RED HARVEST by Dashiell Hammett

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.

I grinned at Thaler and said, “Well, this is nice,” before I saw that Rolff had another gun, centered on my chubby middle. That wasn’t so nice. But my gun was reasonably level in my hand. I didn’t have much worse than an even break.

Rolff said:

“Put down your pistol.”

I looked at Dinah, looked puzzled, I suppose. She shrugged and told me:

“It seems to be Dan’s party.”

“Yeah? Somebody ought to tell him I don’t like to play this way.”

Rolff repeated: “Put down your pistol.”

I said disagreeably:

“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.”

Rolff said:

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

Dinah Brand had wandered across the room. When she was behind Rolff, I interrupted his speech by telling her:

“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.”

She laughed and said:

“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.

“A hundred dollars,” I bid.

“My God!” she exclaimed, “I’ve actually got a cash offer out of you. But not enough.”

“Two hundred.”

“You’re getting reckless. But I still can’t hear you.”

“Try,” I said. “It’s worth that to me not to have to shoot Rolff’s gun out of his hand, but no more than that.”

“You got a good start. Don’t weaken. One more bid, anyway.”

“Two hundred dollars and ten cents and that’s all.”

“You big bum,” she said, “I won’t do it.”

“Suit yourself.” I made a face at Thaler and cautioned him: “When what happens happens be damned sure you keep still.”

Dinah cried:

“Wait! Are you really going to start something?”

“I’m going to take Thaler out with me, regardless.”

“Two hundred and a dime?”

“Yeah.”

“Dinah,” Rolff called without turning his face from me, “you Won’t–”

But she laughed, came close to his back, and wound her strong arms around him, pulling his arms down, pinning them to his sides.

I shoved Thaler out of the way with my right arm, and kept my gun on him while I yanked Rolff’s weapons out of his hands. Dinah turned the lunger loose.

He took two steps toward the dining room door, said wearily, “There is no–” and collapsed on the floor.

Dinah ran to him. I pushed Thaler through the hall door, past the still sleeping Jerry, and to the alcove beneath the front stairs, where I had seen a phone.

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

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

XIV. Max

The news of Whisper’s capture spread quickly. When Noonan, the coppers he had brought along, and I took the gambler and the now conscious Jerry into the City Hall there were at least a hundred people standing around watching us.

All of them didn’t hook pleased. Noonan’s coppers–a shabby lot at best–moved around with whitish strained faces. But Noonan was the most triumphant guy west of the Mississippi. Even the bad luck he had trying to third-degree Whisper couldn’t spoil his happiness.

Whisper stood up under all they could give him. He would talk to his lawyer, he said, and to nobody else, and he stuck to it. And, as much as Noonan hated the gambler, here was a prisoner he didn’t give the works, didn’t turn over to the wrecking crew. Whisper had killed the chief’s brother, and the chief hated his guts, but Whisper was still too much somebody in Poisonville to be roughed around.

Noonan finally got tired of playing with his prisoner, and sent him up–the prison was on the City Hall’s top floor–to be stowed away. I lit another of the chief’s cigars and read the detailed statement he had got from the woman in the hospital. There was nothing in it that I hadn’t learned from Dinah and MacSwain.

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