Nightmare Town

by Dashiell Hammett

  The girl shook her head with emphasis. “She was a school-teacher. Why?”

  Boyer’s explanation was given more directly to Guild. “I was thinking of Wynant’s marriage in Paris.”

  The dark man nodded. “Fremont’s too old. He’s only ten or twelve years younger than Wynant.” He smiled guilelessly. “Want another idea to play with? Fremont and the dead girl have the same initials—C.F.”

  Elsa Fremont laughed. “More than that,” she said, “they had the same birthdays—May twenty-seventh—though of course Charley is older.”

  Guild smiled carelessly at this information while the district attorney’s eyes took on a troubled stare.

  The dark man looked at his watch. “Did your brother say how long he was going to stay in Hell Bend?” he asked.

  “No.”

  Guild spoke to Boyer. “Why don’t you call up and see if he’s there. If he is, ask him to wait for us. If he’s left, we’ll wait here for him.”

  The district attorney rose from his chair, but before he could speak the girl was asking anxiously: “Is there anything special you want to see Charley about? Anything I could tell you?”

  “You said you didn’t know,” Guild said. “It’s the Laura Porter angle we want to find out about.”

  “Oh.” Some of her anxiety went away.

  “Your brother knows Frank Kearny, doesn’t he?” Guild asked.

  “Oh, yes. That’s how I happened to go to work here.”

  “Is there a phone here we can use?”

  “Certainly.” She jumped up and, saying, “Back here,” opened a door into an adjoining room. When the district attorney had passed through she shut the door behind him and returned to her place on the sofa beside Guild. “Have you learned anything else?” she asked. “Anything besides about her being known as Laura Porter and having the apartment?”

  “Some odds and ends,” he said, “but it’s too early to say what they’ll add up to when they’re sorted. I didn’t ask you whether Kearny and Wynant know each other, did I?”

  She shook her head from side to side. “If they do I don’t know it. I don’t. I’m telling you the truth, Mr. Guild.”

  “All right, but Wynant was seen going into the Manchu.”

  “I know, but—” She finished the sentence with a jerk of her shoulders. She moved closer to Guild on the sofa. “You don’t think Charley has done anything he oughtn’t’ve done, do you?”

  Guild’s face was placid. “I won’t lie to you,” he said. “I think everybody connected with the job has done things they oughtn’t’ve done.”

  She made an impatient grimace. “I believe you’re just trying to make things confusing, to make work for yourself,” she said, “so you’ll be looking like you’re doing something even if you can’t find Wynant. Why don’t you find him?” Her voice was rising. “That’s all you’ve got to do. Why don’t you find him instead of trying to make trouble for everybody else? He’s the only one that did anything. He killed her and tried to kill Charley and he’s the one you want—not Charley, not me, not Frank. Wynant’s the one you want.”

  Guild laughed indulgently. “You make it sound simple as hell,” he told her. “I wish you were right.”

  Her indignation faded. She put a hand on his hand. Her eyes held a frightened gleam. “There isn’t anything else, is there?” she asked, “something we don’t know about?”

  Guild put his other hand over to pat the back of hers. “There is,” he assured her pleasantly. “There’s a lot none of us knows and what we do know don’t make sense.”

  “Then—”

  The district attorney opened the door and stood in the doorway. He was pale and he was sweating. “Fremont isn’t up there,” he said blankly. “He didn’t go up there.”

  Elsa Fremont said, “Jesus Christ!” under her breath.

  VIII

  Night was settling between the mountains when Guild and Boyer arrived at Hell Bend. The district attorney drove into the village, saying: “We’ll go to Ray’s. We can come back to Wynant’s later if you want to.”

  “All right,” Guild said, “unless Fremont might be there.”

  “He won’t if he came up to see the body. She’s at Schumach’s funeral parlor.”

  “Inquest to-morrow?”

  “Yes, unless there’s some reason for putting it off.”

  “There’s none that I know of,” Guild said. He looked sidewise at Boyer. “You’ll see that as little as possible comes out at the inquest?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  They were in Hell Bend now, running between irregularly spaced cottages toward lights that glittered up along the railroad, but before they reached the railroad they turned off to the right and stopped before a small square house where softer lights burned behind yellow blinds.

  Callaghan, the raw-boned blond deputy sheriff, opened the door for them. He said, “Hello, Bruce,” to the district attorney and nodded politely if without warmth at Guild.

  They went indoors, into an inexpensively furnished room where three men sat at a table playing stud poker and a huge German sheep dog lay attentive in a corner. Boyer spoke to the three men and introduced Guild while the deputy sheriff sat down at the table and picked up his cards.

  One of the men—thin, bent, old, white-haired, white-mustached—was Callaghan’s father. Another—stocky, broad-browed over wide-spaced clear eyes, sunburned almost as dark as Guild—was Ross Lane. The third—small, pale, painfully neat—was Schumach, the undertaker.

  Boyer turned from the introductions to Callaghan. “You’re sure Fremont didn’t show up?”

  The deputy sheriff replied without looking up from his cards. “He didn’t show up at Wynant’s place. King’s been there all day. And he didn’t show up at Ben’s to—to see her. Where else’d he go if he came up here?” He pushed a chip out on the table. “I’ll crack it.” He had two kings in his hand.

  Schumach pushed a clip out and said: “No, sir, he didn’t show up to look at the corpus delicti.”

  Lane dropped his cards face-down on the table. The elder Callaghan put in a chip and picked up the rest of the deck.

  His son said, “Three cards,” and then to Boyer: “You can phone King if you want.” He moved his head to indicate the telephone by the door.

  Boyer looked questioningly at Guild, who said: “Might as well.”

  Guild addressed a question to Lane while the other three men at the table were making their bets and Boyer was using the telephone. “You’re the man who saw Wynant going into the Manchu?”

  “Yes.” Lane’s voice was a quiet bass.

  “Was anybody with him?”

  Lane said, “No,” with certainty, then hesitated thoughtfully and added: “unless they went in ahead of him. I don’t think so, but it’s possible. He was just going in when I saw him and it could’ve happened that he’d stopped to shut his car-door or take his key out or something and whoever was with him had gone on ahead.”

  “Did you see enough of him to make sure it was him?”

  “I couldn’t go wrong on that, even if I did see only his back. My place being next to his, I guess I’ve seen a lot more of him than most people around here, and then, tall and skinny, with those high shoulders and that funny walk, you couldn’t miss him. Besides, his car was there.”

  “Had he cut his whiskers off, or was he still wearing them?”

  Lane opened his eyes wide and laughed. “By God, I don’t know,” he said. “I heard he shaved them, but I never thought of that. You’ve got me there. His back was to me and I wouldn’t’ve seen them unless they happened to be sticking out sideways or I got a slanting look at him. I don’t remember seeing them, yet I might’ve and thought nothing of it. If I’d seen his face without them it’s a cinch I’d’ve noticed, but—You’ve got me there, brother.”

  “Know him pretty well?”

  Lane picked up the cards the younger Callaghan dealt him and smiled. “Well, I don’t guess anybody could say they know him pretty well.�
�� He spread his cards apart to look at them.

  “Did you know the Forrest girl pretty well?”

  The deputy sheriff’s face began to redden. He said somewhat sharply to the undertaker: “Can you do it?”

  The undertaker rapped the table with his knuckles to say he could not.

  Lane had a pair of sixes and a pair of fours. He said, “I’ll do it,” pushed out a chip, and replied to the dark man’s question: “I don’t know just what you mean by that. I knew her. She used to come over sometimes and watch me work the dogs when I had them over in the field near their place.”

  Boyer had finished telephoning and had come to stand beside Guild. He explained: “Ross raises and trains police dogs.”

  The elder Callaghan said: “I hope she didn’t have you going around talking to yourself like she had Ray.” His voice was a nasal whine.

  His son slammed his cards down on the table. His face was red and swollen. In a loud, accusing tone he began: “I guess I ought to go around chasing after—”

  “Ray! Ray!” A stringy white-haired woman in faded blue had come a step in from the next room. Her voice was chiding. “You oughtn’t to—”

  “Well, make him stop jawing about her, then,” the deputy sheriff said. “She was as good as anybody else and a lot better than most I know.” He glowered at the table in front of him.

  In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Boyer said: “Good evening, Mrs. Callaghan. How are you?”

  “Just fine,” she said. “How’s Lucy?”

  “She’s always well, thanks. This is Mr. Guild, Mrs. Callaghan.”

  Guild bowed, murmuring something polite. The woman ducked her head at him and took a backward step. “If you can’t play cards without rowing I wish you’d stop,” she told her son and husband as she withdrew.

  Boyer addressed Guild: “King, the deputy stationed at Wynant’s place, says he hasn’t seen anything of Fremont all day.”

  Guild looked at his watch. “He’s had eleven hours to make it in,” he said. He smiled pleasantly. “Or eleven hours’ start if he headed in another direction.”

  The undertaker leaned over the table. “You think—?”

  “I don’t know,” Guild said. “I don’t know anything. That’s the hell of it. We don’t know anything.”

  “There’s nothing to know,” the deputy sheriff said querulously, “except that Wynant was jealous and killed her and ran away and you haven’t been able to find him.”

  Guild, staring bleakly at the younger Callaghan, said nothing.

  Boyer cleared his throat. “Well, Ray,” he began, “Mr. Guild and I have found quite a bit of confusing evidence in the—”

  The elder Callaghan prodded his son with a gnarled forefinger. “Did you tell them about that Smoot boy?”

  The deputy sheriff pulled irritably away from his father’s finger. “That don’t amount to nothing,” he said, “and, besides, what chance’ve I got to tell anything with all the talking you’ve been doing?”

  “What was it?” Boyer asked eagerly.

  “It don’t amount to nothing. Just that this kid—maybe you know him, Pete Smoot’s boy—had a telegram for Wynant and took it up to his house. He got there at five minutes after two. He wrote down the time because nobody answered the door and he had to poke the telegram under the door.”

  “This was yesterday afternoon?” Guild asked.

  “Yes,” the deputy sheriff said gruffly. “Well, the kid says the blue car, the one she drove out from the city in, was there then, and Wynant’s wasn’t.”

  “He knew Wynant’s car?” Guild asked.

  Pointedly ignoring Guild, the deputy sheriff said: “He says there wasn’t any other car there, either in the shed or outside. He’d’ve seen it if there was. So he put the telegram under the door, got on his bike, and rode back to the telegraph office. Coming back along the road he says he saw the Hopkinses cutting across the field. They’d been down at Hooper’s buying Hopkins a suit. The kid says they didn’t see him and they were too far from the road for him to holler at them about the telegram.” The deputy sheriff’s face began to redden again. “So if that’s right, and I guess it is, they’d’ve got back to the house, I reckon, around twenty past two—not before that, anyway.” He picked up the cards and began to shuffle them, though he had dealt the last hand. “You see, that—well—it don’t mean anything or help us any.”

  Guild had finished lighting a cigarette. He asked Callaghan, before Boyer could speak: “What do you figure? She was alone in the house and didn’t answer the kid’s knock because she was hurrying to get her packing done before Wynant came home? Or because she was already dead?”

  Boyer began in a tone of complete amazement: “But the Hopkinses said—”

  Guild said: “Wait. Let Callaghan answer.”

  Callaghan said in a voice hoarse with anger: “Let Callaghan answer if he wants to, but he don’t happen to want to, and what do you think of that?” He glared at Guild. “I got nothing to do with you.” He glared at Boyer. “You got nothing to do with me. I’m a deputy sheriff and Petersen’s my boss. Go to him for anything you want. Understand that?”

  Guild’s dark face was impassive. His voice was even. “You’re not the first deputy sheriff that ever tried to make a name for himself by holding back information.” He started to put his cigarette in his mouth, lowered it, and said: “You got the Hopkinses’ call. You were first on the scene, weren’t you? What’d you find there that you’ve kept to yourself?”

  Callaghan stood up. Lane and the undertaker rose hastily from their places at the table.

  Boyer said: “Now, wait, gentlemen, there’s no use of our quarreling.”

  Guild, smiling, addressed the deputy sheriff blandly: “You’re not in such a pretty spot, Callaghan. You had a yen for the girl. You were likely to be just as jealous as Wynant when you heard she was going off with Fremont. You’ve got a childish sort of hot temper. Where were you around two o’clock yesterday afternoon?”

  Callaghan, snarling unintelligible curses, lunged at Guild.

  Lane and the undertaker sprang between the two men, struggling with the deputy sheriff. Lane turned his head to give the growling dog in the corner a quieting command. The elder Callaghan did not get up, but leaned over the table whining remonstrances at his son’s back. Mrs. Callaghan came in and began to scold her son.

  Boyer said nervously to Guild: “I think we’d better go.”

  Guild shrugged. “Whatever you say, though I would like to know where he spent the early part of yesterday afternoon.” He glanced calmly around the room and followed Boyer to the front door.

  Outside, the district attorney exclaimed: “Good God! You don’t think Ray killed her!”

  “Why not?” Guild snapped the remainder of his cigarette to the middle of the roadbed in a long red arc. “I don’t know. Somebody did and I’ll tell you a secret. I’m damned if I think Wynant did.”

  IX

  Hopkins and a tall younger man with a reddish mustache came out of Wynant’s house when Boyer stopped his automobile in front of it.

  The district attorney got down on the ground, saying: “Good evening, gentlemen.” Indicating the red-mustached man, he said to Guild: “This is deputy sheriff King, Mr. Guild. Mr. Guild,” he explained, “is working with me.”

  The deputy sheriff nodded, looking the dark man up and down. “Yes,” he said, “I been hearing about him. Howdy, Mr. Guild.”

  Guild’s nod included Hopkins and King.

  “No sign of Fremont yet?” Boyer asked.

  “No.”

  Guild spoke: “Is Mrs. Hopkins still up?”

  “Yes, sir,” her husband said, “she’s doing some sewing.”

  The four men went indoors.

  Mrs. Hopkins, sitting in a rocking-chair hemming an unbleached linen handkerchief, started to rise, but sank back in her chair with a “How do you do” when Boyer said: “Don’t get up. We’ll find chairs.”

  Guild did not sit down. Stan
ding by the door, he lit a cigarette while the others were finding seats. Then he addressed the Hopkinses: “You told us it was around three o’clock yesterday afternoon that Columbia Forrest got back from the city.”

  “Oh, no, sir!” The woman dropped her sewing on her knees. “Or at least we never meant to say anything like that. We meant to say it was around three o’clock when we heard them—him—quarreling. You can ask Mr. Callaghan what time it was when I called him up and—”

  “I’m asking you,” Guild said in a pleasant tone. “Was she here when you got back from the village—from buying the suit—at two-twenty?”

  The woman peered nervously through her spectacles at him. “Well, yes, sir, she was, if that’s what time it was. I thought it was later, Mr. Gould, but if you say that’s what time it was I guess you know, but she’d only just got home.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She said so. She called downstairs to know if it was us coming in and she said she’d just that minute got home.”

  “Was there a telegram under the door when you came in?”

  The Hopkinses looked at each other in surprise and shook their heads. “No, there was not,” the man said.

  “Was he here?”

  “Mr. Wynant?”

  “Yes. Was he here when you got home?”

  “Yes. I—I think he was.”

  “Do you know?”

  “Well, it”—she looked appealingly at her husband—“he was here when we heard them fighting not much after that, so he must’ve been—”

  “Or did he come in after you got back?”

  “Not—we didn’t see him come in.”

  “Hear him?”

  She shook her head certainly. “No, sir.”

  “Was his car here when you got back?”

  The woman started to say yes, stopped midway, and looked questioningly at her husband. His round face was uncomfortably confused. “We—we didn’t notice,” she stammered.

  “Would you have heard him if he’d driven up while you were here?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Gould. I think—I don’t know. If I was in the kitchen with the water running and Willie—Mr. Hopkins that is—don’t hear any too good anyway. Maybe we—”