The Assistant Murderer by Dashiell Hammett (most read book in the world TXT) 📕

will trust me after I’ve turned on a blush or two for ‘em. So Madeline and I were in the money. She had brains, nerve, and a good front. I have everything but brains. We turned a couple of tricks — one con and one blackmail — and then she ran into Jerome Falsoner. We were going to give him the squeeze at first. But when Madeline found out that Sara was his heiress, that she was in debt, and that she and her uncle were on the outs, we ditched that racket and cooked a juicier one. Madeline found somebody to introduce me to Sara. I made myself agreeable, playing the boob — the shy but worshipful young man.

“Madeline had brains, as I’ve said. She used ‘em all this time. I hung around Sara, sending her candy, books, flowers, taking her to shows and dinner. The books and shows were part of Madeline’s work. Two of the books mentioned the fact that a husband can’t be made to testify against his wife in court, nor wife against husband. One of the plays touched the same thing. That was planting the seeds. We planted another with my blushing and mumbling — persuaded Sara, or rather let her discover for herself, that I was the clumsiest liar in the world.

“The planting done, we began to push the game along. Madeline kept on good terms with Jerome. Sara was getting deeper in debt. We helped her in still deeper. We had a burglar clean out her apartment one night — Ruby Sweeger, maybe you know him. He’s in stir now for another caper. He got what money she had and most of the things she could have hocked in a pinch. Then we stirred up some of the people she owed, sent them anonymous letters warning them not to count too much on her being Jerome’s heir. Foolish letters, but they did the trick. A couple of her creditors sent collectors to the trust company.

“Jerome got his income from the estate quarterly. Madeline knew the dates, and Sara knew them. The day before the next one, Madeline got busy on Sara’s creditors again. I don’t know what she told them this time, but it was enough. They descended on the trust company in a flock, with the result that the next day Sara was given two weeks’ pay and discharged. When she came out I met her — by chance — yes, I’d been watching for her since morning. I took her for a drive and got her back to her apartment at six o’clock. There we found more frantic creditors waiting to pounce on her. I chased them out, played the big-hearted boy, making embarrassed offers of all sorts of help. She refused them, of course, and I could see decision coming into her face. She knew this was the day on which Jerome got his quarterly check. She determined to go see him, to demand that he pay her debts at least. She didn’t tell me where she was going, but I could see it plain enough, since I was looking for it.

“I left her and waited across the street from her apartment, in Franklin Square, until I saw her come out. Then I found a telephone, called up Madeline, and told her Sara was on her way to her uncle’s flat.”

Landow’s cigarette scorched his fingers. He dropped it, crushed it under his foot, lighted another.

“This is a long-winded story, Rush,” he apologised, “but it’ll soon be over now.”

“Keep talking, son,” said Alec Rush.

“There were some people in Madeline’s place when I phoned her — people trying to persuade her to go down the country on a party. She agreed now. They would give her an even better alibi than the one she had cooked up. She told them she had to see Jerome before she left, and they drove her over to his place and waited in their car while she went in with him.

“She had a pint bottle of cognac with her, all doped and ready. She poured out a drink of it for Jerome, telling him of the new bootlegger she had found who had a dozen or more cases of this cognac to sell at a reasonable price. The cognac was good enough and the price low enough to make Jerome think she had dropped in to let him in on something good. He gave her an order to pass on to the bootlegger. Making sure his steel paper-knife was in full view on the table, Madeline rejoined her friends, taking Jerome as far as the door so they would see he was still alive, and drove off.

“Now I don’t know what Madeline had put in that cognac. If she told me, I’ve forgotten. It was a powerful drug — not a poison, you understand, but an excitant. You’ll see what I mean when you hear the rest. Sara must have reached her uncle’s flat ten or fifteen minutes after Madeline’s departure. Her uncle’s face, she says, was red, inflamed, when he opened the door for her. But he was a frail man, while she was strong, and she wasn’t afraid of the devil himself, for that matter. She went in and demanded that he settle her debts, even if he didn’t choose to make her an allowance out of his income.

“They were both Falsoners, and the argument must have grown hot. Also the drug was working on Jerome, and he had no will with which to fight it. He attacked her. The paper-knife was on the table, as Madeline had seen. He was a maniac. Sara was not one of your corner-huddling, screaming girls. She grabbed the paper-knife and let him have it. When he fell, she turned and ran.

“Having followed her as soon as I’d finished telephoning to Madeline, I was standing on Jerome’s front steps when she dashed out. I stopped her and she told me she’d killed her uncle. I made her wait there while I went in, to see if he was really dead. Then I took her home, explaining my presence at Jerome’s door by saying, in my boobish, awkward way, that I had been afraid she might do something reckless and had thought it best to keep an eye on her.

“Back in her apartment, she was all for giving herself up to the police. I pointed out the danger in that, arguing that, in debt, admittedly going to her uncle for money, being his heiress, she would most certainly be convicted of having murdered him so she would get the money. Her story of his attack, I persuaded her, would be laughed at as a flimsy yarn. Dazed, she wasn’t hard to convince. The next step was easy. The police would investigate her, even if they didn’t especially suspect her. I was, so far as we knew, the only person whose testimony could convict her. I was loyal enough, but wasn’t I the clumsiest liar in the world? Didn’t the mildest lie make me blush like an auctioneer’s flag? The way around that difficulty lay in what two of the books I had given her, and one of the plays we had seen, had shown: if I was her husband I couldn’t be made to testify against her. We were married the next morning, on a license I had been carrying for nearly a week.

“Well, there we were. I was married to her. She had a couple of million coming when her uncle’s affairs were straightened out. She couldn’t possibly, it seemed, escape arrest and conviction. Even if no one had seen her entering or leaving her uncle’s flat, everything still pointed to her guilt, and the foolish course I had persuaded her to follow would simply ruin her chance of pleading self-defence. If they hanged her, the two million would come to me. If she got a long term in prison, I’d have the handling of the money at least.”

Landow dropped and crushed his second cigarette and stared for a moment straight ahead into distance.

“Do you believe in God, or Providence, or Fate, or any of that, Rush?” he asked. “Well, some believe in one thing and some in another, but listen. Sara was never arrested, never even really suspected. It seems there was some sort of Finn or Swede who had had a run-in with Jerome and threatened him. I suppose he couldn’t account for his whereabouts the night of the killing, so he went into hiding when he heard of Jerome’s murder. The police suspicion settled on him. They looked Sara up, of course, but not very thoroughly. No one seems to have seen her in the street, and the people in her apartment house, having seen her come in at six o’clock with me, and not having seen her — or not remembering if they did — go out or in again, told the police she had been in all evening. The police were too much interested in the missing Finn, or whatever he was, to look any further into Sara’s affairs.

“So there we were again. I was married into the money, but I wasn’t fixed so I could hand Madeline her cut. Madeline said we’d let things run along as they were until the estate was settled up, and then we could tip Sara off to the police. But by the time the money was settled up there was another hitch. This one was my doing. I — I — well, I wanted to go on just as we were. Conscience had nothing to do with it, you understand? It was simply that — well — that living on with Sara was the only thing I wanted. I wasn’t even sorry for what I’d done, because if it hadn’t been for that I would never have had her.

“I don’t know whether I can make this clear to you, Rush, but even now I don’t regret any of it. If it could have been different — but it couldn’t. It had to be this way or none. And I’ve had those six months. I can see that I’ve been a chump. Sara was never for me. I got her by a crime and a trick, and while I held on to a silly hope that some day she’d — she’d look at me as I did at her, I knew in my heart all the time it was no use. There had been a man — your Millar. She’s free now that it’s out about my being married to Polly, and I hope she — I hope — Well, Madeline began to howl for action. I told Sara that Madeline had had a child by Jerome, and Sara agreed to settle some money on her. But that didn’t satisfy Madeline. It wasn’t sentiment with her. I mean, it wasn’t any feeling for me, it was just the money. She wanted every cent she could get, and she couldn’t get enough to satisfy her in a settlement of the kind Sara wanted to make.

“With Polly, it was that too, but maybe a little more. She’s fond of me, I think. I don’t know how she traced me here after she got out of the Wisconsin big house, but I can see how she figured things. I was married to a wealthy woman. If the woman died — shot by a bandit in a hold-up attempt — then I’d have money, and Polly would have both me and money. I haven’t seen her, wouldn’t know she was in Baltimore if you hadn’t told me, but that’s the way it would work out in her mind. The killing idea would have occurred just as easily to Madeline. I had told her I wouldn’t stand for pushing the game through on Sara. Madeline knew that if she went ahead on