millar shook his downcast head.

  “I don’t know him. I’ve seen him. I know nothing of him.”

  “Mrs. Landow ever speak of him? I mean when she was in the trust company?”

  “It’s likely, but I don’t remember.”

  “So you didn’t know what to make of it when you heard she’d married him?”

  The younger man looked up with frightened brown eyes.

  “What are you getting at, Rush? You don’t think—Yes, as you say, I was surprised. What are you getting at?”

  “The marriage license,” the detective said, ignoring his client’s repeated question, “was issued to Landow four days before the wedding-day, four days before Jerome Falsoner’s body was found.”

  Millar chewed a fingernail and shook his head hopelessly.

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at,” he mumbled around the finger. “The whole thing is bewildering.”
>
  “Isn’t it a fact, Mr. Millar,” the detective’s voice filled the office with hoarse insistence, “that you were on more friendly terms with Sara Falsoner than with anyone else in the trust company?”

  The younger man raised his head and looked Alec Rush in the eye—held his gaze with brown eyes that were doggedly level.

  “The fact is,” he said quietly, “that I asked Sara Falsoner to marry me the day she left.”

  “Yeah. And she—?”

  “And she—I suppose it was my fault. I was clumsy, crude, whatever you like. God knows what she thought—that I was asking her to marry me out of pity, that I was trying to force her into marriage by discharging her when I knew she was over her head in debt! She might have thought anything. Anyhow, it was—it was disagreeable.”

  “You mean she not only refused you, but was—well—disagreeable about it?”

  “I do mean that.”

  Alec Rush sat back in his chair and brought fresh grotesqueries into his face by twisting his thick mouth crookedly up at one corner. His red eyes were evilly reflective on the ceiling.

  “The only thing for it,” he decided, “is to go to Landow and give him what we’ve got.”

  “But are you sure he—?” Millar objected indefinitely.

  “Unless he’s one whale of an actor, he’s a lot in love with his wife,” the detective said with certainty. “That’s enough to justify taking the story to him.”

  Millar was not convinced.

  “You’re sure it would be wisest?”

  “Yeah. We’ve got to go to one of three people with the tale—him, her, or the police. I think he’s the best bet, but take your choice.”

  The younger man nodded reluctantly.

  “All right. But you don’t have to bring me into it, do you?” he said with quick alarm. “You can handle it so I won’t be involved. You understand what I mean? She’s his wife, and it would be—”

  “Sure,” Alec Rush promised; “I’ll keep you covered up.”

  —

  HUBERT LANDOW, twisting the detective’s card in his fingers, received Alec Rush in a somewhat luxuriously furnished room in the second story of the Charles-Street Avenue house. He was standing—tall, blond, boyishly handsome—in the middle of the floor, facing the door, when the detective—fat, grizzled, battered, and ugly—was shown in.

  “You wish to see me? Here, sit down.”

  Hubert Landow’s manner was neither restrained nor hearty. It was precisely the manner that might be expected of a young man receiving an unexpected call from so savage-visaged a detective.

  “Yeah,” said Alec Rush as they sat in facing chairs. “I’ve got something to tell you. It won’t take much time, but it’s kind of wild. It might be a surprise to you, and it might not. But it’s on the level. I don’t want you to think I’m kidding you.”

  Hubert Landow bent forward, his face all interest.

  “I won’t,” he promised. “Go on.”

  “A couple of days ago I got a line on a man who might be tied up in a job I’m interested in. He’s a crook. Trailing him around, I discovered he was interested in your affairs, and your wife’s. He’s shadowed you and he’s shadowed her. He was loafing down the street from a Mount Royal Avenue apartment that you went in yesterday, and he went in there later himself.”

  “But what the devil is he up to?” Landow exclaimed. “You think he’s—”

  “Wait,” the ugly man advised. “Wait until you’ve heard it all, and then you can tell me what you make of it. He came out of there and went to Camden Station, where he met a young woman. They talked a bit, and later in the afternoon she was picked up in a department store—shoplifting. Her name is Polly Bangs, and she’s done a hitch in Wisconsin for the same racket. Your photograph was on her dresser.”

  “My photograph?”

  Alec Rush nodded placidly up into the face of the young man, who was now standing.

  “Yours. You know this Polly Bangs? A chunky, square-built girl of twenty-six or so, with brown hair and eyes—saucy looking?”

  Hubert Landow’s face was a puzzled blank.

  “No! What the devil could she be doing with my picture?” he demanded. “Are you sure it was mine?”

  “Not dead sure, maybe, but sure enough to need proof that it wasn’t. Maybe she’s somebody you’ve forgotten, or maybe she ran across the picture somewhere and kept it because she liked it.”

  “Nonsense!” The blond man squirmed at this tribute to his face, and blushed a vivid red beside which Alec Rush’s complexion was almost colorless. “There must be some sensible reason. She has been arrested, you say?”

  “Yeah, but she’s out on bail now. But let me get along with my story. Last night this thug I’ve told you about and I had a talk. He claims he has been hired to kill your wife.”

  Hubert Landow, who had returned to his chair, now jerked in it so that its joints creaked strainingly. His face, crimson a second ago, drained paper-white. Another sound than the chair’s creaking was faint in the room: the least of muffled gasps. The blond young man did not seem to hear it, but Alec Rush’s bloodshot eyes flicked sidewise for an instant to focus fleetingly on a closed door across the room.

  Landow was out of his chair again, leaning down to the detective, his fingers digging into the ugly man’s loose muscular shoulders.

  “This is horrible!” he was crying. “We’ve got to—”

  The door at which the detective had looked a moment ago opened. A beautiful tall girl came through—Sara Landow. Her rumpled hair was an auburn cloud around her white face. Her eyes were dead things. She walked slowly toward the men, her body inclined a little forward, as if against a strong wind.

  “It’s no use, Hubert.” Her voice was as dead as her eyes. “We may as well face it. It’s Madeline Boudin. She has found out that I killed my uncle.”

  “Hush, darling, hush!” Landow caught his wife in his arms and tried to soothe her with a caressing hand on her shoulder. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Oh, but I do.” She shrugged herself listlessly out of his arms and sat in the chair Alec Rush had just vacated. “It’s Madeline Boudin, you know it is. She knows I killed Uncle Jerome.”

  Landow whirled to the detective, both hands going out to grip the ugly man’s arm.

  “You won’t listen to what she’s saying, Rush?” he pleaded. “She hasn’t been well. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  Sara Landow laughed with weary bitterness.

  “Haven’t been well?” she said. “No, I haven’t been well, not since I killed him. How could I be well after that? You are a detective.” Her eyes lifted their emptiness to Alec Rush. “Arrest me. I killed Jerome Falsoner.”

  Alec Rush, standing arms akimbo, legs apart, scowled at her, saying nothing.

  “You can’t, Rush!” Landow was tugging at the detective’s arm again. “You can’t, man. It’s ridiculous! You—”

  “Where does this Madeline Boudin fit in?” Alec Rush’s harsh voice demanded. “I know she was chummy with Jerome, but why should she want your wife killed?”

  Landow hesitated, shifting his feet, and when he replied it was reluctantly.

  “She was Jerome’s mistress, had a child by him. My wife, when she learned of it, insisted on making her a settlement out of the estate. It was in connection with that that I went to see her yesterday.”

  “Yeah. Now to get back to Jerome: you and your wife were supposed to be in her apartment at the time he was killed, if I remember right?”

  Sara Landow sighed with spiritless impatience.

  “Must there be all this discussion?” she asked in a small, tired voice. “I killed him. No one else killed him. No one else was there when I killed him. I stabbed him with the paper-knife when he attacked me, and he said, ‘Don’t! Don’t!’ and began to cry, down on his knees, and I ran out.”

  Alec Rush looked from the girl to the man. Landow’s face was wet with perspiration, his hands were white fists, and somet
hing quivered in his chest. When he spoke his voice was as hoarse as the detective’s, if not so loud.

  “Sara, will you wait here until I come back? I’m going out for a little while, possibly an hour. You’ll wait here and not do anything until I return?”

  “Yes,” the girl said, neither curiosity nor interest in her voice. “But it’s no use, Hubert. I should have told you in the beginning. It’s no use.”

  “Just wait for me, Sara,” he pleaded, and then bent his head to the detective’s deformed ear. “Stay with her, Rush, for God’s sake!” he whispered, and went swiftly out of the room.

  The front door banged shut. An automobile purred away from the house. Alec Rush spoke to the girl.

  “Where’s the phone?”

  “In the next room,” she said, without looking up from the handkerchief her fingers were measuring.

  The detective crossed to the door through which she had entered the room, found that it opened into a library, where a telephone stood in a corner. On the other side of the room a clock indicated 3:35. The detective went to the telephone and called Ralph Millar’s office, asked for Millar, and told him:

  “This is Rush. I’m at the Landows’. Come up right away.”

  “But I can’t, Rush. Can’t you understand my—”

  “Can’t hell!” croaked Alec Rush. “Get here quick!”

  The young woman with dead eyes, still playing with the hem of her handkerchief, did not look up when the ugly man returned to the room. Neither of them spoke. Alec Rush, standing with his back to a window, twice took out his watch to glare savagely at it.

  The faint tingling of the doorbell came from below. The detective went across to the hall door and down the front stairs, moving with heavy swiftness. Ralph Millar, his face a field in which fear and embarrassment fought, stood in the vestibule, stammering something unintelligible to the maid who had opened the door. Alec Rush put the girl brusquely aside, brought Millar in, guided him upstairs.

  “She says she killed Jerome,” he muttered into his client’s ear as they mounted.

  Ralph Millar’s face went dreadfully white, but there was no surprise in it.