Arson Plus

by Dashiell Hammett

  Evelyn Trowbridge let me in this time, instead of the maid who had opened the door for me in the morning, and she led me to the same room in which we had had our first talk. I let her pick out a seat, and then I selected one that was closer to either door than hers was.

  On the way up I had planned a lot of innocent-sounding questions that would get her all snarled up; but after taking a good look at this woman sitting in front of me, leaning comfortably back in her chair, coolly waiting for me to speak my piece, I discarded the trick stuff and came out cold-turkey.

  “Ever use the name Mrs. Edward Comerford?”

  “Oh, yes.” As casual as a nod on the street.

  “When?”

  “Often. You see, I happen to have been married not so long ago to Mr. Edward Comerford. So it’s not really strange that I should have used the name.”

  “Use it in Seattle recently?”

  “I would suggest,” she said sweetly, “that if you are leading up to the references I gave Coons and his wife, you might save time by coming right to it?”

  “That’s fair enough,” I said. “Let’s do that.”

  There wasn’t a half-tone, a shading, in voice, manner, or expression to indicate that she was talking about anything half so serious or important to her as a possibility of being charged with murder. She might have been talking about the weather, or a book that hadn’t interested her particularly.

  “During the time that Mr. Comerford and I were married, we lived in Seattle, where he still lives. After the divorce, I left Seattle and resumed my maiden name. And the Coonses were in our employ, as you might learn if you care to look it up. You’ll find my husband—or former husband—at the Chelsea apartments, I think.

  “Last summer, or late spring, I decided to return to Seattle. The truth of it is—I suppose all my personal affairs will be aired anyhow—that I thought perhaps Edward and I might patch up our differences; so I went back and took an apartment on Woodmansee Terrace. As I was known in Seattle as Mrs. Edward Comerford, and as I thought my using his name might influence him a little, perhaps, I used it while I was there.

  “Also I telephoned the Coonses to make tentative arrangements in case Edward and I should open our house again; but Coons told me that they were going to California, and so I gladly gave them an excellent recommendation when, some days later, I received a letter of inquiry from an employment bureau in Sacramento. After I had been in Seattle for about two weeks, I changed my mind about the reconciliation—Edward’s interest, I learned, was all centered elsewhere; so I returned to San Francisco.”

  “Very nice! But—”

  “If you will permit me to finish,” she interrupted. “When I went to see my uncle in response to his telegram, I was surprised to find the Coonses in his house. Knowing my uncle’s peculiarities, and finding them now increased, and remembering his extreme secretiveness about his mysterious invention, I cautioned the Coonses not to tell him that they had been in my employ.

  “He certainly would have discharged them, and just as certainly would have quarreled with me—he would have thought that I was having him spied upon. Then, when Coons telephoned me after the fire, I knew that to admit that the Coonses had been formerly in my employ, would, in view of the fact that I was my uncle’s heir, cast suspicion on all three of us. So we foolishly agreed to say nothing about it and carry on the deception.”

  That didn’t sound all wrong, but it didn’t sound all right. I wished Tarr had taken it easier and let us get a better line on these people, before having them thrown in the coop.

  “The coincidence of the Coonses stumbling into my uncle’s house is, I fancy, too much for your detecting instincts,” she went on, as I didn’t say anything. “Am I to consider myself under arrest?”

  I’m beginning to like this girl; she’s a nice, cool piece of work.

  “Not yet,” I told her. “But I’m afraid it’s going to happen pretty soon.”

  She smiled a little mocking smile at that, and another when the doorbell rang.

  It was O’Hara from police headquarters. We turned the apartment upside down and inside out, but didn’t find anything of importance except the will she had told me about, dated July eighth, and her uncle’s life insurance policies. They were all dated between May fifteenth and June tenth, and added up to a little more than $200,000.

  I spent an hour grilling the maid after O’Hara had taken Evelyn Trowbridge away, but she didn’t know any more than I did. However, between her, the janitor, the manager of the apartments, and the names Mrs. Trowbridge had given me, I learned that she had really been entertaining friends on the night of the fire—until after eleven o’clock, anyway—and that was late enough.

  Half an hour later I was riding the Short Line back to Sacramento. I was getting to be one of the line’s best customers, and my anatomy was on bouncing terms with every bump in the road; and the bumps, as “Rubberhead” Davis used to say about the flies and mosquitoes in Alberta in summer, “is freely plentiful.”

  Between bumps I tried to fit the pieces of this Thornburgh puzzle together. The niece and the Coonses fit in somewhere, but not just where we had them. We had been working on the job sort of lop-sided, but it was the best we could do with it. In the beginning we had turned to the Coonses and Evelyn Trowbridge because there was no other direction to go; and now we had something on them—but a good lawyer could make hash of our case against them.

  The Coonses were in the county jail when I got to Sacramento. After some questioning they had admitted their connection with the niece, and had come through with stories that matched hers in every detail.

  Tarr, McClump, and I sat around the sheriff’s desk and argued.

  “Those yarns are pipe-dreams,” the sheriff said. “We got all three of ’em cold, and there’s nothing else to it. They’re as good as convicted of murder!”

  McClump grinned derisively at his superior, and then turned to me.

  “Go on! You tell him about the holes in his little case. He ain’t your boss, and can’t take it out on you later for being smarter than he is!”

  Tarr glared from one of us to the other.

  “Spill it, you wise guys!” he ordered.

  “Our dope is,” I told him, figuring that McClump’s view of it was the same as mine, “that there’s nothing to show that even Thornburgh knew he was going to buy that house before the tenth of June, and that the Coonses were in town looking for work on the second. And besides, it was only by luck that they got the jobs. The employment office sent two couples out there ahead of them.”

  “We’ll take a chance on letting the jury figure that out.”

  “Yes? You’ll also take a chance on them figuring out that Thornburgh, who seems to have been a nut all right, might have touched off the place himself! We’ve got something on these people, Jim, but not enough to go into court with them! How are you going to prove that when the Coonses were planted in Thornburgh’s house—if you can even prove they were—they and the Trowbridge woman knew he was going to load up with insurance policies?”

  The sheriff spat disgustedly.

  “You guys are the limit! You run around in circles, digging up the dope on these people until you get enough to hang ’em, and then you run around hunting for outs! What the hell’s the matter with you now?”

  I answered him from half-way to the door—the pieces were beginning to fit together under my skull.

  “Going to run some more circles! Come on, Mac!”

  McClump and I held a conference on the fly, and then I got a machine from the nearest garage and headed for Tavender. We made time going out, and got there before the general store had closed for the night. The stuttering Philo separated himself from the two men with whom he had been talking Hiram Johnson, and followed me to the rear of the store.

  “Do you keep an itemized list of the laundry you handle?”

&nbs
p; “N-n-no; just the amounts.”

  “Let’s look at Thornburgh’s.”

  He produced a begrimed and rumpled account book and we picked out the weekly items I wanted: $2.60, $3.10, $2.25, and so on.

  “Got the last batch of laundry here?”

  “Y-yes,” he said. “It j-just c-c-came out from the city t-today.”

  I tore open the bundle—some sheets, pillow-cases, table-cloths, towels, napkins; some feminine clothing; some shirts, collars, underwear, sox that were unmistakably Coons’s. I thanked Philo while running back to my machine.

  Back in Sacramento again, McClump was waiting for me at the garage where I had hired the car.

  “Registered at the hotel on June fifteenth, rented the office on the sixteenth. I think he’s in the hotel now,” he greeted me.

  We hurried around the block to the Garden Hotel.

  “Mr. Handerson went out a minute or two ago,” the night clerk told us. “He seemed to be in a hurry.”

  “Know where he keeps his car?”

  “In the hotel garage around the corner.”

  We were within two pavements of the garage, when Handerson’s automobile shot out and turned up the street.

  “Oh, Mr. Handerson!” I cried, trying to keep my voice level and smooth.

  He stepped on the gas and streaked away from us.

  “Want him?” McClump asked; and, at my nod, stopped a passing roadster by the simple expedient of stepping in front of it.

  We climbed aboard, McClump flashed his star at the bewildered driver, and pointed out Handerson’s dwindling tail-light. After he had persuaded himself that he wasn’t being boarded by a couple of bandits, the commandeered driver did his best, and we picked up Handerson’s tail-light after two or three turnings, and closed in on him—though his machine was going at a good clip.

  By the time we reached the outskirts of the city, we had crawled up to within safe shooting distance, and I sent a bullet over the fleeing man’s head. Thus encouraged, he managed to get a little more speed out of his car; but we were definitely overhauling him now.

  Just at the wrong minute Handerson decided to look over his shoulder at us—an unevenness in the road twisted his wheels—his machine swayed—skidded—went over on its side. Almost immediately, from the heart of the tangle, came a flash and a bullet moaned past my ear. Another. And then, while I was still hunting for something to shoot at in the pile of junk we were drawing down upon, McClump’s ancient and battered revolver roared in my other ear.

  Handerson was dead when we got to him—McClump’s bullet had taken him over one eye.

  McClump spoke to me over the body.

  “I ain’t an inquisitive sort of fellow, but I hope you don’t mind telling me why I shot this lad.”

  “Because he was Thornburgh.”

  He didn’t say anything for about five minutes. Then: “I reckon that’s right. How’d you guess it?”

  We were sitting beside the wreckage now, waiting for the police that we had sent our commandeered chauffeur to phone for.

  “He had to be,” I said, “when you think it all over. Funny we didn’t hit on it before! All that stuff we were told about Thornburgh had a fishy sound. Whiskers and an unknown profession, immaculate and working on a mysterious invention, very secretive and born in San Francisco—where the fire wiped out all the old records—just the sort of fake that could be cooked up easily.

  “Then nobody but the Coonses, Evelyn Trowbridge and Handerson ever saw him except between the tenth of May and the middle of June, when he bought the house. The Coonses and the Trowbridge woman were tied up together in this affair somehow, we knew—so that left only Handerson to consider. You had told me he came to Sacramento sometime early this summer—and the dates you got tonight show that he didn’t come until after Thornburgh had bought his house. All right! Now compare Handerson with the descriptions we got of Thornburgh.

  “Both are about the same size and age, and with the same color hair. The differences are all things that can be manufactured—clothes, a little sunburn, and a month’s growth of beard, along with a little acting, would do the trick. Tonight I went out to Tavender and took a look at the last batch of laundry, and there wasn’t any that didn’t fit the Coonses—and none of the bills all the way back were large enough for Thornburgh to have been as careful about his clothes as we were told he was.”

  “It must be great to be a detective!” McClump grinned as the police ambulance came up and began disgorging policemen. “I reckon somebody must have tipped Handerson off that I was asking about him this evening.” And then, regretfully: “So we ain’t going to hang them folks for murder after all.”

  “No, but we oughtn’t have any trouble convicting them of arson plus conspiracy to defraud, and anything else that the Prosecuting Attorney can think up.”

  Black Mask, 1 October 1923

  From the Author of “Arson Plus”

  I’m glad you liked “Arson Plus”—it cost me gallons of sweat and acres of chewed finger nails! It went along nicely until I tried to bring it to an end—then it was hell-bent on running two or three thousand words further; but I finally fought it into reasonable length.

  This detective of mine: I didn’t deliberately keep him nameless, but he got through “Slippery Fingers” and “Arson Plus” without needing one, so I suppose I may as well let him run along that way. I’m not sure that he’s entitled to a name, anyhow. He’s more or less of a type: the private detective who oftenest is successful: neither the derby-hatted and broad-toed blockhead of one school of fiction, nor the all-knowing, infallible genius of another. I’ve worked with several of him.

  Apropos of Charles Somerville’s excellent article on capital punishment in the June 15th issue: under a law passed about two years ago, Nevada uses lethal gas for executions. The condemned man is placed in the lethal chamber during the week set by the court for his death. The gas is turned on while the condemned is asleep, the warden selecting the night of the week

  Dashiell Hammett

  San Francisco, Cal.

  1 “The Vicious Circle” is a story without a detective published in the 15 June 1923 issue of Black Mask.

  CROOKED SOULS

  Black Mask, 1 October 1923

  We’ve all seen the modern girl. She’s a rare bird and here she is in all her glory—if that’s what it is. A good detective yarn, this, with lots of action and some real people. Go to it.

  Harvey Gatewood had issued orders that I was to be admitted as soon as I arrived, so it only took me a little less than fifteen minutes to thread my way past the door-keepers, office boys, and secretaries who filled up most of the space between the Gatewood Lumber Corporation’s front door and the president’s private office. His office was large, all mahogany and bronze and green plush, with a mahogany desk as big as a bed in the center of the floor.

  Gatewood, leaning across the desk, began to bark at me as soon as the obsequious clerk who had bowed me in bowed himself out.

  “My daughter was kidnapped last night! I want the … that did it if it takes every cent I got!”

  “Tell me about it,” I suggested, drawing up the chair that he hadn’t thought to offer me.

  But he wanted results, it seemed, and not questions, and so I wasted nearly an hour getting information that he could have given me in fifteen minutes.

  He’s a big bruiser of a man, something over two hundred pounds of hard red flesh, and a czar from the top of his bullet head to the toes of his shoes that would have been at least number twelves if they hadn’t been made to measure.

  He had made his several millions by sandbagging everybody that stood in his way, and the rage that he’s burning up with now doesn’t make him any easier to deal with.

  His wicked jaw is sticking out like a knob of granite and his eyes are filmed with blood—he’s in a lovely frame of mind. Fo
r a while it looks as if the Continental Detective Agency is going to lose a client; because I’ve made up my mind that he’s going to tell me all I want to know, or I’m going to chuck up the job. But finally I got the story out of him.

  His daughter Audrey had left their house on Clay street at about seven o’clock the preceding evening, telling her maid that she was going for a walk. She had not returned that night—though Gatewood had not known that until after he had read the letter that came this morning.

  The letter had been from someone who said that she had been kidnapped. It demanded fifty thousand dollars for her release; and instructed Gatewood to get the money ready in hundred dollar bills, so that there might be no delay when he is told in what manner it is to be paid over to his daughter’s captors. As proof that the demand was not a hoax, a lock of the girl’s hair, a ring she always wore, and a brief note from her, asking her father to comply with the demands, had been enclosed.

  Gatewood had received the letter at his office, and had telephoned to his house immediately. He had been told that the girl’s bed had not been slept in the previous night, and that none of the servants had seen her since she started out for her walk. He had then notified the police, turning the letter over to them; and, a few minutes later, he had decided to employ private detectives also.

  “Now,” he burst out, after I had wormed these things out of him, and he had told me that he knew nothing of his daughter’s associates or habits, “go ahead and do something! I’m not paying you to sit around and talk about it!”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Me? I’m going to put those … behind the bars if it takes every cent I’ve got in the world!”

  “Sure! But first you can get that fifty thousand ready, so you can give it to them when they ask for it.”

  He clicked his jaw shut and thrust his face into mine.

  “I’ve never been clubbed into doing anything in my life! And I’m too old to start now!” he said. “I’m going to call these people’s bluff!”