The Main Death and This King Business by Dashiell Hammett Read Free Book Online Page B

the slip, looked, said, “They do.”
    â€œGood—pouch the money and the guns and see if you can turn up any more in the room.”
    Coughing Ben Weel had got his breath by now.
    â€œLook here!” he protested. “You can’t pull this, fellow! Where do you think you are? You can’t get away with this!”
    â€œI can try,” I assured him. “I suppose you’re going to yell, Police ! Like hell you are! The only squawk you’ve got coming is at your own dumbness in thinking because your squeeze on the woman was tight enough to keep her from having you copped, you didn’t have to worry about anything. I’m playing the same game you played with her and Main—only mine’s better, because you can’t get tough afterward without facing stir. Now shut up!”
    â€œNo more jack,” Mickey said. “Nothing but four postage stamps.”
    â€œTake ’em along,” I told him. “That’s practically eight cents. Now we’ll go.”
    â€œHey, leave us a couple of bucks,” Weel begged.
    â€œDidn’t I tell you to shut up?” I snarled at him, backing to the door, which Mickey was opening.
    The hall was empty. Mickey stood in it, holding his gun on Weel and Dahl while I backed out of the room and switched the key from the inside to the outside. Then I slammed the door, twisted the key, pocketed it, and we went downstairs and out of the hotel.
    Mickey’s car was around the corner. In it, we transferred our spoils—except the guns—from his pockets to mine. Then he got out and went back to the Agency. I turned the car toward the building in which Jeffrey Main had been killed.
    Mrs. Main was a tall girl of less than twenty-five, with curled brown hair, heavily-lashed gray-blue eyes, and a warm, full-featured face. Her ample body was dressed in black from throat to feet.
    She read my card, nodded at my explanation that Gungen had employed me to look into her husband’s death, and took me into a gray and white living room.
    â€œThis is the room?” I asked.
    â€œYes.” She had a pleasant, slightly husky voice.
    I crossed to the window and looked down on the grocer’s roof, and on the half of the back street that was visible. I was still in a hurry.
    â€œMrs. Main,” I said as I turned, trying to soften the abruptness of my words by keeping my voice low, “after your husband was dead, you threw the gun out the window. Then you stuck the handkerchief to the corner of the wallet and threw that. Being lighter than the gun, it didn’t go all the way to the alley, but fell on the roof. Why did you put the handkerchief—?”
    Without a sound she fainted.
    I caught her before she reached the floor, carried her to a sofa, found Cologne and smelling salts, applied them.
    â€œDo you know whose handkerchief it was?” I asked when she was awake and sitting up.
    She shook her head from left to right.
    â€œThen why did you take that trouble?”
    â€œIt was in his pocket. I didn’t know what else to do with it. I thought the police would ask about it. I didn’t want anything to start them asking questions.”
    â€œWhy did you tell the robbery story?”
    No answer.
    â€œThe insurance?” I suggested.
    She jerked up her head, cried defiantly:
    â€œYes! He had gone through his own money and mine. And then he had to—to do a thing like that. He—”
    I interrupted her complaint:
    â€œHe left a note, I hope—something that will be evidence.” Evidence that she hadn’t killed him, I meant.
    â€œYes.” She fumbled in the bosom of her black dress.
    â€œGood,” I said, standing. “The first thing in the morning, take that note down to your lawyer and tell him the whole story.”
    I mumbled something sympathetic and made my escape.
    Night was coming down when I rang the Gungens’ bell for the second time that day. The pasty-faced