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

statements that have no’s or not’s or nothing’s or don’t’s in them.”
    â€œThat’s it! That’s it, exactly!” She leaned toward me, laughing. “I’ve always known there was some key to it, but nobody’s been able to find it before. You’ve solved our national problem.”
    â€œFor reward, then, I should be given all the information you have about Grantham.”
    â€œYou should, but I’ll have to speak to His Excellency first. He’ll wake presently.”
    â€œYou can tell me unofficially what you think of Grantham. You know him?”
    â€œYes. He’s charming. A nice boy, delightfully naïf, inexperienced, but really charming.”
    â€œWho are his friends here?”
    She shook her head and said:
    â€œNo more of that until His Excellency wakes. You’re from San Francisco? I remember the funny little street cars, and the fog, and the salad right after the soup, and Coffee Dan’s.”
    â€œYou’ve been there?”
    â€œTwice. I was in the United States for a year and half, in vaudeville, bringing rabbits out of hats.”
    We were still talking about that half an hour later when the door opened and the Minister of Police came in.
    The over-size furniture immediately shrank to normal, the girl became a midget, and I felt like somebody’s little boy.
    This Vasilije Djudakovich stood nearly seven feet tall, and that was nothing to his girth. Maybe he wouldn’t weigh more than five hundred pounds, but, looking at him, it was hard to think except in terms of tons. He was a blond-haired, blond-bearded mountain of meat in a black frock coat. He wore a necktie, so I suppose he had a collar, but it was hidden all the way around by the red rolls of his neck. His white vest was the size and shape of a hoop-skirt, and in spite of that it strained at the buttons. His eyes were almost invisible between the cushions of flesh around them, and were shaded into a colorless darkness, like water in a deep well. His mouth was a fat red oval among the yellow hairs of his whiskers and mustache. He came into the room slowly, ponderously, and I was surprised that the floor didn’t creak nor the room tremble.
    Romaine Frankl was watching me attentively as she slid out of the big leather chair and introduced me to the Minister. He gave me a fat, sleepy smile and a hand that had the general appearance of a naked baby, and let himself down slowly into the chair the girl had quit. Planted there, he lowered his head until it rested on the pillows of his several chins, and then he seemed to go to sleep.
    I drew up another chair for the girl. She took another sharp look at me—she seemed to be hunting for something in my face—and began to talk to him in what I suppose was the native lingo. She talked rapidly for about twenty minutes, while he gave no sign that he was listening or that he was even awake.
    When she was through, he said: “ Da .” He spoke dreamily, but there was a volume to the syllable that could have come from no place smaller than his gigantic belly.
    The girl turned to me, smiling.
    â€œHis Excellency will be glad to give you every possible assistance. Officially, of course, he does not care to interfere in the affairs of a visitor from another country, but he realizes the importance of keeping Mr. Grantham from being victimized while here. If you will return tomorrow afternoon, at, say, three o’clock …”
    I promised to do that, thanked her, shook hands with the mountain again, and went out into the rain.
    III
SHADOWING
    Back at the hotel, I had no trouble learning that Lionel Grantham occupied a suite on the sixth floor and was in it at that time. I had his photograph in my pocket and his description in my head. I spent what was left of the afternoon and the early evening waiting for a look at him. At a little after seven I got it.
    He stepped out of the elevator, a tall, flat-backed boy