Дэшил Хэммет: Woman in the Dark

Through the open window came the sound of a shot.

She ran to the window and, hands on sill, leaned far out.

Fifty feet to the left, on the top of a fence that divided the long row of back yards from the alley behind, Brazil was poised, crouching. As Luise Fischer looked, another shot sounded and Brazil fell down out of sight into the alley behind the fence. She caught her breath with a sob.

The pounding on the flat’s front door suddenly stopped. She drew her head in through the window. She took her hands from the sill. Her face was an automaton’s. She pulled the window down without seeming conscious of what she was doing, and was standing in the center of the room looking critically at her fingernails when a tired-faced huge man in wrinkled clothes appeared in the doorway.

He asked: “Where’s he at?”

She looked up at him from her fingernails as she had looked at her fingernails. “Who?”

He sighed wearily. “Brazil.” He went to a closet door, opened it. “You the Fischer woman?” He shut the door and moved toward the window, looking around the room, not at her, with little apparent interest.

“I am Luise Fischer,” she said to his back.

He raised the window and leaned out. “How’s it, Tom?” he called to someone below. Whatever answer he received was inaudible in the room.

Luise Fischer put attentiveness off her face as he turned to her. “I ain’t had breakfast yet,” he said.

Donny’s voice came through the doorway from another part of the flat: “I tell you I don’t know where he’s gone to. He just dropped the dame here and hightailed. He didn’t tell me nothing. He—”

A metallic voice said, “I bet you!” disagreeably. There was the sound of a blow.

Donny’s voice: “If I did know I wouldn’t tell you, you big crum! Now sock me again.”

The metallic voice: “If that’s what you want.” There was the sound of another blow.

Fan’s voice, shrill with anger, screamed, “Stop that, you—” and ceased abruptly.

The huge man went to the bedroom door and called toward the front of the flat: “Never mind, Ray.” He addressed Luise Fischer: “Get some clothes on.”

“Why?” she asked coolly.

“They want you back in Mile Valley.”

“For what?” She did not seem to think it was true.

“I don’t know,” he grumbled impatiently. “This ain’t my job. We’re just picking you up for them. Something about some rings that belonged to a guy’s mother and disappeared from the house the same time you did.”

She held up her hands and stared at the rings. “But they didn’t. He bought them for me in Paris and—” The huge man scowled wearily. “Well, don’t argue with me about it. It’s none of my business. Where was this fellow Brazil meaning to go when he left here?”

“I do not know.” She took a step forward, holding out her hand in an appealing gesture. “Is he—”

“Nobody ever does,” he complained, ignoring the question he had interrupted. “Get your clothes on.” He held a hand out to her. “Better let me take care of the junk. “

She hesitated, then slipped the rings from her fingers and dropped them into his hand.

“Shake it up,” he said. “I ain’t had breakfast yet.” He went out and shut the door.

She dressed hurriedly in the clothes she had taken off a short while before, though she did not again put on the one stocking she had worn down from Brazil’s house. When she had finished, she went quietly, with a backward glance at the closed door, to the window, and began slowly, cautiously, to raise the sash.

The tired-faced huge man opened the door. “Good thing I was peeping through the keyhole,” he said patiently. “Now come on.”

Fan came into the room behind him. Her face was very pink; her voice was shrill. “What’re you picking on her for?” she demanded. “She didn’t do anything. Why don’t you—”

“Stop it, stop it,” the huge man begged. His weariness seemed to have become almost unbearable. “I’m only a copper told to bring her in on a larceny charge. I got nothing to do with it, don’t know anything about it.”

“It is all right, Mrs. Link,” Luise Fischer said with dignity. “It will be all right.”

“But you can’t go like that,” Fan protested, and turned to the huge man. “You got to let her put on some decent clothes.”

He sighed and nodded. “Anything, if you’ll only hurry it up and stop arguing with me.”

Fan hurried out.

Luise Fischer addressed the huge man: “He too is charged with larceny?”

He sighed. “Maybe one thing, maybe another,” he said spiritlessly.

She said: “He has done nothing.”

“Well, I haven’t neither,” he complained.

Fan came in with some clothes, a blue suit and hat, dark slippers, stockings, and a white blouse.

“Just keep the door open,” the huge man said. He went out of the room and stood leaning against an opposite wall, where he could see the windows in the bedroom.

Luise Fischer changed her clothes, with Fan’s assistance, in a corner of the room where they were hidden from him.

“Did they catch him?” Fan whispered.

“I do not know.”

“I don’t think they did.”

“I hope they did not.”

Fan was kneeling in front of Luise Fischer, putting on her stockings. “Don’t let them make you talk till you’ve seen Harry Klaus,” she whispered rapidly. “You tell them he’s your lawyer and you got to see him first. We’ll send him down and he’ll get you out all right.” She looked up abruptly. “You didn’t cop them, did you?”

“Steal the rings?” Luise Fischer asked in surprise.

“I didn’t think so,” the blonde woman said. “So you won’t have to—”

The huge man’s weary voice came to them: “Come on — cut out the barbering and get into the duds.”

Fan said: “Go take a run at yourself.”

Luise Fischer carried her borrowed hat to the looking glass and put it on; then, smoothing down the suit, looked at her reflection. The clothes did not fit her so badly as might have been expected.

Fan said: “You look swell.”

The man outside the door said: “Come on.”

Luise Fischer turned to Fan. “Goodbye, and I—”

The blonde woman put her arms around her. “There’s nothing to say, and you’ll be back here in a couple of hours. Harry’ll show those saps they can’t put anything like this over on you.”

The huge man said: “Come on.”

Luise Fischer joined him and they went toward the front of the flat.

As they passed the living room door Donny, rising from the sofa, called cheerfully: “Don’t let them worry you, baby. We’ll—”

A tall man in brown put a hand over Donny’s face and pushed him back on the sofa.

Luise Fischer and the huge man went out. A police department automobile was standing in front of the house where Brazil had left his coupé. A dozen or more adults and children were standing around it, solemnly watching the door through which she came.

A uniformed policeman pushed some of them aside to make passageway for her and her companion and got into the car behind them. “Let her go, Tom,” he called to the chauffeur, and they drove off.

The huge man shut his eyes and groaned softly. “God, I’m schwach! ”

They rode seven blocks and halted in front of a square red brick building on a corner. The huge man helped her out of the automobile and took her between two large frosted globes into the building, and into a room where a bald fat man in uniform sat behind a high desk.

The huge man said: “It’s that Luise Fischer for Mile Valley.” He took a hand from a pocket and tossed her rings on the desk. “That’s the stuff, I guess.”