The Hunter and Other Stories Part 4

"I asked to see Berthier, who was still overwrought and irritable.

"'h.e.l.lo, West,' he said to me. 'You're just the man I want. Please come down and talk with these detectives. You must help me.'

"'Nothing doing,' I said. 'Your man Armand has just been very offensive.'

"Berthier stared at me in amazement.

"'Armand!' he repeated. 'Armand has been offensive!'

"'He called me a Balkan, said I had big feet, and that I had a square head, and that I was hardly what one would call a gentleman.'

"Berthier's eyes popped out like saucers.

"'It's unthinkable,' he said. 'He must have been describing that crook we're after.'

"I could see that Berthier took this robbery seriously.

"'I thought you never fell for those old gags,' I said.

"'Old gags!' he retorted, his voice rising. 'Hardly a gag, that!'

"'Old as the hills!' I a.s.sured him. 'The basis of most of the so-called magic one sees on the stage.' I paused. 'And what will you do with these nice people when you catch them?'

"'Ten years in jail, at least,' he growled.

"I looked at my watch. The twenty-four hours were well over. Berthier had talked himself out of adjectives concerning this gang of thieves; he could only sit and clench his fists and bite his lips.

"'Four million,' he muttered. 'It could have been avoided. That man Armand-'

"I took my cue. 'That man Berthier,' I said crisply, accusingly, 'should run his establishment better. Besides, my wager concerned you, and not Armand-'

"Berthier looked up sharply, his brain struggling with some dark clew. I mechanically put my hand in my trousers pocket and very slowly drew out a long iridescent string of crystallized carbon ending in a great square pendant.

"Berthier's jaw dropped. He leaned forward. His hand raised and slowly dropped to his side.

"'You!' he whispered. 'You, West!'

"I thought he would collapse. I laid the necklace on his desk, a hand on his shoulder. He found his voice.

"'Was it you who got those necklaces?'

"'No. It was I who stole that necklace, and I who win the wager. Please hand over the yellow diamond.'

"I think it took Berthier ten minutes to regain his composure. He didn't know whether to curse me or to embrace me. I told him the whole story, beginning with our dinner at Ciro's. The proof of it was that the necklace was there on his desk.

"And I am sure Armand thinks I am insane. He was there when Berthier gave me this ring, this fine yellow diamond."

West settled back in his chair, holding his gla.s.s in the same hand that wore the gem.

"Not so bad, eh?" he asked.

I admitted that it was a bit complicated. I was curious about one point, and that was his make-up. He explained: "You see, the broad low-crowned hat reduces one inch from my height; the wide whiskers, instead of the pointed beard, another inch; the bulgy coat, another inch; the trousers, high at the shoes, another inch. That's four inches off my stature with an increase of girth about one-sixth my height-an altogether different figure. A visit to a pharmacy changed my complexion from that of a Nordic to a Semitic."

"And the hotel?" I asked.

"Very simple. I had Berthier go around and pay the damages for plugging that hole. He'll do anything I say now."

I regarded West in the waning firelight.

He was supremely content.

"You must have hated to give up those Indian gems after what you went through to get them?"

West smiled.

"That was the hardest of all. It was like giving away something that was mine, mine by right of conquest. And I'll tell you another thing-if they had not belonged to a friend, I would have kept them."

And knowing West as I do, I am sure he spoke the truth.

ACTION AND THE QUIZ KID.

Lots of kids used to hero-worship Action. At eighteen, he could never navigate the sidewalks without a coterie of awestruck ten year olds swarming around him. They worshipped him for his round black derby and the fat cigar that left a wavering trace of smoke over the route to the poolroom. But none of them had the great crush of Vittorio Corregione.

Action had entered the City College Business School. His high school marks had been poor and he had been forced to take an entrance exam to make the college. I drilled and coached him for a solid two-week period and his voracious brain devoured and held everything I fed it. He pa.s.sed the exam with highest marks.

The successful entrance was only the beginning of his troubles. To pick out a course that would lead to a money-making profession was the real problem. Uncle Myron volunteered the advice. Having stashed away the most loot in the family, Uncle Myron was ent.i.tled to offer advice to young college entrees.

"Take a course in accounting," pontificated Uncle Myron, "and when you get out you'll find a wide-open field. I personally will guarantee you placement in an accounting job."

The money man had spoken, so Action followed through. Years later, when Action had staggered past the course without having cracked a single book, he came to Uncle Myron for the promised job. Myron told him to enlist in the army. Our uncle always held patriotism above all.

Action found the business administration course a complete bore. The usual shortage of cash at home forced him to get a job delivering dog medicine to Park Ave. homes but he grew tired of seeing the dogs wearing finer sweaters than he had and he quit. He had refrained from betting for a couple of months after starting school, but the old lure was too strong and after he located a bookmaker and ticker near the college he was back in the old-time groove. He hung around the Board, noting scores and getting in an occasional small bet when he met the kid.

Vittorio Corregione was a skinny little runt of fourteen with snapping black eyes, and a hungry wet red mouth that puckered in a perpetual pout. He was a bright bundle of brain and attended the honor school that was housed in the college building. Action failed to discover why he shunned his home and the kid wouldn't volunteer the information, but the kid never did want to return at night. He adored Action and saw in the little schemes and plots that my brother wove, the manifestations of genius.

Action had noted the kid hanging around the poolroom but had never bothered to say too much to him until one day, when the runt came over with a five-dollar bill and asked Action to wager it for him. He placed the bet as per the request and the money rode safely home. Thereafter, Vittorio would seek out Action for all of his wagers and even allow him to hold the cash winnings.

The following term the kid was moved to the afternoon session and couldn't make the poolroom during the action hours. He'd hand my brother a small roll and give him carte blanche to pick winners for him, phoning later in the afternoon to discover how he had made out. I was spending the afternoon with Action one day when the kid called. Action eyed the incomplete scores on the Board and rattled off some names. Each one was a stiff and the kid was sure to drop some twenty bucks.

"What's the pitch here," I asked, after he had hung up the phone. "You grabbed the boy a bundle of blanks."

Action looked out the window and his ruddy face took on an even darker shade of red.

"I didn't pick any blanks," he muttered, half to himself. "Things haven't been breaking right for me lately and I've been dipping into the kid's dough. As a matter of fact, I didn't make any bets at all today."

"You mean," I gasped, "you're suckering the kid out of his dough?"

"If not me, some other sonova b.i.t.c.h." He turned on his heel and walked away.

Action was not always as brutal as on this day. If he was doing well, he'd give the kid a fair shake. But somehow he didn't make out too often and the kid suffered. A wide swath was cut in the kid's roll but he never complained and he took it regularly on the chin. One day the apparently limitless wad began to thin out and the kid dropped the play.

"Action," he said, "I want your advice on a business venture."

"What kind of business, kid?"

Vittorio blushed. "I know you'll laugh at me but I'll tell you anyway. I want to book small bets like laying ten to one against a guy hitting a homer in a particular game. Herb Roddes has been drawing a fat take with that pitch in my math cla.s.s."

Action smiled gently, "It's your dough, Vit, and your life. To show you I have no ill will towards you, call me tomorrow and I'll feed you a bet."

The kid almost purred at Action's gesture and floated out of the poolroom on an inflated cloud of if-money. He called Action at three the following afternoon, right after the ticker had announced a homer for J. DiMaggio.

"At ten to one, Vit, I'll put a deuce on J. DiMag to hit a homer today. Thank you kid and good luck."

The kid didn't make out too well on his venture and went bust after the first day. Action took his twenty-dollar payoff and roughed the kid's hair with his fingers.

"You're wasting your time, Vit, when you work with a small roll. You've got to begin fat or you just can't make it."

The kid's big black eyes had grown bigger and more desperate looking. His gestures had become quicker and reflected an overwrought inner tension that threatened to consume him.

"I can get dough, Action," he offered. "At least I can get stuff that's worth dough. If I do, Action," he pleaded, "would you hock it for me, old friend?"

The old friend hocked the kid's books and when the books began to run out, little items that came from the home. But tie clasps and confirmation rings don't bring in much. The kid laid a big turnip of a gold watch on the table one evening. Action hefted it and gasped.

"It's a ton weight, Vit, for sure. It'll bring in at least ten or fifteen for the gold alone."

"Not the gold, Action. Just hock it. I got to get it back later on. Get me fifteen for it and you can keep five."

The p.a.w.nbroker offered twenty on a loan and commented happily on the weight of the gold case. Action was upset over what he had to do but he did it. The Frammis-We-Pay-Highest-Prices-for-Old-Gold Company gave him forty bucks for the gold and tossed the unwanted works into a trash basket.

The kid accepted his ten with delight and ran through it in a day. He was feverish when he left that evening and Action solicitously made him bundle up against the autumn winds. He phoned Action that night.

"I just got to get the watch back tomorrow, Action. Something has come up and I just got to return it. Lend me fifteen bucks old pal and I'll return it to you first chance I get."

"I ain't even got the five you gave me," muttered Action.

"You don't understand," half screamed the kid, "I got to get it back. It ain't a maybe situation anymore!"

"Must or maybe, I ain't got the dough."

"I'll get it somehow and give it to you tomorrow so that you can get it back for me."

Action wrestled inside for a bit.

"Did you hear me, old friend, I'll get the dough to you somehow."

"No use, kid, the watch ain't hocked. I sold the gold and the works were sc.r.a.pped. There's no way of ever getting it back."

The kid gasped. A sick despairing whine came wailing over the wire in a heartrending keen and the phone clicked off.

Action didn't show at the poolroom the next day, but it didn't matter. Neither did the kid. In a few days, Action seemed to have forgotten that Vittorio had ever existed.

I mentioned the kid to him a year or so later and he told the story of the watch. I sat down on the nearest curb and tried to hold down a cantankerous stomach. Action drew his cigar out of his mouth, slowly bubbled bolls of smoke in a gray, upward spiralling arch.

"One thing bothers the h.e.l.l out of me," he said, "what in h.e.l.l ever became of the kid?"

MEN.

COMMENTARY.

Dashiell Hammett's long-standing interest in the ways in which men struggle to find their places among each other and in the world is reflected in the eight stories collected here. The pulp magazines of the post-WWI era had provided an ideal marketplace for Hammett's hard-boiled crime fiction-"real, honest-to-Jasper he-man stuff" in the words of Black Mask editor Phil Cody-satisfying blue-collar readers with triumphant tales of working heroes who were both shrewd and strong. The explorations of masculinity featured here, however, all of which were unpublished during Hammett's lifetime, seem targeted to broader audiences. Hammett had his earliest sights set on tony literary periodicals and later, as his reputation developed, on the more lucrative slick magazines. The first three tales were completed no later than 1926. The last two were written perhaps a decade later. In the span of those years Hammett's ambitions expanded, his standpoint shifted, and his writing evolved-yet his attention to core tensions remained fixed, sharp, and wryly irreverent.

"Fragments of Justice"-one of the earliest pieces of Hammett's unpublished work-was sold to Forum magazine, but never released. It was likely submitted sometime in 1922, when Hammett's references to the Jack DempseyGeorges Carpentier fight of July 1921 and Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle's acquittal in February 1922 would have been fresh in readers' minds. As in "Seven Pages" (in the Men and Women section that follows), Hammett uses a series of vignettes to mock private conceits and public conventions.

"A Throne for the Worm" was suited to and probably intended for publication in the Smart Set, "The Aristocrat among Magazines," edited by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan. Smart Set debuted Hammett's first published fiction in October 1922, and featured five additional contributions in the year that followed. Hammett explores one of his favorite early topics in this story-the struggle of a man who suffers daily humiliation while yearning for a modic.u.m of respect.

In "Magic," Hammett melds his concern for professional obligation with his enthusiastic interest in the supernatural. Among his favorite writers on the mystical arts was Arthur Edward Waite, who wrote the cla.s.sic work on Rosicrucianism, The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross (1924), mentioned by Hammett in his second novel, The Dain Curse (1929). Waite also wrote The Book of Black Magic and Pacts (1898) revised as The Book of Ceremonial Magic (1911), apparently used as a reference source for this story. As in the tale of the Maltese falcon, Hammett informs his fiction with scholarly accuracy. The Black Pullet ma.n.u.script, including its protracted t.i.tle and subt.i.tle, is genuine, first published, according to Waite, in Rome in 1740.

"Faith" was probably completed in 1926, the year the Hammett family moved from Eddy to Hyde Street. Its dark conflict is consistent with Hammett's personal viewpoints. Although raised as a Catholic, he was zealously critical of the Church, which he considered a political troublemaker and exploiter of the poor. Reference to Wobbly songster Joe Hill's "The Preacher and the Slave" also points to an early awareness of progressive labor causes. Hammett's sympathies in the contest between workmen are never in question.

"An Inch and a Half of Glory" was written shortly after "Faith," listing first the same Hyde Street address, then Post Street, where Hammett lived between 1927 and 1929, while writing his first three novels-Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, and The Maltese Falcon. Unlike the novels, however, there is no crime involved in the short story. Questions of valor and ident.i.ty drive the narrative, evidence that even during Hammett's Black Mask heyday, he strove for more mainstream expressions of his talent. The influence of two young daughters on Hammett's life during this period may have heightened his sensitivity to a man's duty to vulnerable youth.

The first page of "Nelson Redline" is missing from Hammett's archives, lost at some point between the writing and the saving. The t.i.tle is penciled in Hammett's hand on the second sheet. The setting is almost certainly San Francisco and the tension, much like in "Inch and a Half of Glory," stems from choices, social expectations, and questions of character revealed in response to the threat of fire.

"Monk and Johnny Fox" marks a break in the short-story sequence. There is no header, no address, fewer clues to time and place. But the text suggests a shift from San Francisco to New York, where Hammett lived, off and on, beginning in late 1929. The style and subject matter link the story to "His Brother's Keeper" (Collier's, February 1934), likewise narrated in the first person by a troubled young fighter called Kid. The storyteller in "Monk" is more wary and self-aware than in "Brother's Keeper" and it is unclear whether the two are discrete characters who share a commonplace nickname or a single youth who (much like Effie in The Maltese Falcon) has been forced to abandon hopeful innocence. While several of Hammett's works feature cameo appearances from the fighting world, only these two stories focus on its extreme masculine turf and agonizing, untenable options.

"The Cure" explores the tenets of courage-a hallmark of male ident.i.ty-as both man against environment and man against man. In "Nelson Redline" and "Inch and a Half of Glory," defining challenges stemmed from fire, one of humankind's primordial adversaries. In "The Cure," the issue is water, a less volatile but equally intractable foe. The conflict is set at an unidentified lakeside, amplified by the taunts of a braggart, and complicated (as often happens in Hammett's fiction) by the presence of a woman. Although Hammett's draft typescript lacks date or address, the story is markedly subtle and sophisticated in its treatment of social interactions, suggesting that the tale dates to at least the early 1930s.