The Golden Horseshoe and Other Stories

by Dashiell Hammett

  “Then you framed the Baltimore trip. He told the truth to me—the truth so far as he knew it. Then you met him Sunday night—maybe accidentally, maybe not. Anyway, you took him down to Joplin’s, giving him some wild yarn that he would swallow and that would persuade him to stay there for a few days. That wasn’t hard, since he didn’t know anything about either of the twenty-thousand-dollar checks. You and your pal Kilcourse knew that if Pangburn disappeared nobody would ever know that he hadn’t forged the Axford check, and nobody would ever suspect that the second check was phoney. You’d have killed him quietly, but when Porky tipped you off that I was on my way down you had to move quick—so you shot him down. That’s the truth of it!” I yelled.

  All this while she had watched me with wide grey eyes that were calm and tender, but now they clouded a little and a pucker of pain drew her brows together.

  I yanked my head away and got the car in motion.

  Just before we swept into Redwood City one of her hands came up to my forearm, rested there for a second, patted the arm twice, and withdrew.

  I didn’t look at her, nor, I think, did she look at me, while she was being booked. She gave her name as Jeanne Delano, and refused to make any statement until she had seen an attorney. It all took a very few minutes.

  As she was being led away, she stopped and asked if she might speak privately with me.

  We went together to a far corner of the room.

  She put her mouth close to my ear so that her breath was warm again on my cheek, as it had been in the car, and whispered the vilest epithet of which the English language is capable.

  Then she walked out to her cell.

  Black Mask, June 1924

  From the author of “The Girl with the Silver Eyes”

  Many thanks for the check for “The Girl with the Silver Eyes.”

  Taken in a lump, the story is pure fiction, but most of its details are based on things that I’ve either run into myself or got second hand from other detectives. For instance, “Tin-Star” Joplin’s roadhouse is in California, though not near Halfmoon Bay, and he is exactly as I have set him down. “Porky” Grout’s original died of tuberculosis in Butte, Montana, two or three years ago. (Some day I’m going to do a psychological study of a stool-pigeon. They’re an interesting lot: almost without exception more cowardly even than the ordinary crook, yet they follow the most dangerous calling in the criminal world; for not only is their own world against them, but the detectives who use them seldom hesitate to sacrifice them if anything is gained thereby.) Jeanne Delano is partly real, but mostly “made up.” (It may be that the Redwood City jail will fail to hold her.”) Fag Kilcourse has perhaps a half a dozen originals: he isn’t an unusual type.

  I simply shook these people up together, added a few more to round out the cast of characters, and siced my little fat detective on ’em.

  Sincerely yours,

  Dashiell Hammett

  San Francisco

  THE GOLDEN HORSESHOE

  A Complete Novelette

  Black Mask, November 1924

  In our recent voting contest for favorite Black Mask authors, Dashiell Hammett received thousands of votes because of his series of stories of the adventures of his San Francisco detective. He has created one of the most convincing and realistic characters in all detective fiction. The story, herewith, is one of his best to date. We know you’ll enjoy it to the last word.

  I

  “I haven’t anything very exciting to offer you this time,” Vance Richmond said as we shook hands. “I want you to find a man for me—a man who is not a criminal.”

  There was an apology in his voice. The last couple of jobs this lean, grey-faced attorney had thrown my way had run to gun-play and other forms of rioting, and I suppose he thought anything less than that would put me to sleep. Was a time when he might have been right—when I was a young sprout of twenty or so, newly attached to the Continental Detective Agency. But the fifteen years that had slid by since then had dulled my appetite for rough stuff. I don’t mean that I shuddered whenever I considered the possibility of some bird taking a poke at me; but I didn’t call that day a total loss in which nobody tried to puncture my short, fat carcass.

  “The man I want found,” the lawyer went on, as we sat down, “is an English architect named Norman Ashcraft. He is a man of about thirty-seven, five feet ten inches tall, well built, and fair-skinned, with light hair and blue eyes. Four years ago he was a typical specimen of the clean-cut blond Britisher. He may not be like that now—those four years have been rather hard ones for him, I imagine.

  “I want to find him for Mrs. Ashcraft, his wife. I know your Agency’s rule against meddling with family affairs, but I can assure you that no matter how things turn out there will be no divorce proceedings in which you will be involved.

  “Here is the story. Four years ago the Ashcrafts were living together in England, in Bristol. It seems that Mrs. Ashcraft is of a very jealous disposition, and he was rather high-strung. Furthermore, he had only what money he earned at his profession, while she had inherited quite a bit from her parents. Ashcraft was rather foolishly sensitive about being the husband of a wealthy woman—was inclined to go out of his way to show that he was not dependent upon her money, that he wouldn’t be influenced by it. Foolish, of course, but just the sort of attitude a man of his temperament would assume. One night she accused him of paying too much attention to another woman. They quarreled, and he packed up and left.

  “She was repentant within a week—especially repentant since she had learned that her suspicion had had no foundation outside of her own jealousy—and she tried to find him. But he was gone. It became manifest that he had left England. She had him searched for in Europe, in Canada, in Australia, and in the United States. She succeeded in tracing him from Bristol to New York, and then to Detroit, where he had been arrested and fined for disturbing the peace in a drunken row of some sort. After that he dropped out of sight until he bobbed up in Seattle ten months later.”

  The attorney hunted through the papers on his desk and found a memorandum.

  “On May 23, 1923, he shot and killed a burglar in his room in a hotel there. The Seattle police seem to have suspected that there was something funny about the shooting, but had nothing to hold Ashcraft on. The man he killed was undoubtedly a burglar. Then Ashcraft disappeared again, and nothing was heard of him until just about a year ago. Mrs. Ashcraft had advertisements inserted in the personal columns of papers in the principal American cities.

  “One day she received a letter from him, from San Francisco. It was a very formal letter, and simply requested her to stop advertising. Although he was through with the name Norman Ashcraft, he wrote, he disliked seeing it published in every newspaper he read.

  “She mailed a letter to him at the General Delivery window here, and used another advertisement to tell him about it. He answered it, rather caustically. She wrote him again, asking him to come home. He refused, though he seemed less bitter toward her. They exchanged several letters, and she learned that he had become a drug addict, and what was left of his pride would not let him return to her until he looked—and was at least somewhat like—his former self. She persuaded him to accept enough money from her to straighten himself out. She sent him this money each month, in care of General Delivery, here.

  “Meanwhile she closed up her affairs in England—she had no close relatives to hold her there—and came to San Francisco, to be on hand when her husband was ready to return to her. A year has gone. She still sends him money each month. She still waits for him to come back to her. He has repeatedly refused to see her, and his letters are evasive—filled with accounts of the struggle he is having, making headway against the drug one month, slipping back the next.

  “She suspects by now, of course, that he has no intention of ever coming back to her; that he does not intend giving up the drug; that he is simp
ly using her as a source of income. I have urged her to discontinue the monthly allowance for a while. That would at least bring about an interview, I think, and she could learn definitely what to expect. But she will not do that. You see, she blames herself for his present condition. She thinks her foolish flare of jealousy is responsible for his plight, and she is afraid to do anything that might either hurt him or induce him to hurt himself further. Her mind is unchangeably made up in that respect. She wants him back, wants him straightened out; but if he will not come, then she is content to continue the payments for the rest of his life. But she wants to know what she is to expect. She wants to end this devilish uncertainty in which she has been living.

  “What we want, then, is for you to find Ashcraft. We want to know whether there is any likelihood of his ever becoming a man again, or whether he is gone beyond redemption. There is your job. Find him, learn whatever you can about him, and then, after we know something, we will decide whether it is wiser to force an interview between them—in hopes that she will be able to influence him—or not.”

  “I’ll try it,” I said. “When does Mrs. Ashcraft send him his monthly allowance?”

  “On the first of each month.”

  “Today is the twenty-eighth. That’ll give me three days to wind up a job I have on hand. Got a photo of him?”

  “Unfortunately, no. In her anger immediately after their row, Mrs. Ashcraft destroyed everything she had that would remind her of him. But I don’t think a photograph would be of any great help at the post office. Without consulting me, Mrs. Ashcraft watched for her husband there on several occasions, and did not see him. It is more than likely that he has someone else call for his mail.”

  I got up and reached for my hat.

  “See you around the second of the month,” I said, as I left the office.

  II

  On the afternoon of the first, I went down to the post office and got hold of Lusk, the inspector in charge of the division at the time.

  “I’ve got a line on a scratcher from up north,” I told Lusk, “who is supposed to be getting his mail at the window. Will you fix it up so I can get a spot on him?”

  Post office inspectors are all tied up with rules and regulations that forbid their giving assistance to private detectives except on certain criminal matters. But a friendly inspector doesn’t have to put you through the third degree. You lie to him—so that he will have an alibi in case there’s a kick-back—and whether he thinks you’re lying or not doesn’t matter.

  So presently I was downstairs again, loitering within sight of the A to D window, with the clerk at the window instructed to give me the office when Ashcraft’s mail was called for. There was no mail for him there at the time. Mrs. Ashcraft’s letter would hardly get to the clerks that afternoon, but I was taking no chances. I stayed on the job until the windows closed at eight o’clock, and then went home.

  At a few minutes after ten the next morning I got my action. One of the clerks gave me the signal. A small man in a blue suit and a soft gray hat was walking away from the window with an envelope in his hand. A man of perhaps forty years, though he looked older. His face was pasty, his feet dragged, and, although his clothes were fairly new, they needed brushing and pressing.

  He came straight to the desk in front of which I stood fiddling with some papers. Out of the tail of my eye I saw that he had not opened the envelope in his hand—was not going to open it. He took a large envelope from his pocket, and I got just enough of a glimpse of its front to see that it was already stamped and addressed. I twisted my neck out of joint trying to read the address, but failed. He kept the addressed side against his body, put the letter he had got from the window in it, and licked the flap backward, so that there was no possible way for anybody to see the front of the envelope. Then he rubbed the flap down carefully and turned toward the mailing slots. I went after him. There was nothing to do but to pull the always reliable stumble.

  I overtook him, stepped close and faked a fall on the marble floor, bumping into him, grabbing him as if to regain my balance. It went rotten. In the middle of my stunt my foot really did slip, and we went down on the floor like a pair of wrestlers, with him under me. To botch the trick thoroughly, he fell with the envelope pinned under him.

  I scrambled up, yanked him to his feet, mumbled an apology and almost had to push him out of the way to beat him to the envelope that lay face down on the floor. I had to turn it over as I handed it to him in order to get the address:

  Mr. Edward Bohannon,

  Golden Horseshoe Cafe,

  Tijuana, Baja California,

  Mexico.

  I had the address, but I had tipped my mitt. There was no way in God’s world for this little man in blue to miss knowing that I had been trying to get that address.

  I dusted myself off while he put his envelope through a slot. He didn’t come back past me, but went on down toward the Mission Street exit. I couldn’t let him get away with what he knew. I didn’t want Ashcraft tipped off before I got to him. I would have to try another trick as ancient as the one the slippery floor had bungled for me. I set out after the little man again.

  Just as I reached his side he turned his head to see if he was being followed.

  “Hello, Micky!” I hailed him. “How’s everything in Chi?”

  “You got me wrong.” He spoke out of the side of his gray-lipped mouth, not stopping. “I don’t know nothin’ about Chi.”

  His eyes were pale blue, with needlepoint pupils—the eyes of a heroin or morphine user.

  “Quit stalling.” I walked along at his side. We had left the building by this time and were going down Mission Street. “You fell off the rattler only this morning.”

  He stopped on the sidewalk and faced me.

  “Me? Who do you think I am?”

  “You’re Micky Parker. The Dutchman gave us the rap that you were headed here. They got him—if you don’t already know it.”

  “You’re cuckoo,” he sneered. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about!”

  That was nothing—neither did I. I raised my right hand in my overcoat pocket.

  “Now I’ll tell one,” I growled at him. “And keep your hands away from your clothes or I’ll let the guts out of you.”

  He flinched away from my bulging pocket.

  “Hey, listen, brother!” he begged. “You got me wrong—on the level. My name ain’t Micky Parker, an’ I ain’t been in Chi in six years. I been here in Frisco for a solid year, an’ that’s the truth.”

  “You got to show me.”

  “I can do it,” he exclaimed, all eagerness. “You come down the drag with me, an’ I’ll show you. My name’s Ryan, an’ I been livin’ aroun’ the corner here on Sixth Street for six or eight months.”

  “Ryan?” I asked.

  “Yes—John Ryan.”

  I chalked that up against him. Of course there have been Ryans christened John, but not enough of them to account for the number of times that name appears in criminal records. I don’t suppose there are three old-time yeggs in the country who haven’t used the name at least once; it’s the John Smith of yeggdom.

  This particular John Ryan led me around to a house on Sixth Street, where the landlady—a rough-hewn woman of fifty, with bare arms that were haired and muscled like the village smithy’s—assured me that her tenant had to her positive knowledge been in San Francisco for months, and that she remembered seeing him at least once a day for a couple of weeks back. If I had been really suspicious that this Ryan was my mythical Micky Parker from Chicago, I wouldn’t have taken the woman’s word for it, but as it was I pretended to be satisfied.

  That seemed to be all right then. Mr. Ryan had been led astray, had been convinced that I had mistaken him for another crook, and that I was not interested in the Ashcraft letter. I would be safe—reasonably safe—in letting the situation go as it s
tood. But loose ends worry me. And you can’t always count on people doing and thinking what you want. This bird was a hop-head, and he had given me a phoney-sounding name, so …

  “What do you do for a living?” I asked him.

  “I ain’t been doin’ nothin’ for a coupla months,” he pattered, “but I expec’ to open a lunch room with a fella nex’ week.”

  “Let’s go up to your room,” I suggested. “I want to talk to you.”

  He wasn’t enthusiastic, but he took me up. He had two rooms and a kitchen on the third floor. They were dirty, foul-smelling rooms. I dangled a leg from the corner of a table and waved him into a squeaky rocking chair in front of me. His pasty face and dopey eyes were uneasy.

  “Where’s Ashcraft?” I threw at him. He jerked, and then looked at the floor.

  “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” he mumbled.

  “You’d better figure it out,” I advised him, “or there’s a nice cool cell down in the booby-hutch that will be wrapped around you.”

  “You ain’t got nothin’ on me.”

  “What of that? How’d you like to do a thirty or a sixty on a vag charge?”

  “Vag, hell!” he snarled, looking up at me. “I got five hundred smacks in my kick. Does that look like you can vag me?”

  I grinned down at him.

  “You know better than that, Ryan. A pocketful of money’ll get you nothing in California. You’ve got no job. You can’t show where your money comes from. You’re made to order for the vag law.”

  I had this bird figured as a dope peddler. If he was—or was anything else off color that might come to light when he was vagged—the chances were that he would be willing to sell Ashcraft out to save himself; especially since, so far as I knew, Ashcraft wasn’t on the wrong side of the criminal law.

  “If I were you,” I went on while he stared at the floor and thought, “I’d be a nice, obliging fellow and do my talking now. You’re—”