Red Harvest quotes

The city wasn’t pretty. Most of its builders had gone in for gaudiness. Maybe they had been successful at first. Since then the smelters whose brick stacks stuck up tall against a gloomy mountain to the south had yellow-smoked everything into uniform dinginess.

The result was an ugly city of forty thousand people, set in an ugly notch between two ugly mountains that had been all dirtied up by mining.

Spread over this was a grimy sky that looked as if it had come out of the smelters’ stacks.

The result was an ugly city of forty thousand people, set in an ugly notch between two ugly mountains that had been all dirtied up by mining.

Spread over this was a grimy sky that looked as if it had come out of the smelters’ stacks.

The first policeman I saw needed a shave. The second had a couple of buttons off his shabby uniform. The third stood in the center of the city’s main intersection—Broadway and Union Street—directing traffic, with a cigar in one corner of his mouth.

The maid who opened the door told me Mr. Willsson was not home. While I was explaining that I had an appointment with him a slender blonde woman of something less than thirty in green crêpe came to the door.

When she smiled her blue eyes didn’t lose their stoniness.

I repeated my explanation to her.

I said I would get in touch with him at the Herald in the morning.

I went away wondering why the green toe of her left slipper was dark and damp with something that could have been blood.

I walked over to Broadway and caught a street car. Three blocks north of my hotel I got off to see what the crowd was doing around a side entrance of the City Hall.

He looked at me carefully before he replied, as if he wanted to be sure that the information was going into safe hands. His eyes were gray as his clothes, but not so soft.

“Don Willsson’s gone to sit on the right hand of God, if God don’t mind looking at bullet-holes.”

“Who shot him?” I asked.

The gray man scratched the back of his neck and said:

I wanted information, not wit.

I would have tried my luck with some other member of the crowd if the red tie hadn’t interested me. I said:

I wanted information, not wit. I would have tried my luck with some other member of the crowd if the red tie hadn’t interested me. I said:

“I’m a stranger in town. Hang the Punch and Judy on me. That’s what strangers are for.”

“Donald Willsson, Esquire, publisher of the Morning and Evening Heralds, was found in Hurricane Street a little while ago, shot very dead by parties unknown,” he recited in a rapid singsong. “Does that keep your feelings from being hurt?”

Along with these pieces of property he owned a United States senator, a couple of representatives, the governor, the mayor, and most of the state legislature.

Elihu Willsson was Personville, and he was almost the whole state.

Back in the war days the I.W.W.—in full bloom then throughout the West—had lined up the Personville Mining Corporation’s help. The help hadn’t been exactly pampered. They used their new strength to demand the things they wanted.

The strike lasted eight months. Both sides bled plenty. The wobblies had to do their own bleeding. Old Elihu hired gunmen, strikebreakers, national guardsmen and even parts of the regular army, to do his.

When the last skull had been cracked, the last rib kicked in, organized labor in Personville was a used firecracker.

But, said Bill Quint, old Elihu didn’t know his Italian history. He won the strike, but he lost his hold on the city and the state. To beat the miners he had to let his hired thugs run wild.

He won the strike, but he lost his hold on the city and the state. To beat the miners he had to let his hired thugs run wild. When the fight was over he couldn’t get rid of them.

He had given his city to them and he wasn’t strong enough to take it away from them.

Personville looked good to them and they took it over. They had won his strike for him and they took the city for their spoils. He couldn’t openly break with them. They had too much on him.

“This fellow who was knocked off tonight—Elihu’s son—where did he stand?” I asked.

“Where papa put him, and he’s where papa put him now.”

“You mean the old man had him—?”

Below them a short thick neck ran down into white pajamas between square meaty shoulders. One of his arms was outside the covers, a short compact arm that ended in a thick-fingered blunt hand. His eyes were round, blue, small and watery.

They looked as if they were hiding behind the watery film and under the bushy white brows only until the time came to jump out and grab something.

He wasn’t the sort of man whose pocket you’d try to pick unless you had a lot of confidence in your fingers.

His eyes were round, blue, small and watery. They looked as if they were hiding behind the watery film and under the bushy white brows only until the time came to jump out and grab something.

He wasn’t the sort of man whose pocket you’d try to pick unless you had a lot of confidence in your fingers.

He ordered me into a bedside chair with a two-inch jerk of his round head, chased the secretary away with another, and asked:

“What the hell are you waiting for?”

He was too old and too sick to be smacked.

I laughed and said:

He put a fist on top of each hump his thighs made in the covers and pushed his square chin at me.

“Old as I am and sick as I am,” he said very deliberately, “I’ve a great mind to get up and kick your behind.”

I paid no attention to that, repeating:

I paid no attention to that, repeating:

“She was,” he said, not yelling now, “and domineering, and spoiled, and suspicious, and greedy, and mean, and unscrupulous, and deceitful, and selfish, and damned bad⁠—altogether damned bad!”

“Any reason for her jealousy?”

“I hope so,” he said bitterly. “

I’d hate to think a son of mine would be faithful to her.

Though likely enough he was. He’d do things like that.”

The chief dumped the ash off his cigar in the center of his desk, flourished the cigar in his fat hand, and said:

“A soiled dove, as the fellow says, a deluxe hustler, a big-league gold-digger.”

“Gone up against her yet?”

Willsson’s residence. The chief stopped for a second with one foot on the bottom step to look at the black crêpe hanging over the bell. Then he said, “Well, what’s got to be done has got to be done,” and we went up the steps.

Mrs. Willsson wasn’t anxious to see us, but people usually see the chief of police if he insists.

This one did. We were taken upstairs to where Donald Willsson’s widow sat in the library. She was in black. Her blue eyes had frost in them.

Mrs. Willsson sat down again, very rigidly. The chief looked at her.

A smile that tried to be tender made funny lines and humps in his fat face.

After a little while her shoulders began to relax, her chin went lower, a curve came in her back.

“

She’s money-mad, all right, but somehow you don’t mind it. She’s so thoroughly mercenary, so frankly greedy, that there’s nothing disagreeable about it.

You’ll understand what I mean when you know her.”

“What name shall I tell her?”

His voice was a sick man’s and an educated man’s.

“It wouldn’t mean anything to her. I want to see her about Willsson’s death.”

She was an inch or two taller than I, which made her about five feet eight. She had a broad-shouldered, full-breasted, round-hipped body and big muscular legs. The hand she gave me was soft, warm, strong.

Her face was the face of a girl of twenty-five already showing signs of wear.

Little lines crossed the corners of her big ripe mouth. Fainter lines were beginning to make nets around her thick-lashed eyes. They were large eyes, blue and a bit bloodshot.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say what he wanted. Maybe just help in the reform campaign.”

“It’s no fun being a sleuth when somebody steals your stuff, does all the questioning.”

“I like to find out what’s going on,” she said, a little laugh gurgling down in her throat.

“Maybe if I knew what it was.”

“Money,” she explained, “the more the better. I like it.”

“Money saved is money earned. I can save you money and grief.”

“Noonan’s figuring on hanging the rap on you as well as on Whisper.”

“Don’t scare me,” she lisped. “I’m only a child.”

“Noonan knows that Thaler knew about the check. He knows that Thaler came here while Willsson was here, but didn’t get in. He knows that Thaler was hanging around the neighborhood when Willsson was shot.

“My God!” the girl protested, “if I’d been going to kill him I’d have done it in here where nobody could have seen it, or waited until he got out of sight of the house.

What kind of a dumb onion do you take me for?

”

“What are you trying to do?” she asked.

“Learn who killed him. Not who could have or might have, but who did.”

“I could give you some help,” she said, “but there’d have to be something in it for me.”

“It’s not the money,” I said, “it’s the principle of the thing.”

She made a face at me and put her glass where she thought the table was. She was eight inches wrong.

I don’t remember if the glass broke when it hit the floor, or what happened to it. I do remember that I was encouraged by her missing the table.

“I will. Now listen to me.

You’re drunk, and I’m drunk, and I’m just exactly drunk enough to tell you anything you want to know.

That’s the kind of girl I am. If I like a person I’ll tell them anything they want to know. Just ask me. Go ahead, ask me.”

Because he couldn’t have used the stuff I sold him. It was good, all right. It was too good. It would have put his old man in jail with the rest of them. It would have nailed Papa Elihu tighter than anyone else.”

I laughed with her while I tried to keep my head above the gin I had guzzled.

“Who else would it nail?” I asked.

“That’s good,” I growled. “

You can go to the gallows with a clear conscience.

Have you seen Thaler since the murder?”

She let go my lapels, put her hands behind her, and laughed in my face.

“All right. Keep it to yourself⁠—and try to figure out which part of what I told you is the truth.”

“Thanks for the part that is, anyhow, and for the gin. And if Max Thaler means anything to you, you ought to pass him the word that Noonan’s trying to rib him.”

As soon as I appeared he took his head off the pillows, sat upright and barked at me:

“Have you got as much guts as you’ve got gall?”

His face was an unhealthy dark red. The film was gone from his eyes. They were hard and hot.

“You’re a great talker,” he said. “I know that. A two-fisted, you-be-damned man with your words. But have you got anything else?

Have you got the guts to match your gall? Or is it just the language you’ve got?

”

“You did, my lad.” There was a foolish sort of triumph in his voice. “And I’ll talk you your sense.

I want a man to clean this pigsty of a Poisonville for me, to smoke out the rats, little and big.

It’s a man’s job. Are you a man?”

He had let them alone, but when they started telling him, Elihu Willsson, what he had to do and what he couldn’t do, he would show them who was who. He brought the speech to an end by pointing at the corpse and boasting:

“That’ll show them there’s still a sting in the old man.”

I wished I were sober. His clowning puzzled me. I couldn’t put my finger on the something behind it.

“I only talked to him with this,” he said, patting the automatic on the bed, “but I reckon they did.”

“It happened simple enough. I heard the door opening, and I switched on the light, and there he was, and I shot him, and there he is.”

“It was about one o’clock.”

“That I have.” The old man laughed savagely and began blustering again: “

Does the sight of a dead man turn your stomach? Or is it his spirit you’re afraid of?

”

I laughed at him. Now I had it.

The old boy was scared stiff. Fright was the something behind his clowning.

That was why he blustered, and why he wouldn’t let them take the body away. He wanted it there to look at, to keep panic away, visible proof of his ability to defend himself. I knew where I stood.

Somebody tripped me.

Fear gave me three brains and half a dozen eyes.

I was in a tough spot. Noonan had slipped me a pretty dose. These birds couldn’t help thinking I was playing his game.

Hands on my ankles dragged me back. The floor scraped pieces off my chin. The door slammed shut. Some comedian said:

“Uh-huh, people don’t like you.”

I sat up and shouted through the racket:

“He’s getting tough in his old age.” The thin lips curved in another smile. He didn’t seem to think much of the fat chief’s deadliness. “

Any time he rubs me out I deserve rubbing.

What’s he got against you?”

We crossed an alley, were beckoned through another gate by a big man in brown, passed through a house, out into the next street, and climbed into a black automobile that stood at the curb.

One of the blond boys drove. He knew what speed was.

I said I wanted to be dropped off somewhere in the neighborhood of the Great Western Hotel. The driver looked at Whisper, who nodded. Five minutes later I got out in front of my hotel.

“See you later,” the gambler whispered, and the car slid away.

The last I saw of it was its police department license plate vanishing around a corner.

“Now tell me why you killed him.”

“Cock Robin or President Lincoln?”

“You’re not going to admit offhand that you killed Donald Willsson?”

“You talked too much, son. You were too damned anxious to make your life an open book for me.

That’s a way you amateur criminals have. You’ve always got to overdo the frank and open business.

”

“

I told you I expected something like that. That’s why I sewed you up.

And you are sewed up. The check has been certified, so you can’t stop payment. The letter of authority may not be as good as a contract, but you’ll have to go into court to prove that it isn’t.

“

Your fat chief of police tried to assassinate me last night. I don’t like that.

I’m just mean enough to want to ruin him for it. Now I’m going to have my fun. I’ve got ten thousand dollars of your money to play with. I’m going to use it opening Poisonville up from Adam’s apple to ankles.

“Your fat chief of police tried to assassinate me last night. I don’t like that. I’m just mean enough to want to ruin him for it. Now I’m going to have my fun. I’ve got ten thousand dollars of your money to play with.

I’m going to use it opening Poisonville up from Adam’s apple to ankles.

I’ll see that you get my reports as regularly as possible. I hope you enjoy them.”

I’ve got ten thousand dollars of your money to play with. I’m going to use it opening Poisonville up from Adam’s apple to ankles. I’ll see that you get my reports as regularly as possible. I hope you enjoy them.”

And I went out of the house with his curses sizzling around my head.

I promised to drop in and returned to the dining room and my meal. When I had finished eating I went up to my room, fifth floor front. I unlocked the door and went in, snapping on the light.

A bullet kissed a hole in the doorframe close to my noodle.

More bullets made more holes in door, doorframe and wall, but by that time I had carried my noodle into a safe corner, one out of line with the window.

Across the street, I knew, was a four-story office building with a roof a little above the level of my window. The roof would be dark. My light was on. There was no percentage in trying to peep out under those conditions.

I looked around for something to chuck at the light globe, found a Gideon Bible, and chucked it.

The bulb popped apart, giving me darkness.

The hotel manager came in, a plump man with carefully controlled face, voice and manner. He didn’t get excited at all.

He took the this-is-unheard-of-but-not-really-serious-of-course attitude of a street fakir whose mechanical dingus flops during a demonstration.

We risked light, getting a new globe, and added up the bullet-holes. There were ten of them.

His hoarse whispering voice said:

“I hear you’ve declared war on Poisonville.”

“Don’t blame me. I’ve got a client who wants the place ventilated.”

“I hear you’ve declared war on Poisonville.”

“Don’t blame me. I’ve got a client who wants the place ventilated.”

“Wanted, not wants,” he corrected me as we sat down. “Why don’t you chuck it?”

But I wasn’t. Especially I wasn’t let alone by that fat Noonan. He’s had two tries at my scalp in two days. That’s plenty. Now it’s my turn to run him ragged, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Poisonville is ripe for the harvest. It’s a job I like, and I’m going to it.

”

“While you last,” the gambler said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I was reading in the paper this morning about a fellow choking to death eating a chocolate eclair in bed.”

“That may be good,” said Dinah Brand, her big body sprawled in an armchair, “but it wasn’t in this morning’s paper.”

“Willsson’s willing for you to keep the ten grand. Let it go at that.”

“I’ve got a mean disposition. Attempted assassinations make me mad.”

“That won’t get you anything but a box. I’m for you. You kept Noonan from framing me. That’s why I’m telling you, forget it and go back to Frisco.”

“Maybe. But you know the racket’s too good to last.

You’ve had the cream of the pickings. Now it’s getaway day.

”

It’s too tight. If I thought you could swing it, I’d be with you. You know how I stand with Noonan. But you’ll never make it. Chuck it.”

“No. I’m in it to the last nickel of Elihu’s ten thousand.”

“I told you he was too damned pigheaded to listen to reason,” Dinah Brand said, yawning. “Isn’t there anything to drink in the dump, Dan?”

“Got a match? … Thanks. … Going to the fights tonight? … I hear Ike Bush takes a dive in the sixth. … It ought to be straight: I got it from Whisper. … Yeah, they all are.”

People like inside stuff, and anything that had Thaler’s name to it was very inside in Personville.

The news spread nicely. Half the men I gave it to worked almost as hard as I did spreading it, just to show they knew what was what.

“Just something I heard. I didn’t think there was anything in it, except maybe a ducat back to Philly.”

“I oughta bust your jaw, you fat crook.”

“Now’s the time to do it,” I advised him. “If you win tonight you’re not likely to see me again. If you lose, you’ll see me, but your hands won’t be loose.”

When I got there at eight-thirty, most of the population seemed to be on hand, packed tight in close rows of folding chairs on the main floor, packed tighter on benches in two dinky balconies.

Smoke. Stink. Heat. Noise.

My seat was in the third row, ringside. Moving down to it, I discovered Dan Rolff in an aisle seat not far away, with Dinah Brand beside him.

My seat was in the third row, ringside. Moving down to it, I discovered Dan Rolff in an aisle seat not far away, with Dinah Brand beside him.

She had had her hair trimmed at last, and marcelled, and looked like a lot of money in a big gray fur coat.

“Get down on Cooper?” she asked after we had swapped hellos.

I leaned past Rolff and put my mouth close to where the gray fur collar hid the girl’s ear, whispering: “The dive is off. Better copper your bets while there’s time.”

Her big bloodshot eyes went wide and dark with anxiety, greed, curiosity, suspicion.

“You mean it?” she asked huskily.

Rolff took the money and went off on his errand. I took his seat. She put a hand on my forearm and said:

“Christ help you if you’ve made me drop that dough.”

I pretended the idea was ridiculous.

They were introduced, went to the center of the ring for the usual instructions, returned to their corners, shed bathrobes, stretched on the ropes, the gong rang, and the scrap was on.

Cooper was a clumsy bum. He had a pair of wide swings that might have hurt when they landed, but anybody with two feet could have kept away from them.

Bush had class—nimble legs, a smooth fast left hand, and a right that got away quick. It would have been murder to put Cooper in the ring with the slim boy if he had been trying. But he wasn’t.

Cooper waddled flat-footed around the ring, throwing his wide swings at everything from the lights to the corner posts. His system was simply to turn them loose and let them take their chances.

Bush moved in and out, putting a glove on the ruddy boy whenever he wanted to, but not putting anything in the glove.

The customers were booing before the first round was over. The second round was just as sour. I didn’t feel so good. Bush didn’t seem to have been much influenced by our little conversation.

Bush cuffed him once on each side of the head, cocked his right, carefully pushed Cooper’s face into position with a long left, and threw his right hand straight from under his jaw to Cooper’s.

Everybody in the house felt the punch.

Cooper hit the floor, bounced, and settled there. It took the referee half a minute to count ten seconds. It would have been just the same if he had taken half an hour. Kid Cooper was out.

Cooper hit the floor, bounced, and settled there.

It took the referee half a minute to count ten seconds. It would have been just the same if he had taken half an hour.

Kid Cooper was out.

She put the car in motion, turned her head back over her shoulder, and sang to him:

“To hell, my love, with you!”

We rode into town rapidly.

He dropped plenty. And then he gets sore with me because I had sense enough to switch over and get in on the win.” She stopped the car violently in front of a Chinese restaurant. “The hell with him, the little tin-horn runt!”

Her eyes were shiny because they were wet.

She jabbed a handkerchief into them as we got out of the car.

“He’s in love with you, and this isn’t the first time you’ve done it. He acted like he had learned there was no use matching muscle with you. But you can’t expect him to enjoy having another man see you slap his face.”

“I used to think I knew men,” she complained, “but, by God! I don’t. They’re lunatics, all of them.”

“So I poked him to give him back some of his self-respect. You know, treated him as I would a man instead of a down-and-outer who could be slapped around by girls.”

“Is it? I can give you the stuff, brother, loads of it, and don’t think I can’t.

I’m a girl who knows her Poisonville.

” She looked down at her gray-stockinged knees, waved one leg at me, and exclaimed indignantly: “Look at that. Another run. Did you ever see anything to beat it? Honest to God! I’m going barefoot.”

I’m a girl who knows her Poisonville.” She looked down at her gray-stockinged knees, waved one leg at me, and exclaimed indignantly: “Look at that. Another run. Did you ever see anything to beat it? Honest to God! I’m going barefoot.”

“Your legs are too big,” I told her. “They put too much strain on the material.”

“That’ll do out of you. What’s your idea of how to go about purifying our village?”

“The closest I’ve got to an idea is to dig up any and all the dirty work I can that might implicate the others, and run it out.

Maybe I’ll advertise⁠—‘Crime Wanted⁠—Male or Female.’

If they’re as crooked as I think they are I shouldn’t have a lot of trouble finding a job or two that I can hang on them.”

“So that’s the way you scientific detectives work.

My God! for a fat, middle-aged, hard-boiled, pig-headed guy, you’ve got the vaguest way of doing things I ever heard of.

”

“So that’s the way you scientific detectives work. My God! for a fat, middle-aged, hard-boiled, pig-headed guy, you’ve got the vaguest way of doing things I ever heard of.”

“Plans are all right sometimes,” I said. “And sometimes just stirring things up is all right⁠—if you’re tough enough to survive, and keep your eyes open so you’ll see what you want when it comes to the top.”

“That ought to be good for another drink,” she said.

“Two people got to Tim before he died, and he told them Max had done it. They’re both still in town, though one won’t live a lot longer. How’s that?”

She looked as if she were telling the truth, though with women, especially blue-eyed women, that doesn’t always mean anything.

“Let’s listen to the rest of it,” I said. “I like details and things.”

“Tim wouldn’t let her alone.

He was a big good-looking Irishman, but a sap and a cheap crook who only got by because his brother was chief of police.

Wherever Myrtle went, he’d pop up sooner or later. She didn’t like to say anything to Max about it, not wanting Max to do anything to put him in wrong with Tim’s brother, the chief.

Max didn’t mean anything to me then, except that I liked him, and I didn’t like any of the Noonans. I knew the dick—MacSwain. I used to know his wife.

He had been a pretty good guy, straight as ace-deuce-trey-four-five, till he got on the force. Then he went the way of the rest of them.

His wife stood as much of it as she could and then left him.

Four men said so. As I remember it, they said it openly and often, long before anybody asked them. There were other men in the bar who didn’t remember whether Max had been there or not, but those four remembered.

They’d remember anything Max wanted remembered.

”

“Not just yet, sister. We’ll have to see how it works out before we start scattering pennies around.”

She called me a damned nickel-nurser and reached for the gin.

“No more for me, thanks,” I told her, looking at my watch. “It’s getting along toward five a.m. and I’ve got a busy day ahead.”

I went back to my hotel and got into a tub of cold water. It braced me a lot, and I needed bracing.

At forty I could get along on gin as a substitute for sleep, but not comfortably.

When I had dressed I sat down and composed a document:

She looked at me with ugly eyes that were shaded into no particular dark color by the pads of flesh around them, then at the document, and finally brought a shapeless fat hand from under the covers to take it.

She pretended it took her nearly five minutes to read the forty-two words I had written.

She let the document fall down on the covers and asked:

He looked me straight in the eye and said evenly:

“There’s no sense in a man picking out the worst name he can find for everything.”

“I’ll give you something to do, MacSwain.” I took out Myrtle Jennison’s document and passed it to him. “Tell me about that.”

I put the muzzle of my gun in his left eye and said:

“You’re making a fine pair of clowns of us. Be still while I get up or I’ll make an opening in your head for brains to leak in.”

I got up, found and pocketed my document, and let him get up.

Noonan came back to his desk, puffing, smiling, saying cheerfully to me:

“That fellow’s a rat if there ever was one.”

MacSwain sat up and looked around, bleeding from nose, mouth and head.

and he says, ‘Max!’ He says it kind of loud and sharp, like he wanted to get it out before he died, because he died right then, almost before he’d got it out. That’s the way it was, chief, but the rock wasn’t worth no—”

“Damn the rock,” Noonan barked. “And stop bleeding on my rug.”

MacSwain hunted in his pocket for a dirty handkerchief, mopped his nose and mouth with it, and jabbered on:

“You know your way around. You know what these jobs are. There’s this one and that one that’s got to be listened to.

Just because a man’s chief of police doesn’t mean he’s chief.

Maybe you’re a lot of trouble to somebody that can be a lot of trouble to me. Don’t make any difference if I think you’re a right guy. I got to play with them that play with me. See what I mean?”

Just because a man’s chief of police doesn’t mean he’s chief. Maybe you’re a lot of trouble to somebody that can be a lot of trouble to me. Don’t make any difference if I think you’re a right guy.

I got to play with them that play with me.

See what I mean?”

The kid gulped a wide mouthful of air, whisked a blackjack from his hip, and stepped in again. His grin was gone.

Jerry laughed what little chin he had out of sight.

Thaler whispered harshly: “Lay off!”

The kid didn’t hear him. He was snarling at the girl.

She watched him with a face hard as a silver dollar.

She was standing with most of her weight on her left foot. I guessed blondy was going to stop a kick when he closed in.

Whisper stood in the center of the floor. His hands were empty and so was his face.

Except for his vicious little mouth he looked like something displaying suits in a clothing store window.

Dan Rolff stood behind him, with a gun-muzzle tilted to the little gambler’s left kidney. Rolff’s face was mostly blood. The blond kid—now dead on the floor between Rolff and me—had sapped him plenty.

Rolff repeated: “Put down your pistol.”

“I’m damned if I will. I’ve shed twenty pounds trying to nab this bird, and I can spare twenty more for the same purpose.”

“I’m not interested in what is between you two, and I have no intention of giving either of you—”

“If you upset him now you’re sure of making two friends—Noonan and me. You can’t trust Thaler any more, so there’s no use helping him.”

“Talk money, darling.”

“Dinah!” Rolff protested. He was caught. She was behind him and she was strong enough to handle him. It wasn’t likely that he would shoot her, and it wasn’t likely that anything else would keep her from doing whatever she decided to do.

I called Noonan, told him I had Thaler, and where.

“Mother of God!” he said. “Don’t kill him till I get there.”

MacSwain got down on his knees in the muddy alley and cried:

“Oh, Christ, no! He’d croak me with his hands.”

“Get up and stop yelling,” I growled. “Now will you give it to me straight?”

“I promise you nothing,” I said. “Why should I?

I’ve got you with your pants down.

Talk to me or Noonan. And make up your mind quick. I’m not going to stand here all night.”

I grinned after it.

Poisonville was beginning to boil out under the lid, and I felt so much like a native that even the memory of my very un-nice part in the boiling didn’t keep me from getting twelve solid end-to-end hours of sleep.

Mickey Linehan was a big slob with sagging shoulders and a shapeless body that seemed to be coming apart at all its joints. His ears stood out like red wings, and his round red face usually wore the meaningless smirk of a half-wit.

He looked like a comedian and was.

Dick Foley was a boy-sized Canadian with a sharp irritable face. He wore high heels to increase his height, perfumed his handkerchiefs and saved all the words he could.

His ears stood out like red wings, and his round red face usually wore the meaningless smirk of a half-wit. He looked like a comedian and was.

Dick Foley was a boy-sized Canadian with a sharp irritable face. He wore high heels to increase his height, perfumed his handkerchiefs and saved all the words he could.

They were both good operatives.

“What did the Old Man tell you about the job?” I asked when we had settled into seats. The Old Man was the manager of the Continental’s San Francisco branch.

He was also known as Pontius Pilate, because he smiled pleasantly when he sent us out to be crucified on suicidal jobs.

He was a gentle, polite, elderly person with no more warmth in him than a hangman’s rope. The Agency wits said he could spit icicles in July.

I asked when we had settled into seats. The Old Man was the manager of the Continental’s San Francisco branch. He was also known as Pontius Pilate, because he smiled pleasantly when he sent us out to be crucified on suicidal jobs.

He was a gentle, polite, elderly person with no more warmth in him than a hangman’s rope.

The Agency wits said he could spit icicles in July.

He was also known as Pontius Pilate, because he smiled pleasantly when he sent us out to be crucified on suicidal jobs. He was a gentle, polite, elderly person with no more warmth in him than a hangman’s rope.

The Agency wits said he could spit icicles in July.

“He didn’t seem to know much what it was all about,” Mickey said, “except that you had wired for help. He said he hadn’t got any reports from you for a couple of days.”

Dick shook his head. Mickey said:

“Only that I’ve heard parties call it Poisonville like they meant it.”

I told them what I knew and what I had done. The telephone bell interrupted my tale in the last quarter.

“If it works out the way I want it to, I won’t have to report all the distressing details,” I said. “

It’s right enough for the Agency to have rules and regulations, but when you’re out on a job you’ve got to do it the best way you can.

And anybody that brings any ethics to Poisonville is going to get them all rusty. A report is no place for the dirty details, anyway, and I don’t want you birds to send any writing back to San Francisco without letting me see it first.”

“It’s right enough for the Agency to have rules and regulations, but when you’re out on a job you’ve got to do it the best way you can.

And anybody that brings any ethics to Poisonville is going to get them all rusty.

A report is no place for the dirty details, anyway, and I don’t want you birds to send any writing back to San Francisco without letting me see it first.”

And anybody that brings any ethics to Poisonville is going to get them all rusty. A report is no place for the dirty details, anyway, and I don’t want you birds to send any writing back to San Francisco without letting me see it first.”

“What kind of crimes have you got for us to pull?” Mickey asked.

“I want you to take Pete the Finn. Dick will take Lew Yard. You’ll have to play it the way I’ve been playing—do what you can when you can. I’ve an idea that the pair of them will try to make Noonan let Whisper alone.

I’ve got to have results to hide the details under.

So evidence won’t do. What we’ve got to have is dynamite.

”

“Now hop to it,” I said.

“And don’t kid yourselves that there’s any law in Poisonville except what you make for yourself.”

Mickey said I’d be surprised how many laws he could get along without. Dick said: “So long,” and they departed.

“Now hop to it,” I said. “And don’t kid yourselves that there’s any law in Poisonville except what you make for yourself.”

Mickey said I’d be surprised how many laws he could get along without.

Dick said: “So long,” and they departed.

He grabbed his hat and went after them, calling over his thick shoulder to me:

“Come on, man, this is the kill.”

I followed him down to the department garage, where the engines of half a dozen cars were roaring. The chief sat beside his driver. I sat in back with four detectives.

… missed the garage door by half an inch, chased a couple of pedestrians diagonally across the sidewalk, bounced off the curb into the roadway, missed a truck as narrowly as we had missed the door, and dashed out King Street with our siren wide open.

Panicky automobiles darted right and left, regardless of traffic rules, to let us through. It was a lot of fun.

I looked back, saw another police car following us, a third turning into Broadway. Noonan chewed a cold cigar and told the driver:

Out of the center of the city there wasn’t much traffic to bother us, but the paving was rougher.

It was a nice half-hour’s ride, with everybody getting a chance to sit in everybody else’s lap.

The last ten minutes of it was over an uneven road that had hills enough to keep us from forgetting what Pat had said about the brakes.

The machine-gun by the tree fired, haltingly, experimentally, eight or ten shots. Noonan grinned and let a smoke ring float out of his mouth.

The machine-gun settled down to business, grinding out metal like the busy little death factory it was.

Noonan blew another smoke ring and said:

I agreed that it ought to. We leaned against the clay bank and smoked while, farther away, another machine-gun got going, and then a third. Irregularly, rifles, pistols, shotguns joined in. Noonan nodded approvingly and said:

“Five minutes of that will let him know there’s a hell.”

When the five minutes were up I suggested a look at the remains. I gave him a boost up the bank and scrambled up after him.

The first floor was ankle-deep with booze that was still gurgling from bullet holes in the stacked-up cases and barrels that filled most of the house.

Dizzy with the fumes of spilled hooch, we waded around until we had found four dead bodies and no live ones.

The four were swarthy foreign-looking men in laborers’ clothes. Two of them were practically shot to pieces.

“Leave them here and get out.”

His voice was cheerful, but in a flashlight’s glow his eyes showed white-ringed with fear.

We went out gladly, though I did hesitate long enough to pocket an unbroken bottle labeled “Dewar.”

“My God, you keep a boozy smelling room,” she said.

“It’s my shoes. Noonan took me wading in rum.”

She crossed to the window, opened it, sat on the sill, and asked:

I pushed her feet off the bed and said:

“I was raised in a waterfront saloon. Keep your saliva off my floor or I’ll toss you out on your neck.”

“Let’s have another drink first. Listen, what’ll you give me for the inside story of how the boys didn’t lose anything building the City Hall—the story that was in the papers I sold Donald Willsson?”

“That’s goofy of you. He’s got reasons for not liking you and me.

Take mama’s advice and nail him quick, if you like living and like having mama live too.

”

“God damn you!” Her breath was hot in my face. Her face was white as her teeth. Rouge stood out sharply like red labels pasted on her mouth and cheeks. “If you’ve framed him and made me frame him, you’ve got to kill him—now.”

I don’t like being manhandled, even by young women who look like something out of mythology when they’re steamed up.

I took her hands off my shoulders, and said:

“Don’t make so much fuss over it.

I’ve framed my millions and nothing’s happened to me.

Get your hat and coat and we’ll feed. You’ll feel better then.”

“Who were the uninvited guests?”

“Some plugs that don’t know enough to leave me alone.”

“Do I know them?” she asked, too casually, as she turned the car into a narrower and rougher road.

Reno, holding to the door with his elbows while he pushed another clip into his automatic, said:

“Nice work, kid. You handle the bus like you meant it.”

“Far away first. Just follow the road. We’ll have to figure it out. Looks like they got the burg closed up on us. Keep your dog on it.”

“God knows,” he mumbled. “

Everybody’s killing everybody. Where’s it going to end?

”

I came back to my chair. Noonan watched the top of his desk.

His face was gray, flabby, damp, like fresh putty.

“Whisper’s staying at Willsson’s,” I told him.

“That’s what started it,” I reminded him. “If you’re willing to call it off, it ought to be possible to stop it.”

He raised his face and looked at me with eyes that were like a dog’s looking at a bone.

“The others ought to be as sick of it as you are,” I went on. “Tell them how you feel about it. Have a get-together and make peace.”

Thaler’s thin mouth curved into a vicious smile.

“Your bastard of a brother needed killing, but I didn’t kill him,” he whispered coldly.

Red became purple in the chief’s face.

He wouldn’t look at me. He sat down and looked at nobody.

He was busy trying to look as if he didn’t expect to be carved apart before he got away from these wolves to whom I had handed him.

I went on with the work, turning to Elihu Willsson:

Reno seems to have had the right dope, because I notice that right now he’s holding down a chair that would have been Lew Yard’s if Lew hadn’t been put on ice.”

Everybody was sitting very still, as if to call attention to how still they were sitting.

Nobody could count on having any friends among those present. It was no time for careless motions on anybody’s part.

Everybody was sitting very still, as if to call attention to how still they were sitting.

Nobody could count on having any friends among those present.

It was no time for careless motions on anybody’s part.

And when Thaler had stopped and turned to face him: “I’m telling you this. You, Whisper, and all of you. That damn gun-work is out. All of you understand it. You’ve got no brains to know what is best for yourselves. So I’ll tell you.

This busting the town open is no good for business. I won’t have it any more.

You be nice boys or I’ll make you.

“I got one army of young fellows that know what to do on any end of a gun. I got to have them in my racket. If I got to use them on you I’ll use them on you.

You want to play with gunpowder and dynamite? I’ll show you what playing is.

You like to fight? I’ll give you fighting. Mind what I tell you. That’s all.”

His going made the others impatient.

None wanted to remain until anybody else had time to accumulate a few guns in the neighborhood.

In a very few minutes Elihu Willsson and I had the library to ourselves.

“Old pirate,” he repeated. “

Son, if I hadn’t been a pirate I’d still be working for the Anaconda for wages, and there’d be no Personville Mining Corporation.

You’re a damned little woolly lamb yourself, I suppose. I was had, son, where the hair was short. There were things I didn’t like—worse things that I didn’t know about until tonight—but I was caught and had to bide my time.

“

Attending a peace conference out of which at least a dozen killings ought to grow.

”

“

This damned burg’s getting me. If I don’t get away soon I’ll be going blood-simple like the natives.

There’s been what? A dozen and a half murders since I’ve been here. Donald Willsson; Ike Bush; the four wops and the dick at Cedar Hill; Jerry; Lew Yard; Dutch Jake, Blackie Whalen and Put Collings at the Silver Arrow;

“I’ve arranged a killing or two in my time, when they were necessary. But this is the first time I’ve ever got the fever.

It’s this damned burg. You can’t go straight here.

I got myself tangled at the beginning. When old Elihu ran out on me there was nothing I could do but try to set the boys against each other. I had to swing the job the best way I could.

“

Play with murder enough and it gets you one of two ways. It makes you sick, or you get to like it.

It got Noonan the first way. He was green around the gills after Yard was knocked off, all the stomach gone out of him, willing to do anything to make peace.

Noonan was out of the count, and Reno and Whisper, against each other, had Pete against them.

So everybody sat around and behaved and watched everybody else while I juggled death and destruction.

“Whisper was the first to leave, and he seems to have had time to collect some rods in front of Noonan’s house by the time the chief reached home. The chief was shot down.

I don’t know how I’m going to come out with the Agency. The Old Man will boil me in oil if he ever finds out what I’ve been doing. It’s this damned town.

Poisonville is right. It’s poisoned me.

“Look. I sat at Willsson’s table tonight and played them like you’d play trout, and got just as much fun out of it.

I looked at Noonan and knew he hadn’t a chance in a thousand of living another day because of what I had done to him, and I laughed, and felt warm and happy inside. That’s not me.

I’ve got hard skin all over what’s left of my soul, and after twenty years of messing around with crime I can look at any sort of a murder without seeing anything in it but my bread and butter, the day’s work.

But this getting a rear out of planning deaths is not natural to me. It’s what this place has done to me.”

I ran a finger down its half-foot of round steel blade to the needle point. “Not a bad thing to pin a man to his clothes with. That’s the way I’m betting, on the level.

I can’t even see a mechanical cigar lighter without thinking of filling one with nitroglycerine for somebody you don’t like.

There’s a piece of copper wire lying in the gutter in front of your house—thin, soft, and just long enough to go around a neck with two ends to hold on.

“Well, I don’t like it. Put that thing back in the kitchen and sit down and be sensible.”

I obeyed two-thirds of the order.

“The trouble with you is,” she scolded me, “your nerves are shot. You’ve been through too much excitement in the last few days. Keep it up and you’re going to have the heebie-jeebies for fair, a nervous breakdown.”

“

Can’t, sister. Somebody’s got to stay here to count the dead.

Besides, the whole program is based on the present combination of people and events. Our going out of town would change that, and the chances are the whole thing would have to be gone over again.”

“

I’d drink nitroglycerine tonight.

”

I put the doped gin down my throat. Presently I felt more comfortable.

Time went by as we drank and talked in a world that was rosy, cheerful, and full of fellowship and peace on earth.

Dinah stuck to gin. I tried that for a while too, and then had another gin and laudanum.

Dinah stuck to gin. I tried that for a while too, and then had another gin and laudanum.

For a while after that I played a game, trying to hold my eyes open as if I were awake, even though I couldn’t see anything out of them.

When the trick wouldn’t fool her any more I gave it up.

While I sat there a train came in. She got off it and came into the lobby, over to me, and began kissing me. I was very uncomfortable because everybody stood around looking at us and laughing.

I dreamed I was in a strange city hunting for a man I hated. I had an open knife in my pocket and meant to kill him with it when I found him.

It was Sunday morning. Church bells were ringing, crowds of people were in the streets, going to and from church. I walked almost as far as in the first dream, but always in this same strange city.

He was a small brown man who wore an immense sombrero. He was standing on the steps of a tall building on the far side of a wide plaza, laughing at me. Between us, the plaza was crowded with people, packed shoulder to shoulder.

Keeping one hand on the open knife in my pocket, I ran toward the little brown man, running on the heads and shoulders of the people in the plaza.

The heads and shoulders were of unequal heights and not evenly spaced. I slipped and floundered over them.

The little brown man stood on the steps and laughed until I had almost reached him. Then he ran into the tall building.

I chased him up miles of spiral stairway, always just an inch more than a hand’s reach behind him.

We came to the roof. He ran straight across to the edge and jumped just as one of my hands touched him.

My fingers went all the way around it. Squeezing his head in one hand, I tried to bring the knife out of my pocket with the other—and realized that I had gone off the edge of the roof with him.

We dropped giddily down toward the millions of upturned faces in the plaza, miles down.

I opened my eyes in the dull light of morning sun filtered through drawn blinds.

“You don’t think she had anything to do with Noonan’s killing?”

I wanted a cigarette, but cigarettes were too well known as first aids to the nervous for me to take a chance on one just then.

McGraw was trying to look through my eyes. I let him look, having all sorts of confidence in my belief that, like a lot of people, I looked most honest when I was lying. Presently he gave up the eye-study and asked:

McGraw was trying to look through my eyes.

I let him look, having all sorts of confidence in my belief that, like a lot of people, I looked most honest when I was lying.

Presently he gave up the eye-study and asked:

McGraw reached for the phone and told somebody to send Shepp and Vanaman in.

Shepp was a stoop-shouldered tall man whose wide mouth had a grimly honest look that probably came from bad teeth.

The other detective was short, stocky, with purplish veins in his nose and hardly any neck.

There were a lot of men in the corridor when I left McGraw.

Some of these men were quite young⁠—just kids⁠—quite a few were foreigners, and most of them were every bit as tough looking as any men should be.

Near the street door I met Donner, one of the coppers who had been on the Cedar Hill expedition.

“

I’ll knock him off for you for half a grand.

”

“It don’t need nothing,” he said, looking at me sharply, not moving toward either chair. “

You either want him knocked off or you don’t.

”

Charles Proctor Dawn was a little fat man of fifty-something. He had prying triangular eyes of a very light color, a short fleshy nose, and a fleshier mouth whose greediness was only partly hidden between a ragged gray mustache and a ragged gray Vandyke beard.

His clothes were dark and unclean looking without actually being dirty.

He didn’t get up from his desk, and throughout my visit he kept his right hand on the edge of a desk drawer that was some six inches open.

… values, my responsibilities as well as my prerogatives as a—and why should I stoop to conceal the fact that there are those who feel justified in preferring to substitute the definite article for the indefinite?—recognized and accepted leader of the bar in this thriving state.”

He knew a lot of sentences like those, and he didn’t mind using them on me.

Finally he got along to:

It was barely visible back in a dim corner of the first floor. It was a shoe.

It was lying in a position that empty shoes don’t lie in.

I took my foot off the step and went toward the shoe. Now I could see an ankle and the cuff of a black pants-leg above the shoe-top.

Tail her. If she cuts up on you throw her in the can.

Be careful⁠—she’s crazy as a bedbug.

”

“

He’s the guy that the joke was wrote about: ‘Is he a criminal lawyer?’ ‘Yes, very.’

This fellow Albury that you nailed, some of his family hired this bird Dawn to defend him. Albury wouldn’t have anything to do with him when Dawn came to see him.

“I just ran into Tommy Robins,” he said. “The Consolidated Press sent him here to cover the doings. He tells me some of the other press associations and a big-city paper or two are sending in special correspondents, beginning to play our troubles up.”

I was making one of my favorite complaints⁠—that newspapers were good for nothing except to hash things up so nobody could unhash them⁠—when I heard a boy chanting my name.

For a dime he told me I was wanted on the phone.

“This is Peak,” said a voice that didn’t sound anything at all like his. “Who’s talking?”

I said disgustedly, “This is Lillian Gish,” hung up the receiver, and removed myself from the neighborhood.

I gave up the idea of finding Reno and decided to go calling on my client, old Elihu, and try to blackjack him into good behavior with the love letters he had written Dinah Brand, and which I had stolen from Dawn’s remains.

I walked, keeping to the darker side of the darkest streets.

It was a fairly long walk for a man who sneers at exercise.

By the time I reached Willsson’s block I was in bad enough humor to be in good shape for the sort of interviews he and I usually had. But I wasn’t to see him for a little while yet.

I was two pavements from my destination when somebody S‑s‑s‑s‑s’d at me.

I probably didn’t jump twenty feet.

“ ’S all right,” a voice whispered.

“I’ll make out. But that’s what I wanted to see you about. Here’s how she stacks up. Pete’s throwed in with McGraw. That lines coppers and beer mob up against me and Whisper.

But hell! Me and Whisper are busier trying to put the chive in each other than bucking the combine.

That’s a sour racket. While we’re tangling, them bums will eat us up.”

Nobody won’t have to trust nobody else. Whisper don’t ever show in any of his jobs anyways. He just sends the boys. I’ll do the same this time. We’ll just put the mobs together to swing the caper.

We run them together, rub out that damned Finn, and then we’ll have plenty of time to go gunning among ourselves.

“Put it to him cold. I don’t want him to get any ideas that I’m dodging a rumpus with him or any other guy.

“

If they pop the bag, we’ll all of us hit the moon.

Get it open. We got to work fast when we get there.”

A sheet of flame was followed by deafening noise. Hunks of things pelted us while we tried to keep from being knocked over by the concussion.

Then there was no door to keep anybody out of the red brick building.

A man ran forward, swung his arm, let a pipeful of hell go through the doorway. The shutters came off the downstairs windows, fire and glass flying behind them.

A sheet of flame was followed by deafening noise. Hunks of things pelted us while we tried to keep from being knocked over by the concussion. Then there was no door to keep anybody out of the red brick building.

A man ran forward, swung his arm, let a pipeful of hell go through the doorway.

The shutters came off the downstairs windows, fire and glass flying behind them.

A man ran forward, swung his arm, let a pipeful of hell go through the doorway. The shutters came off the downstairs windows, fire and glass flying behind them.

The car that had followed us was stationary up the street, trading shots with the neighborhood.

The car that had gone ahead of us had turned into a side street. Pistol shots from behind the red brick building, between the explosions of our cargo, told us that our advance car was covering the back door.

We picked ourselves up off the sidewalk, dodged flying things, and saw that the frame house was all out of whack, with flames climbing its torn edges.

“Any left?” Reno asked as we looked around, enjoying the novelty of not being shot at.

“Here’s the last one,” Fat said, holding out a bomb.

The other machine slowed up for us to climb aboard. It was already full.

We packed it in layers, with the overflow hanging on the running boards.

We bumped over dead Hank O’Marra’s legs and headed for home. We covered one block of the distance with safety if not comfort. After that we had neither.

Another car came around the limousine and charged us. Out of it, gunfire.

We did our best, but we were too damned amalgamated for good fighting.

You can’t shoot straight holding a man in your lap, another hanging on your shoulder, while a third does his shooting from an inch behind your ear.

We did our best, but we were too damned amalgamated for good fighting.

You can’t shoot straight holding a man in your lap, another hanging on your shoulder, while a third does his shooting from an inch behind your ear.

Our other car—the one that had been around at the building’s rear—came up and gave us a hand. But by then two more had joined the opposition.

A garbage can helped me over the gate into a brick-paved yard. The side fence of that yard let me into another, and from that I got into another, where a fox terrier raised hell at me.

I kicked the pooch out of the way, made the opposite fence, untangled myself from a clothes line, crossed two more yards, got yelled at from a window, had a bottle thrown at me, and dropped into a cobblestoned back street.

The shooting was behind me, but not far enough. I did all I could to remedy that. I must have walked as many streets as I did in my dreams the night Dinah was killed.

I kicked the pooch out of the way, made the opposite fence, untangled myself from a clothes line, crossed two more yards, got yelled at from a window, had a bottle thrown at me, and dropped into a cobblestoned back street.

The shooting was behind me, but not far enough. I did all I could to remedy that.

I must have walked as many streets as I did in my dreams the night Dinah was killed.

“

So after all your brave talking you had to come back to the old pirate to have your neck saved, did you?

”

I said I didn’t anything of the sort.

I said if he was going to talk like a sap he ought to lower his voice so the people in Los Angeles wouldn’t learn what a sap he was.

The old boy let his voice out another notch, bellowing:

I put fingers in my ears.

They didn’t shut out the noise, but they insulted him into cutting the bellowing short.

I took the fingers out and said:

“

You’re the damndest client I ever had.

What do you do?

“Listen who’s naming it. All right, call it that.” I tapped the edge of the bed with a forefinger. “I’m not licked, old top. I’ve won.

You came crying to me that some naughty men had taken your little city away from you.

Pete the Finn, Lew Yard, Whisper Thaler, and Noonan. Where are they now?

“

Then you’ll have your city back, all nice and clean and ready to go to the dogs again.

If you don’t do it, I’m going to turn these love letters of yours over to the newspaper buzzards, and I don’t mean your Herald crew—the press associations. I got the letters from Dawn.

You’ll have a lot of fun proving that you didn’t hire him to recover them, and that he didn’t kill the girl doing it. But the fun you’ll have is nothing to the fun people will have reading these letters. They’re hot.

I haven’t laughed so much over anything since the hogs ate my kid brother.

”

“

Publish them and be damned!

”

“No.

I lost my guts out fighting your fights while you were hiding in bed and thinking up new ways of disowning me. Find another wet nurse.

”

Up the street a black coupé stood under some trees. I couldn’t see if anyone was in it. I played safe by walking in the opposite direction. The coupé moved after me.

There is nothing in running down streets with automobiles in pursuit.

I stopped, facing this one. It came on. I took my hand away from my side when I saw Mickey Linehan’s red face through the windshield.

“

Don’t get so cocky over one lousy murder that maybe didn’t happen.

But what the hell? You know you didn’t lift her dough and pretties.”

Presently I spotted a big square rusty-red building set in the center of a weedy lot.

Disuse stuck out all over lot and building.

It had the look of a likely candidate.