Bob Rafelson was nominated for a prize for his direction at the Moscow International Film Festival.
THE HOUSE IN TURK STREET
Dashiell Hammett
I HAD BEEN TOLD that the man for whom I was hunting lived in a certain Turk Street block, but my informant hadn’t been able to give me his house number. Thus it came about that late one rainy afternoon I was canvassing this certain block, ringing each bell, and reciting a myth that went like this:
“I’m from the law office of Wellington and Berkeley. One of our clients—an elderly lady—was thrown from the rear platform of a street car last week and severely injured. Among those who witnessed the accident was a young man whose name we don’t know. But we have been told that he lives in this neighborhood.” Then I would describe the man I wanted, and wind up: “Do you know of anyone who looks like that?”
All down one side of the block the answers were: “No,” “No,” “No.”
I crossed the street and started on the other side. The first house: “No.” The second: “No.” The third. The fourth. The fifth—
No one came to the door in answer to my first ring. After a while, I rang again. I had just decided that no one was at home, when the knob turned slowly and a little old woman opened the door. She was a very fragile little old woman, with a piece of grey knitting in one hand, and faded eyes that twinkled pleasantly behind goldrimmed spectacles. She wore a stiffly starched apron over a black dress.
“Good evening,” she said in a thin friendly voice. “I hope you didn’t mind waiting. I always have to peep out to see who’s there before I open the door—an old woman’s timidity.”
“Sorry to disturb you,” I apologized. “But—”
“Won’t you come in, please?”
“No, I just want a little information. I won’t take much time.”
“I wish you would come in,” she said, and then added with mock severity, “I’m sure my tea is getting cold.”
She took my damp hat and coat, and I followed her down a narrow hall to a dim room, where a man got up as we entered. He was old too, and stout, with a thin white beard that fell upon a white vest that was as stiffly starched as the woman’s apron.
“Thomas,” the little fragile woman told him; “this is Mr.—”
“Tracy,” I said, because that was the name I had given the other residents of the block; but I came as near blushing when I said it as I have in fifteen years. These folks weren’t made to be lied to.
Their name, I learned, was Quarre; and they were an affectionate old couple. She called him “Thomas” every time she spoke to him, rolling the name around in her mouth as if she liked the taste of it. He called her “my dear” just as frequently, and twice he got up to adjust a cushion more comfortably to her frail back.
I had to drink a cup of tea with them and eat some little spiced cookies before I could get them to listen to a question. Then Mrs. Quarre made little sympathetic clicking sounds with her tongue and teeth, while I told about the elderly lady who had fallen off a street car. The old man rumbled in his beard that it was “a damn shame,” and gave me a fat cigar.
Finally I got away from the accident, and described the man I wanted.
“Thomas,” Mrs. Quarre said; “isn’t that the young man who lives in the house with the railing—the one who always looks so worried?”
The old man stroked his snowy beard and pondered for a moment.
“But, my dear,” he rumbled at last; “hasn’t he got dark hair?”
She beamed upon her husband. “Thomas is so observant,” she said with pride. “I had forgotten; but the young man I spoke of does have dark hair, so he couldn’t be the one.”
The old man then suggested that one who lived in the block below might be my man. They discussed this one at some length before they decided that he was too tall and too old. Mrs. Quarre suggested another. They discussed that one, and voted against him. Thomas offered a candidate; he was weighed and discarded. They chattered on.
Darkness settled. The old man turned on a light in a tall lamp that threw a soft yellow circle upon us, and left the rest of the room dim. The room was a large one, and heavy with the thick hangings and bulky horsehair furniture of a generation ago. I didn’t expect to get any information here; but I was comfortable, and the cigar was a good one. Time enough to go out into the drizzle when I had finished my smoke.
Something cold touched the nape of my neck.
“Stand up!”
I didn’t stand up: I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. I sat and blinked at the Quarres.
And looking at them, I knew that something cold couldn’t be against the back of my neck; a harsh voice couldn’t have ordered me to stand up. It wasn’t possible!
Mrs. Quarre still sat primly upright against the cushions her husband had adjusted to her back; her eyes still twinkled with friendliness behind her glasses. The old man still stroked his white beard, and let cigar smoke drift unhurriedly from his nostrils.
They would go on talking about the young men in the neighborhood who might be the man I wanted. Nothing had happened. I had dozed.
“Get up!” The cold thing against my neck jabbed deep into the flesh.
I stood up. “Frisk him,” the harsh voice came from behind.
The old man carefully laid his cigar down, came to me, and ran his hands over my body. Satisfied that I was unarmed, he emptied my pockets, dropping the contents upon the chair that I had just left.
“That’s all,” he told the man behind me, and returned to his chair.
“Turn around, you!” the harsh voice ordered.
I turned and faced a tall, gaunt, raw-boned man of about my own age, which is thirty-five. He had an ugly face—hollow-cheeked, bony, and spattered with big pale freckles. His eyes were of a watery blue, and his nose and chin stuck out abruptly. “Know me?” he asked.
“No.”
“You’re a liar!”
I didn’t argue the point; he was holding a gun in one big freckled hand.
“You’re going to know me pretty well before you’re through with me,” this big ugly man threatened. “You’re going to—”
“Hook!” a voice came from a portièred doorway—the doorway through which the ugly man had no doubt crept up behind me. “Hook, come here!” The voice was feminine—young, clear, and musical.
“What do you want?” the ugly man called over his shoulder.
“He’s here.”
“All right!” He turned to Thomas Quarre. “Keep this joker safe.”
From somewhere among his whiskers, his coat, and his stiff white vest, the old man brought out a big black revolver, which he handled with no signs of unfamiliarity.
The ugly man swept up the things that had been taken from my pockets, and carried them through the portières with him.
Mrs. Quarre smiled up at me. “Do sit down, Mr. Tracy,” she said.
I sat.
Through the portières a new voice came from the next room; a drawling baritone voice whose accent was unmistakably British; cultured British. “What’s up, Hook?” this voice was asking.
The harsh voice of the ugly man:
“Plenty’s up, I’m telling you! They’re on to us! I started out a while ago; and as soon as I got to the street, I seen a man I knowed on the other side. He was pointed out to me in Philly five-six years ago. I don’t know his name, but I remembered his mug—he’s a Continental Detective Agency man. I came back in right away, and me and Elvira watched him out of the window. He went to every house on the other side of the street, asking questions or something. Then he came over and started to give this side a whirl, and after a while he rings the bell. I tell the old woman and her husband to get him in, stall him along, and see what he says for himself. He’s got a song and dance about looking for a guy what seen an old woman bumped by a street car—but th
at’s the bunk! He’s gunning for us. I went in and stuck him up just now. I meant to wait till you come, but I was scared he’d get nervous and beat it.”
The British voice: “You shouldn’t have shown yourself to him. The others could have taken care of him.”
Hook: “What’s the diff? Chances is he knows us all anyway. But supposing he didn’t, what diff does it make?”
The drawling British voice: “It may make a deal of difference. It was stupid.”
Hook, blustering: “Stupid, huh? You’re always bellyaching about other people being stupid. To hell with you, I say! Who does all the work? Who’s the guy that swings all the jobs? Huh? Where—”
The young feminine voice: “Now, Hook, for God’s sake don’t make that speech again. I’ve listened to it until I know it by heart!”
A rustle of papers, and the British voice: “I say, Hook, you’re correct about his being a detective. Here is an identification card.”
The feminine voice from the next room: “Well, what’s to be done? What’s our play?”
Hook: “That’s easy to answer. We’re going to knock this sleuth off!”
The feminine voice: “And put our necks in the noose?”
Hook, scornfully: “As if they ain’t there if we don’t! You don’t think this guy ain’t after us for the L.A. job, do you?”
The British voice: “You’re an ass, Hook, and a quite hopeless one. Suppose this chap is interested in the Los Angeles affair, as is probable; what then? He is a Continental operative. Is it likely that his organization doesn’t know where he is? Don’t you think they know he was coming up here? And don’t they know as much about us—chances are—as he does? There’s no use killing him. That would only make matters worse. The thing to do is to tie him up and leave him here. His associates will hardly come looking for him until tomorrow.”
My gratitude went out to the British voice! Somebody was in my favor, at least to the extent of letting me live. I hadn’t been feeling very cheerful these last few minutes. Somehow, the fact that I couldn’t see these people who were deciding whether I was to live or die, made my plight seem all the more desperate. I felt better now, though far from gay; I had confidence in the drawling British voice; it was the voice of a man who habitually carries his point.
Hook, bellowing: “Let me tell you something, brother: that guy’s going to be knocked off! That’s flat! I’m taking no chances. You can jaw all you want to about it, but I’m looking out for my own neck and it’ll be a lot safer with that guy where he can’t talk. That’s flat.”
The feminine voice, disgustedly: “Aw, Hook, be reasonable!”
The British voice, still drawling, but dead cold: “There’s no use reasoning with you, Hook, you’ve the instincts and the intellect of a troglodyte. There is only one sort of language that you understand; and I’m going to talk that language to you, my son. If you are tempted to do anything silly between now and the time of our departure, just say this to yourself two or three times: ‘If he dies, I die.’ Say it as if it were out of the Bible—because it’s that true.”
There followed a long space of silence, with a tenseness that made my not particularly sensitive scalp tingle.
When, at last, a voice cut the silence, I jumped as if a gun had been fired; though the voice was low and smooth enough.
It was the British voice, confidently victorious, and I breathed again.
“We’ll get the old people away first,” the voice was saying. “You take charge of our guest, Hook. Tie him up while I get the bonds, and we’ll be gone in less than half an hour.”
The portières parted and Hook came into the room—a scowling Hook whose freckles had a greenish tinge against the sallowness of his face. He pointed a revolver at me, and spoke to the Quarres, short and harsh:
“He wants you.” They got up and went into the next room.
Hook, meanwhile, had stepped back to the doorway, still menacing me with his revolver; and pulled loose the plush ropes that were around the heavy curtains. Then he came around behind me, and tied me securely to the highbacked chair; my arms to the chair’s arms, my legs to the chair’s legs, my body to the chair’s back and seat; and he wound up by gagging me with the corner of a cushion that was too well-stuffed.
As he finished lashing me into place, and stepped back to scowl at me, I heard the street door close softly, and then light footsteps ran back and forth overhead.
Hook looked in the direction of those footsteps, and his little watery blue eyes grew cunning. “Elvira!” he called softly.
The portières bulged as if someone had touched them, and the musical feminine voice came through. “What?”
“Come here.”
“I’d better not. He wouldn’t—”
“Damn him!” Hook flared up. “Come here!”
She came into the room and into the circle of light from the tall lamp; a girl in her early twenties, slender and lithe, and dressed for the street, except that she carried her hat in one hand. A white face beneath a bobbed mass of flame-colored hair. Smoke-grey eyes that were set too far apart for trustworthiness—though not for beauty—laughed at me; and her red mouth laughed at me, exposing the edges of little sharp animal-teeth. She was as beautiful as the devil, and twice as dangerous.
She laughed at me—a fat man all trussed up with red plush rope, and with the corner of a green cushion in my mouth—and she turned to the ugly man. “What do you want?”
He spoke in an undertone, with a furtive glance at the ceiling, above which soft steps still padded back and forth.
“What say we shake him?”
Her smoke-grey eyes lost their merriment and became calculating.
“There’s a hundred thousand he’s holding—a third of it’s mine. You don’t think I’m going to take a Mickey Finn on that, do you?”
“Course not! Supposing we get the hundred-grand?”
“How?”
“Leave it to me, kid; leave it to me! If I swing it, will you go with me? You know I’ll be good to you.”
She smiled contemptuously, I thought—but he seemed to like it.
“You’re whooping right you’ll be good to me,” she said. “But listen, Hook: we couldn’t get away with it—not unless you get him. I know him! I’m not running away with anything that belongs to him unless he is fixed so that he can’t come after it.”
Hook moistened his lips and looked around the room at nothing. Apparently he didn’t like the thought of tangling with the owner of the British drawl. But his desire for the girl was too strong for his fear.
“I’ll do it!” he blurted. “I’ll get him! Do you mean it, kid? If I get him, you’ll go with me?”
She held out her hand. “It’s a bet,” she said and he believed her.
His ugly face grew warm and red and utterly happy, and he took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. In his place, I might have believed her myself—all of us have fallen for that sort of thing at one time or another—but sitting tied up on the side-lines, I knew that he’d have been better off playing with a gallon of nitro than with this baby. She was dangerous! There was a rough time ahead for Hook!
“This is the lay—” Hook began, and stopped, tongue-tied.
A step had sounded in the next room.
Immediately the British voice came through the portières, and there was exasperation to the drawl now:
“This is really too much! I can’t”—he said reahly and cawnt—“leave for a moment without having things done all wrong. Now just what got into you, Elvira, that you must go in and exhibit yourself to our detective?”
Fear flashed into her smoke-grey eyes, and out again, and she spoke airily. “Don’t be altogether yellow,” she said. “Your precious neck can get along all right without so much guarding.”
The portières parted, and I twisted my head around as far as I c
ould get it for my first look at this man who was responsible for my still being alive. I saw a short fat man, hatted and coated for the street, and carrying a tan traveling bag in one hand.
Then his face came into the yellow circle of light, and I saw that it was a Chinese face. A short fat Chinese, immaculately clothed in garments that were as British as his accent.
“It isn’t a matter of color,” he told the girl—and I understood now the full sting of her jibe; “it’s simply a matter of ordinary wisdom.”
His face was a round yellow mask, and his voice was the same emotionless drawl that I had heard before; but I knew that he was as surely under the girl’s sway as the ugly man—or he wouldn’t have let her taunt bring him into the room. But I doubted that she’d find this Anglicized oriental as easily handled as Hook.
“There was no particular need,” the Chinese was still talking, “for this chap to have seen any of us.” He looked at me now for the first time, with little opaque eyes that were like two black seeds. “It’s quite possible that he didn’t know any of us, even by description. This showing ourselves to him is the most arrant sort of nonsense.”
“Aw, hell, Tai!” Hook blustered. “Quit your bellyaching, will you? What’s the diff? I’ll knock him off, and that takes care of that!”
The Chinese set down his tan bag and shook his head.
“There will be no killing,” he drawled, “or there will be quite a bit of killing. You don’t mistake my meaning, do you, Hook?”
Hook didn’t. His Adam’s apple ran up and down with the effort of his swallowing and behind the cushion that was choking me, I thanked the yellow man again.
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 210
