The Glass Key

by Dashiell Hammett

  “That’s the idea.” Madvig drew his chin back and his eyes lost their opaqueness. “Look after it, will you? Give them everything.”

  III

  Walter Ivans was waiting for Ned Beaumont at the foot of the stairs, bright-eyed and hopeful. “Wh-what did he s-say?”

  “It’s what I told you: no can do. After election Tim’s to have anything he needs to get out, but nothing stirring till then.”

  Walter Ivans hung his head and made a low growling noise in his chest.

  Ned Beaumont put a hand on the shorter man’s shoulder and said: “It’s a tough break and nobody knows it better than Paul, but he can’t help himself. He wants you to tell her not to pay any bills. Send them to him—rent, grocer, doctor, and hospital.”

  Walter Ivans jerked his head up and caught Ned Beaumont’s hand in both of his. “B-by G-god that’s white of him!” The china-blue eyes were wet. “B-b-but I wish he could g-get Tim out.”

  Ned Beaumont said, “Well, there’s always a chance that something will come up to let him,” freed his hand, said, “I’ll be seeing you,” and went around Ivans to the billiard-room door.

  The billiard-room was deserted.

  He got his hat and coat and went to the front door. Long oyster-colored lines of rain slanted down into China Street. He smiled and addressed the rain under his breath: “Come down, you little darlings, thirty-two hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of you.”

  He went back and called a taxicab.

  IV

  Ned Beaumont took his hands away from the dead man and stood up. The dead man’s head rolled a little to the left, away from the curb, so that his face lay fully in the light from the corner street-lamp. It was a young face and its expression of anger was increased by the dark ridge that ran diagonally across the forehead from the edge of the curly fair hair to an eyebrow.

  Ned Beaumont looked up and down China Street. As far up the street as the eye could see no person was there. Two blocks down the street, in front of the Log Cabin Club, two men were getting out of an automobile. They left the automobile standing in front of the Club, facing Ned Beaumont, and went into the Club.

  Ned Beaumont, after staring down at the automobile for several seconds, suddenly twisted his head around to look up the street again and then, with a swiftness that made both movements one continuous movement, whirled and sprang upon the sidewalk in the shadow of the nearest tree. He was breathing through his mouth and though tiny points of sweat had glistened on his hands in the light he shivered now and turned up the collar of his overcoat.

  He remained in the tree’s shadow with one hand on the tree for perhaps half a minute. Then he straightened abruptly and began to walk towards the Log Cabin Club. He walked with increasing swiftness, leaning forward, and was moving at something more than a half-trot when he spied a man coming up the other side of the street. He immediately slackened his pace and made himself walk erect. The man entered a house before he came opposite Ned Beaumont.

  By the time Ned Beaumont reached the Club he had stopped breathing through his mouth. His lips were still somewhat faded. He looked at the empty automobile without pausing, climbed the Club’s steps between the two lanterns, and went indoors.

  Harry Sloss and another man were crossing the foyer from the cloak-room. They halted and said together: “Hello, Ned.” Sloss added: “I hear you had Peggy O’Toole today.”

  “Yes.”

  “For much?”

  “Thirty-two hundred.”

  Sloss ran his tongue over his lower lip. “That’s nice. You ought to be set for a game tonight.”

  “Later, maybe. Paul in?”

  “I don’t know. We just got in. Don’t make it too late: I promised the girl I’d be home early.”

  Ned Beaumont said, “Right,” and went over to the cloak-room. “Paul in?” he asked the attendant.

  “Yes, about ten minutes ago.”

  Ned Beaumont looked at his wrist-watch. It was half past ten. He went up to the front second-story room. Madvig in dinner clothes was sitting at the table with a hand stretched out towards the telephone when Ned Beaumont came in.

  Madvig withdrew his hand and said: “How are you, Ned?” His large handsome face was ruddy and placid.

  Ned Beaumont said, “I’ve been worse,” while shutting the door behind him. He sat on a chair not far from Madvig’s. “How’d the Henry dinner go?”

  The skin at the corners of Madvig’s eyes crinkled. “I’ve been at worse,” he said.

  Ned Beaumont was clipping the end of a pale spotted cigar. The shakiness of his hands was incongruous with the steadiness of his voice asking: “Was Taylor there?” He looked up at Madvig without raising his head.

  “Not for dinner. Why?”

  Ned Beaumont stretched out crossed legs, leaned back in his chair, moved the hand holding his cigar in a careless arc, and said: “He’s dead in a gutter up the street.”

  Madvig, unruffled, asked: “Is that so?”

  Ned Beaumont leaned forward. Muscles tightened in his lean face. The wrapper of his cigar broke between his fingers with a thin crackling sound. He asked irritably: “Did you understood what I said?”

  Madvig nodded slowly.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “He was killed.”

  “All right,” Madvig said. “Do you want me to get hysterical about it?”

  Ned Beaumont sat up straight in his chair and asked: “Shall I call the police?”

  Madvig raised his eyebrows a little. “Don’t they know it?”

  Ned Beaumont was looking steadily at the blond man. He replied: “There was nobody around when I saw him. I wanted to see you before I did anything. Is it all right for me to say I found him?”

  Madvig’s eyebrows came down. “Why not?” he asked blankly.

  Ned Beaumont rose, took two steps towards the telephone, halted, and faced the blond man again. He spoke with slow emphasis: “His hat wasn’t there.”

  “He won’t need it now.” Then Madvig scowled and said: “You’re a God-damned fool, Ned.”

  Ned Beaumont said, “One of us is,” and went to the telephone.

  V

  TAYLOR HENRY MURDERED

  BODY OF SENATOR’S SON FOUND

  IN CHINA STREET

  Believed to have been the victim of a hold-up, Taylor Henry, 26, son of Senator Ralph Bancroft Henry, was found dead in China Street near the corner of Pamela Avenue at a few minutes after 10 o’clock last night.

  Coroner William J. Hoops stated that young Henry’s death was due to a fracture of the skull and concussion of the brain caused by hitting the back of his head against the edge of the curb after having been knocked down by a blow from a blackjack or other blunt instrument on his forehead.

  The body is believed to have been first discovered by Ned Beaumont, 914 Randall Avenue, who went to the Log Cabin Club, two blocks away, to telephone the police; but before he had succeeded in getting Police Headquarters on the wire, the body had been found and reported by Patrolman Michael Smitt.

  Chief of Police Frederick M. Rainey immediately ordered a wholesale round-up of all suspicious characters in the city and issued a statement to the effect that no stone will be left unturned in his effort to apprehend the murderer or murderers at once.

  Members of Taylor Henry’s family stated that he left his home on Charles Street at about half past nine o’clock to …

  Ned Beaumont put the newspaper aside, swallowed the coffee that remained in his cup, put cup and saucer on the table beside his bed, and leaned back against the pillows. His face was tired and sallow. He pulled the covers up to his neck, clasped his hands together behind his head, and stared with dissatisfied eyes at the etching that hung between his bedroom-windows.

  For half an hour he lay there with only his eyelids moving. Then he picked up the newspaper and reread the story. As he read, dissatisfaction spread from his eyes to all his face. He put the paper aside again, got out of bed, slowly, wearily, wrapped his
lean white-pajamaed body in a small-figured brown and black kimono, thrust his feet into brown slippers, and, coughing a little, went into his living-room.

  It was a large room in the old manner, high of ceiling and wide of window, with a tremendous mirror over the fireplace and much red plush on the furnishings. He took a cigar from a box on the table and sat in a wide red chair. His feet rested in a parallelogram of late morning sun and the smoke he blew out became suddenly full-bodied as it drifted into the sunlight. He frowned now and chewed a finger-nail when the cigar was not in his mouth.

  Knocking sounded on his door. He sat up straight, keen of eye and alert. “Come in.”

  A white-jacketed waiter came in.

  Ned Beaumont said, “Oh, all right,” in a disappointed tone and relaxed again against the red plush of his chair.

  The waiter passed through to the bedroom, came out with a tray of dishes, and went away. Ned Beaumont threw what was left of his cigar into the fireplace and went into his bathroom. By the time he had shaved, bathed, and dressed, his face had lost its sallowness, his carriage most of its weariness.

  VI

  It was not quite noon when Ned Beaumont left his rooms and walked eight blocks to a pale grey apartment-building in Link Street. He pressed a button in the vestibule, entered the building when the door-lock clicked, and rode to the sixth floor in a small automatic elevator.

  He pressed the bell-button set in the frame of a door marked 611. The door was opened immediately by a diminutive girl who could have been only a few months out of her teens. Her eyes were dark and angry, her face white, except around her eyes, and angry. She said, “Oh, hello,” and with a smile and a vaguely placatory motion of one hand apologized for her anger. Her voice had a metallic thinness. She wore a brown fur coat, but not a hat. Her short-cut hair—it was nearly black—lay smooth and shiny as enamel on her round head. The gold-set stones pendent from her ear-lobes were carnelian. She stepped back pulling the door back with her.

  Ned Beaumont advanced through the doorway asking: “Bernie up yet?”

  Anger burned in her face again. She said in a shrill voice: “The crummy bastard!”

  Ned Beaumont shut the door behind him without turning around.

  The girl came close to him, grasped his arms above the elbows, and tried to shake him. “You know what I did for that bum?” she demanded. “I left the best home any girl ever had and a mother and father that thought I was the original Miss Jesus. They told me he was no good. Everybody told me that and they were right and I was too dumb to know it. Well, I hope to tell you I know it now, the …” The rest was shrill obscenity.

  Ned Beaumont, motionless, listened gravely. His eyes were not a well man’s now. He asked, when breathlessness had stopped her words for the moment: “What’s he done?”

  “Done? He’s taken a run-out on me, the …” The rest of that sentence was obscenity.

  Ned Beaumont flinched. The smile into which he pushed his lips was watery. He asked: “I don’t suppose he left anything for me?”

  The girl clicked her teeth together and pushed her face nearer his. Her eyes widened. “Does he owe you anything?”

  “I won—” He coughed. “I’m supposed to have won thirty-two hundred and fifty bucks on the fourth race yesterday.”

  She took her hands from his arms and laughed scornfully. “Try and get it. Look.” She held out her hands. A carnelian ring was on the little finger of her left hand. She raised her hands and touched her carnelian ear-rings. “That’s every stinking piece of my jewelry he left me and he wouldn’t’ve left me that if I hadn’t had them on.”

  Ned Beaumont asked, in a queer detached voice: “When did this happen?”

  “Last night, though I didn’t find it out till this morning, but don’t think I’m not going to make Mr. Son-of-a-bitch wish to God he’d never seen me.” She put a hand inside her dress and brought it out a fist. She held the fist up close to Ned Beaumont’s face and opened it. Three small crumpled pieces of paper lay in her hand. When he reached for them she closed her fingers over them again, stepping back and snatching her hand away.

  He moved the corners of his mouth impatiently and let his hand fall down at his side.

  She said excitedly: “Did you see the paper this morning about Taylor Henry?”

  Ned Beaumont’s reply, “Yes,” was calm enough, but his chest moved out and in with a quick breath.

  “Do you know what these are?” She held the three crumpled bits of paper out in her open hand once more.

  Ned Beaumont shook his head. His eyes were narrow, shiny.

  “They’re Taylor Henry’s I O Us,” she said triumphantly, “twelve hundred dollars’ worth of them.”

  Ned Beaumont started to say something, checked himself, and when he spoke his voice was lifeless. “They’re not worth a nickel now he’s dead.”

  She thrust them inside her dress again and came close to Ned Beaumont. “Listen,” she said: “they never were worth a nickel and that’s why he’s dead.”

  “Is that a guess?”

  “It’s any damned thing you want to call it,” she told him. “But let me tell you something: Bernie called Taylor up last Friday and told him he’d give him just three days to come across.”

  Ned Beaumont brushed a side of his mustache with a thumb-nail. “You’re not just being mad, are you?” he asked cautiously.

  She made an angry face. “Of course I’m mad,” she said “I’m just mad enough to take them to the police and that’s what I’m going to do. But if you think it didn’t happen you’re just a plain damned fool.”

  He seemed still unconvinced. “Where’d you get them?”

  “Out of the safe.” She gestured with her sleek head towards the interior of the apartment.

  He asked: “What time last night did he blow?”

  “I don’t know. I got home at half past nine and sat around most of the night expecting him. It wasn’t till morning that I began to suspect something and looked around and saw he’d cleaned house of every nickel in money and every piece of my jewelry that I wasn’t wearing.”

  He brushed his mustache with his thumb-nail again and asked: “Where do you think he’d go?”

  She stamped her foot and, shaking both fists up and down, began to curse the missing Bernie again in a shrill enraged voice.

  Ned Beaumont said: “Stop it.” He caught her wrists and held them still. He said: “If you’re not going to do anything about it but yell, give me those markers and I’ll do something about it.”

  She tore her wrists out of his hands, crying: “I’ll give you nothing. I’ll give them to the police and not to another damned soul.”

  “All right, then do it. Where do you think he’d go, Lee?”

  Lee said bitterly that she didn’t know where he would go, but she knew where she would like to have him go.

  Ned Beaumont said wearily: “That’s the stuff. Wise-cracking is going to do us a lot of good. Think he’d go back to New York?”

  “How do I know?” Her eyes had suddenly become wary.

  Annoyance brought spots of color into Ned Beaumont’s cheeks. “What are you up to now?” he asked suspiciously.

  Her face was an innocent mask. “Nothing. What do you mean?”

  He leaned down towards her. He spoke with considerable earnestness, shaking his head slowly from side to side with his words. “Don’t think you’re not going to the police with them, Lee, because you are.”

  She said: “Of course I am.”

  VII

  In the drug-store that occupied part of the ground-floor of the apartment-building Ned Beaumont used a telephone. He called the Police Department’s number, asked for Lieutenant Doolan, and said: “Hello. Lieutenant Doolan?… I’m speaking for Miss Lee Wilshire. She’s in Bernie Despain’s apartment at 1666 Link Street. He seems to have suddenly disappeared last night, leaving some of Taylor Henry’s I O Us behind him.… That’s right, and she says she heard him threaten him a couple of days ago.… Yes, and she w
ants to see you as soon as possible.… No, you’d better come up or send and as soon as you can.… Yes.… That doesn’t make any difference. You don’t know me. I’m just speaking for her because she didn’t want to phone from his apartment.…” He listened a moment longer, then, without having said anything else, put the receiver on its prong and went out of the drug-store.

  VIII

  Ned Beaumont went to a neat red-brick house in a row of neat red-brick houses in upper Thames Street. The door was opened to his ring by a young Negress who smiled with her whole brown face, said, “How do you do, Mr. Beaumont?” and made the opening of the door a hearty invitation.

  Ned Beaumont said: “ ’Lo, June. Anybody home?”

  “Yes, sir, they still at the dinner-table.”

  He walked back to the dining-room where Paul Madvig and his mother sat facing one another across a red-and-white-clothed table. There was a third chair at the table, but it was not occupied and the plate and silver in front of it had not been used.

  Paul Madvig’s mother was a tall gaunt woman whose blondness had been faded not quite white by her seventy-some years. Her eyes were as blue and clear and young as her son’s—younger than her son’s when she looked up at Ned Beaumont entering the room. She deepened the lines in her forehead, however, and said: “So here you are at last. You’re a worthless boy to neglect an old woman like this.”

  Ned Beaumont grinned impudently at her and said: “Aw, Mom, I’m a big boy now and I’ve got my work to look after.” He flirted a hand at Madvig. “ ’Lo, Paul.”

  Madvig said: “Sit down and June’ll scrape you up something to eat.”

  Ned Beaumont was bending to kiss the scrawny hand Mrs. Madvig had held out to him. She jerked it away and scolded him: “Wherever did you learn such tricks?”

  “I told you I was getting to be a big boy now.” He addressed Madvig: “Thanks, I’m only a few minutes past breakfast.” He looked at the vacant chair. “Where’s Opal?”