Dashiell Hammett: The Thin Man

“What there is of them?” Macaulay repeated.

“Uh-huh. He'd been sawed up in pieces and buried in lime or something so there wasn't much flesh left on him, according to the report I got, but his clothes had been stuck in with him rolled up in a bundle, and enough was left of the inside ones to tell us something. There was part of a cane, too, with a rubber tip. That's why we thought he might be lame, and we—” He broke off as Andy came in. “Well?”

Andy shook his head gloomily. “Nobody sees him come, nobody sees him go. What was that joke about a guy being so thin he had to stand in the same place twice to throw a shadow?”

I laughed—not at the joke—and said: “Wynant's not that thin, but he's thin enough, say as thin as the paper in that check and in those letters people have been getting.”

“What's that?” Guild demanded, his face reddening, his eyes angry and suspicious.

“He's dead. He's been dead a long time except on paper. I'll give you even money they're his bones in the grave with the fat lame man's clothes.”

Macaulay leaned towards me. “Are you sure of that, Charles?”

Guild snarled at me: “What are you trying to pull?”

“There's the bet if you want it. Who'd go to all that trouble with a corpse and then leave the easiest thing of all to get rid of—the clothes— untouched unless they—”

“But they weren't untouched. They—”

“Of course not. That wouldn't look right. They'd have to be partly destroyed, only enough left to tell you what they were supposed to tell. I bet the initials were plenty conspicuous.”

“I don't know,” Guild said with less heat. “They were on a belt buckle.”

I laughed.

Mimi said angrily: “That's ridiculous, Nick. How could that be Clyde? You know he was here this afternoon. You know he—”

“Sh-h-h. It's very silly of you to play along with him,” I told her. “Wynant's dead, your children are probably his heirs, that's more money than you've got over there in the drawer. What do you want to take part of the loot for when you can get it all?”

“I don't know what you mean,” she said. She was very pale.

Macauhay said: “Charles thinks Wynant wasn't here this afternoon and that you were given those securities and the check by somebody else, or perhaps stole them yourself. Is that it?” he asked me.

“Practically.”

“But that's ridiculous,” she insisted.

“Be sensible, Mimi,” I said. “Suppose Wynant was killed three months ago and his corpse disguised as somebody else. He's supposed to have gone away leaving powers of attorney with Macaulay. All right, then, the estate's completely in Macaulay's hands for ever and ever, or at least until he finishes plundering it, because you can't even—”

Macaulay stood up saying: “I don't know what you're getting at, Charles, but I'm—”

“Take it easy,” Guild told him. “Let him have his say out.”

“He killed Wynant and he killed Julia and he killed Nunheim,” I assured Mimi. “What do you want to do? Be next on the list? YOu pught to know damned well that once you've come to his aid by saying you've seen Wynant alive—because that's his weak spot, being the only person up to now who claims to have seen Wynant since October—he's not going to take any chances on having you change your mind—not when it's only a matter of knocking you off with the same gun and putting the blame on Wynant. And what are you doing it for? For those few crunimy bonds in the drawer, a fraction of what you get your hands on through your children if we prove Wynant's dead.”

Mimi turned to Macaulay and said: “You son of a bitch.”

Guild gaped at her, more surprised by that than by anything else that had been said.

Macaulay started to move. I did not wait to see what he meant to do, but slammed his chin with my left fist. The punch was all right, it landed solidly and dropped him, but I felt a burning sensation on my left side and knew I had torn the bullet-wound open.

“What do you want me to do?” I growled at Guild. “Put him in Cellophane for you?”

It was nearly three in the morning when I let myself into our apartment at the Normandie. Nora, Dorothy, and Larry Crowley were in the living-room, Nora and Larry playing backgammon, Dorothy reading a newspaper.

“Did Macaulay really kihi them?” Nora asked immediately.

“Yes. Did the morning papers have anything about Wynant?”

Dorothy said: “No, just about Macaulay being arrested. Why?”

“Macaulay killed him too.”

Nora said, “Really?” Larry said, “I'll be damned.” Dorothy began to cry. Nora looked at Dorothy in surprise.

Dorothy sobbed: “I want to go home to Mamma.”

Larry said not very eagerly: “I'll be glad to take you home if . .

Dorothy said she wanted to go. Nora fussed over her, but did not try to talk her out of going. Larry, trying not to look too unwilling, found his hat and coat. He and Dorothy left.

Nora shut the door behind them and leaned against it. “Explain that to me, Mr. Charalambides,” she said.

I shook my head.

She sat on the sofa beside me. “Now out with it. If you skip a single word, I'll—”

“I'd have to have a drink before I could do any talking.”

She cursed me and brought me a drink. “Has he confessed?”

“Why should he? You can't plead guilty of murder in the first degree. There were too many murders—and at least two of them were too obviously done in cold blood—for the District Attorney to let him plead guilty of second-degree murder. There's nothing for him to do but fight it out.”

“But he did commit them?”

“Sure.”

She pushed my glass down from my mouth. “Stop stalling and tell me about it.”

“Well, it figures out that he and Julia had been gypping Wynant for some time. He'd dropped a lot of money in the market and he'd found out about her past—as Morelli hinted—and the pair of them teamed up on the old man. We're sicking accountants on Macaulay's books and Wynant's and shouldn't have much trouble tracing some of the loot from one to the other.”

“Then you don't know positively that he was robbing Wynant?”

“Sure we know. It doesn't click any other way. The chances are Wynant was going away on a trip the 3rd of October, because he did draw five thousand dollars out of the bank in cash, but he didn't close up his shop and give up his apartment. That was done by Macaulay a few days later. Wynant was killed at Macaulay's in Scarsdale on the night of the 3rd. We know that because on the morning of the 4th, when Macaulay's cook, who slept at home, came to work, Macaulay met her at the door with some kind of trumped-up complaint and two weeks' wages and fired her on the spot, not letting her in the house to find any corpses or bloodstains.”

“How did you find that out? Don't skip details.”

“Ordinary routine. Naturally after we grabbed him we went to his office and house to see what we could find out—you know, where-were-youon-the-night-of-June-6, 1894-stuff—and the present cook said she'd only been working for him since the 8th of October, and that led to that. We also found a table with a very faint trace of what we hope is human blood not quite scrubbed out. The scientific boys are making shavings of it now to see if they can soak out any results for us.” (It turned out to be beef blood.)

“Then you're not sure he—”

“Stop saying that. Of course we're sure. That's the only way it clicks. Wynant had found out that Julia and Macaulay were gypping him and also thought, rightly or wrongly, that Julia and Macaulay were cheating on him—and we know he was jealous—so he went up there to confront him with whatever proof he had, and Macaulay, with prison looking him in the face, killed the old man. Now don't say we're not sure. It doesn't make any sense otherwise. Well, there he is with a corpse, one of the harder things to get rid of. Can I stop to take a swallow of whisky?”