The Glass Key

by Dashiell Hammett

  Ned Beaumont spoke hesitantly: “You’re putting Rainey in a tough spot. Our coppers aren’t used to bothering with Prohibition-enforcement. They’re not going to like it very much.”

  “They can do it once for me,” Madvig said, “without feeling that they’ve paid all their debts.”

  “Maybe.” Ned Beaumont’s face and voice were dubious still. “But this wholesale stuff is too much like using a cyclone shot to blow off a safe-door when you could get it off without any fuss by using a come-along.”

  “Have you got something up your sleeve, Ned?”

  Ned Beaumont shook his head. “Nothing I’m sure of, but it wouldn’t hurt to wait a couple of days till—”

  Now Madvig shook his head. “No,” he said. “I want action. I don’t know a damned thing about opening safes, Ned, but I do know fighting—my kind—going in with both hands working. I never could learn to box and the only times I ever tried I got licked. We’ll give Mr. O’Rory the cyclone shot.”

  VI

  The stringy man in horn-rimmed spectacles said: “So you don’t have to worry none about that.” He sat complacently back in his chair.

  The man on his left—a raw-boned man with a bushy brown mustache and not much hair on his head—said to the man on his left: “It don’t sound so God-damned swell to me.”

  “No?” The stringy man turned to glare through his spectades at the raw-boned man. “Well, Paul don’t never have to come down to my ward hisself to—”

  The raw-boned man said: “Aw, nurts!”

  Madvig addressed the raw-boned man: “Did you see Parker, Breen?”

  Breen said: “Yes, I saw him and he says five, but I think we can get a couple more out of him.”

  The bespectacled man said contemptuously: “My God, I’d think so!”

  Breen sneered sidewise at him. “Yes? And who’d you ever get that much out of?”

  Three knocks sounded on the broad oaken door.

  Ned Beaumont rose from the chair he was straddling and went to the door. He opened it less than a foot.

  The man who had knocked was a small-browed dark man in blue clothes that needed pressing. He did not try to enter the room and he tried to speak in an undertone, but excitement made his words audible to everyone in the room. “Shad O’Rory’s downstairs. He wants to see Paul.”

  Ned Beaumont shut the door and turned with his back against it to look at Paul Madvig. Only those two of the ten men in the room seemed undisturbed by the small-browed man’s announcement. All the others did not show their excitement frankly—in some it could be seen in their suddenly acquired stoniness—but there was none whose respiration was exactly as it had been before.

  Ned Beaumont, pretending he did not know repetition was unnecessary, said, in a tone that expressed suitable interest in his words: “O’Rory wants to see you. He’s downstairs.”

  Madvig looked at his watch. “Tell him I’m tied up right now, but if he’ll wait a little while I’ll see him.”

  Ned Beaumont nodded and opened the door. “Tell him Paul’s busy now,” he instructed the man who had knocked, “but if he’ll stick around awhile Paul’ll see him.” He shut the door.

  Madvig was questioning a square-faced yellowish man about their chances of getting more votes on the other side of Chestnut Street. The square-faced man replied that he thought they would get more than last time “by a hell of a sight,” but still not enough to make much of a dent in the opposition. While he talked his eyes kept crawling sidewise to the door.

  Ned Beaumont sat astride his chair by the window again smoking a cigar.

  Madvig addressed to another man a question having to do with the size of the campaign-contribution to be expected from a man named Hartwick. This other man kept his eyes from the door, but his reply lacked coherence.

  Neither Madvig’s and Ned Beaumont’s calmness of mien nor their business-like concentration on campaign-problems could check the growth of tension in the room.

  After fifteen minutes Madvig rose and said: “Well, we’re not on Easy Street yet, but she’s shaping up. Keep hard at it and we’ll make the grade.” He went to the door and shook each man’s hand as they went out. They went out somewhat hurriedly.

  Ned Beaumont, who had not left his chair, asked, when he and Madvig were the only ones in the room: “Do I stick around or beat it?”

  “Stick around.” Madvig crossed to the window and looked down into the sunny China Street.

  “Both hands working?” Ned Beaumont asked after a little pause.

  Madvig turned from the window nodding. “I don’t know anything else”—he grinned boyishly at the man straddling the chair—“except maybe the feet too.”

  Ned Beaumont started to say something, but was interrupted by the noise the turning door-knob made.

  A man opened the door and came in. He was a man of little more than medium height, trimly built with a trimness that gave him a deceptively frail appearance. Though his hair was a sheer sleek white he was probably not much past his thirty-fifth year. His eyes were a notable clear grey-blue set in a rather long and narrow, but very finely sculptured, face. He wore a dark blue overcoat over a dark blue suit and carried a black derby hat in a black-gloved hand.

  The man who came in behind him was a bow-legged ruffian of the same height, a swarthy man with something apish in the slope of his big shoulders, the length of his thick arms, and the flatness of his face. This one’s hat—a grey fedora—was on his head. He shut the door and leaned against it, putting his hands in the pockets of his plaid overcoat.

  The first man, having advanced by then some four or five steps into the room, put his hat on a chair and began to take off his gloves.

  Madvig, hands in trousers-pockets, smiled amiably and said: “How are you, Shad?”

  The white-haired man said: “Fine, Paul. How’s yourself?” His voice was a strong musical baritone. The faintest of brogues colored his words.

  Madvig indicated with a small jerk of his head the man on the chair and asked: “You know Beaumont?”

  O’Rory said: “Yes.”

  Ned Beaumont said: “Yes.”

  Neither nodded to the other and Ned Beaumont did not get up from his chair.

  Shad O’Rory had finished taking off his gloves. He put them in an overcoat-pocket and said: “Politics is politics and business is business. I’ve been paying my way and I’m willing to go on paying my way, but I want what I’m paying for.” His modulated voice was no more than pleasantly earnest.

  “What do you mean by that?” Madvig asked as if he did not greatly care.

  “I mean that half the coppers in town are buying their cakes and ale with dough they’re getting from me and some of my friends.”

  Madvig sat down by the table. “Well?” he asked, carelessly as before.

  “I want what I’m paying for. I’m paying to be let alone. I want to be let alone.”

  Madvig chuckled. “You don’t mean, Shad, that you’re complaining to me because your coppers won’t stay bought?”

  “I mean that Doolan told me last night that the orders to shut up my places came straight from you.”

  Madvig chuckled again and turned his head to address Ned Beaumont: “What do you think of that, Ned?”

  Ned Beaumont smiled thinly, but said nothing.

  Madvig said: “You know what I think of it? I think Captain Doolan’s been working too hard. I think somebody ought to give Captain Doolan a nice long leave of absence. Don’t let me forget it.”

  O’Rory said: “I bought protection, Paul, and I want it. Business is business and politics is politics. Let’s keep them apart.”

  Madvig said: “No.”

  Shad O’Rory’s blue eyes looked dreamily at some distant thing. He smiled a little sadly and there was a note of sadness in his musical slightly Irish voice when he spoke. He said: “It’s going to mean killing.”

  Madvig’s blue eyes were opaque and his voice was as difficultly read as his eyes. He said: “If you make it mean kil
ling.”

  The white-haired man nodded. “It’ll have to mean killing,” he said, still sadly. “I’m too big to take the boot from you now.”

  Madvig leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. His tone attached little importance to his words. He said: “Maybe you’re too big to take it laying down, but you’ll take it.” He pursed his lips and added as an afterthought: “You are taking it.”

  Dreaminess and sadness went swiftly out of Shad O’Rory’s eyes. He put his black hat on his head. He adjusted his coat-collar to his neck. He pointed a long white finger at Madvig and said: “I’m opening the Dog House again tonight. I don’t want to be bothered. Bother me and I’ll bother you.”

  Madvig uncrossed his legs and reached for the telephone on the table. He called the Police Department’s number, asked for the Chief, and said to him: “Hello, Rainey.… Yes, fine. How are the folks?… That’s good. Say, Rainey, I hear Shad’s thinking of opening up again tonight.… Yes … Yes, slam it down so hard it bounces.… Right.… Sure. Good-by.” He pushed the telephone back and addressed O’Rory: “Now do you understand how you stand? You’re through, Shad. You’re through here for good.”

  O’Rory said softly, “I understand,” turned, opened the door, and went out.

  The bow-legged ruffian paused to spit—deliberately—on the rug in front of him and to stare with bold challenging eyes at Madvig and Ned Beaumont. Then he went out.

  Ned Beaumont wiped the palms of his hands with a handkerchief. He said nothing to Madvig, who was looking at him with questioning eyes. Ned Beaumont’s eyes were gloomy.

  After a moment Madvig asked: “Well?”

  Ned Beaumont said: “Wrong, Paul.”

  Madvig rose and went to the window. “Jesus Christ!” he complained over his shoulder, “don’t anything ever suit you?”

  Ned Beaumont got up from his chair and walked towards the door.

  Madvig, turning from the window, asked angrily: “Some more of your God-damned foolishness?”

  Ned Beaumont said, “Yes,” and went out of the room. He went downstairs, got his hat, and left the Log Cabin Club. He walked seven blocks to the railroad station, bought a ticket for New York, and made reservations on a night train. Then he took a taxicab to his rooms.

  VII

  A stout shapeless woman in grey clothes and a chubby half-grown boy were packing Ned Beaumont’s trunk and three leather bags under his supervision when the door-bell rang.

  The woman rose grunting from her knees and went to the door. She opened it wide. “My goodness, Mr. Madvig,” she said. “Come right on in.”

  Madvig came in saying: “How are you, Mrs. Duveen? You get younger-looking every day.” His gaze passed over the trunk and bags to the boy. “Hello, Charley. Ready for the job running the cement-mixer yet?”

  The boy grinned bashfully and said: “How do you do, Mr. Madvig?”

  Madvig’s smile came around to Ned Beaumont “Going places?”

  Ned Beaumont smiled politely. “Yes,” he said.

  The blond man looked around the room, at the bags and trunk again, at the clothes piled on chairs and the drawers standing open. The woman and the boy went back to their work. Ned Beaumont found two somewhat faded shirts in a pile on a chair and put them aside.

  Madvig asked: “Got half an hour to spare, Ned?”

  “I’ve got plenty of time.”

  Madvig said: “Get your hat.”

  Ned Beaumont got his hat and overcoat. “Get as much of it in as you can,” he told the woman as he and Madvig moved towards the door, “and what’s left over can be sent on with the other stuff.”

  He and Madvig went downstairs to the street. They walked south a block. Then Madvig asked: “Where’re you going, Ned?”

  “New York.”

  They turned into an alley.

  Madvig asked: “For good?”

  Ned Beaumont shrugged. “I’m leaving here for good.”

  They opened a green wooden door set in the red-brick rear wall of a building and went down a passageway and through another door into a bar-room where half a dozen men were drinking. They exchanged greetings with the bar-tender and three of the drinkers as they passed through to a small room where there were four tables. Nobody else was there. They sat at one of the tables.

  The bar-tender put his head in and asked: “Beer as per usual, gents?”

  Madvig said, “Yes,” and then, when the bar-tender had drawn: “Why?”

  Ned Beaumont said: “I’m tired of hick-town stuff.”

  “Meaning me?”

  Ned Beaumont did not say anything.

  Madvig did not say anything for a while. Then he sighed and said: “This is a hell of a time to be throwing me down.”

  The bar-tender came in with two seidels of pale beer and a bowl of pretzels. When he had gone out again, shutting the door behind him, Madvig exclaimed: “Christ, you’re hard to get along with, Ned!”

  Ned Beaumont moved his shoulders. “I never said I wasn’t.” He lifted his seidel and drank.

  Madvig was breaking a pretzel into small bits. “Do you really want to go, Ned?” he asked.

  “I’m going.”

  Madvig dropped the fragments of pretzel on the table and took a check-book from his pocket. He tore out a check, took a fountain-pen from another pocket, and filled in the check. Then he fanned it dry and dropped it on the table in front of Ned Beaumont.

  Ned Beaumont, looking down at the check, shook his head and said: “I don’t need money and you don’t owe me anything.”

  “I do. I owe you more than that, Ned. I wish you’d take it.”

  Ned Beaumont said, “All right, thanks,” and put the check in his pocket.

  Madvig drank beer, ate a pretzel, started to drink again, set his seidel down on the table, and asked: “Was there anything on your mind—any kick—besides that back in the Club this afternoon?”

  Ned Beaumont shook his head. “You don’t talk to me like that. Nobody does.”

  “Hell, Ned, I didn’t say anything.”

  Ned Beaumont did not say anything.

  Madvig drank again. “Mind telling me why you think I handled O’Rory wrong?”

  “It wouldn’t do any good.”

  “Try.”

  Ned Beaumont said: “All right, but it won’t do any good.” He tilted his chair back, holding his seidel in one hand, some pretzels in the other. “Shad’ll fight. He’s got to. You’ve got him in a corner. You’ve told him he’s through here for good. There’s nothing he can do now but play the long shot. If he can upset you this election he’ll be fixed to square anything he has to do to win. If you win the election he’s got to drift anyhow. You’re using the police on him. He’ll have to fight back at the police and he will. That means you’re going to have something that can be made to look like a crime-wave. You’re trying to re-elect the whole city administration. Well, giving them a crime-wave and one it’s an even bet they’re not going to be able to handle—just before election—isn’t going to make them look any too efficient. They—”

  “You think I ought to’ve laid down to him?” Madvig demanded scowling.

  “I don’t think that. I think you should have left him an out, a line of retreat. You shouldn’t have got him with his back to the wall.”

  Madvig’s scowl deepened. “I don’t know anything about your kind of fighting. He started it. All I know is when you got somebody cornered you go in and finish them. That system’s worked all right for me so far.” He blushed a little. “I don’t mean I think I’m Napoleon or something, Ned, but I came up from running errands for Packy Flood in the old Fifth to where I’m sitting kind of pretty today.”

  Ned Beaumont emptied his seidel and let the front legs of his chair come down on the floor. “I told you it wouldn’t do any good,” he said. “Have it your own way. Keep on thinking that what was good enough for the old Fifth is good enough anywhere.”

  In Madvig’s voice there was something of resentment and something of humility whe
n he asked: “You don’t think much of me as a big-time politician, do you, Ned?”

  Now Ned Beaumont’s face flushed. He said: “I didn’t say that, Paul.”

  “But that’s what it amounts to, isn’t it?” Madvig insisted.

  “No, but I do think you’ve let yourself be outsmarted this time. First you let the Henrys wheedle you into backing the Senator. There was your chance to go in and finish an enemy who was cornered, but that enemy happened to have a daughter and social position and what not, so you—”

  “Cut it out, Ned,” Madvig grumbled.

  Ned Beaumont’s face became empty of expression. He stood up saying, “Well, I must be running along,” and turned to the door.

  Madvig was up behind him immediately, with a hand on his shoulder, saying: “Wait, Ned.”

  Ned Beaumont said: “Take your hand off me.” He did not look around.

  Madvig put his other hand on Ned Beaumont’s arm and turned him around. “Look here, Ned,” he began.

  Ned Beaumont said: “Let go.” His lips were pale and stiff.

  Madvig shook him. He said: “Don’t be a God-damned fool. You and I—”

  Ned Beaumont struck Madvig’s mouth with his left fist.

  Madvig took his hands away from Ned Beaumont and fell back two steps. While his pulse had time to beat perhaps three times his mouth hung open and astonishment was in his face. Then his face darkened with anger and he shut his mouth tight, so his jaw was hard and lumpy. He made fists of his hands, hunched his shoulders, and swayed forward.

  Ned Beaumont’s hand swept out to the side to grasp one of the heavy glass seidels on the table, though he did not lift it from the table. His body leaned a little to that side as he had leaned to get the seidel. Otherwise he stood squarely confronting the blond man. His face was drawn thin and rigid, with white lines of strain around the mouth. His dark eyes glared fiercely into Madvig’s blue ones.

  They stood thus, less than a yard apart—one blond, tall and powerfully built, leaning far forward, big shoulders hunched, big fists ready; the other dark of hair and eye, tall and lean, body bent a little to one side with an arm slanting down from that side to hold a heavy glass seidel by its handle—and except for their breathing there was no sound in the room. No sound came in from the bar-room on the other side of the thin door, the rattling of glasses nor the hum of talk nor the splash of water.