The Early Pulp of Dashiell Hammett - Volume 1: "I deserve all the love you can spare me. And I want a lot more than I deserve."

By Dashiell Hammett

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born on May 27th, 1894 at Saint Mary's County, Maryland. Despite a short education he laid the groundwork for his classic writing by later working for the famous Pinkerton National Detective Agency. During this employment he took time off to serve in the war but this was limited to catching Spanish flu and then tuberculosis ensuring he spent most of his Army time as a patient at Cushman Hospital in Tacoma, Washington. His health issues had become further exacerbated by his heavy drinking and by the time he was writing full time he had become an alcoholic. That jump into writing was immeasurably helped by his work at Pinkertons which provided both source material and inspiration, especially for his earlier works in the 1920s which centered on detective fiction. His first published work was in 1922 for the magazine, The Smart Set. This would lead to his hard-boiled pulp classics; Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key and The Thin Man being his most well known. As Raymond Chandler said of him “He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.” By 1934 Hammett had written his last novel and was embarked on a 30 year affair with playwright Lillian Hellman. His left wing politics clashed with the government and in 1951 after refusing to answer question on the whereabouts of several convicted but absconded colleagues Hammett was found guilty of contempt of court and served time in a West Virginia federal penitentiary where, apparently, he was assigned to cleaning toilets. He testified on March 26, 1953 before the House Un-American Activities Committee about his own activities, but refused to cooperate with the committee and was blacklisted. As the years of the 1950s wore on, Hammett became reclusive and no longer engaged with things that he had once loved, even his typewriter. On January 10, 1961, Hammett died in New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital, of lung cancer, diagnosed just two months before. As a veteran of two World Wars, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Copyright Group
• Release date: Oct 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781785434464

Book preview

The Early Pulp of Dashiell Hammett

Volume 1

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born on May 27th, 1894 at Saint Mary's County, Maryland.

Despite a short education he laid the groundwork for his classic writing by later working for the famous Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

During this employment he took time off to serve in the war but this was limited to catching Spanish flu and then tuberculosis ensuring he spent most of his Army time as a patient at Cushman Hospital in Tacoma, Washington. 

His health issues had become further exacerbated by his heavy drinking and by the time he was writing full time he had become an alcoholic.

That jump into writing was immeasurably helped by his work at Pinkertons which provided both source material and inspiration, especially for his earlier works in the 1920s which centered on detective fiction.

His first published work was in 1922 for the magazine, The Smart Set. This would lead to his hard-boiled pulp classics;  Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key and The Thin Man being his most well known.

As Raymond Chandler said of him He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.

By 1934 Hammett had written his last novel and was embarked on a 30 year affair with playwright Lillian Hellman.  His left wing politics clashed with the government and in 1951 after refusing to answer question on the whereabouts of several convicted but absconded colleagues Hammett was found guilty of contempt of court and served time in a West Virginia federal penitentiary where, apparently, he was assigned to cleaning toilets. 

He testified on March 26, 1953 before the House Un-American Activities Committee about his own activities, but refused to cooperate with the committee and was blacklisted.

As the years of the 1950s wore on, Hammett became reclusive and no longer engaged with things that he had once loved, even his typewriter.

On January 10, 1961, Hammett died in New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital, of lung cancer, diagnosed just two months before. As a veteran of two World Wars, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Index of Contents

THE ROAD HOME

ARSON PLUS

THE SECOND-STORY ANGEL

BODIES PILED UP aka House Dick

THE MAN WHO KILLED DAN ODAMS

THE TENTH CLEW

NIGHT SHOTS

ZIGZAGS OF TREACHERY

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

DASHIELL HAMMETT – A SHORT BIOGRAPHY

DASHIELL HAMMETT – A CONCISE BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE ROAD HOME

You're a fool to pass it up! You'll get just as much credit and reward for taking back proof of my death as you will for taking me back. And I got papers and stuff buried back near the Yunnan border that you can have to back up your story; and you needn't be afraid that I'll ever show up to spoil your play.

The gaunt man in faded khaki frowned with patient annoyance and looked away from the blood-shot brown eyes in front of him, over the teak side of the jahaz to where the wrinkled snout of a muggar broke the surface of the river. When the small crocodile submerged again, Hagedom's gray eyes came back to the pleading ones before him, and he spoke wearily, as one who has been answering the same arguments again and again.

I can't do it, Barnes. I left New York two years ago to; get you, and for two years I've been in this damned country—here and in Yunnan—hunting you. I promised my people I'd stay until I found you, and I kept my word. Lord! man, with a touch of exasperation, after all I've gone through you don't expect me to throw them down now—now that the job's as good as done!

The dark man in the garb of a native smiled an oily, ingratiating smile and brushed away his captor's words with a wave of his hand.

I ain't offering you a dinky coupla thousand dollars; I'm offering you your pick out of one of the richest gem beds in Asia—a bed that was hidden by the Mran-ma when the British jumped the country. Come back up there with me and I'll show you rubies and sapphires and topazes that'll knock your eye out. All I'm asking you is to go back up there with me and take a look at 'em. If you don't like 'em you'll still have me to take back to New York.

Hagedorn shook his head slowly.

You're going back to New York with me. Maybe man-hunting isn't the nicest trade in the world but it's all the trade I've got, and this jewel bed of yours sounds phoney to me. I can't blame you for not wanting to go back—but just the same I'm taking you.

Barnes glared at the detective disgustedly.

You're a fine chump! And it's costing me and you thousands of dollars! Hell!

He spat over the side insultingly—native-like—and settled himself back on his corner of the split-bamboo mat

Hagedorn was looking past the lateen sail, down the river—the beginning of the route to New York—along which a miasmal breeze was carrying the fifty-foot boat with surprising speed. Four more days and they would be aboard a steamer for Rangoon; then another steamer to Calcutta, and in the end, one to New York—home, after two years!

Two years through unknown country, pursuing what until the very day of the capture had never been more than a vague shadow. Through Yunnan and Burma, combing wilderness with microscopic thoroughness—a game of hide-and-seek up the rivers, over the hills and through the jungles—sometimes a year, sometimes two months and then six behind his quarry. And now successfully home! Betty would be fifteen—quite a lady.

Barnes edged forward and resumed his pleading, with a whine creeping into his voice.

Say, Hagedorn, why don't you listen to reason? There ain't no sense in us losing all that money just for something that happened over two years ago. I didn't mean to kill that guy, anyway. You know how it is; I was a kid and wild and foolish—but I wasn't mean—and I got in with a bunch. Why, I thought of that hold-up as a lark when we planned it! And then that messenger yelled and I guess I was excited, and my gun went off the first thing I knew. I didn't go to kill him; and it won't do him no good to take me back and hang me for it. The express company didn't lose no money. What do they want to hound me like this for? I been trying to live it down.

The gaunt detective answered quietly enough but what kindness there had been in his dry voice before was gone now.

I know—the old story! And the bruises on the Burmese woman you were living with sure show that there's nothing mean about you. Cut it, Barnes, and make up your mind to face it—you and I are going back to New York.

The hell we are!

Barnes got slowly to his feet and backed away a step.

I'd just as leave—

Hagedorn's automatic came out a split second too late; his prisoner was over the side and swimming toward the bank. The detective caught up his rifle from the deck behind him and sprang to the rail. Barnes' head showed for a moment and then went down again, to appear again twenty feet nearer shore. Upstream the man in the boat saw the blunt, wrinkled noses of three muggars, moving toward the shore at a tangent that would intercept the fugitive. He leaned against the teak rail and summed up the situation.

Looks like I'm not going to take him back alive after all—but my job's done. I can shoot him when he shows again, or I can let him alone and the muggars will get him.

Then the sudden but logical instinct to side with the member of his own species against enemies from another wiped out all other considerations, and sent his rifle to his shoulder to throw a shower of bullets into the muggars.

Barnes clambered up the bank of the river, waved his hand over his head without looking back, and plunged into the jungle.

Hagedorn turned to the bearded owner of the jahaz, who had come to his side, and addressed him in his broke Burmese.

Put me ashore—yu nga apau mye—and wait—thaing—until I bring him back—thu yughe.

The captain wagged his black beard protestingly.

Mahok! In the jungle here, sahib a man is as a lei Twenty men might find him in a week, or a month, it may take five years. I cannot wait that long.

The gaunt white man gnawed at his lower lip and looked down the river—the road to New York.

Two years, he said aloud to himself, it took to fin him when he didn't know I was hunting for him. Now-Oh, hell! It may take five years. I wonder about them jewel of his.

He turned to the boatman.

I go after him. You wait three hours, pointing over head, until noon—ne apomha. If I am not back then do not wait—malotu thaing, thwa. Thi?

The captain nodded.

Hokhe!

For five hours the captain kept the jahaz at anchor, and then, when the shadows of the trees on the west bank were creeping out into the river, he ordered the latten sail hoisted, and the teak craft vanished around a bend in the river.

ARSON PLUS

Jim Tarr picked up the cigar I rolled across his desk, looked at the band, bit off an end, and reached for a match.

Three for a buck, he said. You must want me to break a couple of laws for you this time.

I had been doing business with this fat sheriff of Sacramento County for four or five years—ever since I came to the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco office—and I had never known him to miss an opening for a sour crack; but it didn't mean anything.

Wrong both times, I told him. I get them for two bits each, and I'm here to do you a favor instead of asking for one. The company that insured Thornburgh's house thinks somebody touched it off.

That's right enough, according to the fire department. They tell me the lower part of the house was soaked with gasoline, but the Lord knows how they could tell—there wasn't a stick left standing. I've got McClump working on it, but he hasn't found anything to get excited about yet.

What's the layout? All I know is that there was a fire.

Tarr leaned back in his chair and bellowed:

Hey, Mac!

The pearl push buttons on his desk are ornaments so far as he is concerned. Deputy sheriffs McHale, McClump, and Macklin came to the door together—MacNab apparently wasn't within hearing.

What's the idea? the sheriff demanded of McClump. Are you carrying a bodyguard around with you?

The two other deputies, thus informed as to whom Mac referred this time, went back to their cribbage game.

We got a city slicker here to catch our firebug for us, Tarr told his deputy. But we got to tell him what it's all about first.

McClump and I had worked together on an express robbery several months before. He's a rangy, towheaded youngster of twenty-five or six, with all the nerve in the world—and most of the laziness.

Ain't the Lord good to us?

He had himself draped across a chair by now—always his first objective when he comes into a room.

"Well, here's how she stands: This fellow Thornburgh's house was a couple miles out of town, on the old county road—an old frame house. About midnight, night before last, Jeff Pringle—the nearest neighbor, a half-mile or so to the east—saw a glare in the sky from over that way, and phoned in the alarm; but by the time the fire wagons got there, there wasn't enough of the house left to bother about. Pringle was the first of the neighbors to get to the house, and the roof had already fallen in then.

"Nobody saw anything suspicious—no strangers hanging around or nothing. Thornburgh's help just managed to save themselves, and that was all. They don't know much about what happened— too scared, I reckon. But they did see Thornburgh at his window just before the fire got him. A fellow here in town—name of Henderson—saw that part of it too. He was driving home from Wayton, and got to the house just before the roof caved in.

The fire department people say they found signs of gasoline. The Coonses, Thornburgh's help, say they didn't have no gas on the place. So there you are.

Thornburgh have any relatives?

Yeah. A niece in San Francisco—a Mrs. Evelyn Trowbridge. She was up yesterday, but there wasn't nothing she could do, and she couldn't tell us nothing much, so she went back home.

Where are the servants now?

Here in town. Staying at a hotel on I Street. I told 'em to stick around for a few days.

Thornburgh own the house?

Uh-huh. Bought it from Newning & Weed a couple months ago.

You got anything to do this morning?

Nothing but this.

Good. Let's get out and dig around.

We found the Coonses in their room at the hotel on I Street. Mr. Coons was a small-boned, plump man with the smooth, meaningless face and the suavity of the typical male house-servant.

His wife was a tall, stringy woman, perhaps five years older than her husband—say, forty—with a mouth and chin that seemed shaped for gossiping. But he did all the talking, while she nodded her agreement to every second or third word.

We went to work for Mr. Thornburgh on the fifteenth of June I think, he said, in reply to my first question. We came to Sacramento, around the first of the month, and put in applications at the Allis Employment Bureau. A couple of weeks later they sent us out to see Mr. Thornburgh, and he took us on.

Where were you before you came here?

In Seattle, sir, with a Mrs. Comerford; but the climate there didn't agree with my wife—she has bronchial trouble—so we decided to come to California. We most likely would have stayed in Seattle, though, if Mrs. Comerford hadn't given up her house.

What do you know about Thornburgh?

Very little, sir. He wasn't a talkative gentleman. He hadn't any business that I know of. I think he was a retired seafaring man. He never said he was, but he had that manner and look. He never went out or had anybody in to see him, except his niece once, and he didn't write or get any mail. He had a room next to his bedroom fixed up as a sort of workshop. He spent most of his time in there. I always thought he was working on some kind of invention, but he kept the door locked, and wouldn't let us go near it.

Haven't you any idea at all what it was?

No, sir. We never heard any hammering or noises from it, and never smelled anything either. And none of his clothes were ever the least bit soiled, even when they were ready to go out to the laundry. They would have been if he had been working on anything like machinery.

Was he an old man?

He couldn't have been over fifty, sir. He was very erect, and his hair and beard were thick, with no gray hairs.

Ever have any trouble with him?

Oh, no, sir! He was, if I may say it, a very peculiar gentleman in a way; and he didn't care about anything except having his meals fixed right, having his clothes taken care of—he was very particular about them—and not being disturbed. Except early in the morning and at night, we'd hardly see him all day.

Now about the fire. Tell us everything you remember.

"Well, sir, my wife and I had gone to bed about ten o'clock, our regular time, and had gone to sleep. Our room was on the second floor, in the rear. Some time later—I never did exactly know what time it was—I woke up, coughing. The room was all full of smoke, and my wife was sort of strangling. I jumped up, and dragged her down the back stairs and out the back door.

"When I had her safe in the yard, I thought of Mr. Thornburgh, and tried to get back in the house; but the whole first floor was just flames. I ran around front then, to see if he had got out, but didn't see anything of him. The whole yard was as light as day by then. Then I heard him scream—a horrible scream, sir—I can hear it yet! And I looked up at his window—that was the front