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

She crouched close to me, shivering. I was looking ahead, planning how I was to land an invitation into her apartment. I was sorry I hadn’t held on to her gun. I had let it fall when I pushed Big Chin out of the car. It would have been an excuse for a later call if she didn’t invite me in.
    I needn’t have worried. She didn’t invite me. She insisted that I go in with her. She was scared stiff.
    â€œYou will not leave me?” she pleaded as we drove up McAllister street. “I am in complete terror. You cannot go from me! If you will not come in, I will stay with you.”
    I was willing enough to go in, but I didn’t want to leave the coupé where it would advertise me.
    â€œWe’ll ride around the corner and park the car,” I told her, “and then I’ll go in with you.”
    I drove around the block, with an eye in each direction for the Cadillac. Neither eye found it. I left the coupé on Franklin street and we returned to the McAllister street building.
    She had me almost running through the rain that had lightened now to a drizzle.
    The hand with which she tried to fit a key to the front door was a shaky, inaccurate hand. I took the key and opened the door. We rode to the third floor in an automatic elevator, seeing no one. I unlocked the door to which she led me, near the rear of the building.
    Holding my arm, with one hand, she reached inside and snapped on the lights in the passageway.
    I didn’t know what she was waiting for, until she cried:
    â€œFrana! Frana! Ah, Frana!”
    The muffled yapping of a small dog replied. The dog did not appear.
    She grabbed me with both arms, trying to crawl up my damp coat-front.
    â€œThey are here!” she cried in the thin dry voice of utter terror. “They are here!”
    V
    â€œIs anybody supposed to be here?” I asked, putting her around to one side, where she wouldn’t be between me and the two doors across the passageway.
    â€œNo! Just my little dog Frana, but—”
    I slid my gun half out of my pocket and back again, to make sure it wouldn’t catch if I needed it, and used my other hand to get rid of the woman’s arms.
    â€œYou stay here. I’ll see if you’ve got company.”
    Moving to the nearest door, I heard a seven-year-old voice—Lew Maher’s—saying: “He can shoot and he’s plain crazy. He ain’t hampered by nothing like imagination or fear of consequences.”
    With my left hand I turned the first door’s knob. With my left foot I kicked it open.
    Nothing happened.
    I put a hand around the frame, found the button, switched on the lights.
    A sitting-room, all orderly.
    Through an open door on the far side of the room came the muffled yapping of Frana. It was louder now and more excited. I moved to the doorway. What I could see of the next room, in the light from this, seemed peaceful and unoccupied enough. I went into it and switched on the lights.
    The dog’s voice came through a closed door. I crossed to it, pulled it open. A dark fluffy dog jumped snapping at my leg. I grabbed it where its fur was thickest and lifted it squirming and snarling. The light hit it. It was purple—purple as a grape! Dyed purple!
    Carrying this yapping, yelping artificial hound a little away from my body with my left hand, I moved on to the next room—a bedroom. It was vacant. Its closet hid nobody. I found the kitchen and bathroom. Empty. No one was in the apartment. The purple pup had been imprisoned by the Whosis Kid earlier in the day.
    Passing through the second room on my way back to the woman with her dog and my report, I saw a slitted envelope lying face-down on a table. I turned it over. The stationery of a fashionable store, it was addressed to Mrs. Inés Almad, here.
    The party seemed to be getting international. Maurois was French; the Whosis Kid was Boston American; the dog had a Bohemian name (at least I remember nabbing a Czech