Nightmare Town

by Dashiell Hammett

  “A messenger boy brought it at noon, and I came right over. Eli had assured me he hadn’t said anything to anybody, but I didn’t know. I had to face it, whatever it was.”

  Spade turned to the others, his face wooden. “Well?”

  Minera and Conrad looked at James, who made an impatient grimace and said, “Oh, sure, we sent him the letter. Why not? We was friends of Eli’s and we hadn’t been able to find him since he went to put the squeeze to this baby, and then he turns up dead, so we kind of like to have the gent come over and explain things.”

  “You knew about the squeeze?”

  “Sure. We was all together when he got the idea.”

  “How’d he happen to get the idea?” Spade asked.

  James spread the fingers of his left hand. “We’d been drinking and talking—you know the way a bunch of guys will, about all they’d seen and done—and he told a yarn about once seeing a guy boot another off a train into a cañon, and he happens to mention the name of the guy that done the booting—Buck Ferris. And somebody says, ‘What’s this Ferris look like?’ Eli tells him what he looked like then, saying he ain’t seen him for fifteen years; and whoever it is whistles and says, ‘I bet that’s the Ferris that owns about half the movie joints in the state. I bet you he’d give something to keep that back trail covered!’

  “Well, the idea kind of hit Eli. You could see that. He thought a little while and then he got cagey. He asked what this movie Ferris’s first name is, and when the other guy tells him, ‘Roger,’ he makes out he’s disappointed and says, ‘No, it ain’t him. His first name was Martin.’ We all give him the ha-ha and he finally admits he’s thinking of seeing the gent, and when he called me up Thursday around noon and says he’s throwing a party at Pogey Hecker’s that night, it ain’t no trouble to figure out what’s what.”

  “What was the name of the gentleman who was red-lighted?”

  “He wouldn’t say. He shut up tight. You couldn’t blame him.”

  “Then nothing. He never showed up at Pogey’s. We tried to get him on the phone around two o’clock in the morning, but his wife said he hadn’t been home, so we stuck around till four or five and then decided he had given us a run-around, and made Pogey charge the bill to him, and beat it. I ain’t seen him since—dead or alive.”

  Spade said mildly. “Maybe. Sure you didn’t find Eli later that morning, taking him riding, swap him bullets for Ferris’s five thou, dump him in the—?”

  A sharp double knock sounded on the door.

  Spade’s face brightened. He went to the door and opened it.

  A young man came in. He was very dapper, and very well proportioned. He wore a light topcoat and his hands were in its pockets. Just inside the door he stepped to the right, and stood with his back to the wall.

  By that time another young man was coming in. He stepped to the left. Though they did not actually look alike, their common dapperness, the similar trimness of their bodies, and their almost identical positions—back to wall, hands in pockets, cold, bright eyes studying the occupants of the room—gave them the appearance of twins.

  Then Gene Colyer came in. He nodded at Spade, but paid no attention to the others in the room, though James said, “Hello, Gene.”

  “Anything new?” Colyer asked Spade.

  Spade nodded. “It seems this gentleman”—he jerked a thumb at Ferris—“was—”

  “Any place we can talk?”

  “There’s a kitchen back here.”

  Colyer snapped a “Smear anybody that pops” over his shoulder at the two dapper young men and followed Spade into the kitchen. He sat on the one kitchen chair and stared with unblinking green eyes at Spade while Spade told him what he had learned.

  When the private detective had finished, the green-eyed man asked, “Well, what do you make of it?”

  Spade looked thoughtfully at the other, “You’ve picked up something. I’d like to know what it is.”

  Colyer said, “They found the gun in a stream a quarter of a mile from where they found him. It’s James’s—got the mark on it where it was shot out of his hand once in Vallejo.”

  “That’s nice,” Spade said.

  “Listen. A kid named Thurston says James comes to him last Wednesday and gets him to tail Haven. Thurston picks him up Thursday afternoon, puts him in at Ferris’s, and phones James. James tells him to take a plant on the place and let him know where Haven goes when he leaves, but some nervous woman in the neighborhood puts in a ruble about the kid hanging around, and the cops chase him along about ten o’clock.”

  Spade pursed his lips and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.

  Colyer’s eyes were expressionless, but sweat made his round face shiny, and his voice was hoarse. “Spade,” he said, “I’m going to turn him in.”

  Spade switched his gaze from the ceiling to the protuberant green eyes.

  “I’ve never turned in one of my people before,” Colyer said, “but this one goes. Julia’s got to believe I hadn’t anything to do with it if it’s one of my people and I turn him in, hasn’t she?”

  Spade nodded slowly. “I think so.”

  Colyer suddenly averted his eyes and cleared his throat. When he spoke again it was curtly. “Well, he goes.”

  Minera, James, and Conrad were seated when Spade and Colyer came out of the kitchen. Ferris was walking the floor. The two dapper young men had not moved.

  Colyer went over to James. “Where’s your gun, Louis?” he asked.

  James moved his right hand a few inches toward his left breast, stopped it, and said, “Oh, I didn’t bring it.”

  With his gloved hand—open—Colyer struck James on the side of the face, knocking him out of his chair.

  James straightened up, mumbling, “I didn’t mean nothing.” He put a hand to the side of his face. “I know I oughtn’t’ve done it, Chief, but when he called up and said he didn’t like to go up against Ferris without something and didn’t have any of his own, I said, ‘All right,’ and sent it over to him.”

  Colyer said, “And you sent Thurston over to him, too.”

  “We were just kind of interested in seeing if he did go through with it,” James mumbled.

  “And you couldn’t’ve gone there yourself, or sent somebody else?”

  “After Thurston had stirred up the whole neighborhood?”

  Colyer turned to Spade. “Want us to help you take them in, or want to call the wagon?”

  “We’ll do it regular,” Spade said, and went to the wall telephone. When he turned away from it his face was wooden, his eyes dreamy. He made a cigarette, lit it, and said to Colyer, “I’m silly enough to think your Louis has got a lot of right answers in that story of his.”

  James took his hand down from his bruised cheek and stared at Spade with astonished eyes.

  Colyer growled, “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing,” Spade said softly, “except I think you’re a little too anxious to slam it on him.” He blew smoke out. “Why, for instance, should he drop his gun there when it had marks on it that people knew?”

  Colyer said, “You think he’s got brains.”

  “If these boys killed him, knew he was dead, why do they wait till the body’s found and things are stirred up before they go after Ferris again? What’d they turn his pockets inside out for if they hijacked him? That’s a lot of trouble and only done by folks that kill for some other reason and want to make it look like robbery.” He shook his head. “You’re too anxious to slam it on him. Why should they—”

  “That’s not the point right now,” Colyer said. “The point is, why do you keep saying I’m too anxious to slam it on him?”

  Spade shrugged. “Maybe to clear yourself with Julia as soon as possible and as clear as possible, maybe even to clear yourself with the police, and then you’ve got clients.”

  Colyer said, “What?”

  Spade made a careless gesture with his cigarette. “Ferris,” he said blandly. “He killed him, of course.”
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  Colyer’s eyelids quivered, though he did not actually blink.

  Spade said, “First, he’s the last person we know of who saw Eli alive, and that’s always a good bet. Second, he’s the only person I talked to before Eli’s body turned up who cared whether they were holding out on me or not. The rest of you just thought I was hunting for a guy who’d gone away. He knew I was hunting for a man he’d killed, so he had to put himself in the clear. He was even afraid to throw that book away, because it had been sent up by the book store and could be traced, and there might be clerks who’d seen the inscription. Third, he was the only one who thought Eli was just a sweet, clean, lovable boy—for the same reasons. Fourth, that story about a blackmailer showing up at three o’clock in the afternoon, making an easy touch for five grand, and then sticking around till midnight is just silly, no matter how good the booze was. Fifth, the story about the paper Eli signed is still worse, though a forged one could be fixed up easy enough. Sixth, he’s got the best reason of anybody we know for wanting Eli dead.”

  Colyer nodded slowly, “Still—”

  “Still nothing,” Spade said. “Maybe he did the ten-thousand-out-five-thousand-back trick with his bank, but that was easy. Then he got this feebleminded blackmailer in his house, stalled him along until the servant had gone to bed, took the borrowed gun from him, shoved him downstairs into his car, took him for a ride—maybe took him already dead, maybe shot him down there by the bushes—frisked him clean to make identification harder and to make it look like robbery, tossed the gun in the water, and came home—”

  He broke off to listen to the sound of a siren in the street. He looked then, for the first time since he had begun to talk, at Ferris.

  Ferris’s face was ghastly white, but he held his eyes steady.

  Spade said, “I’ve got a hunch, Ferris, that we’re going to find out about that red-lighting job, too. You told me you had your carnival company with a partner for a while when Eli was working for you, and then by yourself. We oughtn’t to have a lot of trouble finding out about your partner—whether he disappeared, or died a natural death, or is still alive.”

  Ferris had lost some of his erectness. He wet his lips and said, “I want to see my lawyer. I don’t want to talk till I’ve seen my lawyer.”

  Spade said, “It’s all right with me. You’re up against it, but I don’t like blackmailers myself. I think Eli wrote a good epitaph for them in that book back there—‘Too many have lived.’ ”

  THEY CAN ONLY HANG YOU ONCE

  Samuel Spade said: “My name is Ronald Ames. I want to see Mr. Binnett—Mr. Timothy Binnett.”

  “Mr. Binnett is resting now, sir,” the butler replied hesitantly.

  “Will you find out when I can see him? It’s important.” Spade cleared his throat. “I’m—uh—just back from Australia, and it’s about some of his properties there.”

  The butler turned on his heel while saying, “I’ll see, sir,” and was going up the front stairs before he had finished speaking.

  Spade made and lit a cigarette.

  The butler came downstairs again. “I’m sorry; he can’t be disturbed now, but Mr. Wallace Binnett—Mr. Timothy’s nephew—will see you.”

  Spade said, “Thanks,” and followed the butler upstairs.

  Wallace Binnett was a slender, handsome, dark man of about Spade’s age—thirty-eight—who rose smiling from a brocaded chair, said, “How do you do, Mr. Ames?” waved his hand at another chair, and sat down again. “You’re from Australia?”

  “Got in this morning.”

  “You’re a business associate of Uncle Tim’s?”

  Spade smiled and shook his head. “Hardly that, but I’ve some information I think he ought to have—quick.”

  Wallace Binnett looked thoughtfully at the floor, then up at Spade. “I’ll do my best to persuade him to see you, Mr. Ames, but, frankly, I don’t know.”

  Spade seemed mildly surprised. “Why?”

  Binnett shrugged. “He’s peculiar sometimes. Understand, his mind seems perfectly all right, but he has the testiness and eccentricity of an old man in ill health and—well—at times he can be difficult.”

  Spade asked slowly: “He’s already refused to see me?”

  “Yes.”

  Spade rose from his chair. His blond satan’s face was expressionless.

  Binnett raised a hand quickly. “Wait, wait,” he said. “I’ll do what I can to make him change his mind. Perhaps if—” His dark eyes suddenly became wary. “You’re not simply trying to sell him something, are you?”

  “No.”

  The wary gleam went out of Binnett’s eyes. “Well, then, I think I can—”

  A young woman came in crying angrily, “Wally, that old fool has—” She broke off with a hand to her breast when she saw Spade.

  Spade and Binnett had risen together. Binnett said suavely: “Joyce, this is Mr. Ames. My sister-in-law, Joyce Court.”

  Spade bowed.

  Joyce Court uttered a short, embarrassed laugh and said: “Please excuse my whirlwind entrance.” She was a tall, blue-eyed, dark woman of twenty-four or -five with good shoulders and a strong, slim body. Her features made up in warmth what they lacked in regularity. She wore wide-legged blue satin pajamas.

  Binnett smiled good-naturedly at her and asked: “Now what’s all the excitement?”

  Anger darkened her eyes again and she started to speak. Then she looked at Spade and said: “But we shouldn’t bore Mr. Ames with our stupid domestic affairs. If—” She hesitated.

  Spade bowed again. “Sure,” he said, “certainly.”

  “I won’t be a minute,” Binnett promised, and left the room with her.

  Spade went to open the doorway through which they had vanished and, standing just inside, listened. Their footsteps became inaudible. Nothing else could be heard. Spade was standing there—his yellow-gray eyes dreamy—when he heard the scream. It was a woman’s scream, high and shrill with terror. Spade was through the doorway when he heard the shot. It was a pistol shot, magnified, reverberated by walls and ceilings.

  Twenty feet from the doorway Spade found a staircase, and went up it three steps at a time. He turned to the left. Halfway down the hallway a woman lay on her back on the floor.

  Wallace Binnett knelt beside her, fondling one of her hands desperately, crying in a low, beseeching voice: “Darling, Molly, darling!”

  Joyce Court stood behind him and wrung her hands while tears streaked her cheeks.

  The woman on the floor resembled Joyce Court but was older, and her face had a hardness the younger one’s had not.

  “She’s dead, she’s been killed,” Wallace Binnett said incredulously, raising his white face toward Spade. When Binnett moved his head Spade could see the round hole in the woman’s tan dress over her heart and the dark stain which was rapidly spreading below it.

  Spade touched Joyce Court’s arm. “Police, emergency hospital—phone,” he said. As she ran toward the stairs he addressed Wallace Binnett: “Who did—”

  A voice groaned feebly behind Spade.

  He turned swiftly. Through an open doorway he could see an old man in white pajamas lying sprawled across a rumpled bed. His head, a shoulder, an arm dangled over the edge of the bed. His other hand held his throat tightly. He groaned again and his eyelids twitched, but did not open.

  Spade lifted the old man’s head and shoulders and put them up on the pillows. The old man groaned again and took his hand from his throat. His throat was red with half a dozen bruises. He was a gaunt man with a seamed face that probably exaggerated his age.

  A glass of water was on a table beside the bed. Spade put water on the old man’s face and, when the old man’s eyes twitched again, leaned down and growled softly: “Who did it?”

  The twitching eyelids went up far enough to show a narrow strip of bloodshot gray eyes. The old man spoke painfully, putting a hand to his throat again: “A man—he—” He coughed.

  Spade made an impatient grimace. Hi
s lips almost touched the old man’s ear. “Where’d he go?” His voice was urgent.

  A gaunt hand moved weakly to indicate the rear of the house and fell back on the bed.

  The butler and two frightened female servants had joined Wallace Binnett beside the dead woman in the hallway.

  “Who did it?” Spade asked them.

  They stared at him blankly.

  “Somebody look after the old man,” he growled, and went down the hallway.

  At the end of the hallway was a rear staircase. He descended two flights and went through a pantry into the kitchen. He saw nobody. The kitchen door was shut but, when he tried it, not locked. He crossed a narrow back yard to a gate that was shut, not locked. He opened the gate. There was nobody in the narrow alley behind it.

  He sighed, shut the gate, and returned to the house.

  —

  SPADE SAT COMFORTABLY slack in a deep leather chair in a room that ran across the front second story of Wallace Binnett’s house. There were shelves of books and the lights were on. The window showed outer darkness weakly diluted by a distant street lamp. Facing Spade, Detective-Sergeant Polhaus—a big, carelessly shaven, florid man in dark clothes that needed pressing—was sprawled in another leather chair; Lieutenant Dundy—smaller, compactly built, square-faced—stood with legs apart, head thrust a little forward, in the center of the room.

  Spade was saying: “…and the doctor would only let me talk to the old man a couple of minutes. We can try it again when he’s rested a little, but it doesn’t look like he knows much. He was catching a nap and he woke up with somebody’s hands on his throat dragging him around the bed. The best he got was a one-eyed look at the fellow choking him. A big fellow, he says, with a soft hat pulled down over his eyes, dark, needing a shave. Sounds like Tom.” Spade nodded at Polhaus.

  The detective-sergeant chuckled, but Dundy said, “Go on,” curtly.

  Spade grinned and went on: “He’s pretty far gone when he hears Mrs. Binnett scream at the door. The hands go away from his throat and he hears the shot and just before passing out he gets a flash of the big fellow heading for the rear of the house and Mrs. Binnett tumbling down on the hall floor. He says he never saw the big fellow before.”