Дэшил Хэммет - The Hunter and Other Stories

A downstairs crash rattled windows, shook the room, put weapons in the hands of men at the door. Feet thumped on distant steps, scurried overhead, stamped in the hall. The door opened far enough to admit a pale hatchet-face.

“Ben,” it addressed the cheerful man, “Big Fat wants you. We been ranked!”

Two shots close together sounded below. Ben, recently Tom, hurried out after the hatchet-face, leaving the brutish Bill alone to guard the prisoners. He glowered threateningly at them with his little red-brown eyes, crouching beside the door, blackjack in one hand, battered revolver in the other.

Another shot thundered. Something broke with a splintering sound in the rear of the house. A distant man yelled throatily, “Put the slug to him!” In another part of the building a man laughed. Heavy feet were on the stairs, in the hall.

Bill spun to the door as the door came in. Gunpowder burned diagonally upward in a dull flash. Metal buttons glistened against blue cloth around, under, over Bill. His blackjack arched through the air, twisted end over end, and thudded on the floor.

A sallow plump man in blue civilian clothes came into the room, stepping over the policemen struggling with Bill on the floor. His hands were in his jacket pockets and he nodded to Newbrith senior without removing his hat.

“Detective-sergeant McClurg,” he introduced himself. “We nabbed six or seven of ’em, all of ’em, I guess. What’s it all about?”

“Robbery, that’s what it’s all about!” Newbrith stormed. “They seized the house at daybreak. All day they’ve held us here, prisoners in our own home! I’ve been forced to withdraw my bank balances, to sell stocks and bonds and everything that could be sold quickly. I’ve been forced to make myself ridiculous by demanding currency for everything, by sending God knows what kind of messengers for it. I’ve been forced to borrow money from men I despise! I might just as well live in a wilderness as in a city that keeps me poor with its taxes for all the protection I’ve got. I haven’t—”

“We can’t guess what’s happening,” the detective-sergeant said. “We came as soon as Pentner gave us the rap.”

“Pentner?” It was a despairing scream. The old man’s eyes rolled frenziedly at the bright round hole in the curtained window that concealed his neighbor’s residence. “That damned scoundrel! I hope he waits for me to thank him for his impudence in meddling in my business! I’d rather lose everything I’ve got in the world than be beholden to that—”

The detective-sergeant’s plumpness shook with an inner mirth. “You don’t have to let that bother you,” he interrupted the old man’s tirade. “He won’t like it so much either! He phoned in saying you had taken a shot at him while he was standing in his room brushing his hair. He said he always expected something like that would happen, because he knew you were crazy as a pet cuckoo and ought to have been locked up long ago. He said that, since you had missed him, he was glad you had cut loose at him, because now the city would have to put you away where you belonged.”

“So you see,” came the triumph of Brenda Newbrith’s voice, “Mr. Trate is clever, and he did show you!”

“Eh?” was the most her grandfather could achieve.

“You know very well,” she declared, “that if he hadn’t set fire to the sofa you wouldn’t have burst the cushion, and the feathers wouldn’t have tickled that man’s nose, and he wouldn’t have sneezed, and his gun wouldn’t have gone off, and the bullet wouldn’t have frightened Mr. Pentner into thinking you were trying to kill him, and he wouldn’t have phoned the police, and they wouldn’t have come here to rescue us. That stands to reason. Well, then, how can you say that Mr. Trate’s cleverness didn’t do it?”

Detective-sergeant McClurg’s plumpness shook again. Old Newbrith snorted and fumbled for words that wouldn’t come. The younger Newbrith murmured something about the house that Jack built.

The young man who had been clever turned a bit red and had a moment of trouble with his breathing, but the bland smile his face wore was the smile of one who wears honestly won laurels easily, neither over-valuing nor under-valuing them.

“I think it’s wonderful,” the girl assured him, “to be able to make plans that go through successfully no matter how much everybody tries to spoil them from the very beginning.”

Nobody could find a reply to that — if one were possible.

I always knew West was eccentric.

Ever since the days of our youth, in various universities — for we seemed destined to follow each other about the globe — I had known Alexander West to be a person of the most bizarre, though not unattractive, personality: At Heidelberg, where he renounced water as a beverage; at Pisa, where he affected a one-piece garment for months; at the Sorbonne, where he consorted with the most notorious characters, boasting an acquaintance with Le Grand Raoul, an unspeakable ruffian of La Villette.

And in later life, when we met in Constantinople, where West was American minister, I found that his idiosyncrasies were common topics in the diplomatic corps. In the then Turkish capital I naturally dined with West at the Legation, and except for his pointed beard and Prussian mustache being somewhat more gray, I found him the same tall, courtly figure, with a keen brown eye and the hands of generations, an aristocrat.

But his eccentricities were then of more refined fantasy. No more baths in snow, no more beer orgies, no more Libyan negroes opening the door, no more strange diets. At the Legation, West specialized in rugs and gems. He had a museum in carpets. He had even abandoned his old practice of having the valet call him every morning at eight o’clock with a gramophone record.

I left the Legation thinking West had reformed. “Rugs and precious stones,” I reflected; “that’s such a banal combination for West.” Although I did recall that he had told me he was doing something strange with a boat on the Bosporus; but I neglected to inquire about the details. It was something in connection with work, as he had said, “Everybody has a pleasure boat; I have a work boat, where I can be alone.” But that is all I retained concerning this freak of his mind.

It was some years later, however, when West had retired from diplomacy, that he turned up in my Paris apartment, a little grayer, straight and keen as usual, but with his beard a trifle less pointed — and, let’s say, a trifle less distinguished-looking. He looked more the successful business man than the traditional diplomat. It was a cold, blustery night, so I bade West sit down by my fire and tell me of his adventures; for I knew he had not been idle since leaving Constantinople.

“No, I am not doing anything,” he answered, after a pause, in reply to my question as to his present activities. “Just resting and laughing to myself over a little prank I played on a friend.”

“Oho!” I declared; “so you’re going in for pranks now.”

He laughed heartily. I could hardly see West as a practical joker. That was one thing out of his line. As he held his long, thin hands together, I noticed an exceptionally fine diamond ring on his left hand. It was of an unusual luster, deep set in gold, flush with the cutting. His quick eye caught me looking at this ornament. As I recall, West had never affected jewelry of any kind.

“Oh, yes, you are wondering about this,” he said, gazing into the crystal. “Fine yellow diamond; not so rare, but unusual, set in gold, which they are not wearing any longer. A little present.” He repeated blandly, after a pause, “A little present for stealing.”