Who Killed Bob Teal? and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett Read Free Book Online

building in which they lived. Whitacre—thinking Bob a Post Office Inspector—had gone completely to pieces, and it had taken the combined efforts of the woman and his partner—apparently working separately—to keep him from bolting immediately. They had persuaded him to stick it out another few days.
    On the night of the murder, Ogburn, pretending skepticism of Whitacre’s story about being followed, had met Whitacre for the purpose of learning if he really was being shadowed. They had walked the streets in the rain for an hour. Then Ogburn, convinced, had announced his intention of going back and talking to the supposed Post Office Inspector, to see if he could be bribed. Whitacre had refused to accompany his partner, but had agreed to wait for him in a dark doorway.
    Ogburn had taken Bob Teal over behind the billboards on some pretext, and had murdered him. Then he had hurried back to his partner, crying: “My God! He grabbed me and I shot him. We’ll have to leave!”
    Whitacre, in blind panic, had left San Francisco without stopping for his bags or even notifying Mae Landis. Ogburn was supposed to leave by another route. They were to meet in Oklahoma City ten days later, where Ogburn—after getting the loot out of the Los Angeles banks, where he had deposited it under various names—was to give Whitacre his share, and then they were to part for good.
    In Sacramento next day Whitacre had read the newspapers, and had understood what had been done to him. He had done all the bookkeeping; all the false entries in Ogburn & Whitacre’s books were in his writing. Mae Landis had revealed his former criminal record, and had fastened the ownership of the gun—really Ogburn’s—upon him. He was framed completely! He hadn’t a chance of clearing himself.
    He had known that his story would sound like a far-fetched and flimsy lie; he had a criminal record. For him to have surrendered and told the truth would have been merely to get himself laughed at.
    As it turned out, Ogburn went to the gallows, Mae Landis is now serving a fifteen-year sentence, and Whitacre, in return for his testimony and restitution of the loot, was not prosecuted for his share in the land swindle.

THE WHOSIS KID
    A Complete Detective Novelette
    Black Mask , March 1925
    We have talked so many times of Mr. Hammett’s “Shrewd, canny sleuth,” his “hard-boiled detective,” etc., that we’re at the end of our rope for words to introduce him to new readers. … Well, he is a shrewd, canny, hard-boiled sleuth, and this is an exciting tale.
    I
    It started in Boston, back in 1917. I ran into Lew Maher on the Tremont street sidewalk of the Touraine Hotel one afternoon, and we stopped to swap a few minutes’ gossip in the snow.
    I was telling him something or other when he cut in with:
    â€œSneak a look at this kid coming up the street. The one with the dark cap.”
    Looking, I saw a gangling youth of eighteen or so; pasty and pimply face, sullen mouth, dull hazel eyes, thick, shapeless nose. He passed the city sleuth and me without attention, and I noticed his ears. They weren’t the battered ears of a pug, and they weren’t conspicuously deformed, but their rims curved in and out in a peculiar crinkled fashion.
    At the corner he went out of sight, turning down Boylston street toward Washington.
    â€œThere’s a lad that will make a name for hisself if he ain’t nabbed or rocked off too soon,” Lew predicted. “Better put him on your list. The Whosis Kid. You’ll be looking for him some one of these days.”
    â€œWhat’s his racket?”
    â€œStick-up, gunman. He’s got the makings of a good one. He can shoot, and he’s plain crazy. He ain’t hampered by nothing like imagination or fear of consequences. I wish he was. It’s these careful, sensible birds that are easiest caught. I’d swear the Kid was in on a coupla