“Having,” as he says, “not only been shot at, but also insulted by yaps,” Nick decides to go to work. He goes down into Chinatown and gets a line on Dancer’s friends and habits and digs into them; he combs the waterfront; he has practically exhausted the city before he, also exhausted, returns home looking fairly satisfied with himself.
Meanwhile Morelli, returning from his “job,” has arrived in the neighborhood of his hideout just in time to see Georgia being taken away by the police, so later that night he comes calling on Nick again, asking him to help save the little woman. Grilled, he admits that both of them were near the hotel when Chris was shot but swears both are innocent and didn’t even see the flash.
Nick makes Morelli a proposition. He says he’s got everything he needs to convict Dancer except an eyewitness. If Morelli and Georgia can find it in their hearts to change their testimony just a little bit, even if only enough to swear there was nobody except Dancer within ten feet of Chris when he was killed (he was shot under one ear and there were plenty of powder-marks), Nick will promise to save them. Morelli balks; he would never frame anybody and he hadn’t thought Nick would. Nick insists that it’s not really framing to add a little needed evidence against a man you’re positive is guilty and keeps talking about “saving the little woman” until Morelli agrees.
The next day Nick assembles everybody and goes to work on Dancer. He has a mob of witnesses: a bellboy to swear Dancer had a gun for years; a longshoreman to swear he saw him throw what looked like a gun off a dock the previous afternoon; a newsboy to swear he had seen him running from the direction of Nick’s house right after the shot had been fired through the window; a pool-room attendant to swear he had once told him when drunk that there was one guy in the world he wanted to get, a guy named Chris Something. He has more witnesses, but the most effective are Morelli and Georgia, who now almost remember seeing the gun in Dancer’s hand.
Dancer gives up. “All right,” he tells Nick, “you win. I’ll take what’s coming to me but I don’t want a murder rap. It was all just as I told you till we got to the alley. I was closing in then, wanting to get some few pennies anyway from Chris before he went in his hotel, and then that gun came out and was almost under my nose when it went off, and I didn’t want to be the next on the list, so I grabbed it and then I see what I’ve got besides the gun. Real dough, if what Chris said was right. So I helped in the getaway and the next day I called her [nodding at Mimi] up and—”
Mimi screams: “That’s a lie, you double-crossing—” and a copper grabs her and puts handcuffs on her wrists.
Dancer shakes his head coolly and goes on talking: “Not her, you mug. I went to her and told her if she wanted the kid kept off the gallows I’d have to be fixed up regular and so—after a little trouble: she was kind of tough at first—we made the deal.” He scowls at Nick. “And a fine deal you turned it into.”
Nick says excuse me and goes out to pay off his witnesses, one of whom suddenly looks up and asks: “Mister, was it just a joke like you said?” Nick assures him it was and goes back into the room where Gilbert was assuring the detectives very seriously that he did feel that now he was the head of the house he had a right to protect his mother from ravenous males, and after all the money she would waste on Chris was actually his money, since it was doubtful if she would get anything out of his father’s estate, and . . .
THE END
Table of Contents
Cover
RETURN OF THE THIN MAN
Dashiell Hammett Created
Title Page
Copyright
CONTENTS
Introduction
After the Thin Man: Headnote
AFTER THE THIN MAN
After the Thin Man: Afterword
Another Thin Man: Headnote
ANOTHER THIN MAN
Another Thin Man: Afterword
Sequel to the Thin Man: Headnote
“SEQUEL TO THE THIN MAN”
Return of the Thin Man: Two never-before-published novellas featuring Nick & Nora Charles Page 25
