The Golden Horseshoe and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett Read Free Book Online Page B

war, who had five on him—one under each armpit, one on each hip, and one in his waistband.) One gun had been taken from Tai, and if they tried to truss him up without frisking him, there was likely to be fireworks. So I moved off to one side.
    Fat Thomas Quarre went phlegmatically up to the Chinese to carry out his wife’s orders—and bungled the job perfectly.
    He put his bulk between Tai and the old woman’s gun.
    Tai’s hands moved.
    An automatic was in each.
    Once more Tai ran true to racial form. When a Chinese shoots, he keeps on shooting until his gun is empty.
    When I yanked Tai over backward by his fat throat, and slammed him to the floor, his guns were still barking metal; and they clicked empty as I got a knee on one of his arms. I didn’t take any chances. I worked on his throat until his eyes and tongue told me that he was out of things for a while.
    Then I looked around.
    Thomas Quarre was huddled against the bed, plainly dead, with three round holes in his starched white vest—holes that were brown from the closeness of the gun that had put them there.
    Across the room, Mrs. Quarre lay on her back. Her clothes had somehow settled in place around her fragile body, and death had given her once more the gentle friendly look she had worn when I first saw her. One thin hand was on her bosom, covering, I found later, the two bullet-holes that were there.
    The red-haired girl Elvira was gone.
    Presently Tai stirred, and, after taking another gun from his clothes, I helped him sit up. He stroked his bruised throat with one fat hand, and looked coolly around the room.
    â€œSo this is how it came out?” he said.
    â€œUh-huh!”
    â€œWhere’s Elvira?”
    â€œGot away—for the time being.”
    He shrugged.
    â€œWell, you can call it a decidedly successful operation. The Quarres and Hook dead; the bonds and I in your hands.”
    â€œNot so bad,” I admitted, “but will you do me a favor?”
    â€œIf I may.”
    â€œTell me what the hell this is all about!”
    â€œAll about?” he asked.
    â€œExactly! From what you people have let me overhear, I gather that you pulled some sort of job in Los Angeles that netted you a hundred-thousand-dollars’ worth of Liberty Bonds; but I can’t remember any recent job of that size down there.”
    â€œWhy, that’s preposterous!” he said with what, for him, was almost wild-eyed amazement. “Preposterous! Of course you know all about it!”
    â€œI do not! I was trying to find a young fellow named Fisher who left his Tacoma home in anger a week or two ago. His father wants him found on the quiet, so that he can come down and try to talk him into going home again. I was told that I might find Fisher in this block of Turk Street, and that’s what brought me here.”
    He didn’t believe me. He never believed me. He went to the gallows thinking me a liar.
    When I got out into the street again (and Turk Street was a lovely place when I came free into it after my evening in that house!) I bought a newspaper that told me most of what I wanted to know.
    A boy of twenty—a messenger in the employ of a Los Angeles stock and bond house—had disappeared two days before, while on his way to a bank with a wad of Liberty Bonds. That same night this boy and a slender girl with bobbed red hair had registered at a hotel in Fresno as J. M. Riordan and wife . The next morning the boy had been found in his room—murdered. The girl was gone. The bonds were gone.
    That much the paper told me. During the next few days, digging up a little here and a little there, I succeeded in piecing together most of the story.
    The Chinese—whose full name was Tai Choon Tau—had been the brains of the mob. Their game had been a variation of the always-reliable badger game. Tai selected the victims, and he must have been a good judge of humans, for he seems never to have picked a