Дэшил Хэммет - The Collected Dashiell Hammett

“Stop it!” Papa’s voice was so sharp that a man immediately in front of us jumped, looked back over his shoulder at Papa with startled eyes, and moved over toward the curb to get out of his way. “What do you think of that Brenham?” Papa went on in a more moderate tone.

“I think our Miss Queenan might profitably learn something of secretarial conduct from her.”

“You do, do you?” Papa stood abruptly still in the middle of the sidewalk. The man he had frightened a moment ago, now behind him, bumped into him, and scurried away from Papa’s scowl as if his life were in danger. “So that’s why you’re always picking on Florence,” Papa turned his scowl on me. “She don’t bow and scrape enough! Well, let me tell you, young fellow, the day after she ever tries to slobber over me like that Brenham does over Cayterer she’ll be reading the Help Wanted Female column!”

“I don’t like that Brenham,” he continued as he ceased blocking the sidewalk and moved on toward our office again. “She’ll scalp Cayterer one of these days. A slinky woman!”

I said nothing. To have attempted a defense of Miss Brenham against this unreasonable attack would have been merely to increase Papa’s disliking for her.

“Let me tell you something about Cayterer and his secretaries. He says he’s had this one two years. That’s a record for him. He and his secretaries used to be a standing joke. He never kept one longer than three or four months, and they were all girls you’d look at the second time. Figure it out for yourself. And keep your eye on this one. She’s slinky!”

I refused to contradict him, though my manner must have indicated that I was far from agreeing with what I considered his very groundless aversion to a young woman whose manner had favorably impressed me.

“You better see what Ford Nugent is like this afternoon,” Papa said as we entered our building, “and if you run into that woman, don’t let her close your eyes.” And he added, characteristically, “She’s slinky!”

“Yes, sir,” I replied quietly.

It was three-fifteen when I returned to Mr. Cayterer’s offices.

“Is Mr. Nugent in?” I asked the boy who had admitted us in the morning.

“Yes, sir. You’re Mr. Thin? Well, he’s in Mr. Cayterer’s office. You can go right back.”

I did so, and, having been thus directed, I opened the door of the promoter’s private office without knocking, a freedom of which I should certainly not have availed myself otherwise, and which I immediately regretted, although later my regret was somewhat less. Opening the door, then, I surprised Miss Brenham in the act of being kissed by, and apparently also kissing, a tall young man with rumpled brown hair over a sun-browned thin face.

They were standing, the participants in this decidedly unbusinesslike tableau, beside Mr. Cayterer’s desk, with their arms familiarly around one another, and their faces — after the quite appreciable moment their muscles required for reaction to the clicking of the door — turned toward me. Then the young woman sprang swiftly away from her — shall I say accomplice? — while he looked at me as if he did not like me.

“I beg your pardon!” I exclaimed.

“You ought to.”

The white line of a scar, running diagonally across the young man’s dark forehead, gave him, now that his features were tinged with chagrin, a peculiarly sinister appearance, which, however, was somewhat tempered by the absence of any brutality in his face.

“I came by appointment with Mr. Cayterer.” I did not wish to be suspected of having deliberately spied. “The boy told me to come right in. I assure you I would not otherwise have dared to enter without knocking, and I certainly had no intention, no thought, of intruding at... at such a time.”

The young man blinked his grey eyes and turned them toward Miss Brenham, who, her face becomingly pinkened, was gathering up papers from the top of her employer’s desk. When he looked at me again he had stopped blinking, and there was a faint trace of humor in his thin face.

“You’re the detective jobbie?”

I nodded, although I did not especially care for the words he had selected.

“Can you beat it?” He looked at me slowly and carefully, from head to foot. “You ought to be a good one! I never saw one that looked, acted and talked less like one, and I’ve known a few — even been jailed by some.”

“You are Mr. Nugent?” I asked, disregarding for the time his admission, which certainly reflected no credit on him.

“Yes, and you’re Thin. Sit down and let’s have it out.”

He sat in Mr. Cayterer’s chair, while I took the one Papa had occupied that morning, and Miss Brenham, carrying her papers, left the office, closing the door softly behind her.

The subsequent interview was rather unprofitable, inasmuch as the young man stubbonly refused to tell me anything of value about himself.

“Uncle Hop can give you the dope on. me,” he insisted. “I wouldn’t tell you anything I didn’t want him to know, and he’s got all the facts I want made public.”

“But this is a serious matter, Mr. Nugent, and a reticence that might be perfectly proper and justifiable in ordinary circumstances would not, I think you must grant, be becoming in these.”

He finished making a cigarette, lighted it, and pulled out a drawer to serve as a support for his feet.

“It’s serious for Uncle Hop, and maybe for you, but not for me. I’m only the hired man. There’s a trip and maybe some excitement, and a salary in it for me. And any mixups are in my favor, because they’ll increase the excitement and maybe the salary.” He emphasized the disloyalty of this unaccountable speech by grinning with broad recklessness through an outflung cloud of cigarette smoke. “So don’t expect me to bellyache about you troubles.”

“You spoke a moment ago, Mr. Nugent, of having been arrested: ‘jailed by some,’ referring to detectives, were, I think, your words. Would you mind relating the circumstances?”

“Fat chance, my lad!” He was, I should have said, not more than twenty-six or seven years of age, which would have made him some five years younger than I, and his “my lad” therefore ridiculous. “We criminals don’t go around exposing our records.”

The interview was really most unsatisfactory: he refused, in the face of all the persuasive force I could bring to bear, to assist me to the least extent, expressing complete indifference to his uncle’s difficulties, and maintaining that his only interest lay in the pay he was to receive and in the fact that there might be, as he phrased it, a chance to shoot somebody. By the end of three quarters of an hour I found I had more than enough of this nonsense, and so, making no attempt beyond that required by common courtesy to conceal my disapproval, I terminated the interview by withdrawing.

In Papa’s office, when I returned there, I found him and Miss Queenan sitting at his desk, with an afternoon paper spread in front of them. It was one of our stenographer’s duties to read carefully the daily papers, clipping and filing such items as might be of interest to us; that is, those items that dealt with crimes or with persons who had or seemed likely to be implicated in or affected by crimes. By these means we had in the course of some years built up a really valuable library of this sort. But now, as I approached Papa’s desk, I saw, as I had indeed suspected, for it was not unusual, that what held Papa’s and Miss Queenan’s attention was nothing more nor less than the comic strips page.

“If you don’t stop sniffing at what I do I’m going to hit you with something, Robin!” Papa looked up from his — shall I say vapid — entertainment to threaten. “Did you see Nugent?”