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

could pick up a little profit for the Continental, in the form of a wanted crook or two among the survivors.
    My guess at the Frenchman’s quarry was wrong. It wasn’t the Whosis Kid. It was a man and a woman. I didn’t see their faces. The light was behind them. They didn’t waste any time between the Venetian’s door and their taxicab.
    The man was big—tall, wide, and thick. The woman looked small at his side. I couldn’t go by that. Anything weighing less than a ton would have seemed tiny beside him.
    As the taxicab pulled away from the café, the Cadillac went after it. I ran in the Cadillac’s wake.
    It was a short chase.
    The taxicab turned into a dark block on the edge of Chinatown. The Cadillac jumped to its side, bearing it over to the curb.
    A noise of brakes, shouting voices, broken glass. A woman’s scream. Figures moving in the scant space between touring car and taxicab. Both cars rocking. Grunts. Thuds. Oaths.
    A man’s voice: “Hey! You can’t do that! Nix! Nix!”
    It was a stupid voice.
    I had slowed down until the coupé was barely moving toward this tussle ahead. Peering through the rain and darkness, I tried to pick out a detail or so as I approached, but I could see little.
    I was within twenty feet when the curbward door of the taxicab banged open. A woman bounced out. She landed on her knees on the sidewalk, jumped to her feet, and darted up the street.
    Putting the coupé closer to the curb, I let the door swing open. My side windows were spattered with rain. I wanted to get a look at the woman when she passed. If she should take the open door for an invitation, I didn’t mind talking to her.
    She accepted the invitation, hurrying as directly to the car as if she had expected me to be waiting for her. Her face was a small oval above a fur collar.
    â€œHelp me!” she gasped. “Take me from here—quickly.”
    There was a suggestion of foreignness too slight to be called an accent.
    â€œHow about—?”
    I shut my mouth. The thing she was jabbing me in the body with was a snub-nosed automatic.
    â€œSure! Get in,” I urged her.
    She bent her head to enter. I looped an arm over her neck, throwing her down across my lap. She squirmed and twisted—a small-boned, hard-fleshed body with strength in it.
    I wrenched the gun out of her hand and pushed her back on the seat beside me.
    Her fingers dug into my arms.
    â€œQuick! Quick! Ah, please, quickly! Take me—”
    â€œWhat about your friend?” I asked.
    â€œNot him! He is of the others! Please, quickly!”
    A man filled the open coupé door—the big-chinned man who had driven the Cadillac.
    His hand seized the fur at the woman’s throat.
    She tried to scream—made the gurgling sound of a man with a slit throat. I smacked his chin with the gun I had taken from her.
    He tried to fall into the coupé. I pushed him out.
    Before his head had hit the sidewalk, I had the door closed, and was twisting the coupé around in the street.
    We rode away. Two shots sounded just as we turned the first corner. I don’t know whether they were fired at us or not. I turned other corners. The Cadillac did not appear again.
    So far, so good. I had started with the Whosis Kid, dropped him to take Maurois, and now let him go to see who this woman was. I didn’t know what this confusion was all about, but I seemed to be learning who it was all about.
    â€œWhere to?” I asked presently.
    â€œTo home,” she said, and gave me an address.
    I pointed the coupé at it with no reluctance at all. It was the McAllister street apartments the Whosis Kid had visited earlier in the evening.
    We didn’t waste any time getting there. My companion might know it or might not, but I knew that all the other players in this game knew that address. I wanted to get there before the Frenchman and Big Chin.
    Neither of us said anything during the ride.