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

the language. To whom can I take my story and get help?”
    â€œI don’t know,” he said gloomily. Then his face brightened. “Go to Vasilije Djudakovich. He is Minister of Police. He is the man for you! He can help you, and you may trust him. He has a digestion instead of a brain. He’ll not understand a thing you tell him. Yes, Djudakovich is your man!”
    â€œThanks,” I said, and staggered out into the muddy street.
    II
ROMAINE
    I found the Minister of Police’s offices in the Administration Building, a gloomy concrete pile next to the Executive Residence at the head of the plaza. In French that was even worse than my German, a thin, white-whiskered clerk, who looked like a consumptive Santa Claus, told me His Excellency was not in. Looking solemn, lowering my voice to a whisper, I repeated that I had come from the United States chargé d’affaires . This hocuspocus seemed to impress Saint Nicholas. He nodded understandingly and shuffled out of the room. Presently he was back, bowing at the door, asking me to follow him.
    I tailed him along a dim corridor to a wide door marked “15.” He opened it, bowed me through it, wheezed, “ Asseyez-vous, s’il vous plaît ,” closed the door and left me. I was in an office, a large, square one. Everything in it was large. The four windows were double-size. The chairs were young benches, except the leather one at the desk, which could have been the rear half of a touring car. A couple of men could have slept on the desk. Twenty could have eaten at the table.
    A door opposite the one through which I had come opened, and a girl came in, closing the door behind her, shutting out a throbbing purr, as of some heavy machine, that had sounded through.
    â€œI’m Romaine Frankl,” she said in English, “His Excellency’s secretary. Will you tell me what you wish?”
    She might have been any age from twenty to thirty, something less than five feet in height, slim without boniness, with curly hair as near black as brown can get, black-lashed eyes whose gray irises had black rims, a small, delicate-featured face, and a voice that seemed too soft and faint to carry as well as it did. She wore a red woolen dress that had no shape except that which her body gave it, and when she moved—to walk or raise a hand—it was as if it cost her no energy—as if some one else were moving her.
    â€œI’d like to see him,” I said while I was accumulating this data.
    â€œLater, certainly,” she promised, “but it’s impossible now.” She turned, with her peculiar effortless grace, back to the door, opening it so that the throbbing purr sounded in the room again. “Hear?” she said. “He’s taking his nap.”
    She shut the door against His Excellency’s snoring and floated across the room to climb up in the immense leather chair at the desk.
    â€œDo sit down,” she said, wriggling a tiny forefinger at a chair beside the desk. “It will save time if you will tell me your business, because, unless you speak our tongue, I’ll have to interpret your message to His Excellency.”
    I told her about Lionel Grantham and my interest in him, in practically the same words I had used on Scanlan, winding up:
    â€œYou see, there’s nothing I can do except try to learn what the boy’s up to and give him a hand if he needs it. I can’t go to him—he’s too much Grantham, I’m afraid, to take kindly to what he’d think was nurse-maid stuff. Mr. Scanlan advised me to come to the Minister of Police.”
    â€œYou were fortunate.” She looked as if she wanted to make a joke about my country’s representative but weren’t sure how I’d take it. “Your chargé d’affaires is not always easy to understand.”
    â€œOnce you get the hang of it, it’s not hard,” I said. “You just throw out all his