Return of the Thin Man: Two never-before-published novellas featuring Nick & Nora Charles

by Dashiell Hammett

  Abrams mumbles in Nick’s ear: “You ask her the rest. She always blows up on me.”

  Nick says to Selma: “Since you’ve gone this far, I think you’d better tell the police why you didn’t tell them the truth before.”

  Selma: “I started to, but Aunt Katherine wouldn’t let me.”

  Abrams growls: “That old battle-axe.”

  Nick asks: “Why wouldn’t she?”

  Selma: “She said there was enough scandal with Robert being killed that way, without this.”

  Nick: “Thanks. That’s fine.” Pats her on the shoulder, turns away.

  Abrams: “Maybe that’s fine for you, but it could stand a little more explaining for my part.”

  Nick: “The explaining room is out there,” indicating the kitchen. “Shall we try it now?” He and Abrams go into the kitchen. Nick continues: “The gadget is that Aunt Katherine thought Robert forged the check and she was willing to let the $10,000 go to keep people from knowing there had been a forger in the family as well as a murdered man—” Then as an afterthought, he adds: “Especially since it was Selma’s $10,000.”

  Abrams asks: “Had he ever done anything like that before?”

  Nick, earnestly: “That boy had done everything.”

  Francis comes to the door and says: “Telephone for you,” to Abrams.

  Abrams goes out.

  Nick spies a battered cocktail shaker on the shelf, and begins to look through the closets for something to put in it. The closets are absolutely bare. He disgustedly throws the cocktail shaker in the garbage can as Abrams comes back.

  Abrams: “The laboratory says those red hairs were probably from a wig and that the broken specs were only windowglass. Were you kind of expecting something like that?”

  Nick: “Kinda.”

  Abrams: “And the gun’s not the one those people were killed with. Expect that?”

  Nick: “Kinda.”

  Abrams: “But what’s really good is, the boys picked up some pretty nice fingerprints of Dancer’s in the joint. Let’s go in and see how he likes that.”

  Nick: “All right, but mind if I get in a question first?”

  Abrams: “Go ahead, help yourself.”

  They return to the room where the others are.

  Nick asks Lum Kee: “Did you ever mail to Mrs. Landis a cigarette case that you thought she left in the restaurant about a week ago?”

  Lum Kee: “Maybe yes, maybe no. All the time people leave things.”

  Nick to Dancer: “I know he didn’t. You sent it to her pretending you thought it was hers and when she sent it back with a note saying it wasn’t, you traced her signature on the bottom of a $10,000 check payable to Robert, and sent it over for deposit in his account because you knew the bank wouldn’t question that and when they eventually found out it was a forgery, he’d be blamed for it because he’d done things like that before. Then you were all set to forge a check on his account for the same $10,000 while Polly kept him busy so that the bank couldn’t reach him to ask him about it if they got suspicious. And so then if he’s killed, who’s going to be able to prove that he didn’t forge his wife’s name to the check to get money to give to this girl he was in love with?”

  Dancer asks scornfully: “And then I suppose I knock him off and stir up all this fuss before I get the dough? What kind of a stumble-bum does that make me out to be?”

  Nick: “I’ll let you know in a little while. Take the witness, Lieutenant Abrams.”

  Abrams: “I’ll tell you what kind of a stumble-bum you are. You’re the kind that left fingerprints all over Phil Byrnes’s joint when you killed him.”

  Caspar comes forward between Dancer and Abrams, saying: “Lieutenant Abrams, I cannot allow—”

  Dancer takes him by the back of the neck and pushes him out of the way, snarling: “Shut up! Everything you say is used against me.” Then to Abrams: “Yeah, I was at Phil’s place last night and when I left he was on the floor with a split lip and a goog and a couple of dents in him here and there but he was just as alive as you are, if that means anything.”

  Abrams: “You mean you went up there when you had the switch pulled in your place?”

  Dancer: “Yeah.”

  Abrams: “What for?”

  Dancer looks thoughtful for a moment, then says: “Okay, I don’t know what I’m letting myself in for, but I’m not going to let you hang any murder rap on me. This Robert was a sucker and Polly and I were taking him. Maybe it was some kind of check razzle-dazzle like he (jerking a thumb at Nick) said, maybe it wasn’t. Even if it had been, what would be the sense of killing him? Nobody’d have believed him if he’d said he hadn’t forged his wife’s name. Maybe we even talked him into doing it; anyways, he’s cooled before we get anything. This guy,” jerking his thumb again at Nick, “says Phil followed Robert and Polly down the street. Knowing Phil, I figured he tried to stick Robert up that night and had to kill him. I don’t like having a punk gum things up for me that way, so why shouldn’t I go over and push him around a little to learn him manners. But I didn’t kill him.”

  Abrams asks: “Did you ever wear a wig?”

  Dancer seems completely surprised. Then he says: “No, but you ought to see my collection of hoopskirts.”

  Abrams asks Lum Kee: “Did you?”

  Lum Kee says: “No,” pulling a lock of his hair. “Good hair—see?”

  Abrams groans and says to Nick: “I hate comedians.” Then he asks Polly: “Did you?”

  Polly: “No.”

  Abrams: “Have you thought of anything that might have something to do with this layout?” indicating the window from which the ladder is hanging and the earphones.

  Polly: “No. But maybe this was all just a gag. Nobody came down and hit me on the head with that pipe and Robert wasn’t killed in my place.”

  Nick asks her: “You know why that was, don’t you?”

  Polly: “No.”

  Francis says to the detective standing beside him: “What a swell gal she’d be to take out—all she can say is ‘No.’”

  Nick: “I’ll tell you. This mysterious Anderson, probably in a red wig, phony glasses, and gloves to keep from leaving fingerprints, was sitting up here at his listening post waiting for a good chance to come down and polish off Robert, and hearing most of the things that were said down there between you and Phil and you and Dancer and you and Robert until he knew more about all of you than any of you did. But for one reason or another, he put off the killing until he learned that you and Robert were going away the next day. It was that night or never with him, but he got a bad break. Pedro came up and wanted to put a new rug down. That would have exposed the listening post and spoiled everything; so when he tries to talk Pedro out of it—”

  Asta, who has been playing with David over by the open window, now lifts his leg against the chair.

  Nora yells: “Asta!” then complains, “Now I’ll have to take you out just when I was so interested. Couldn’t you wait until I get back, Nickie?”

  David: “I’ll take him out for you.”

  Nick to Abrams: “Murderers get funnier every year, don’t they?”

  Abrams: “Huh?”

  Nick: “Just when you get ready to arrest them they want to take dogs out walking!”

  Everybody looks at Nick in surprise.

  Nick: “David is Anderson. He didn’t recognize Pedro any more than Robert or I did, but in spite of the disguise, Pedro finally recognized him just as Polly told us he’d recognized Robert. I suppose David gave him some hocus-pocus story, but Pedro, knowing Robert was spending a lot of time in the apartment just below this, probably knowing that Robert married Selma and knowing that David had been engaged to her when Pedro was working for Nora, and knowing Nora married a detective, thought he’d better change the lock and keep David out until he could come over and ask Nora’s and my advice. He was foolish enough to tell David what he was going to do and David followed him over and shot him in the vestibule.”

  David tur
ns to Nora, who is standing beside him by the window, and asks: “Nora, is he fooling?”

  Nora says nothing. She is too busy listening to Nick, as are the others.

  Nick: “Sure. And you were fooling when you said you hadn’t seen him since he worked for Nora and pretended you remembered him as a man with a long, gray mustache. He’s got one now all right, but if you’ll look at that picture downstairs, you’ll see that it was neither very long nor very gray then. And what was Phil doing on your fire-escape except to try to shake you down because we know he’d followed you and Polly that night? We know the boy liked to shake people down; but you weren’t alone that night, so he beat it and made a date with you for the next night and got himself killed.”

  David protests: “But—”

  Nick, paying no attention to him, continues: “And what do you suppose Pedro was trying to say when he died? That he’d been killed by Miss Selma’s young man, which would be a servant’s language for your status back when he worked for Nora.”

  Selma says: “But Nick, why should David have killed him? He’d given him the bonds and Robert was going away.”

  Nick: “He didn’t want Robert to go away—he wanted to kill him. That’s why he had to do it that night; otherwise he’d have had to hunt all over the world for him. Promising to pay him, with Polly knowing it, would make it look as though he had no reason for killing him. He intended killing him that night he met him, but Polly was along, so he couldn’t. But he followed him and shot him when he came out of the house.”

  Selma: “I can’t believe—”

  David grabs Nora and forces her backwards out of the window so that only her legs are inside and she is held there only by his arms. His face has become insane; his voice, high-pitched and hysterical. He screams: “I’m not going to the gallows! Either you give me your word that I go out of here with a five-minute start, or Nora goes out of the window with me.”

  The policemen’s guns are in their hands, but everyone is afraid to move except Lum Kee, who, standing by the corridor door, softly slips out, and Selma, who starts toward David, crying: “David!”

  David snarls: “Keep away, you idiot!”

  Nick, talking to gain time, trying not to show how frightened he is, says to Selma: “See, he’s not in love with you. He was, but when you turned him down for Robert, he probably came to hate you almost as much as he did Robert. But playing the faithful lover let him hang around until he could get a crack at Robert. That’s why when he saw you hop around the corner with a gun in your hand right after he’d shot Robert from the car, he circled the block and came back in time to frame you while he pretended he was covering you up. He had probably meant to frame Phil or Dancer—which he did after he’d had to kill Phil while you were in jail.”

  David, from the window, says: “You’re stalling for time, Nick, and it’s no good. Five minutes’ start or another of your lovely family goes down on the rocks with me.”

  Nick: “Don’t be a sap, David. The chances are they’d never hang you. You ought to be able to get off with a few years in an asylum. What jury’s going to believe a sane man did all this?”

  David: “That’s a good idea! So I won’t have to jump out the window with her. Either I get my five minutes or she goes down alone.”

  Nick turns to Abrams and says: “Lieutenant, I—”

  There is a commotion at the window. Nora goes farther out backwards. David turns and leans out of the window, looking at something below. Outside, Lum Kee, in his stocking feet, is hanging by his toes and one hand to the rungs of the ladder, with his other around Nora’s waist, and his head bent down, trying to avoid David’s blows. Inside, Nick snatches a pistol from the nearest policeman and shoots David. David somersaults out of the window and crashes to the rocks some sixty feet below. Nick has gone to the window and is pulling Nora in. He shakes her violently by the shoulders and says:

  “You numbskull, why didn’t you keep away from him after I told you he was a murderer?”

  She says just as sharply: “You fool, why didn’t you—”

  They both break off and go into each other’s arms.

  Abrams turns from looking out of the window and says: “Some of you boys go down and gather him up. A good enough ending for it. I guess that Doc Kammer would have had no trouble at all getting him off.”

  Lum Kee climbs over the sill. Nick and Nora turn to him together to thank him for saving her, Nora adding that it was especially wonderful of him, inasmuch as Nick had once sent his brother to the pen.

  Lum Kee says: “Sure. Mr. Charles send him over—number one detective—I no like my brother—I like his girl—thank you many times—you betcha.”

  He moves uncomfortably and looks down at his stocking feet. He is standing in a puddle. He smiles blandly and says: “I go down and get my shoes,” while Nora exclaims reproachfully, “Asta!”

  THE END

  AFTER THE THIN MAN

  Afterword

  In the opening frames of After the Thin Man, a billowing locomotive speeds through space and time with turns of night and day, and rushing American landscapes. The two and a half years that passed between the release of the original Thin Man film, in May of 1934, and its first sequel, released on Christmas Day 1936, evaporate in twenty seconds. Nick and Nora Charles, who had celebrated Christmas in New York, arrive just in time for New Year’s Eve in San Francisco.

  At its core, The Thin Man’s sequel remains faithful to both Hammett’s original story and MGM’s original film adaptation. After the Thin Man, wrote Norbert Lusk in the Los Angeles Times, “succeeds in recapturing and carrying on the charm and originality of Nick and Nora Charles, who set a fashion in characterization all their own.” As Hunt Stromberg insisted, “Nick is always the same!—he’s a—CHARACTER.” And Nora remains his inimitable wife, friend, and foil. Important, the voices of The Thin Man also stay true. The Hacketts preserved Hammett’s quirky dialogue, with its rare blend of silly and cynical, sloshed and smart. “Have you ever been thrown out of a place, Mr. Charles?” threatens Dancer. “How many places was it up to yesterday, Mrs. Charles?” asks Nick. “How many places have you been in, Mr. Charles?” replies Nora. As in the first Thin Man—and as in John Huston’s 1941 adaptation of The Maltese Falcon—sizeable blocks of Hammett’s conversations are transferred undisturbed. Hollywood’s studios hired Hammett because he knew how to write dialogue that rang true, amused, and informed. Shrewd filmmakers didn’t muddle it.

  Hunt Stromberg stressed another constant in his Thin Man project—the inherent tension between Nick and Nora’s personal histories. Portrayals of “his” and “her” people “should be of exactly the opposite type and tempo,” Stromberg said, so that “contrast between the two backgrounds will become more poignant.” Nick was a man of the people, with all their intemperate foibles. Nora was a product of the moneyed upper class, and while she was intrigued by Nick’s world, she was not insensible to its offenses. The surprise party at the Charles’s home, the dinner party at the Forrests’, and encounters with Nick’s criminal acquaintances amplify the contrast. Nora’s raised eyebrows and the couple’s furtive banter make good comedy. Their ability to transform social dissonance into connubial delight also reflects on the economic realities of the Depression Era, when moviegoers welcomed an imaginative world in which class barriers were permeable and wealth was not a precondition of happiness. Nick appropriated Nora’s glamorous lifestyle, but his low-life friends had a lot of fun, too.

  There are, of course, significant differences between After the Thin Man’s screen story and its final production. Fewer changes than might be expected can be attributed to the Production Code Administration’s censorship. While Joseph Breen, head of the PCA, had said that “It will be necessary to limit all unnecessary drinking to an absolute minimum,” Nick, Nora, and the rest indulge liberally throughout the film. Breen also objected to Nick handling Nora’s underwear in the opening train sequence, to Phil striking Polly, and to David’s mention of “divorce”—a
ll in scenes that remain largely intact. Asta’s “toilet gag[s]” were more troubling. In the wake of PCA complaints, proposed leg-lifting scenes disappeared—although the Hacketts’ sequences illustrating Mrs. Asta’s infidelity remain. Canine cuckolding, it appears, was less offensive to Mr. Breen than urination.

  The most salient difference between the screen story and its film adaptation is Pedro Dominges’s death scene. In a late addition to the story that was not well received by Stromberg or the Hacketts, Hammett has Pedro shot at the Charleses’ front door during the New Year’s Eve surprise party sequence. “We must not forget that your script was written really without any preparations for the Hammett injection of the Pedro incident,” Stromberg complained to the Hacketts on August 31, 1936. “And that we felt Saturday that the script was detached and irrelevant as Pedro seemed to be just dragged in and not really dramatized in scenes and premises.” Stromberg suggested a reconstruction that might have mitigated the problem, but Hackett and Goodrich settled on a more drastic revision. They cut the initial shooting scene entirely. Instead, Pedro’s character is introduced late in the film, found dead in Polly’s apartment house. While his white mustache still provides the key to identifying David as the murderer, Pedro is demoted to janitor, rather than the building owner and former bootlegger made good. Had Hammett continued to develop his story alongside Stromberg and the Hacketts, he might have worked through their objections and found a more graceful solution. But Hammett had moved on.

  Although their treatment of the Pedro situation is less than ideal, Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich deserve kudos for the final adaptation of Hammett’s screen story to film. When they began work on the original Thin Man film, director W. S. Van Dyke had asked them to focus on fleshing out the Charleses’ relationship, rather than articulating the murder mystery. In After the Thin Man, they take on the same task—drafting train-car, domestic, and nightclub scenes that brighten the film. With Hammett’s departure from Hollywood, however, the Hacketts were left to transform a complicated mystery story into a filmable screenplay. They reshuffled the clues and key sequences that Hammett left behind. They compressed his secondary points into simple shots. And they trimmed extraneous or impractical material. Director Van Dyke must have been relieved by their revised version of the final confrontation, which plays out inside Polly’s apartment with a pistol and a tossed hat, rather than on both sides of an open window, by way of a makeshift pipe ladder, a dodgy gunshot, and a gruesome fatal plunge.