Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett Read Free Book Online

here. Then call Mr. Willsson's doctor."
    The old man declared he didn't want any damned doctors.
    "You're going to have a nice shot in the arm so you can sleep," I promised him, stepping over the corpse to take the black gun from the bed. "I'm going to stay here tonight and we'll spend most of tomorrow sifting Poisonville affairs."
    The old man was tired. His voice, when he profanely and somewhat long-windedly told me what he thought of my impudence in deciding what was best for him, barely shook the windows.
    I took off the dead man's cap for a better look at his face. It didn't mean anything to me. I put the cap back in place.
    When I straightened up the old man asked, moderately:
    "Are you getting anywhere in your hunt for Donald's murderer?"
    "I think so. Another day ought to see it finished."
    "Who?" he asked.
    The secretary came in with the letter and the check. I gave them to the old man instead of an answer to his question. He put a shaky signature on each, and I had them folded in my pocket when the police arrived.
    The first copper into the room was the chief himself, fat Noonan. He nodded amiably at Willsson, shook hands with me, and looked with twinkling greenish eyes at the dead man.
    "Well, well," he said. "It's a good job he did, whoever did it. Yakima Shorty. And will you look at the sap he's toting?" He kicked the blackjack out of the dead man's hand. "Big enough to sink a battleship. You drop him?" he asked me.
    "Mr. Willsson."
    "Well, that certainly is fine," he congratulated the old man. "You saved a lot of people a lot of troubles, including me. Pack him out, boys," he said to the four men behind him.
    The two in uniform picked Yakima Shorty up by legs and arm-pits and went away with him, while one of the others gathered up the blackjack and a flashlight that had been under the body.
    "If everybody did that to their prowlers, it would certainly be fine," the chief babbled on. He brought three cigars out of a pocket, threw one over on the bed, stuck one at me, and put the other in his mouth. "I was just wondering where I could get hold of you," he told me as we lighted up. "I got a little job ahead that I thought you'd like to be in on. That's how I happened to be on tap when the rumble came." He put his mouth close to my ear and whispered: "Going to pick up Whisper. Want to go along?"
    "Yeah."
    "I thought you would. Hello, Doc!"
    He shook hands with a man who had just come in, a little plump man with a tired oval face and gray eyes that still had sleep in them.
    The doctor went to the bed, where one of Noonan's men was asking Willsson about the shooting. I followed the secretary into the hail and asked him:
    "Any men in the house besides you?"
    "Yes, the chauffeur, the Chinese cook."
    "Let the chauffeur stay in the old man's room tonight. I'm going out with Noonan. I'll get back as soon as I can. I don't think there'll be any more excitement here, but no matter what happens don't leave the old man alone. And don't leave him alone with Noonan or any of Noonan's crew."
    The secretary's mouth and eyes popped wide.
    "What time did you leave Donald Willsson last night?" I asked.
    "You mean night before last, the night he was killed?"
    "Yeah."
    "At precisely half-past nine."
    "You were with him from five o'clock till then?"
    "From a quarter after five. We went over some statements and that sort of thing in his office until nearly eight o'clock. Then we went to Bayard's and finished our business over our dinners. He left at half-past nine, saying he had an engagement."
    "What else did he say about this engagement?"
    "Nothing else."
    "Didn't give you any hint of where he was going, who he was going to meet?"
    "He merely said he had an engagement."
    "And you didn't know anything about it?"
    "No. Why? Did you think I did?"
    "I thought he might have said something." I switched back to tonight's doings: "What visitors did Willsson have today, not counting the one he shot?"
    "You'll have to pardon me," the secretary