Nightmare Town: Stories by Dashiell Hammett Read Free Book Online Page A

feet.
    “Your work with a bat is what you might call adequate,” he drawled.
    Steve stared at the thin man. This was the man he had accepted on an evening’s acquaintance as a comrade! A man who lay on the street and let his companion do the fighting for both. Hot words formed in Steve’s throat.
    “You -“
    The thin man’s face twisted into a queer grimace, as if he were listening to faint, far-off sounds. He caught his hands to his chest, pressing the sides together. Then he turned half around, went down on one knee, went over backward with a leg bent over him.
    “Get-word-to-“
    The fourth word was blurred beyond recognition. Steve knelt beside Kamp, lifted his head from the bricks, and saw that Kamp’s thin body was ripped open from throat to waistline.
    “Get-word-to-“ The thin man tried desperately to make the last word audible.
    A hand gripped Steve’s shoulder.
    “What the hell’s all this?” The roaring voice of Marshal Grant Fernie blotted out Kamp’s words.
    “Shut up a minute!” Steve snapped, and put his ear again close to Kamp’s mouth.
    But now the dying man could achieve no articulate sound. He tried with an effort that bulged his eyes; then he shuddered horribly, coughed, the slit in his chest gaped open, and he died.
    “What’s all this?” the marshal repeated.
    “Another reception committee,” Steve said bitterly, easing the dead body lo the sidewalk, and standing up. “There’s one of them in the street; the others beat it around the corner.”
    He tried to point with his left hand, then let it drop to his side. Looking at it, he saw that his sleeve was black with blood.
    The marshal bent to examine Kamp, grunted, “He’s dead, all right,” and moved over to where the man Steve had knocked into the gutter lay.
    “Knocked out,” the marshal said, straightening up; “but he’ll be coming around in a while. How’d you make out?”
    “My arm’s slashed, and I’ve got some sore spots, but I’ll live through it.”
    Fernie took hold of the wounded arm.
    “Not bleeding so bad,” he decided. “But you better get it patched up. Doc MacPhail’s is only a little way up the street. Can you make it, or do you want me to give you a lift?”
    “I can make it. How do I find the place?”
    “Two blocks up this street, and four to the left. You can’t miss it – it’s the only house in town with flowers in front of it. I’ll get in touch with you when I want you.”

    Steve Threefall found Dr. MacPhail’s house without difficulty – a two-story building set back from the street, behind a garden that did its best to make up a floral profusion for Izzard’s general barrenness. The fence was hidden under twining virgin’s bower, clustered now with white blossoms, and the narrow walk wound through roses, trillium, poppies, tulips, and geraniums that were ghosts in the starlight. The air was heavily sweet with the fragrance of saucer-like moon flowers, whose vines covered the doctor’s porch.
    Two steps from the latter Steve stopped, and his right hand slid to the middle of his stick. From one end of the porch had come a rustling, faint but not of the wind, and a spot that was black between vines had an instant before been paler, as if framing a peeping face.
    “Who is -“ Steve began, and went staggering back.
    From the vine-blackened porch a figure had flung itself on his chest.
    “Mr. Threefall,” the figure cried in the voice of the girl of the telegraph office, “there’s somebody in the house!”
    “You mean a burglar?” he asked stupidly, staring down into the small white face that was upturned just beneath his chin.
    “Yes! He’s upstairs – in Dr. MacPhail’s room!”
    “Is the doctor up there?”
    “No, no! He and Mrs. MacPhail haven’t come home yet.”
    He patted her soothingly on a velvet-coated shoulder, selecting a far shoulder, so that he had to put his arm completely around her to do the patting.
    “We’ll fix that,” he promised. “You