Return Of The Thin Man Part 31

Guild: "And then what?"

Dum-Dum: "I just had seen her and was going cross the street to talk to her-a truck get in my way-and when it pa.s.s I see her-and Mr. Church."

Guild: "Didn't you hear the shot?"

Dum-Dum: "No, sir. I am dodging noisy truck."

Guild, to Smitty: "What did you see?"

Smitty: "I heard the shot, I think, though I didn't know what it was at the time."

Guild: "I didn't ask you what you heard. What did you see?"

Smitty: "Just-I looked up and there was Sam falling down right in front of me. I didn't know who it was at the time. I-I don't think I knew until the copper grabbed me."

Guild: "Oh, you didn't? And you didn't know about the gun you dropped?"

Smitty: "I didn't drop that gun. I heard it fall right after he fell, but I didn't drop it."

Guild turns to Ella Waters: "And what's your unlikely story, Hilda?"

Ella, turning to Nick and Nora: "My name's really not Ella Waters. I took that after I got out of jail for shoplifting, but I was honestly trying to go straight, but I knew the police wouldn't believe it after Colonel MacFay was killed, and would find out from my fingerprints who I was, so I ran away; but I felt bad about it and was coming back to tell you about it, because I knew you'd understand, when there was all that excitement downstairs and a policeman that knew me grabbed me and brought me up here, but I-"

Guild stops her by putting a hand over her mouth, growling: "You still talk more and say less than anybody I ever ran into." He turns to Vogel: "And what were you here for, Diamond-Back?"

Vogel: "I had a couple of questions I wanted to ask Charles."

Guild: "Such as for instance?"

Vogel: "Is that monkey Church really dead?"

Guild: "He'll never be any deader. Somebody shot him off the fire-escape from below with a .38, and if the slug hadn't done the job, the fall would-he must've dropped twenty stories."

Vogel: "Okay. I didn't trust that guy, and when it looked like he was going out of his way to do folks a favor I thought I'd better come over and see what I could angle out of Charles."

Guild: "Could you come to the point now-you can fill in the details afterwards."

Vogel: "You're getting it all. I got a place I run uptown that gets a high-cla.s.s trade that wouldn't want their connections to know they're there. Get what I mean? Or do you want me to wait till I can talk through a lawyer?"

Guild: "I get it. You don't admit you run gambling joints."

Vogel: "That's right. Last night there was-say-a bank vice-president in my place and a couple of other customers like that-big and respectable-and Sam Church comes in and sits in with them for an hour or two-including the time MacFay was being killed down on the Island. Well, when I see in the morning papers that coppers are hunting for him, I don't feel so good about it, and I don't think my customers are going to feel so hot either-having to give him that kind of alibi. And just when I'm stewing about it, he phones and says tell them not to worry. He knows what it'll cost them to come to the front for him, and he says even if he's picked up and things look pretty black, he won't call on them unless it's only that between him and the chair-so they can sleep pretty, because he don't think things'll ever get that far."

VanSlack: "I don't understand. Do you mean he had an alibi-a genuine one?"

Nick: "That's what he means. And he didn't want to use it-yet. A man who saw Church going into Vogel's last night was slugged all over Harlem by Church's friends for trying to tell me about it."

VanSlack: "That's incredible."

Nick: "Not as incredible as if Church had killed MacFay, after going to all that trouble before and after to advertise himself as the murderer and coming here trying to get himself pinched."

VanSlack: "But if he were innocent-"

Nick: "I didn't say he was innocent. I'm saying-drew all the attention to himself while his accomplice did the dirty work-and when the accomplice thought Church was working a double cross, the accomplice killed Church."

Dum-Dum draws a deep breath, stops crying, smiles as if to himself.

VanSlack, looking at Smitty and Dum-Dum: "But they have alibis, too."

Nick: "So then they didn't kill MacFay, huh? Maybe Dum-Dum's knife that didn't do the killing had Asta's tooth prints in it from when he pulled it out of the wall of the cottage yesterday-huh?"

Guild: "All right. Who did it?"

Van Slack: "Yes, who?"

Nick, aside to Nora, indicating VanSlack and Guild: "A couple of schoolboys," then: "Didn't you think it was funny that n.o.body heard any sounds of a struggle before the shot at MacFay's-in spite of the signs of a row in which a lamp had been upset and his arm broken-though all of us had heard noises of people moving around afterwards?"

VanSlack: "I don't know. That is-what do you mean?"

Nick: "Let me show you a trick." He sets up the electric-cord-gun-paper-water trick as it was used by the murderer, saying as he arranges it: "I figured this out by myself, but I had an electrician check up the details for me. Lend me a gun, somebody . . . Will you switch on the lights . . . Get me a gla.s.s of water, etc."

The trick works perfectly, even to blowing out the fuses. Nick takes a bow as they all stare at him.

Dum-Dum, who has been held tightly by a policeman up to this point, takes advantage of the policeman's attention being on the trick to suddenly dive across the floor after the pistol that has been hurled into a corner by the recoil, grab it, and begin shooting. Nick has leapt upon Dum-Dum, grappling with him, so that the bullets go wild. As he succeeds in disarming Dum-Dum, a policeman knocks the Cuban cold.

VanSlack, bewildered: "But he had an alibi."

Nick: "Then he's still got it. All he was trying to do just now was to kill the accomplice that killed his Mr. Church."

VanSlack: "And who is that?"

Nick looks at VanSlack and at the others who are impatiently awaiting his reply.

Nick: "You people haven't been paying any attention to what I'm saying or doing. Listen to me now. There was no struggle in MacFay's room. He was stunned-probably with a blow from the hilt of the knife-then his throat was cut and his wrist broken, and it's easy enough to break a dead man's wrist-to pretend there was a struggle in which the lamp and stuff was upset. The trick I just showed you gave the murderer between five and ten minutes to get an alibi before the water soaked through and set the gun off. Get it?"

Nora: "But who, Nick?"

Nick: "Who is the only person that used that particular alibi?"

Nora stares at Nick in bewilderment.

Nick, answering his own question: "Lois, of course. Everybody else had real alibis or none at all." He steps close to Lois, speaking swiftly: "Church, the engineer, planned it, and you carried it through; that's why he needed Smitty to stooge for him, so folks wouldn't suspect him of being mixed up with any other woman. You were friends with Church and Dum-Dum; that's why your dog was friends with them and let them come and go on the grounds as they wanted, and that's why your dog stood up with his paws on his killer's shoulders-as the prints showed-and let his throat get cut."

Lois: "But why should I kill Papa?"

Nick: "For money. But don't interrupt the maestro when he's exposing criminals. I don't get the Horn killing exactly, unless he had found out you killed MacFay and you told him I had you cold or would have when I came back from getting the knife from the dog. He'd have covered you up and would have tried to kill me for those millions he would have when he married you. You had to get him going quick, because once he saw it was Church's knife you'd used, he'd have seen through you. So you put me on the spot, even moving around so I had to turn my back toward where he was standing, and then pushed me off the spot so there was nothing for me to do but kill him in self-defense."

Lois: "But Papa gave me everything I wanted. He-"

Nick: "That wasn't your kind of life and he looked good for years. Your kind of life was the Linda Mills life you had been leading ever since you got old enough to sneak out after the folks went to bed."

Lois: "Linda Mills?"

Nick: "Yes-L. M. for Linda Mills and Lois MacFay. Linda Mills, the girl whose description fits you with allowance for makeup and flashy clothes. Linda Mills, who sleeps without pillows, just as you do. Linda Mills, in whose apartment there is a scorched spot beside the bed and a bullet hole in the wall where the lamp-trick was rehea.r.s.ed. Linda Mills, who disappeared a couple of weeks ago when you and Church started planning MacFay's murder."

Lois stares stonily at him.

Nick: "This is going to be easy enough to prove, you know. We'll make you up for the people who knew you as Linda Mills and see what they say. Or maybe you'd rather be left alone with Dum-Dum after he comes to."

Lois: "But he can't think I killed Sam Church. They said he was shot from the street."

Nick: "Nonsense. They said he was shot from below. Well, he ran up the fire-escape from here, and you leaned out the window and shot him from below, and dropped the gun down after him."

Lois: "But why?"

Nick: "Why? I'm still hoa.r.s.e from standing close to your door bellowing that he was trying to get himself arrested and tried, so he would be in the clear forever after, and in a spot to shake you down if he wanted to double-cross you; and telling you how nuts he was about Smitty and-"

Smitty: "That's a lie and you know it."

Nick: "I don't know anything. Anyhow I thought it would sound good at the time. I didn't know how sweetness here would kill Church, but I wanted to stir her up as much as I could."

Lois, horrified: "Sam wasn't-" Then she pulls herself together, shrugs slightly, says: "Can I talk to you and Nora alone?"

VanSlack and Guild look at Nick, who nods.

Guild: "Okay, but slap her down if she gets funny."

Nick, Nora, and Lois go into the bedroom and shut the door.

Lois to Nick, coolly: "You're right. I'm Linda Mills at heart. I hated having to play Little Red Riding Hood to that horrible old man. So when Sam was fooling around trying to find a way of getting money out of him and picked me up, we found out we talked the same language. I'm not sorry for any of it-except your lying to me about Sam and Smitty-it was a chance and I took it. Having to get rid of Horn that way-and you guessed it right-made things tough-gummed the works pretty bad-but what could I do? Then when I thought Sam was crossing me up for that big tramp-well, I let him have it. I'd always figured he was safe because he was nuts about me, but-oh, well, I still think you gave me a raw deal on that, but the chances are he was playing me for a sap anyway, even if not with Smitty. So far, so good or bad, whichever way you look at it. What I'm getting at is, I'll make a deal with you."

Nick: "What'll you give us? The moon?

Lois, calmly: "You like that brat of yours, don't you?"

Nick and Nora stare at her, alarmed.

Lois: "Let me walk out of here and I'll send the kid back in an hour."

Nick and Nora start for the door together, then Nick checks himself and says to Nora: "You look. I'll stay here with angel."

Nora goes into the living room and looks at the sleeping child. It is not Nicky. Paying no attention to the others in the room, she runs back to Nick, leaving the door open. She cannot speak, but one look at her tells Nick the child is gone. He grabs Lois by the shoulders.

Lois, wincing, but smiling coolly: "Now you know. Make up your minds. Try to send me to the chair, or get your child back all in one piece. Whichever you like best."

As the others start to come in from the living room, there is a terrific pounding on the corridor door. A policeman opens it.

Into the room comes an enormous unkempt woman carrying Nick Jr. under one arm, holding one of Creeps's friends by the ear with her other hand.

Woman, loudly and angrily: "My beautiful Raphael. Give me back my beautiful Raphael and take this toad-frog you try to palm off on me. Where is my lovely boy?"

Nora runs to her and takes Nick Jr., while the woman, spying the child who has been awakened by the noise and is sitting up on the sofa, goes over and gathers him into her arms, crooning over him: "Mama's darling. Did they try to swap that awful hideous dwarf for Mama's darling? Never again will your mama lend you to go to a party."

Raphael is a truly, deeply, and offensively ugly child.

Jensen and Schultz stare at each other, Schultz muttering: "Kids are like Chinamen-how can you tell 'em apart?"

Lois says philosophically to Nick: "Oh, well, all you can do is try to play the breaks as far as you get them."

THE END.

ANOTHER THIN MAN.

Afterword.

On November 25, 1939, eight days after the release of Another Thin Man, the headline on a brief notice in the Los Angeles Times announced, "Thin Man of Film Fame Gone but t.i.tle Lives On." Dashiell Hammett's original Thin Man was an eccentric inventor named Clyde Wynant, who was, as the Times notes, "killed and buried beneath his laboratory floor, thus providing a mystery for Detective Nick Charles in the initial picture." Yet the t.i.tle character refused to die. "Through a quirk on the public's part, the character of the Thin Man was shifted from its original owner to William Powell. Faced with this widespread belief, the studio decided to t.i.tle the picture Another Thin Man, to fit both Powell and William Poulsen, the eight-month-old infant, who plays Nick Charles Jr." The Times report suggests that MGM was happy to trade on movie fans' misconceptions.

Dashiell Hammett played his part in the confusion, as well, first by posing on the dust jacket of Knopf's first edition of The Thin Man novel. Hammett was lean and stylish as any film star. He was also a master of observation and wordplay who claimed credit for the film's t.i.tle. Hammett told his daughter Jo that MGM's filmmakers had gone round and round, unable to discover a suitably artful moniker for the third of the Thin Man films, and that he had suggested what seemed the obvious solution-Another Thin Man. The t.i.tle was simple and straightforward on its face, subtle in its implications. Little Poulsen joined Wynant, Hammett, and Powell as another of the "thin men." Nick and Nora launched another episode of merry mayhem. And Hammett and the Hacketts were caught up again, against their better judgments, in yet another Thin Man filmmaking ordeal.

While Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich failed to kill off the Thin Man film franchise with Nora's pregnancy, the arrival of Nick Jr. did alter Another Thin Man's trajectory. Nick and especially Nora are more temperate. Nick talks about wanting a drink more often than he gets one. Nora rarely imbibes, as is fitting for a young mother. After reviewing the Hacketts' initial screenplay submission, the Breen office made only a general request to minimize the "display of liquor and drinking." A few scenes depicting violence or s.e.xuality drew specific objections. Body parts, whether b.l.o.o.d.y or alluring, were frowned upon. Innuendo-laden dialogue was censured, though not eliminated. Another Thin Man is tame by comparison with the first two films. Nick and Nora recapture their smart and sa.s.sy relationship and the film maintains what one reviewer called "that agile, faintly sardonic quality." But, whether influenced by the Charleses' transformation into parents, Hammett's accommodation to the Thin Man's formula, or the Hacketts' pragmatic modifications, the film is more domestic than decadent.

Hammett fulfilled his screenwriting obligation to MGM in mid-May 1938. He was hospitalized in New York ten days later, again leaving the Hacketts to shape his crime-fiction story line into its final filmable form. As in After the Thin Man, they pruned, juggled, and appended Hammett's story elements. They compressed the time line by a day, curbed some of the characters' rougher interactions, and reshaped some ancillary action. The Hacketts inject new complications as well, so that Mrs. Bellam professes motherly concern for Lois and Colonel MacFay distrusts Dudley Horn to the extent that he threatens to disinherit his daughter if the two were wed. These were the Hacketts', not Hammett's modifications and while they are generally helpful, the film's plot and resolution remain complicated.

The final filmed version of Another Thin Man also shows changes to Hammett's cast of supporting characters. Hammett's original thieving bellboy, "a youngish man with a small, cheerful, wizened face" named "Face" Peppler, is supplanted by "Creeps" Binder-who is similarly young and cheery, but without the improbably aged face. Interesting, Hammett and the Hacketts used the name "Face" Peppler for entirely different characters in The Thin Man novel and film. Mrs. Dolley's role is more subtly altered. Hammett describes the landlord of Linda Mills's apartment building as a "frowsy, middle-aged woman with the sniffles. In one hand she carries a newspaper, in the other a handkerchief." Marjorie Main plays Dolley, as gruff as Hammett imagined. But Main is a tough not tawdry character, who carries no damp handkerchief and delivers her lines in tones that minimize potential for innuendo. Changes to her role might be attributed to Production Code censors, who had objected to implications that the building was a "house of a.s.signation, or that the landlady is a madam." The breed of the murdered dog undergoes more conspicuous transformation, beginning in Hammett's "Farewell Murder" as an Airedale pup, becoming in his screen story a collie, and ending in the film as an Irish wolfhound-big enough to leave paw prints on a man's shoulders.

Two other supporting roles deserve attention. The first is a.s.sistant District Attorney VanSlack. In Hammett's screen story VanSlack is an unlikeable character who toggles between incompetence and authoritarian insolence. Hammett described him as "a tall, stooped colorless young man with a vague face; the same vagueness characterizes his words and manner." Hammett's VanSlack is ambiguous, tentative, and unsure how to a.s.sert himself and enact his obligations. In Another Thin Man, the role is played by Otto Kruger, a veteran stage and film actor who was fifty-four when he received an urgent casting call from MGM and rushed back to the studio from a family vacation. Kruger's VanSlack is cryptic-even vague-but he offers none of the moral vacillation suggested by Hammett's younger version. The character still works, and works well, but Hammett's subtleties are lost in translation.

The final character of note is Nick Charles Jr., described in Hammett's screen story as "a fat, year-old boy who is interested in very little besides eating and sleeping." He eats anything and sleeps anywhere. His basic vocabulary consists of "*Drunk' for things he does not like and *Gimme' for things he does." Nick Jr. rarely laughs, never cries, and is not amused by his fun-loving parents. "He ordinarily regards them with the same sort of mild curiosity or tolerant boredom with which he regards the rest of the world," wrote Hammett. Bored babies don't play well on the big screen, however, so while William Poulsen's infant character is docile, he is hardly the dullard child that Hammett bestowed on the Charleses in Another Thin Man's screen story. Hammett's littlest Thin Man was tubby, vapid, and humorless-the opposite of everything Nick and Nora represented and a fitting Parthian shot for Hammett's last piece of long fiction.

J. M. R.

SEQUEL TO THE THIN MAN.