The Glass Key

by Dashiell Hammett

  “Jeff’s the monkey-looking guy, huh? Has he been picked up yet?”

  “No. Shad took him into hiding with him after you got away, I guess. They had you, didn’t they?”

  “Uh-huh. In the Dog House, upstairs. I went there to lay a trap for the gent and he out-trapped me.” He scowled. “I remember going there with Whisky Vassos and being bitten by the dog and knocked around by Jeff and a blond kid. Then there was something about a fire and—that’s about all. Who found me? and where?”

  “A copper found you crawling on all fours up the middle of Colman Street at three in the morning leaving a trail of blood behind you.”

  “I think of funny things to do,” Ned Beaumont said.

  III

  The small nurse with large eyes opened the door cautiously and put her head in.

  Ned Beaumont addressed her in a tired voice: “All right—peekaboo! But don’t you think you’re a little old for that?”

  The nurse opened the door wider and stood on the sill holding the edge of the door with one hand. “No wonder people beat you up,” she said. “I wanted to see if you were awake. Mr. Madvig and”—the breathless quality became more pronounced in her voice and her eyes became brighter—“a lady are here.”

  Ned Beaumont looked at her curiously and a bit mockingly. “What kind of lady?”

  “It’s Miss Janet Henry,” she replied in the manner of one revealing some unexpected pleasant thing.

  Ned Beaumont turned on his side, his face away from the nurse. He shut his eyes. A corner of his mouth twitched, but his voice was empty of expression: “Tell them I’m still asleep.”

  “You can’t do that,” she said. “They know you’re not asleep—even if they haven’t heard you talking—or I’d’ve been back before this.”

  He groaned dramatically and propped himself up on his elbow. “She’ll only come back again some other time,” he grumbled. “I might as well get it over with.”

  The nurse, looking at him with contemptuous eyes, said sarcastically: “We’ve had to keep policemen in front of the hospital to fight off all the women that’ve been trying to see you.”

  “That’s all right for you to say,” he told her. “Maybe you’re impressed by senators’ daughters who are in the roto all the time, but you’ve never been hounded by them the way I have. I tell you they’ve made my life miserable, them and their brown roto-sections. Senators’ daughters, always senators’ daughters, never a representative’s daughter or a cabinet minister’s daughter or an alderman’s daughter for the sake of variety—never anything but—Do you suppose senators are more prolific than—”

  “You’re not really funny,” the nurse said. “It’s the way you comb your hair. I’ll bring them in.” She left the room.

  Ned Beaumont took a long breath. His eyes were shiny. He moistened his lips and then pressed them together in a tight secretive smile, but when Janet Henry came into the room his face was a mask of casual politeness.

  She came straight to his bed and said: “Oh, Mr. Beaumont, I was so glad to hear that you were recovering so nicely that I simply had to come.” She put a hand in his and smiled down at him. Though her eyes were not a dark brown her otherwise pure blondness made them seem dark. “So if you didn’t want me to come you’re not to blame Paul. I made him bring me.”

  Ned Beaumont smiled back at her and said: “I’m awfully glad you did. It’s terribly kind of you.”

  Paul Madvig, following Janet Henry into the room, had gone around to the opposite side of the bed. He grinned affectionately from her to Ned Beaumont and said: “I knew you’d be, Ned. I told her so. How’s it go today?”

  “Nobly. Pull some chairs up.”

  “We can’t stay,” the blond man replied. “I’ve got to meet M’Laughlin at the Grandcourt.”

  “But I don’t,” Janet Henry said. She directed her smile at Ned Beaumont again. “Mayn’t I stay—a little while?”

  “I’d love that,” Ned Beaumont assured her while Madvig, coming around the bed to place a chair for her, beamed delightedly upon each of them in turn and said: “That’s fine.” When the girl was sitting beside the bed and her black coat had been laid back over the back of the chair, Madvig looked at his watch and growled: “I’ve got to run.” He shook Ned Beaumont’s hand. “Anything I can get for you?”

  “No, thanks, Paul.”

  “Well, be good.” The blond man turned towards Janet Henry, stopped, and addressed Ned Beaumont again: “How far do you think I ought to go with M’Laughlin this first time?”

  Ned Beaumont moved his shoulders a little. “As far as you want, so long as you don’t put anything in plain words. They scare him. But you could hire him to commit murders if you put it to him in a long-winded way, like: ‘If there was a man named Smith who lived in such and such a place and he got sick or something and didn’t get well and you happened to drop in to see me some time and just by luck an envelope addressed to you had been sent there in care of me, how would I know it had five hundred dollars in it?’ ”

  Madvig nodded. “I don’t want any murders,” he said, “but we do need that railroad vote.” He frowned. “I wish you were up, Ned.”

  “I will be in a day or two. Did you see the Observer this morning?”

  “No.”

  Ned Beaumont looked around the room. “Somebody’s run off with it. The dirt was in an editorial in a box in the middle of the front page. What are our city officials going to do about it? A list of six weeks’ crimes to show we’re having a crime-wave. A lot smaller list of who’s been caught to show the police aren’t able to do much about it. Most of the squawking done about Taylor Henry’s murder.”

  When her brother was named, Janet Henry winced and her lips parted in a little silent gasp. Madvig looked at her and then quickly at Ned Beaumont to move his head in a brief warning gesture.

  Ned Beaumont, ignoring the effect of his words on the others, continued: “They were brutal about that. Accused the police of deliberately keeping their hands off the murder for a week so a gambler high in political circles could use it to square a grievance with another gambler—meaning my going after Despain to collect my money. Wondered what Senator Henry thought of his new political allies’ use of his son’s murder for this purpose.”

  Madvig, red of face, fumbling for his watch, said hastily: “I’ll get a copy and read it. I’ve got to—”

  “Also,” Ned Beaumont went on serenely, “they accuse the police of raiding—after having protected them for years—those joints whose owners wouldn’t come across with enormous campaign-contributions. That’s what they make of your fight with Shad O’Rory. And they promise to print a list of the places that are still running because their owners did come across.”

  Madvig said, “Well, well,” uncomfortably, said, “Good-by, have a nice visit,” to Janet Henry, “See you later,” to Ned Beaumont, and went out.

  Janet Henry leaned forward in her chair. “Why don’t you like me?” she asked Ned Beaumont.

  “I think maybe I do,” he said.

  She shook her head. “You don’t. I know it.”

  “You can’t go by my manners,” he told her. “They’re always pretty bad.”

  “You don’t like me,” she insisted, not answering his smile, “and I want you to.”

  He was modest. “Why?”

  “Because you are Paul’s best friend,” she replied.

  “Paul,” he said, looking obliquely at her, “has a lot of friends: he’s a politician.”

  She moved her head impatiently. “You’re his best friend.” She paused, then added: “He thinks so.”

  “What do you think?” he asked with incomplete seriousness.

  “I think you are,” she said gravely, “or you would not be here now. You would not have gone through that for him.”

  His mouth twitched in a meager smile. He did not say anything.

  When it became manifest that he was not going to speak she said earnestly: “I wish you would like me, if you can.�
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  He repeated: “I think maybe I do.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t.”

  He smiled at her. His smile was very young and engaging, his eyes shy, his voice youthfully diffident and confiding, as he said: “I’ll tell you what makes you think that, Miss Henry. It’s—you see, Paul picked me up out of the gutter, as you might say, just a year or so ago, and so I’m kind of awkward and clumsy when I’m around people like you who belong to another world altogether—society and roto-sections and all—and you mistake that—uh—gaucherie for enmity, which it isn’t at all.”

  She rose and said, “You’re ridiculing me,” without resentment.

  When she had gone Ned Beaumont lay back on his pillows and stared at the ceiling with glittering eyes until the nurse came in.

  The nurse came in and asked: “What have you been up to now?”

  Ned Beaumont raised his head to look sullenly at her, but he did not speak.

  The nurse said: “She went out of here as near crying as anybody could without crying.”

  Ned Beaumont lowered his head to the pillow again. “I must be losing my grip,” he said. “I usually make senators’ daughters cry.”

  IV

  A man of medium size, young and dapper, with a sleek, dark, rather good-looking face, came in.

  Ned Beaumont sat up in bed and said: “ ’Lo, Jack.”

  Jack said, “You don’t look as bad as I thought you would,” and advanced to the side of the bed.

  “I’m still all in one piece. Grab a chair.”

  Jack sat down and took out a package of cigarettes.

  Ned Beaumont said: “I’ve got another job for you.” He put a hand under his pillows and brought out an envelope.

  Jack lit his cigarette before he took the envelope from Ned Beaumont’s hand. It was a plain white envelope addressed to Ned Beaumont at St. Luke’s Hospital and bore the local postmark dated two days before. Inside was a single typewritten sheet of paper which Jack took out and read.

  What do you know about Paul Madvig that Shad O’Rory was so anxious to learn?

  Has it anything to do with the murder of Taylor Henry?

  If not, why should you have gone to such lengths to keep it secret?

  Jack refolded the sheet of paper and returned it to the envelope before he raised his head. Then he asked: “Does it make sense?”

  “Not that I know of. I want you to find out who wrote it.”

  Jack nodded. “Do I keep it?”

  “Yes.”

  Jack put the envelope in his pocket. “Any ideas about who might have done it?”

  “None at all.”

  Jack studied the lighted end of his cigarette. “It’s a job, you know,” he said presently.

  “I know it,” Ned Beaumont agreed, “and all I can tell you is that there’s been a lot of them—or several of them—in the past week. That’s my third. I know Farr got at least one. I don’t know who else has been getting them.”

  “Can I see some of the others?”

  Ned Beaumont said: “That’s the only one I kept. They’re all pretty much alike, though—same paper, same typewriting, three questions in each, all on the same subject.”

  Jack regarded Ned Beaumont with inquisitive eyes. “But not exactly the same questions?” he asked.

  “Not exactly, but all getting to the same point.”

  Jack nodded and smoked his cigarette.

  Ned Beaumont said: “You understand this is to be strictly on the qt.”

  “Sure.” Jack took the cigarette from his mouth. “The ‘same point’ you mentioned is Madvig’s connection with the murder?”

  “Yes,” Ned Beaumont replied, looking with level eyes at the sleek dark young man, “and there isn’t any connection.”

  Jack’s dark face was inscrutable. “I don’t see how there could be,” he said as he stood up.

  V

  The nurse came in carrying a large basket of fruit. “Isn’t it lovely?” she said as she set it down.

  Ned Beaumont nodded cautiously.

  The nurse took a small stiff envelope from the basket. “I bet you it’s from her,” she said, giving Ned Beaumont the envelope.

  “What’ll you bet?”

  “Anything you want.”

  Ned Beaumont nodded as if some dark suspicion had been confirmed. “You looked,” he said.

  “Why, you—” Her words stopped when he laughed, but indignation remained in her mien.

  He took Janet Henry’s card from the envelope. One word was written on it: Please! Frowning at the card, he told the nurse, “You win,” and tapped the card on a thumb-nail. “Help yourself to that gunk and take enough of it so it’ll look as if I’d been eating it.”

  Later that afternoon he wrote:

  My Dear Miss Henry—

  You’ve quite overwhelmed me with your kindness—first your coming to see me, and then the fruit. I don’t at all know how to thank you, but I hope I shall some day be able to more clearly show my gratitude.

  Sincerely yours,

  Ned Beaumont

  When he had finished he read what he had written, tore it up, and rewrote it on another sheet of paper, using the same words, but rearranging them to make the ending of the second sentence read: “be able some day to show my gratitude more clearly.”

  VI

  Ned Beaumont, in bathrobe and slippers this morning, was reading a copy of the Observer over his breakfast at a table by the window of his hospital-room when Opal Madvig came in. He folded the newspaper, put it face-down on the table beside his tray, and rose saying, “ ’Lo, snip,” cordially. He was pale.

  “Why didn’t you call me up when you got back from New York?” she demanded in an accusing tone. She too was pale. Pallor accentuated the child-like texture of her skin, yet made her face seem less young. Her blue eyes were wide open and dark with emotion, but not to be read easily. She held herself tall without stiffness, in the manner of one more sure of his balance than of stability underfoot. Ignoring the chair he moved out from the wall for her, she repeated, imperatively as before: “Why didn’t you?”

  He laughed at her, softly, indulgently, and said: “I like you in that shade of brown.”

  “Oh, Ned, please—”

  “That’s better,” he said. “I intended coming out to the house, but—well—there were lots of things happening when I got back and a lot of loose ends of things that had happened while I was gone, and by the time I finished with those I ran into Shad O’Rory and got sent here.” He waved an arm to indicate the hospital.

  Her gravity was not affected by the lightness of his tone.

  “Are they going to hang this Despain?” she asked curtly.

  He laughed again and said: “We’re not going to get very far talking like this.”

  She frowned, but said, “Are they, Ned?” with less haughtiness.

  “I don’t think so,” he told her, shaking his head a little. “The chances are he didn’t kill Taylor after all.”

  She did not seem surprised. “Did you know that when you asked me to—to help you get—or fix up—evidence against him?”

  He smiled reproachfully. “Of course not, snip. What do you think I am?”

  “You did know it.” Her voice was cold and scornful as her blue eyes. “You only wanted to get the money he owed you and you made me help you use Taylor’s murder for that.”

  “Have it your own way,” he replied indifferently.

  She came a step closer to him. The faintest of quivers disturbed her chin for an instant, then her young face was firm and bold again. “Do you know who killed him?” she asked, her eyes probing his.

  He shook his head slowly from side to side.

  “Did Dad?”

  He blinked. “You mean did Paul know who killed him?”

  She stamped a foot. “I mean did Dad kill him?” she cried.

  He put a hand over her mouth. His eyes had jerked into focus on the closed door. “Shut up,” he muttered.

  She stepp
ed back from his hand as one of her hands pushed it away from her face. “Did he?” she insisted.

  In a low angry voice he said: “If you must be a nitwit at least don’t go around with a megaphone. Nobody cares what kind of idiotic notions you have as long as you keep them to yourself, but you’ve got to keep them to yourself.”

  Her eyes opened wide and dark. “Then he did kill him,” she said in a small flat voice, but with utter certainty.

  He thrust his face down towards hers. “No, my dear,” he said in an enraged sugary voice, “he didn’t kill him.” He held his face near hers. A vicious smile distorted his features.

  Firm of countenance and voice, not drawing back from him, she said: “If he didn’t I can’t understand what difference it makes what I say or how loud.”

  An end of his mouth twitched up in a sneer. “You’d be surprised how many things there are you can’t understand,” he said angrily, “and never will if you keep on like this.” He stepped back from her, a long step, and put his fists in the pockets of his bathrobe. Both corners of his mouth were pulled down now and there were grooves in his forehead. His narrowed eyes stared at the floor in front of her feet. “Where’d you get this crazy idea?” he growled.

  “It’s not a crazy idea. You know it’s not.”

  He moved his shoulders impatiently and demanded: “Where’d you get it?”

  She too moved her shoulders. “I didn’t get it anywhere. I—I suddenly saw it.”

  “Nonsense,” he said sharply, looking up at her under his brows. “Did you see the Observer this morning?”

  “No.”

  He stared at her with hard skeptical eyes.

  Annoyance brought a little color into her face. “I did not,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  “No?” he asked in a tone that said he did not believe her, but the skeptical gleam had gone out of his eyes. They were dull and thoughtful. Suddenly they brightened. He took his right hand from his bathrobe-pocket. He held it out towards her, palm up. “Let me see the letter,” he said.