Arson Plus and Other Stories

by Dashiell Hammett

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  Arson Plus and Other Stories

  Collected Case Files of the Continental Op

  The Early Years, Vol. 1

  Dashiell Hammett

  Edited by Richard Layman and Julie M. Rivett

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  Contents

  Foreword: “Through Mud and Blood and Death and Deceit”

  Introduction: The Early Years, 1923–1924

  “Arson Plus”

  “Crooked Souls”

  “Slippery Fingers”

  About the Author

  FOREWORD

  “Through Mud and Blood and Death and Deceit”

  The Continental Op: The Complete Case Files is the first electronic publication of Dashiell Hammett’s collected Continental Op stories to be licensed by either Hammett or his estate—and the first English-language volume of any kind to include all twenty-eight of the Op’s standalone stories. But, as with most of Hammett’s publishing history, the saga of the case-hardened, inelegant, unnamed operative from the Continental Detective Agency is anything but straightforward. The players in the Op’s publishing-life drama are several—including Hammett; his paramour and executrix, Lillian Hellman; Hellman’s allies; Hammett’s family; and various publishing advocates and political adversaries. Add to that the relative novelty of electronic books. Hammett’s 1920s publishing contracts did not anticipate his “little fat detective” on the luminous, ephemeral pages so lately familiar to modern readers. And yet, the Op was the product of an era of tumult, who survived gunshots, grifters, criminal conspiracies, class struggles, temptations, and neglect. He’s learned to adapt.

  The Op stories were published individually during the early years of Hammett’s writing career, between 1923 and 1930. All but two were featured in Black Mask, the leading light of pulp magazines—a favorite among working-class readers, crime-fiction aficionados, and anyone who longed for a coin’s worth of well-crafted thrills. In June of 1929, near the end of the run, Hammett sent a note to Harry Block, his editor at Alfred A. Knopf. He had just sent Block a draft of his third novel, The Maltese Falcon, which he described as “by far the best thing” he’d done so far.

  Also I’ve about two hundred and fifty thousand words of short stories in which the Continental Op appears. I know you’re not likely to be wildly enthusiastic about the short-story idea; but don’t you think that something quite profitable for both of us could be done with them by making a quite bulky collection of them—selling them by the pound, as it were? I don’t know anything about the manufacturing costs—how far bulkiness could be carried at a fairly low cost without eating up the profits. I’d want to rewrite the stories we included, of course, and there are possibly fifty or sixty of the quarter-million that I’d throw out as not worth bothering about. In the remainder there are some good stories, and altogether I think they’d give a more complete and true picture of a detective at work than has been given anywhere else.

  Almost immediately Hammett had second thoughts about republishing the Op tales. “I’d rather forget them,” he told Block. The hardboiled pioneer was ready, in contemporary lexis, to retool his brand—to abandon the constraints and expectations of the crime-fiction genre and to shift his focus from the Continental Detective Agency’s anonymous foot soldier to more sophisticated conflicts starring independent detectives, non-detectives, and ex-detectives. It wasn’t long before the Continental Op’s work-a-day exploits were overshadowed by the deeper, darker, and splashier successes of Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon, 1930), Ned Beaumont (The Glass Key, 1931), and Nick Charles (The Thin Man, 1934). Hammett’s hardworking, hardboiled protagonist was relegated to the sidelines.

  During the thirteen-year hiatus that followed, the Continental Op was available to readers primarily in Hammett’s first two novels, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse (each reworked from four linked Black Mask stories released 1927–1929, both published by Knopf in 1929). Red Harvest was ahead of its time—a vivid and exquisitely informed exploration of corruption, pragmatism, and ambiguity, set in Montana mining country. While it was optioned for film, Hammett’s fans could easily have overlooked the Op’s dubious debut as Willie Bindbugel in Ben Hecht’s wildly divergent film adaptation of the novel, released by Paramount as Roadhouse Nights in 1930. Willie played an investigative reporter, rather than a hardboiled detective, in a story that was more action-comedy than crime. Today, the film is most notable as a vehicle for Jimmy Durante in his first big-screen appearance.

  The Dain Curse, Hammett’s second novel, featured the Op negotiating San Franciscan family drama, religious fervor, insanity, and drug-induced confusion in a tangled contest between the supernatural and sober reality. Hammett titled the expository final chapter “The Circus” and later described the book as a “silly story.” It is generally considered the least of his five novels. Still, The Dain Curse was a solid performance that garnered largely favorable reviews, earned a spot on the New York Times recommended holiday books list, and won the Op (and Hammett) his first printing in England. The Op was less fortunate in Hollywood, where, despite the fledgling film industry’s thirst for talking-picture storylines, Hammett’s ornate detective thriller came to naught.

  The Continental Op’s fortunes rebounded in 1943, when Lawrence Spivak (with Frederick Dannay and his cousin Manfred B. Lee, jointly known as Ellery Queen) made arrangements to publish a string of digest-size paperback collections featuring Hammett’s short fiction. Hammett, serving in Alaska with the US Army Signal Corps, agreed unenthusiastically to a deal with Spivak’s Mercury Publications. “I signed the contract,” he told Lillian Hellman, “but don’t take that as a hint that I want it especially.” All but one of the twenty-eight Continental Op standalone tales were reprinted (in sometimes liberally re-edited form) between 1943 and 1951, under Best Seller Mysteries, Jonathan Press Mystery, Mercury Mystery, and Ellery Queen Selects imprints. Once again, the Op was widely available in the working-class world he represented.

  Between 1951 and 1961—the last decade of Hammett’s life—virtually no one published the Op, Sam Spade, Ned Beaumont, Nick Charles, or any of Hammett’s fiction. It was the era of the Red scare, with its blacklists and committee hearings, and the beginnings of the Cold War, rife with anti-Soviet fear mongering and jingoistic conservatism. Hammett had made no secret of his leftwing affiliations, and with the taint of the Red brush he became unmarketable. His income was devastated, his publishers wary, the radio shows based on his work cancelled.

  “Financially,” Hammett told his wife, Jose, in March of 1951, “this year’s going to be a holy terror and so—from the looks of things right now—are the next few years to come.” Hammett’s estimation was dead-on. He spent five of the last six months of 1951 imprisoned on a contempt of court charge after claiming his Fifth Amendment rights in US District Court. He would neither name the contributors to the Civil Rights Congress of New York bail fund he chaired nor provide information on the whereabouts of four Communist Party leaders who had skipped out on bail the CRC fund had provided. Hammett served his time without regret, but when he was released on December 9, both his health and his finances had crumbled beyond repair. His final bids at political engagement, teaching, and innovative fiction withered away over the course of the next two years. He lived in increasing seclusion and frugality in upstate New York, dependent on the kindness of friends and his monthly veteran’s pension of $131.10.

  Hammett died on January 10, 1961. His only significant asset—$7,914.23 held in escrow by his publisher,
Alfred A. Knopf—was dwarfed by Federal and New York State tax liens totaling nearly $175,000. While a portion of the shortfall might be attributed to slipshod tax reporting on Hammett’s part—he had failed to file returns while he was serving in the Army—the bulk is plainly a bitter byproduct of the US government’s retaliatory anti-communist campaigns. Lillian Hellman attached another $40,000 in claims for repayment of personal loans, in addition to his final medical, funeral, and administrative expenses. She was executrix for the Dashiell Hammett estate and with the approval of the IRS she put the rights to Hammett’s entire body of work up for auction, with the understanding that the sale price (a minimum of $5,000) would settle his outstanding debt.

  Lillian Hellman wrote to Hammett’s daughters Mary and Jo to ask if they would be willing to go in with her to make an offer. There is no record of Mary’s reply. But Jo wrote back in June of 1963: “We will be able to send the thousand but it will be a month or six weeks before the cash is available. Is this satisfactory? Please let us know what has developed with the proposed tax settlement.” Hellman ignored Jo’s letter, disregarded her request for updates, and chose instead to pool resources with her friend Arthur Cowan. At the sale in November, she and Cowan won all rights to Hammett’s works with the minimum bid of $5,000. One year later Cowan was killed in a car accident, leaving his share of the Hammett library under Hellman’s complete control. “I am now the sole owner of the estate,” she told Jo.

  Having captured Hammett’s literary rights at a bargain-basement rate, Hellman set herself to an ambitious campaign to restore his stifled reputation. She arranged for Random House to publish The Novels of Dashiell Hammett in 1965, followed by Dell paperback editions of The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, and The Thin Man in 1966. With that, Hammett’s five major works were back in the marketplace.

  The Continental Op made his comeback in The Big Knock-Over collection in 1966, edited and introduced by Hellman. All but one of the nine Op tales she selected had been published originally between 1925 and 1929—which is to say, Hellman’s choices comprised the bulk of the second half of Hammett’s Op oeuvre. Her introduction offers tribute and reminiscence, her glowing portrait of Hammett and the Hammett-Hellman relationship pointedly sentimental rather than squarely factual. “I don’t want modesty for either of us,” she explains. She glosses over Hammett’s early life (his wife and daughters dispatched in just twelve words) with petty inaccuracies, then fleshes out Hammett’s later years with a deft synthesis of personal history and private moments. Some of Hellman’s stories are almost certainly true. But truth, Hellman explained years later, is “slippery, tricky, unreliable.” Hammett’s fiction remained authentic, however, and The Big Knock-Over, published five years after his death, was received enthusiastically. And with it, Hellman’s inaugural foray into the reconstruction of her lover’s life slipped quietly into public consciousness.

  The Continental Op collection followed in 1974, edited and introduced by Steven Marcus. He was a friend of Hellman and a respected literary and cultural scholar, but even so Hellman maintained tight control over the editorial process. Early on Marcus suggested twenty-four pieces of Hammett fiction, broken into three sections: Op stories, non-Op stories, and the first, unfinished draft of The Thin Man. Hellman objected, again and again; the book got shorter and shorter. “I do agree with you that Dash grew as a writer … but I don’t think we can base an anthology on the growth since most readers would properly be more interested in the results of the growth,” she argued. In the end, the collection included just seven Op selections, hopscotching between 1924 and 1930. Marcus divided his introduction into two parts—biographical and critical. There are golden echoes of Hellman’s reminisces in the first—especially where they touch on the Hammett-Hellman relationship—and threads of Marxist, Hobbesian, and nihilistic rationale weaving backwards and forwards through the second. Marcus, too, leaves his fingerprints on the Hammett legacy.

  Through all of this, barring his ersatz appearance in Roadhouse Nights, the Op was noticeably absent from Hollywood. Hellman did what she could to capitalize on the character’s film and television potential, but it was tough going. Film rights to Red Harvest had been sold to Knopf along with print rights in 1929, as was then the standard. Knopf assigned rights to Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation, who, probably in 1972, assigned rights to PEA Films—whose claims continue to constrain Red Harvest’s film and television prospects. Hellman sold film and television rights to several other Op stories to Fast Film and PEA Films in 1974 and 1975—deals that brought her income, but left Hammett’s meaty, middle-aged detective in the wings, future opportunities further entangled. The Dain Curse, perhaps improbably, broke the Op’s dry streak in 1978 with a three-part mini-series on CBS, starring James Coburn as detective Hamilton Nash. The Op had a name and, at last, a legitimate film credit. In the decades before and after, filmic roles for Hammett’s seminal gumshoe have been more inspirational (read uncredited or unrecognizable), than sanctioned or celebrated.

  When Lillian Hellman died in 1984 control of the Hammett literary estate passed into a literary trust administered by three of her friends. While the trustees’ oversight was uneven and unenthusiastic, under their tenure two important story collections came to fruition. The first was Nightmare Town, comprising twenty pieces of short fiction, spanning eleven years. The book was slow to come together, as the editors waded through a labyrinth of Hammett-Hellman-Random House permissions and decisions. Nightmare Town was published in 1999, with an introduction by William F. Nolan, who rightly described the anthology as “the largest collection of [Hammett’s] shorter works and by far the most comprehensive.” Seven stories featuring the Continental Op were included.

  Just two years later, the prestigious Library of America published Hammett’s Crime Stories and Other Writings, succeeding Nightmare Town as the most comprehensive compilation of Hammett’s short fiction. Steven Marcus, then free from Hellman’s micro-managing oversight, selected twenty-seven pieces, including all but eight of the twenty-eight Op stories. Contractual limitations dealing with reprints in competing publications made full inclusion problematic. Nevertheless, the volume is handsome and enlightening. Margaret Atwood, a Hammett fan of longstanding, said it took readers “back to the beginning of the line” and showed why Hammett’s popularity had risen so rapidly. The mere presence of Crime Stories and Other Writings among Library of America’s illustrious volumes is proof of esteem for Hammett’s work that survived his pulp fiction origins nearly eight decades earlier.

  Lillian Hellman’s appointees to the Dashiell Hammett literary trust ceded control to the Hammett family in 2003. Because rights to the five novels had already been transferred to Jo Hammett, in 1995 in a negotiated agreement based on copyright extension law, the change in administration applied mainly to Hammett’s short stories—and to the Op in particular. The new trustees (including Hammett’s grandson, Evan Marshall, and the editors of this volume) took seriously their responsibility to Hammett’s legacy. What followed was a new season of engagement and publication, in the United States and abroad. Hammett never ventured overseas, but his Op is a veteran traveler, with recent excursions that include Brazil, Italy, Romania, Poland, Germany, England, and, most notably, France, where a Hammett renaissance has resulted in a flock of new translations and paperback compilations, as well as, in 2011, an omnibus volume that collected virtually all of Hammett’s available fiction.

  This electronic publication of Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op stories comes 93 years after his “little man going forward day after day through mud and blood and death and deceit” narrated his first investigation in Black Mask magazine in 1923. It is the first opportunity for readers across the globe to enjoy both what Hammett called “a more complete and true picture of a detective at work” and to witness the growth of his creator, who changed the face of not just American crime fiction, but realistic, literary, and entertaining fiction worldwide. The stories are presented chron
ologically, with section introductions providing context and insights into Hammett’s evolution under his three Black Mask editors—George W. Sutton, Philip C. Cody, and Joseph Thompson Shaw. Headnotes original to each story’s publication are included, along with Hammett’s remarks in letters to the editors. “Three Dimes”—an incomplete Continental Op adventure preserved in Hammett’s archive—is included as a bonus to the complete volume.

  We offer no pulp paper. No cloth-covered boards or dust jacket. No lurid cover art. No sewn binding or ribbon. Just Hammett’s words, as originally published in Black Mask, True Detective Stories, and Mystery Stories. Our only modifications are silent corrections to spelling and typographical errors preserved on the rare, fragile pages of Hammett’s original magazine offerings. Modern publishing provides distinct advantages to those of us who edit—who collect and prepare materials for publication—leaving us grateful for today’s more durable manuscripts, nimble word-processing technologies, and the easy mutability of e-files.

  Hammett, however, was a man of an earlier era—writing with typewriters or pen, pencil, and paper, computers unconceived. He read bound books, hardcopy magazines, and newspapers in those decades when “papers” was not a metaphor. His image lingers in vintage shades of black and white, bound up with the Op, Sam Spade, and Nick Charles, washed in afterlife with Lillian Hellman’s painterly recollections. It’s tempting, then, to imagine our crime-fiction champion rejecting e-reading in favor of bookbinding’s tactile pleasures and traditions. “I tell you, it wasn’t like this when I was young,” Hammett wrote in 1950. “The world’s going to hell: some people claim radio and movies are responsible, but I think it started with the invention of the wheel. If man had been meant to revolve he wouldn’t have been born with flat feet.”