Fly Paper and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett Read Free Book Online Page B

Lost?” It was Harry Pebble, a police detective.
    I stopped holding my breath and said:
    â€œHello, Harry. Looking for Babe?”
    â€œYes. We’ve been going over the rattlers.”
    â€œHe’s here. I just tailed him in from the street.”
    Pebble swore and snapped the light off.
    â€œWatch, Harry,” I advised. “Don’t play with him. He’s packing plenty of gun and he’s cut down one boy tonight.”
    â€œI’ll play with him,” Pebble promised, and told one of the men with him to go over and warn those on the other side of the yard that McCloor was in, and then to ring for reinforcements.
    â€œWe’ll just sit on the edge and hold him in till they come,” he said.
    That seemed a sensible way to play it. We spread out and waited. Once Pebble and I turned back a lanky bum who tried to slip into the yard between us, and one of the men below us picked up a shivering kid who was trying to slip out. Otherwise nothing happened until Lieutenant Duff arrived with a couple of carloads of coppers.
    Most of our force went into a cordon around the yard. The rest of us went through the yard in small groups, working it over car by car. We picked up a few hoboes that Pebble and his men had missed earlier, but we didn’t find McCloor.
    We didn’t find any trace of him until somebody stumbled over a railroad bull huddled in the shadow of a gondola. It took a couple of minutes to bring him to, and he couldn’t talk then. His jaw was broken. But when we asked if McCloor had slugged him, he nodded, and when we asked in which direction McCloor had been headed, he moved a feeble hand to the east.
    We went over and searched the Santa Fe yards.
    We didn’t find McCloor.
    VIII
    I Rode up to the Hall of Justice with Duff. MacMan was in the captain of detectives’ office with three or four police sleuths.
    â€œWales die?” I asked.
    â€œYep.”
    â€œSay anything before he went?”
    â€œHe was gone before you were through the window.”
    â€œYou held on to the girl?”
    â€œShe’s here.”
    â€œShe say anything?”
    â€œWe were waiting for you before we tapped her,” detective-sergeant O’Gar said, “not knowing the angle on her.”
    â€œLet’s have her in. I haven’t had any dinner yet. How about the autopsy on Sue Hambleton?”
    â€œChronic arsenic poisoning.”
    â€œChronic? That means it was fed to her little by little, and not in a lump?”
    â€œUh-huh. From what he found in her kidney, intestines, liver, stomach and blood, Jordan figures there was less than a grain of it in her. That wouldn’t be enough to knock her off. But he says he found arsenic in the tips of her hair, and she’d have to be given some at least a month ago for it to have worked out that far.”
    â€œAny chance that it wasn’t arsenic that killed her?”
    â€œNot unless Jordan’s a bum doctor.”
    A policewoman came in with Peggy Carroll.
    The blonde girl was tired. Her eyelids, mouth corners and body drooped, and when I pushed a chair out toward her she sagged down in it.
    O’Gar ducked his grizzled bullet head at me.
    â€œNow, Peggy,” I said, “tell us where you fit into this mess.”
    â€œI don’t fit into it.” She didn’t look up. Her voice was tired. “Joe dragged me into it. He told you.”
    â€œYou his girl?”
    â€œIf you want to call it that,” she admitted.
    â€œYou jealous?”
    â€œWhat,” she asked, looking up at me, her face puzzled, “has that got to do with it?”
    â€œSue Hambleton was getting ready to go away with him when she was murdered.”
    The girl sat up straight in the chair and said deliberately:
    â€œI swear to God I didn’t know she was murdered.”
    â€œBut you did know she was dead,” I said positively.
    â€œI didn’t,” she replied just as positively.
    I