Corkscrew and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett Read Free Book Online

with shaky fingers that sprinkled the floor with tobacco crumbs. Beside him, paying no attention to anything, not even looking up at our arrival, Mark Nisbet sat.
    â€œBy God, I’m glad to see you!” Bardell was telling me, his fat face not quite so red as it had been the day before. “This thing of having men killed at my front door has got to stop, and you’re the man to stop it!”
    I noticed that the Circle H. A. R. men had not followed me into the center of the room, but had stopped in a loose semi-circle just inside the street door.
    I lifted a flap of the blanket and looked at the dead man. A small hole was in his forehead, over his right eye.
    â€œHas a doctor seen him?” I asked.
    â€œYes,” Bardell said. “Doc Haley saw him, but couldn’t do anything. He must have been dead before he fell.”
    â€œCan you send for Haley?”
    â€œI reckon I can.” Bardell called to Gyp Rainey, “Run across the street and tell Doc Haley that the deputy sheriff wants to talk to him.”
    Gyp went gingerly through the cowboys grouped at the door and vanished.
    I didn’t like this public stuff. I’d rather do my questioning on the side. But to try that here would probably call for a showdown with Peery and his men, and I wasn’t quite ready for that.
    â€œWhat do you know about the killing, Bardell?” I began.
    â€œNothing,” he said emphatically, and then went on to tell me what he knew. “Nisbet and I were in the back room, counting the day’s receipts. Chick was straightening the bar up. Nobody else was in here. It was about half-past one this morning, maybe.
    â€œWe heard the shot—right out front, and all run out there, of course. Chick was closest, so he got there first. Slim was laying in the street—dead.”
    â€œAnd what happened after that?”
    â€œNothing. We brought him in here. Adderly and Doc Haley—who lives right across the street—and the Jew next door had heard the shot, too, and they came out and—and that’s all there was to it.”
    I turned to Gyp.
    He spit in a cuspidor and hunched his shoulders.
    â€œBardell’s give it all to you.”
    â€œDidn’t see anything before or after except what Bardell has said?”
    â€œNothin’.”
    â€œDon’t know who shot him?”
    â€œNope.”
    I saw Adderly’s white mustache near the front of the room, and I put him on the stand next. He couldn’t contribute anything. He had heard the shot, had jumped out of bed, put on pants and shoes, and had arrived in time to see Chick kneeling beside the dead man. He hadn’t seen anything Bardell hadn’t mentioned.
    Dr. Haley had not arrived by the time I was through with Adderly, and I wasn’t ready to open on Nisbet yet. Nobody else there seemed to know anything.
    â€œBe back in a minute,” I said, and went through the cowboys at the door to the street.
    The Jew was giving his joint a much-needed cleaning.
    â€œGood work,” I praised him; “it needed it.”
    He climbed down from the counter on which he had been standing to reach the ceiling. The walls and floor were already comparatively clean.
    â€œI not think it was so dirty,” he grinned, showing his empty gums, “but when the sheriff come in to eat and make faces at my place, what am I going to do but clean him up?”
    â€œKnow anything about the killing last night?”
    â€œSure, I know. I am in my bed, and I hear that shot. I jump out of my bed, grab that shotgun, and run to the door. There is that Slim Vogel in the street, and that Chick Orr on his knees alongside him. I stick my head out. There is Mr. Bardell and that Nisbet standing in their door.
    â€œMr. Bardell say, ‘How is he, Chick?’
    â€œThat Chick Orr, he say, ‘He’s dead enough.’
    â€œThat Nisbet, he does not say anything, but he turn around and go back into the place. And