The Glass Key

by Dashiell Hammett

  “I’m awfully sorry to be late,” she began, “but—”

  “But you’re not,” he assured her. “It was to have been any time after ten.”

  He ushered her into his living-room.

  “I like this,” she said, turning around slowly, examining the old-fashioned room, the height of its ceiling, the width of its windows, the tremendous mirror over the fireplace, the red plush of the furniture. “It’s delightful.” She turned her brown eyes towards a half-open door. “Is that your bedroom?”

  “Yes. Would you like to see it?”

  “I’d love to.”

  He showed her the bedroom, then the kitchen and bathroom.

  “It’s perfect,” she said as they returned to the living-room. “I didn’t know there could be any more of these left in a city as horribly up to date as ours has become.”

  He made a little bow to acknowledge her approval. “I think it’s rather nice and, as you can see, there’s no one here to eavesdrop on us unless they’re stowed away in a closet, which isn’t likely.”

  She drew herself up and looked straight into his eyes. “I did not think of that. We may not agree, may even become—or now be—enemies, but I know you’re a gentleman, or I shouldn’t be here.”

  He asked in an amused tone: “You mean I’ve learned not to wear tan shoes with blue suits? Things like that?”

  “I don’t mean things like that.”

  He smiled. “Then you’re wrong. I’m a gambler and a politician’s hanger-on.”

  “I’m not wrong.” A pleading expression came into her eyes. “Please don’t let us quarrel, at least not until we must.”

  “I’m sorry.” His smile was apologetic now. “Won’t you sit down?”

  She sat down. He sat in another wide red chair facing her. He said: “Now you were going to tell me what happened at your house the night your brother was killed.”

  “Yes,” issuing from her mouth, was barely audible. Her face became pink and she transferred her gaze to the floor. When she raised her eyes again they were shy. Embarrassment clogged her voice: “I wanted you to know. You are Paul’s friend and that—that may make you my enemy, but—I think when you know what happened—when you know the truth—you’ll not be—at least not be my enemy. I don’t know. Perhaps you’ll—But you ought to know. Then you can decide. And he hasn’t told you.” She looked intently at him so that shyness went out of her eyes. “Has he?”

  “I don’t know what happened at your house that night,” he said. “He didn’t tell me.”

  She leaned towards him quickly to ask: “Doesn’t that show it’s something he wants to conceal, something he has to conceal?”

  He moved his shoulders. “Suppose it does?” His voice was unexcited, uneager.

  She frowned. “But you must see—Never mind that now. I’ll tell you what happened and you can see it for yourself.” She continued to lean far forward, staring at his face with intent brown eyes. “He came to dinner, the first time we’d had him to dinner.”

  “I knew that,” Ned Beaumont said, “and your brother wasn’t there.”

  “Taylor wasn’t at the dinner-table,” she corrected him earnestly, “but he was up in his room. Only Father, Paul, and I were at the table. Taylor was going out to dinner. He—he wouldn’t eat with Paul because of the trouble they’d had about Opal.”

  Ned Beaumont nodded attentively without warmth.

  “After dinner Paul and I were alone for a little while in—in the room where you and I talked last night and he suddenly put his arms around me and kissed me.”

  Ned Beaumont laughed, not loudly, but with abrupt irrepressible merriment.

  Janet Henry looked at him in surprise.

  He modified his laugh to a smile and said: “I’m sorry. Go on. I’ll tell you later why I laughed.” But when she would have gone on he said: “Wait. Did he say anything when he kissed you?”

  “No. That is, he may have, but nothing I understood.” Perplexity was deepening in her face. “Why?”

  Ned Beaumont laughed again. “He ought to’ve said something about his pound of flesh. It was probably my fault. I had been trying to persuade him not to support your father in the election, had told him that your father was using you as bait to catch his support, and had advised him that if he was willing to be bought that way he ought to be sure and collect his pound of flesh ahead of the election or he’d never get it.”

  She opened her eyes wide and there was less perplexity in them.

  He said: “That was that afternoon, though I didn’t think I’d had much luck putting it over.” He wrinkled his forehead. “What did you do to him? He was meaning to marry you and was chock-full of respect and what not for you and you must have rubbed him pretty thoroughly the wrong way to make him jump at you like that.”

  “I didn’t do anything to him,” she replied slowly, “though it had been a difficult evening. None of us was comfortable. I thought—I tried not to show that—well—that I resented having to entertain him. He wasn’t at ease, I know, and I suppose that—his embarrassment—and perhaps a suspicion that you had been right made him—” She finished the sentence with a brief quick outward motion of both hands.

  Ned Beaumont nodded. “What happened then?” he asked.

  “I was furious, of course, and left him.”

  “Didn’t you say anything to him?” Ned Beaumont’s eyes twinkled with imperfectly hidden mirth.

  “No, and he didn’t say anything I could hear. I went upstairs and met Father coming down. While I was telling him what had happened—I was angry with Father as with Paul, because it was Father’s fault that Paul was there—we heard Paul going out the front door. And then Taylor came down from his room.” Her face became white and tense, her voice husky with emotion. “He had heard me talking to Father and he asked me what had happened, but I left him there with Father and went on to my room, too angry to talk any more about it. And I didn’t see either of them again until Father came to my room and told me Taylor had—had been killed.” She stopped talking and looked white-faced at Ned Beaumont, twisting her fingers together, awaiting his response to her story.

  His response was a cool question: “Well, what of it?”

  “What of it?” she repeated in amazement. “Don’t you see? How could I help knowing then that Taylor had run out after Paul and had caught up with him and had been killed by him? He was furious and—” Her face brightened. “You know his hat wasn’t found. He was too much in a hurry—too angry—to stop for his hat. He—”

  Ned Beaumont shook his head slowly from side to side and interrupted her. His voice held nothing but certainty. “No,” he said. “That won’t do. Paul wouldn’t’ve had to kill Taylor and he wouldn’t’ve done it. He could have managed him with one hand and he doesn’t lose his head in a fight. I know that. I’ve seen Paul fight and I’ve fought with him. That won’t do.” He drew eyelids closer together around eyes that had become stony. “But suppose he did? I mean accidentally, though I can’t believe even that. But could you make anything out of it except self-defense?”

  She raised her head scornfully. “If it were self-defense, why should he hide it?”

  Ned Beaumont seemed unimpressed. “He wants to marry you,” he explained. “It wouldn’t help him much to admit he’d killed your brother even—” He chuckled. “I’m getting as bad as you are. Paul didn’t kill him, Miss Henry.”

  Her eyes were stony as his had been. She looked at him and did not speak.

  His expression became thoughtful. He asked: “You’ve only”—he wriggled the fingers of one hand—“the two and two you think you’ve put together to tell you that your brother ran out after Paul that night?”

  “That is enough,” she insisted. “He did. He must’ve. Otherwise—why, otherwise what would he have been doing down there in China Street bare-headed?”

  “Your father didn’t see him go out?”

  “No. He didn’t know it either until we heard—”

  He interrup
ted her. “Does he agree with you?”

  “He must,” she cried. “It’s unmistakable. He must, no matter what he says, just as you must.” Tears were in her eyes now. “You can’t expect me to believe that you don’t, Mr. Beaumont. I don’t know what you knew before. You found Taylor dead. I don’t know what else you found, but now you must know the truth.”

  Ned Beaumont’s hands began to tremble. He slumped farther down in his chair so he could thrust his hands into his trousers-pockets. His face was tranquil except for hard lines of strain around his mouth. He said: “I found him dead. There was nobody else there. I didn’t find anything else.”

  “You have now,” she said.

  His mouth twitched under his dark mustache. His eyes became hot with anger. He spoke in a low, harsh, deliberately bitter voice: “I know whoever killed your brother did the world a favor.”

  She shrank back in her chair with a hand thrown up to her throat, at first, but almost immediately the horror went out of her face and she sat upright and looked compassionately at him. She said softly: “I know. You’re Paul’s friend. It hurts.”

  He lowered his head a little and muttered: “It was a rotten thing to say. It was silly.” He smiled wryly. “You see I was right about not being a gentleman.” He stopped smiling and shame went out of his eyes leaving them clear and steady. He said in a quiet voice: “You’re right about my being Paul’s friend. I’m that no matter who he killed.”

  After a long moment of earnest staring at him she spoke in a small flat voice: “Then this is useless? I thought if I could show you the truth—” She broke off with a hopeless gesture in which hands, shoulders, and head took part.

  He moved his head slowly from side to side.

  She sighed and stood up holding out her hand. “I’m sorry and disappointed, but we needn’t be enemies, need we?”

  He rose facing her, but did not take her hand. He said: “The part of you that’s tricked Paul and is trying to trick him is my enemy.”

  She held her hand there while asking: “And the other part of me, the part that hasn’t anything to do with that?”

  He took her hand and bowed over it.

  IV

  When Janet Henry had gone Ned Beaumont went to his telephone, called a number, and said: “Hello, this is Mr. Beaumont. Has Mr. Madvig come in yet?… When he comes will you tell him I called and will be in to see him?… Yes, thanks.”

  He looked at his wrist-watch. It was a little after one o’clock. He lit a cigar and sat down at a window, smoking and staring at the grey church across the street. Out-blown cigar-smoke recoiled from the window-panes in grey clouds over his head. His teeth crushed the end of his cigar. He sat there for ten minutes, until his telephone-bell rang.

  He went to the telephone. “Hello.… Yes, Harry.… Sure. Where are you?… I’m coming downtown. Wait there for me.… Half an hour.… Right.”

  He threw his cigar into the fireplace, put on his hat and overcoat, and went out. He walked six blocks to a restaurant, ate a salad and rolls, drank a cup of coffee, walked four blocks to a small hotel named Majestic, and rode to the fourth floor in an elevator operated by an undersized youth who called him Ned and asked what he thought of the third race.

  Ned Beaumont thought and said: “Lord Byron ought to do it.”

  The elevator-operator said: “I hope you’re wrong. I got Pipe-organ.”

  Ned Beaumont shrugged. “Maybe, but he’s carrying a lot of weight.” He went to room 417 and knocked on the door.

  Harry Sloss, in his shirt-sleeves, opened the door. He was a thickset pale man of thirty-five, broad-faced and partially bald. He said: “On the dot. Come on in.”

  When Sloss had shut the door Ned Beaumont asked: “What’s the diffugalty?”

  The thickset man went over to the bed and sat down. He scowled anxiously at Ned Beaumont. “It don’t look so damned good to me, Ned.”

  “What don’t?”

  “This thing of Ben going to the Hall with it.”

  Ned Beaumont said irritably: “All right. Any time you’re ready to tell me what you’re talking about’s soon enough for me.”

  Sloss raised a pale broad hand. “Wait, Ned, I’ll tell you what it’s about. Just listen.” He felt in his pocket for cigarettes, bringing out a package mashed limp. “You remember the night the Henry kid was pooped?”

  Ned Beaumont’s “Uh-huh” was carelessly uttered.

  “Remember me and Ben had just come in when you got there, at the Club?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, listen: we saw Paul and the kid arguing up there under the trees.”

  Ned Beaumont brushed a side of his mustache with a thumb-nail, once, and spoke slowly, looking puzzled: “But I saw you get out of the car in front of the Club—that was just after I found him—and you came up the other way.” He moved a forefinger. “And Paul was already in the Club ahead of you.”

  Sloss nodded his broad head vigorously. “That’s all right,” he said, “but we’d drove on down China Street to Pinky Klein’s place and he wasn’t there and we turned around and drove back to the Club.”

  Ned Beaumont nodded. “Just what did you see?”

  “We saw Paul and the kid standing there under the trees arguing.”

  “You could see that as you rode past?”

  Sloss nodded vigorously again.

  “It was a dark spot,” Ned Beaumont reminded him. “I don’t see how you could’ve made out their faces riding past like that, unless you slowed up or stopped.”

  “No, we didn’t, but I’d know Paul anywhere,” Sloss insisted.

  “Maybe, but how’d you know it was the kid with him?”

  “It was. Sure, it was. We could see enough of him to know that.”

  “And you could see they were arguing? What do you mean by that? Fighting?”

  “No, but standing like they were having an argument. You know how you can tell when people are arguing sometimes by the way they stand.”

  Ned Beaumont smiled mirthlessly. “Yes, if one of them’s standing on the other’s face.” His smile vanished. “And that’s what Ben went to the Hall with?”

  “Yes. I don’t know whether he went in with it on his own account or whether Farr got hold of it somehow and sent for him, but anyhow he spilled it to Farr. That was yesterday.”

  “How’d you hear about it, Harry?”

  “Farr’s hunting for me,” Sloss said. “That’s the way I heard about it. Ben’d told him I was with him and Farr sent word for me to drop in and see him, but I don’t want any part of it.”

  “I hope you don’t, Harry,” Ned Beaumont said. “What are you going to say if Farr catches you?”

  “I’m not going to let him catch me if I can help it. That’s what I wanted to see you about.” He cleared his throat and moistened his lips. “I thought maybe I ought to get out of town for a week or two, till it kind of blows over, and that’d take a little money.”

  Ned Beaumont smiled and shook his head. “That’s not the thing to do,” he told the thickset man. “If you want to help Paul go tell Farr you couldn’t recognize the two men under the trees and that you don’t think anybody in your car could.”

  “All right, that’s what I’ll do,” Sloss said readily, “but, listen, Ned, I ought to get something out of it. I’m taking a chance and—well—you know how it is.”

  Ned Beaumont nodded. “We’ll pick you out a soft job after election, one you’ll have to show up on maybe an hour a day.”

  “That’ll be—” Sloss stood up. His green-flecked palish eyes were urgent. “I’ll tell you, Ned, I’m broke as hell. Couldn’t you make it a little dough now instead? It’d come in damned handy.”

  “Maybe. I’ll talk it over with Paul.”

  “Do that, Ned, and give me a ring.”

  “Sure. So long.”

  V

  From the Majestic Hotel Ned Beaumont went to the City Hall, to the District Attorney’s office, and said he wanted to see Mr. Farr.

  The r
ound-faced youth to whom he said it left the outer office, returning a minute later apologetic of mien. “I’m sorry, Mr. Beaumont, but Mr. Farr is not in.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “I don’t know. His secretary says he didn’t leave word.”

  “I’ll take a chance. I’ll wait awhile in his office.”

  The round-faced youth stood in his way. “Oh, you can’t do—”

  Ned Beaumont smiled his nicest smile at the youth and asked softly: “Don’t you like this job, son?”

  The youth hesitated, fidgeted, and stepped out of Ned Beaumont’s way. Ned Beaumont walked down the inner corridor to the District Attorney’s door and opened it.

  Farr looked up from his desk, sprang to his feet. “Was that you?” he cried. “Damn that boy! He never gets anything right. A Mr. Bauman, he said.”

  “No harm done,” Ned Beaumont said mildly. “I got in.”

  He let the District Attorney shake his hand up and down and lead him to a chair. When they were seated he asked idly: “Anything new?”

  “Nothing.” Farr rocked back in his chair, thumbs hooked in lower vest-pockets. “Just the same old grind, though God knows there’s enough of that.”

  “How’s the electioneering going?”

  “It could be better”—a shadow passed over the District Attorney’s pugnacious red face—“but I guess we’ll manage all right.”

  Ned Beaumont kept idleness in his voice. “What’s the matter?”

  “This and that. Things always come up. That’s politics, I guess.”

  “Anything I can do—or Paul—to help?” Ned Beaumont asked and then, when Farr had shaken his red-stubble-covered head: “This talk that Paul’s got something to do with the Henry killing the worst thing you’re up against?”

  A frightened gleam came into Farr’s eyes, disappeared as he blinked. He sat up straight in his chair. “Well,” he said cautiously, “there’s a lot of feeling that we ought to’ve cleared the murder up before this. That is one of the things—maybe one of the biggest.”