THE THIN MAN by Dashiell Hammett

“Darling,” I said, “my guess is that Wynant killed her, and the police’ll catch him without my help. Anyway, it’s nothing in my life.”

“I didn’t mean just that, but–”

“But besides I haven’t the time: I’m too busy trying to see that you don’t lose any of the money I married you for.” I kissed her. “Don’t you think maybe a drink would help you to sleep?”

“No, thanks.”

“Maybe it would if I took one.” When I brought my Scotch and soda back to bed, she was frowning into space. I said: “She’s cute, but she’s cuckoo. She wouldn’t be his daughter if she wasn’t. You can’t tell how much of what she says is what she thinks and you can’t tell how much of what she thinks ever really happened. I like her, but I think you’re letting–”

“I’m not sure I like her,” Nora said thoughtfully, “she’s probably a little bastard, but if a quarter of what she told us is true, she’s in a tough spot.”

“There’s nothing I can do to help her.”

“She thinks you can.”

“And so do you, which shows that no matter what you think, you can always get somebody else to go along with you.”

Nora sighed. “I wish you were sober enough to talk to.” She leaned over to take a sip of my drink. “I’ll give you your Christmas present now if you’ll give me mine.”

I shook my head. “At breakfast.”

“But it’s Christmas now.”

“Breakfast.”

“Whatever you’re giving me,” she said, “I hope I don’t like it.”

“You’ll have to keep them anyway, because the man at the Aquarium said he positively wouldn’t take them back. He said they’d already bitten the tails off the–”

“It wouldn’t hurt you any to find out if you can help her, would it? She’s got so much confidence in you, Nicky.”

“Everybody trusts Greeks.”

“Please.”

“You just want to poke your nose into things that–”

“I meant to ask you: did his wife know the Wolf girl was his mistress?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t like her.”

“What’s the wife like?”

“I don’t know–a woman.”

“Good-looking?”

“Used to be very.”

“She old?”

“Forty, forty-two. Cut it out, Nora. You don’t want any part of it. Let the Charleses stick to the Charleses’ troubles and the Wynants stick to the Wynants’.”

She pouted. “Maybe that drink would help me.”

I got out of bed and mixed her a drink. As I brought it into the bedroom, the telephone began to ring. I looked at my watch on the table. It was nearly five o’clock.

Nora was talking into the telephone: “FIello

Yes, speaking.” She looked sidewise at me. I shook my head no. “Yes Why, certainly. . . . Yes, certainly.” She put the telephone down and grinned at me.

“You’re wonderful,” I said. “Now what?”

“Dorothy’s coming up. I think she’s tight.”

“That’s great.” I picked up my bathrobe. “I was afraid I was going to have to go to sleep.”

She was bending over looking for her slippers. “Don’t be such an old fuff. You can sleep all day.” She found her slippers and stood up in them. “Is she really as afraid of her mother as she says?”

“If she’s got any sense. Mimi’s poison.”

Nora screwed up her dark eyes at me and asked slowly: “What are you holding out on me?”

“Oh, dear,” I said, “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to tell you. Dorothy is really my daughter. I didn’t know what I was doing, Nora. It was spring in Venice and I was so young and there was a moon over the–”

“Be funny. Don’t you want something to eat?”

“If you do. What do you want?”

“Raw chopped beef sandwich with a lot of onion and some coffee.”

Dorothy arrived while I was telephoning an all-night delicatessen. When I went into the living-room, she stood up with some difficulty and said: “I’m awfully sorry, Nick, to keep bothering you and Nora like this, but I can’t go home this way tonight. I can’t. I’m afraid to. I don’t know what’d happen to me, what I’d do. Please don’t make me.” She was very drunk. Asta sniffed at her ankles.

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