Woman in the Dark by Dashiell Hammett Read Free Book Online Page B

their heads." He tossed his briefcase on the desk. "Sit down."
    "Brazil?" she said. "He is-"
    His shrug lifted his shoulders almost to his ears. "I don't know. Can't get anything out of these people."
    "Then-?"
    "Then he got away," he said.
    "Do you think he did?"
    He shrugged his shoulders again. "We can always hope."
    "But one of those policemen told me he had been shot and-"
    "That don't have to mean anything but that they hope they hit him." He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down into a chair. "There's no use of worrying about Brazil till we know whether we've got anything to worry about." He drew another chair up close to hers and sat in it. "Let's worry about you now. I want the works-no song and dance-just what happened, the way it happened."
    She drew her brows together in a puzzled frown. "But you told me everything-"
    "I told you everything was all fixed, and it is." He patted her knee. "I've got the bail all fixed so you can walk out of here as soon as they get through asking you questions. But we've got to decide what kind of answers you're going to give them." He looked sharply at her from under his hat brim. "You want to help Brazil, don't you?"
    "Yes."
    "That's the stuff." He patted her knee again, and his hand remained on it. "Now, give me everything, from the beginning."
    "You mean from when I first met Kane Robson?"
    He nodded.
    She crossed her knees, dislodging his hand. Staring at the opposite wall as if not seeing it, she said earnestly: "Neither of us did anything wrong. It is not right that we should suffer."
    "Don't worry." His tone was light, confident. "I'll get the pair of you out of it." He proffered her cigarettes in a shiny case.
    She took a cigarette, leaned forward to hold its end to the flame from his lighter, and, still leaning forward, asked: "I will not have to stay here tonight?"
    He patted her cheek. "I don't think so. It oughtn't to take them more than an hour to grill you." He dropped his hand to her knee. "And the sooner we get through here, the sooner you'll be through with them."
    She took a deep breath and sat back in her chair. "There is not a lot to say," she began, pronouncing her words carefully so they were clear in spite of her accent. "I met him in a little place in Switzerland. I was without any money at all, any friends. He liked me and he was rich." She made a little gesture with the cigarette in her hand. "So I said yes."
    Klaus nodded sympathetically and his fingers moved on her knee.
    "He bought me clothes, those jewels, in Paris. They were not his mother's and he gave them to me."
    The lawyer nodded again and his fingers moved again on her knee.
    "He brought me over here then and"-she put the burning end of her cigarette on the back of his hand-"I stayed at his-"
    Klaus had snatched his hand from her knee to his mouth, was sucking the back of his hand. "What's the matter with you?" he demanded indignantly, the words muffled by the hand to his mouth. He lowered the hand and looked at the burn. "If there's something you don't like, you can say so, can't you?"
    She did not smile. "I no speak Inglis good," she said, burlesquing a heavy accent. "I stayed at his house for two weeks-not quite two weeks-until-"
    "If it wasn't for Brazil, you could take your troubles to another lawyer!" He pouted over his burned hand.
    "Until last night," she continued, "when I could stand him no longer. We quarreled and I left. I left just as I was, in evening clothes, with…"
    She was finishing her story when the telephone bell rang. The attorney went to the desk and spoke into the telephone: "Hello?… Yes… Just a couple of minutes more… That's right. Thanks." He turned. "They're getting impatient."
    She rose from her chair, saying: "I have finished. Then the police came and he escaped through the window and they arrested me about those rings."
    "Did you do any talking after they arrested you?"
    She shook her head. "They would not let me. Nobody would listen to me. Nobody