Дэшил Хэммет - The Collected Dashiell Hammett

“Yes, sir, although not very successfully. I found him a rather irresponsible, not to say foolish, young man whose conversation was purely facetious.”

“So. I found out a few things about him. Left college to enlist during the war. Stayed in training camps here till the war was over. Took his training to South America, Asia, and the Balkans afterward, and used it in whatever fighting he could find. Spent a couple of months in Japan last year. Got no relations but Cayterer, no job but soldiering, no money,”

“That’s very good, sir,” I said. “Now there is one thing I discovered. When I entered Mr, Cayterer’s office Nugent and Miss Brenham were engaged in — well, rather demonstrative affection.”

Miss Queenan jerked her head up to toss her short brown hair out of her eyes, and her eyes were darkly bright.

“You mean kissing?”

“I do, Miss Queenan.”

“So,” Papa grunted. “That might come in handy, but there’s nothing very important about a youngster kissing his uncle’s secretary. If he didn’t kiss her it might mean something.”

“Is she pretty?” Miss Queenan asked.

“Ask Robin. My idea is she’s slinky!”

“She is,” I said judicially, “quite attractive in appearance.”

“A blonde, I bet!”

I made no response to that, since the conclusion’s pertinence was as hidden from me as the means by which Miss Queenan had arrived at it.

“See here, Mr. Thin,” — Miss Queenan still called Papa and me Mr. Thin to our faces, though I happened to know that in speaking of us to others she habitually dispensed with even that last barrier between employer and employed — “you’re not going to tell Mr. Cayterer about that, are you?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” I demanded, though what I should have liked to ask was by what right she questioned my intentions; but that would have led to words with Papa, who deliberately encouraged her to intrude in our affairs.

“Why because... because it’s none of his business. Is it?” she sought Papa’s support.

“None at all,” Papa agreed quite as if he meant it. But that he should have been sincere was, I knew, preposterous; he simply would not side with me against Miss Queenan, regardless of the absurdities this practice made him so frequently defend.

“I think it is,” I stood my ground. “He has employed us to secure information about his affairs for him, and such information as we may secure is his property.”

“I’m surprised, Mr. Thin! And you a poet!”

“Miss Queenan, it is true that by inclination and avocation I am a poet, but it is also true that by parental compulsion I am a detective; and, since I must be a detective, I purpose being as efficient and conscientious a detective as I may be. That certain aspects of the work are and always have, been distasteful to me is, I trust, not a secret, but I may not on that account shirk them.”

Papa applauded with exaggerated heartiness, beating his palms noisily together.

“That’s my boy, Florence!” he boasted with the mock-pride he liked to affect. “Cold-blooded as a tadpole! A pip, huh?”

“You know what I think?” she said. “I think he’s smitten with this Miss Brenham, and is telling on Nugent just out of jealousy!”

“That may be.” What could one say in the face of so idiotic a charge? “However, I consider that I should be lax in my duty if I concealed this or any other information of the sort from Mr. Cayterer, and I shall certainly tell him.”

I did so the following morning, in the promoter’s office.

“Not altogether a surprise,” he said deep in his chest, rolling a cigar in his hands, apparently unaware of the considerable damage he was doing it. “I suspected something of the sort. It doesn’t make any difference. I’ve decided to send Ford to China by this afternoon’s boat. This won’t have anything to do with the leak; you can count on that. Was there anything else?”

There was nothing else: I said so, and left the office, pausing to learn from the office boy that Nugent had not come in yet. Downstairs, in the lobby, I went into a telephone booth and got Papa on the wire.

“I want to keep Nugent under surveillance, but can’t do it myself, of course, since he knows roe. Can you spare me an operative?”

“Yes. Smitts is in. Where are you?”

“In the lobby of Cayterer’s building — Seaman’s National Bank Building.”

“Right. I’ll send Smitts over to you.”

I had hoped that Smitts would arrive before Nugent, so that I could have designated the young man to the operative and had that part of the surveillance over with, but, unfortunately, Nugent was going into an elevator as I left the booth. Five minutes later Smitts arrived, one of the men Papa and I employ from time to time, a small sandy chap with prematurely deep vertical lines in his cheeks and watery pale eyes that see with surprising accuracy.

“Smitts, there is a man I want you to shadow. His name is Ford Nugent, and the chances are he will sail for China this afternoon. I wish to know what he does between now and then. You will telephone me from the pier as soon as he gets there.”

“I’ll do that thing,”, he promised.

“Very well. Now you had better take your position by the street door, so he will not see us together. When he gets out of the elevator I will speak to him, going on into the elevator as if I were going up to his office. You will shadow him.”

This arrangement was not to hold, however: when Nugent stepped out of the elevator he was accompanied by Miss Brenham, and he caught my arm when I spoke to him.

“How are you, Mr. Thin?” he hailed me gaily, “And how are all the little mysteries?”

He seemed quite elated, doubtless at the prospect of the trip to China with its “chance to shoot somebody.”

“Good morning, Miss Brenham. Good morning, Mr. Nugent,” I responded.

“Got a couple of hours to spare,” he asked, and then, as I hesitated, “I don’t mean to waste. Here it is: if you’ll come along with us and promise net to interfere, not to desert us until we finish what we’re up to, I’ll promise to tell you something about your leak.”

“What would be the nature of that something?” I inquired, watching Miss Brenham, whose blue eyes were focused, with some perplexity, on her companion’s face.

“It will be something that will save you trouble, keep you from going off on the wrong foot, maybe, though I won’t pretend it’ll clear everything up.”

“Very well,” I agreed, “on that condition I will accompany you.”

“Good!” Nugent grasped my elbow with one hand, Miss Brenham’s with the other, and urged us toward the street door. “We’ve got to hurry!”

Passing Smitts in the vestibule, I shook my head slightly to indicate that he was not to follow, and then the three of us got into a taxicab that was waiting at the curb. Nugent gave the chauffeur a Post Street number.

“So you told Uncle Hop what you saw yesterday?” he asked as the taxicab began to move into the westbound stream of Market Street traffic. His voice was careless, but I could see that Miss Brenham was watching me intently.

“Yes. There was nothing else to do. We contracted to furnish Mr. Cayterer with what information we could secure, and we must do so.”

“Just the same,” the young woman said softly, “it wasn’t nice.”

“Stick around,” Nugent laughed, the scar on his forehead curling up at the ends, lending his laugh a sardonic tone, “and you’ll have something else to tell him.”

The Post Street address was a large apartment building, into which Nugent went, leaving Miss Brenham and me in the taxicab.

I took advantage of the opportunity to engage her in conversation.