THE GLASS KEY by Dashiell Hammett

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

He moved his head slowly from side to side.

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

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

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

He took her hand and bowed over it.

4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What don’t?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

“You could see that as you rode past?”

Sloss nodded vigorously again.

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

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