Crime Stories

by Dashiell Hammett

  His brain was racing. Kapaloff’s “secretary and valet,” of course; and as their indifference to the noises they had made at the door testified to their determination to do what they had come to do at any cost, so now did their indifference to the pistol in Phil’s hand. Close upon him as they were, he could hardly expect to drop both of them; but even if he did—the whole story would be bound to come out in the police investigation that must follow, and his chance of getting greater profit out of the affair would be blasted.

  As the two men, working together like twin parts of a machine, contracted their muscles to spring, Phil hit on a way out. He leaped backward through the bedroom door, whirled, and jumped into the hall, shouting: “Help! Police!”

  There was a snarling at the door, a scuffling, and the noise of two men running through the dark hall toward the front door. The laughter that welled up in Phil’s throat silenced his shouts; he fired his pistol into the floor and returned to his bedroom. He laid a chair gently on its side and swept some books and papers from the table to the floor. Then he turned with a wide-eyed semblance of excitement to welcome the callers in various degrees of negligee who came in answer to his bellowing. After a while a policeman came and Phil told his story.

  “A noise woke me up and I saw a man in the room. I grabbed my gun and yelled at him, but I forgot to take the safety catch off the gun.” With sham sheepishness: “I guess I was kind of scared. He ran out in the hall with me after him. I remembered the safety, then, and took a shot at him, but it was too dark to see whether I hit him. I looked through my stuff and don’t think he got anything, so I guess no harm’s done.”

  After the last question had been answered and the last caller had gone, Phil bolted the door and shook hands with himself. “Well, that fixes Mr. Kapaloff’s story. And you’ve got him faded to date, my boy, so don’t let me catch you letting him run a bluff on you again.”

  CHAPTER V

  Forcing His Luck

  At five minutes past three Thursday afternoon the Kapaloffs arrived. Romaine Kapaloff acknowledged her uncle’s introduction in easy and faultless English, and thanked Phil warmly for his efforts in her behalf Tuesday morning. Phil found himself holding her hand and straining his self-possession to the utmost to keep from gaping and stammering. The girl—she couldn’t have been more than nineteen—was looking up through brown eyes that glowed now with friendliness and gratitude into Phil’s grey ones, and asking: “And you really weren’t hurt?”

  To Phil she seemed the loveliest creature he had ever seen. His attempts at extortion seemed mean and sordid. Because he was bitterly ashamed of his attempt to wring profits from her uncle, and was badly rattled, he answered almost gruffly; and in his effort to keep the chaos within him from his face he made it a mask of stupidity.

  “Not at all. Really! It was nothing.”

  Kapaloff stood watching them with the smile of one who sees his difficulties dissipated. Finally their hands fell apart and they sought chairs. There was an awkward pause. Phil knew that though they sat there until nightfall he could not bring up the question of the girl’s sanity, demand the corroboration of her uncle’s story, which was the excuse for the meeting.

  Kapaloff said nothing, sat smiling benignly upon girl and boy. The girl glanced at her uncle, as if expecting him to open the conversation, but when he ignored her silent appeal she turned impulsively to Phil, putting out her hand.

  “Uncle Boris told you about my—about the trouble?”

  Phil nodded, started to reach for the extended hand, thought better of it, and twined his fingers together between his knees.

  “Then you know how fortunate it was that your gallantry wasn’t successful. I can’t understand why you didn’t laugh at Uncle Boris’ story—it must have sounded fantastic to you. But—Oh, it is horrible! I can never trust myself again, no matter what the doctors say!”

  Phil found that he was holding her hand, after all. He looked at Kapaloff, who was smiling sympathetically. Phil and the girl stood up, and for an instant her eyes held a baffling undertone of pleading. Then it was gone, and she was turning to her uncle. Phil had but one idea in his mind now: to hand over the bag, get rid of these people, and be alone with his shame and disgust. He moved toward the door. “I’ll get the bag,” he said in a tired, weak voice.

  A silver purse that dangled from the girl’s wrist clattered to the floor. As Phil turned his head at the sound, Kapaloff bent to pick up the purse, and Romaine Kapaloff’s eyes met Phil’s. For an infinitesimal part of a second her eyes burned into his as they had Tuesday morning, and stark terror wiped out the smooth young beauty of her face. Then her uncle was holding out the purse, her face was composed again, and Phil was walking toward his bedroom door with blood pounding in his temples. He sat on the top of his trunk, gnawed a thumb-nail, and thought desperately. Then he took the bag from the trunk and thrust it under his coat and returned to his guests.

  “It is gone.”

  Kapaloff’s urbanity seemed about to desert him. His face darkened and he took a swift step forward. Then he was master of himself again, and was asking pleasantly, “Are you positive?”

  “You may look if you like.”

  Phil went to the telephone and a few seconds later was talking to the desk sergeant at the district police station.

  “A burglar got in here last night. One of your men was in afterward, and I told him I hadn’t missed anything. Now I find that a lady’s handbag is gone. All right.”

  He turned from the telephone to the Kapaloffs.

  “I woke up some time this morning and found two burglars in the room. They escaped, and I thought everything was safe. I forgot about the bag, and didn’t look to see if it was still here. I am sorry.”

  Neither of the Kapaloffs gave any indication of previous knowledge of the burglary. Boris Kapaloff said evenly, “Very unfortunate, but the bag and its contents were not so valuable that we should worry unduly over the loss.”

  “I am going to the police station this afternoon to give a description of the bag. Shall I tell them that it is your property and have them turn it over to you?”

  “If you will be so kind. Our address is, La Jolla Avenue, Burlingame.”

  Conversation lagged. Several times Kapaloff seemed about to speak, but each time he restrained himself. The girl’s eyes, when Phil met them, held a question which he made no attempt to answer. The Kapaloffs departed. Phil shook hands with both of them, answering the girl’s unspoken question with a quick pressure.

  When they were gone, he withdrew the bag from under his vest, counted three hundred and fifty-five dollars from the bills in his pocket, and put the money in the bag. Then he drew a deep breath. That was the end of three years of searching for an “easy living.” Since his discharge from the army he had been drifting, finding himself at odds with the world, gambling, doing chores for political factors—never doing anything very vicious, perhaps, but steadily becoming more and more enmeshed in the underworld. As he looked back now, with the memory of his shame and self-disgust of a few minutes ago still fresh, he thought that he would not feel quite so worthless if there had been some outstanding crime in his past, instead of a legion of petty deeds. Well, that was past! After this tangle came to an end he would get a job and go back to the ways he had known before the war interrupted his aspirations.

  He wrapped the bag in heavy paper, tied it, and sealed it securely. Then he took it downtown and turned it over to the friendly proprietor of a poolroom to be put in the safe.

  For two days Phil kept to his rooms—days in which he sprang to the telephone at the first tingling of the bell. He tried to reach Romaine Kapaloff by telephone, got her house, and was told by a harsh voice in broken English that she was not at home. Three times he tried it, but the results were the same. Then he tried to talk to her uncle, and got the same answer. On the second night he slept hardly at all. He would doze and then spring into wakefulness, imagining that the bell had sounded, race to the telephone, to be asked, �
��What number are you calling?”

  Then he decided to wait no longer. When a man’s luck is running good he should force the issue—not wait in idleness until his fortunes turn.

  CHAPTER VI

  “Flashing, Dripping Jaws”

  In Burlingame Phil easily found the Kapaloffs’ house. At the first garage where he inquired, the name was unknown, but they knew where “the Russians” lived. Even in the dark he had no difficulty in recognizing the house from the garage-man’s description. He drove past it, left his borrowed car in the darkest shadow he could find, and returned afoot. The building loomed immense in the night, a great gray structure set in a park, ringed about by a tall iron fence overgrown with hedging. The nearest house was at least half a mile away.

  No light came from the house, and Phil found the front gale locked, lie crossed the road and squatted under a tree some two hundred feet away. His plan involved nothing further than waiting in the vicinity until he saw Romaine, found some means of communicating with her, or found an avenue through which his luck could carry him toward a solution of whatever mystery existed in the house across the road. The chances were that Romaine was a prisoner; otherwise she would have got word to him before this. His watch registered 10:15.

  He waited.

  When his watch said 1:30 his youth and his faith in his luck overcame his patience. A man might as well be home in bed as sitting out here waiting for something to turn up. When a man’s luck is running good . . . He skirted the hedge-grown fence until he found a tree with a branch that grew over the barrier. He climbed the tree, crawled out on the overhanging limb, swung for a minute, and dropped. He landed on hands and knees in soft, moist loam. Carefully he moved forward, keeping a cluster of bushes between himself and the house. When he reached the bushes he halted. Nothing that might serve to conceal him was between the bushes and the building, and he was afraid to trust himself out in the pale starlight. He sat on his heels and waited.

  Three-quarters of an hour passed, and then he heard the sound of metal scraping against wood. He could see nothing. The sound came again and he identified it: someone was opening a shutter, cautiously, stopping at each sound the bolt made. A babel of dogs’ voices broke out at the rear of the house, and around the corner swept a pack of great hounds, to throw themselves frenziedly against one of the lower windows.

  Phil heard the shutter slam sharply. In the wake of the dogs a man stumbled. The shutter opened and Kapaloff leaned out to speak to the man in the yard. Above the men’s words Phil heard Romaine Kapaloff’s voice, raised in anger. In the rectangle of light shining from the window six wolfhounds were twisting and leaping—not the sedate, finely bred borzois of my lady’s promenade; but great, shaggy wolf-killers of the steppes, over half a man’s height from ground to shoulder, and more than a hundred pounds each of fighting machinery. Phil held his breath, shrunk behind his screen, and prayed that what he had heard somewhere of these wolfhounds hunting by sight and not by scent be true, that his presence escape their noses. Kapaloff withdrew his head and closed the shutter. The man in the yard shouted at the dogs. They followed him to the rear of the house. A door closed, shutting off the dogs’ voices. Phil was damp with perspiration, but he knew that the dogs were kept indoors.

  From an upper story came a muffled scream and a sound of something falling against a shutter. Then silence. The sound had come from the front of the house, Phil decided; the corner room on the third floor, at a guess.

  For a moment Phil was tempted to leave the place and enlist the services of the police; but he was not used to allying himself with the police—on the few occasions when he had had dealings with the law he had found it on the other side. Then, too, would not the glib Kapaloff have the advantage of his aristocratic manner, his standing as a property holder, and his seemingly secure position in the world? Against all this Phil would have but his bare word and a vague story, backed by three years of living without what the police call “visible means of support.” He could imagine what the outcome would be. He would have to play this hand out alone. Well, then . . .

  He left the protecting bush and crept to the front of the house. Around the corner he paused to scan the building. So far as he could determine in the dark every window was fitted with a shutter. He was afraid to try the shutters on the first floor; but it was unlikely that one of them would have been left unbolted, anyway. The upper windows held out the best promise of an entrance. He crept up on the porch, removed his shoes, and stuck them in his hip pockets. Mounting the porch-rail, he encircled a pillar with arms and legs and pulled himself up until his fingers caught the edge of the porch-roof. Silently he drew himself up and lay face down on the shingles. No sound came from house or grounds. On hands and knees he went to each of the four windows and tried the shutters. All were securely fastened.

  He sat up and studied the third-story windows. The window on the extreme left should open into the room from which the last noises had come—Romaine Kapaloff’s room, if his reasoning was correct. A rainspout ran up the corner of the house, within arm’s length of the window. If the spout would support him, he could reach the window and risk a signal to the girl. He crawled over and inspected the spout, testing it with his hands. It shook a little but he decided to risk it.

  He found a niche for the stockinged toes of one foot, drew himself up, reached for a higher hold on the spout with his hands, and felt for a support for the other foot. There was a tearing noise, a rattle of tin, and Phil thumped to the roof of the porch with a length of pipe in his hands. He rolled over, let go the spout, and caught at the roof in time to keep from going over the edge. The released piece of tin hit the roof with a clang and rolled over the edge to clatter madly on the paved walk.

  The night was suddenly filled with the snarling of hounds. The pack careened around the corner, flung themselves against the porch, tore up and down the yard—lithe, evil shapes in the starlight, with flashing, dripping jaws. Peeping over the edge of the roof, Phil saw a man following the dogs, a gleam of metal in his hands.

  A sound came from behind Phil. A second-story shutter was being opened. He wormed his way to it and lay on his back under it, close to the wall. The shutter swung open and a man leaned out—the man with the scarred face. Phil lay motionless, not breathing, his body tense, a forefinger tight around the trigger of his pistol, the pistol’s muzzle not six inches from the body slanting over him. The man called a question to the one in the yard. The front door opened, and Kapaloff’s easy voice sounded. The man at the window and the man in the yard called to Kapaloff in Russian; he answered. Then the man at the window withdrew, his footsteps receded, and a door closed within the room. The window remained open. Phil was over the sill in an instant, and in the dark room. As his feet touched the floor he sensed something amiss, heard a grunt, and lunged blindly forward. The room filled with dancing lights, and there was a roaring in his ears . . .

  CHAPTER VII

  The Third Degree

  Phil awoke with his nostrils stinging from ammonia administered by the man with the scarred face. Phil tried to push the bottle away, but his hands were lashed. His feet, too, were tied. He looked around, turning his head from side to side. He was lying on a bed in a luxuriously furnished chamber, fully clothed except for coat and shoes. Kapaloff stood across the room, looking on with a smile of mild mockery. On one side of the bed stood the man with the scar; on the opposite side, the other man who had entered Phil’s flat. At a word from Kapaloff this man assisted Phil to a sitting position.

  Phil’s head ached cruelly and his stomach felt queerly empty, but taking his cue from Kapaloff, he tried to keep his face composed, as if he found nothing disconcerting in his position. Kapaloff came over to the bed and asked solicitously: “You are not seriously injured this time either, I trust?”

  “I don’t think so. But if these hired men of yours keep it up they’ll wear my head away,” Phil said lightly.

  Kapaloff exhibited his teeth in an affable smile. “You are the fo
rtunate possessor of a tough head. But I hope it will not prove as little amenable to persuasion as it has been to force.” Phil said nothing. Every iota of his will was needed to keep his face calm. The pain in his head was unbearable. Kapaloff went on talking, his voice a mixture of friendliness and banter.

  “Your tenacity in clinging to the bag would, under other circumstances, be admirable; but really it must be terminated. I must insist that you tell me where it is.”

  “Suppose my head stays tough on the inside, too?” Phil suggested.

  “That would be most unfortunate. But you are going to be reasonable, aren’t you? When you stumbled into this affair you saw, or suspected, much that did not appear on the surface-being an extremely perspicacious young man—and thought you could unearth whatever was hidden and exact a little—well—not blackmail, perhaps, though a crude intellect might call it that. Now, you must see that I have the advantage; and assuredly you are enough the sportsman to acknowledge defeat, and make what terms you can.”

  “And what are the terms?”

  “Turn the bag over to me and sign a few papers.”

  “Papers for what?”

  “Oh! the papers are unimportant. Merely a precaution. You will not know what they contain exactly—just a few statements supposedly made by you: confessions to certain crimes, perhaps—to insure me that you will not trouble the police afterward. I am frank. I do not know where you have put the bag. After you so obligingly entered the window that Mikhail left open for you, Mikhail and Serge visited your rooms again. They found nothing. So I offer terms. The bag, your signature, and you receive five hundred dollars, exclusive of the money that was in the bag.”

  “Suppose I don’t like the terms?”

  “That would be most unfortunate,” Kapaloff protested. “Serge”—motioning toward the man who had helped Phil sit up—“is remarkably adept with a heated knife; and remembering the ludicrous manner in which you put him and Mikhail to rout, I fancy he would relish having you as a subject for his play.”