Who Killed Bob Teal? and Other Stories (2 page)

Lillian Hellman's appointees to the Dashiell Hammett literary trust ceded control to the Hammett family in 2003. Because rights to the five novels had already been transferred to Jo Hammett, in 1995 in a negotiated agreement based on copyright extension law, the change in administration applied mainly to Hammett's short stories—and to the Op in particular. The new trustees (including Hammett's grandson, Evan Marshall, and the editors of this volume) took seriously their responsibility to Hammett's legacy. What followed was a new season of engagement and publication, in the United States and abroad. Hammett never ventured overseas, but his Op is a veteran traveler, with recent excursions that include Brazil, Italy, Romania, Poland, Germany, England, and, most notably, France, where a Hammett renaissance has resulted in a flock of new translations and paperback compilations, as well as, in 2011, an omnibus volume that collected virtually all of Hammett's available fiction.

This electronic publication of Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op stories comes 93 years after his “little man going forward day after day through mud and blood and death and deceit” narrated his first investigation in
Black Mask
magazine in 1923. It is the first opportunity for readers across the globe to enjoy both what Hammett called “a more complete and true picture of a detective at work” and to witness the growth of his creator, who changed the face of not just American crime fiction, but realistic, literary, and entertaining fiction worldwide. The stories are presented chronologically, with section introductions providing context and insights into Hammett's evolution under his three
Black
Mask
editors—George W. Sutton, Philip C. Cody, and Joseph Thompson Shaw. Headnotes original to each story's publication are included, along with Hammett's remarks in letters to the editors. “Three Dimes”—an incomplete Continental Op adventure preserved in Hammett's archive—is included as a bonus to the complete volume.

We offer no pulp paper. No cloth-covered boards or dust jacket. No lurid cover art. No sewn binding or ribbon. Just Hammett's words, as originally published in
Black
Mask
,
True Detective Stories
, and
Mystery Stories
. Our only modifications are silent corrections to spelling and typographical errors preserved on the rare, fragile pages of Hammett's original magazine offerings. Modern publishing provides distinct advantages to those of us who edit—who collect and prepare materials for publication—leaving us grateful for today's more durable manuscripts, nimble word-processing technologies, and the easy mutability of e-files.

Hammett, however, was a man of an earlier era—writing with typewriters or pen, pencil, and paper, computers unconceived. He read bound books, hardcopy magazines, and newspapers in those decades when “papers” was not a metaphor. His image lingers in vintage shades of black and white, bound up with the Op, Sam Spade, and Nick Charles, washed in afterlife with Lillian Hellman's painterly recollections. It's tempting, then, to imagine our crime-fiction champion rejecting e-reading in favor of bookbinding's tactile pleasures and traditions. “I tell you, it wasn't like this when I was young,” Hammett wrote in 1950. “The world's going to hell: some people claim radio and movies are responsible, but I think it started with the invention of the wheel. If man had been meant to revolve he wouldn't have been born with flat feet.”

He was kidding, of course.

Dashiell Hammett was progressive. He was fascinated by technology (the “newest toy,” in his words), whether newfangled electric typewriters and razors or high-tech crossbows. He went to moving pictures when the art was new and bought televisions in the days when both equipment and programming were notoriously fickle. He dabbled in color photography when it was so slow as to require the semi-freezing of his insect subjects. He bought a hearing aid to test its power to eavesdrop on woodland animals. While he clearly loved books, he routinely abandoned book-husks when their subject matter had been digested. Hammett was far more interested in content than collectables—a sentiment that will resonate with today's e-book shoppers. It was the words, the characters, and the fictional world they created that mattered. Medium was a convenience, not a creed. It's a good bet that if Hammett were writing and reading in our electronic age he would own and enjoy an array of computers, tablets, and smart phones. And, at least sometimes, he would use them to enjoy ebooks. We hope you enjoy this one.

 

J.M.R.

INTRODUCTION

The Middle Years: 1924–1925

The character of
Black Mask
and of Hammett's fiction changed abruptly when Philip C. Cody, described by H. L. Mencken as “a mild and pleasant fellow who was almost stone deaf,” succeeded Sutton as editor. Cody was spread as thinly as his predecessor with regard to his editorial duties. He was vice-president and general manager of Warner Publications, a growing concern that included
Field and Stream, Black Mask,
and other pulps, as well as a short-lived book club started in 1925. Cody had doubled as circulation manager of
Black Mask,
and he brought to the editor's chair a sense of marketing that Sutton lacked. Cody transformed
Black Mask
into a magazine that offered increased emphasis on action-packed crime fiction, enlivened by violence and punctuated with sexual titillation. He nurtured a small stable of favorite writers and encouraged them write stories of substantial length.

The effect on Hammett was immediately clear. His stories more than doubled in length after “One Hour,” a story that the editors of this collection assume to have been accepted by Sutton though it was published in the 1 April 1924
Black Mask
, the first that carried Cody's name as editor. With two exceptions (“The Tenth Clew” at 11,419 words and “Zigzags of Treachery” at 14,521 words), Hammett's Op stories for Sutton averaged just under 6,000 words apiece. The ten Op stories published by Cody between April 1924 and March 1926 averaged about 14,000 words each. And the Op got meaner. During the course of the nine Op stories written for Sutton, the Op usually didn't carry a gun, and he was not directly involved in any lethal activity. Hammett's first story for Cody features six murders, three of which are committed with cause by the Op. During the rest of Cody's tenure, Hammett's stories average some six dead bodies each. The Op was turning blood simple. The plots become more complicated; the women more seductive and dangerous; the crooks more professional. Dramatic confrontation rather than simple description increasingly served to advance the plot. Notably in “The Girl with the Silver Eyes” (June 1924), the first of a handful of stories in which the Op struggles to overcome a dangerous attraction to a beautiful woman, Hammett's Op begins to reveal his emotions. And Hammett's settings began to exhibit an international flair, as in “The Golden Horseshoe” (November 1924), “The Gutting of Couffignal” (December 1925), and “The Creeping Siamese” (March 1926).

Cody may have been the boss, but his vision was implemented by associate editor Harry C. North, who had served under Sutton, as well. North seems to have conducted an extensive editorial correspondence with his authors, and he minced no words in expressing his editorial opinion. Cody unleashed him. The communications with Hammett are lost, but North's style can be gleaned from his letters to Erle Stanley Gardner, who published more than 100 stories in
Black Mask
between 1924 and 1943. That correspondence reveals North to be a man with a sharp editorial eye and firm opinions. His entire reply to an early submission by Gardner was “This stinks.” His editorial principle was also simply stated: he advised Gardner: “If you could once appreciate the fact that the publisher of
Black Mask
is printing the magazine to make money and nothing else, perhaps you would be more nearly able to guess our needs.”

Cody wasted no time asserting his authority, but he let North do the dirty work of rejecting two of Hammett's stories. The rejection must have taken place almost immediately after Cody took control, but the account of it did not appear until August 1924, four months after Cody's ascension, when he published Hammett's response to Harry North's rejection letter under the headline “Our Own Short Story Course”:

We recently were obliged to reject two of Mr. Hammett's detective stories. We didn't like to do it, for Mr. Hammett and his Continental Detective Agency had become more or less fixtures in BLACK MASK. But in our opinion, the stories were not up to the standard of Mr. Hammett's own work—so they had to go back.

In returning the manuscripts, we enclosed the “Tragedy in One Act,” referred to in the letter which follows. The “Tragedy” was simply a verbatim report of the discussion in this office, which led to the rejection of the stories.

We are printing Mr. Hammett's letter below; first, to show the difference between a good author and a poor one; and secondly, as a primary course in short story writing. We believe that authors—especially young authors, and also old authors who have fallen into the rut—can learn more about successful writing from the hundred or so words following, than they can possibly learn from several volumes of so-called short story instruction. Mr. Hammett has gone straight to the heart of the whole subject of writing—or of painting, singing, acting … or of just living for that matter. As the advertising gentry would say, here is the “Secret” of success.

I don't like that “tragedy in one act” at all; it's too damned true-to-life. The theatre, to amuse me, must be a bit artificial.

I don't think I shall send “Women, Politics, and Murder” back to you—not in time for the July issue anyway. The trouble is that this sleuth of mine has degenerated into a meal-ticket. I liked him at first and used to enjoy putting him through his tricks; but recently I have fallen into the habit of bringing him out and running him around whenever the landlord, or the butcher, or the grocer shows signs of nervousness.

There are men who can write like that, but I'm not one of them. If I stick to the stuff I want to write—the stuff I enjoy writing—I can make a go of it, but when I try to grind out a yarn because I think there's a market for it, then I flop.

Whenever, from now on, I get hold of a story that fits my sleuth, I shall put him to work, but I'm through with trying to run him on a schedule.

Possibly I could patch up “The Question's One Answer” and “Women, Politics, and Murder” enough to get by with them, but my frank opinion of them is that neither is worth the trouble. I have a liking for honest work, and honest work as I see it is work that is done for the worker's enjoyment as much as for the profit it will bring him. And henceforth that's my work.

I want to thank both you and Mr. Cody for jolting me into wakefulness. There's no telling how much good this will do me. And you may be sure that whenever you get a story from me hereafter,—frequently, I hope,—it will be one that I enjoyed writing.

DASHIELL HAMMETT

San Francisco, Cal.

Meanwhile, Cody published “The House on Turk Street” (15 April 1924) and “The Girl with the Silver Eyes” (June 1924), Hammett's first set of linked stories and the strongest fiction he had written to that point. Together these stories form a 25,000 word novelette and begin to treat the characters and themes Hammett perfected five years later in
The Maltese Falcon
.

Hammett didn't like Cody and North, but he needed the money they paid him. Two months after Cody became editor, Hammett's disability payment from the U.S. Veterans Bureau was discontinued due to his improving health. It is not known how much he was paid for his
Black Mask
stories, but the base rate is believed to have been a penny a word, though Mencken claimed to have paid a bit less. Other pulps were paying their star writers two cents a word by the mid 1920s and as much as three cents a word by the end of the decade. Because of his popularity Hammett presumably commanded the top rate, but his income was limited by a schedule imposed by Cody, and generally observed, of no more than a story every other month. During Cody's tenure, from 1 April 1924 until Hammett quit writing for him in March 1926, Hammett published 15 stories in
Black Mask
of which ten featured the Op. If he made two cents a word under Cody, he earned about $4500 in the two years he wrote for him, or an average of about $300 a story. During that time he also published four stories (one of which was narrated by the Op) in other pulps, as well as a smattering of non fiction and poems; those publications would have earned him no more than another $1000. In September 1925, Hammett learned that his wife was pregnant with their second child. With another mouth to feed, Hammett asked Cody for more money, threatening to quit the magazine if he were denied. Gardner, an attorney, claimed he offered to take a cut in his own pay rate for Hammett's sake, but Cody refused Hammett on the grounds that it would be unfair to other
Black Mask
authors. The circumstances are unclear, but Hammett claimed Cody owed him $300, which Cody refused to pay. Hammett quit the magazine in anger early in 1926. His last story for Cody was “The Creeping Siamese” published in March.

 

R.L.

WHO KILLED BOB TEAL?

True Detective Magazine
,
November 1924

Operative Teal went out to shadow a thief, who didn't even know he was suspected. Seven hours after Teal left his agency's office, he was found—shot to death. Whose hand cut him down?

“Teal was killed last night.”

The Old Man—the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco manager—spoke without looking at me. His voice was as mild as his smile, and gave no indication of the turmoil that was seething in his mind.

If I kept quiet, waiting for the Old Man to go on, it wasn't because the news didn't mean anything to me. I had been fond of Bob Teal—we all had. He had come to the agency fresh from college two years before; and if ever a man had the makings of a crack detective in him, this slender, broad-shouldered lad had. Two years is little enough time in which to pick up the first principles of sleuthing, but Bob Teal, with his quick eye, cool nerve, balanced head, and whole-hearted interest in the work, was already well along the way to expertness. I had an almost fatherly interest in him, since I had given him most of his early training.

The Old Man didn't look at me as he went on. He was talking to the open window at his elbow.

“He was shot with a .32, twice, through the heart. He was shot behind a row of signboards on the vacant lot on the northwest corner of Hyde and Eddy Streets, at about ten last night. His body was found by a patrolman a little after eleven. The gun was found about fifteen feet away. I have seen him and I have gone over the ground myself. The rain last night wiped out any leads the ground may have held, but from the condition of Teal's clothing and the position in which he was found, I would say that there was no struggle, and that he was shot where he was found, and not carried there afterward. He was lying behind the signboards, about thirty feet from the sidewalk, and his hands were empty. The gun was held close enough to him to singe the breast of his coat. Apparently no one either saw or heard the shooting. The rain and wind would have kept pedestrians off the street, and would have deadened the reports of a .32, which are not especially loud, anyway.”

The Old Man's pencil began to tap the desk, its gentle clicking setting my nerves on edge. Presently it stopped, and the Old Man went on:

“Teal was shadowing a Herbert Whitacre—had been shadowing him for three days. Whitacre is one of the partners in the firm Ogburn & Whitacre, farm-development engineers. They have options on a large area of land in several of the new irrigation districts. Ogburn handles the sales end, while Whitacre looks after the rest of the business, including the bookkeeping.

“Last week Ogburn discovered that his partner had been making false entries. The books show certain payments made on the land, and Ogburn learned that these payments had not been made. He estimates that the amount of Whitacre's thefts may be anywhere from $150,000 to $250,000. He came in to see me three days ago and told me all this, and wanted to have Whitacre shadowed in an endeavor to learn what he has done with the stolen money. Their firm is still a partnership, and a partner cannot be prosecuted for stealing from the partnership, of course. Thus, Ogburn could not have his partner arrested, but he hoped to find the money, and then recover it through civil action. Also he was afraid that Whitacre might disappear.

“I sent Teal out to shadow Whitacre, who supposedly didn't know that his partner suspected him. Now I am sending you out to find Whitacre. I'm determined to find him and convict him if I have to let all regular business go and put every man I have on this job for a year. You can get Teal's reports from the clerks. Keep in touch with me.”

All that, from the Old Man, was more than an ordinary man's oath written in blood.

In the clerical office I got the two reports Bob had turned in. There was none for the last day, of course, as he would not have written that until after he had quit work for the night. The first of these two reports had already been copied and a copy sent to Ogburn; a typist was working on the other now.

In his reports Bob had described Whitacre as a man of about thirty-seven, with brown hair and eyes, a nervous manner, a smooth-shaven, medium-complexioned face, and rather small feet. He was about five feet eight inches tall, weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds, and dressed fashionably, though quietly. He lived with his wife in an apartment on Gough Street. They had no children. Ogburn had given Bob a description of Mrs. Whitacre: a short, plump, blond woman of something less than thirty.

Those who remember this affair will know that the city, the detective agency, and the people involved all had names different from the ones I have given them. But they will know also that I have kept the facts true. Names of some sort are essential to clearness, and when the use of the real names might cause embarrassment, or pain even, pseudonyms are the most satisfactory alternative.

In shadowing Whitacre, Bob had learned nothing that seemed to be of any value in finding the stolen money. Whitacre had gone about his usual business, apparently, and Bob had seen him do nothing downright suspicious. But Whitacre had seemed very nervous, had often stopped to look around, obviously suspecting that he was being shadowed without being sure of it. On several occasions Bob had had to drop him to avoid being recognized. On one of these occasions, while waiting in the vicinity of Whitacre's residence for him to return, Bob had seen Mrs. Whitacre—or a woman who fit the description Ogburn had given—leave in a taxicab. Bob had not tried to follow her, but he had made a memorandum of the taxi's license number.

These two reports read and practically memorized, I left the agency and went down to Ogburn & Whitacre's suite in the Packard Building. A stenographer ushered me into a tastefully furnished office, where Ogburn sat at a desk signing mail. He offered me a chair. I introduced myself to him: a medium-sized man of perhaps thirty-five, with sleek brown hair and the cleft chin that is associated in my mind with orators, lawyers, and salesmen.

“Oh, yes!” he said, pushing aside the mail, his mobile, intelligent face lighting up. “Has Mr. Teal found anything?”

“Mr. Teal was shot and killed last night.”

He looked at me blankly for a moment out of wide brown eyes, and then repeated: “Killed?”

“Yes,” I replied, and told him what little I knew about it.

“You don't think—” he began when I had finished, and then stopped. “You don't think Herb would have done that?”

“What do you think?”

“I don't think Herb would commit murder! He's been jumpy the last few days, and I was beginning to think he suspected I had discovered his thefts, but I don't believe he would have gone that far, even if he knew Mr. Teal was following him. I honestly don't!”

“Suppose,” I suggested, “that sometime yesterday Teal found where he had put the stolen money, and then Whitacre learned that Teal knew it. Don't you think that under those circumstances Whitacre might have killed him?”

“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “but I'd hate to think so. In a moment of panic Herb might—but I really don't think he would.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Yesterday. We were here in the office together most of the day. He left for home a few minutes before six. But I talked with him over the phone later. He called me up at home at a little after seven, and said he was coming down to see me, wanted to tell me something. I thought he was going to confess his dishonesty, and that maybe we would be able to straighten out this miserable affair. But he didn't show up; changed his mind, I suppose. His wife called up at about ten. She wanted him to bring something from downtown when he went home, but of course he was not there. I staid in all evening waiting for him, but he didn't—”

He stuttered, stopped talking, and his face drained white.

“My God. I'm wiped out!” he said faintly, as if the thought of his own position had just come to him. “Herb gone, money gone, three years' work gone for nothing! And I'm legally responsible for every cent he stole. God!”

He looked at me with eyes that pleaded for a contradiction, but I couldn't do anything except assure him that everything possible would be done to find both Whitacre and the money. I left him trying frantically to get his attorney on the telephone.

From Ogburn's office I went up to Whitacre's apartment. As I turned the corner below into Gough Street I saw a big, hulking man going up the apartment house steps, and recognized him as George Dean. Hurrying to join him, I regretted that he had been assigned to the job instead of some other member of the Police Detective Homicide Detail. Dean isn't a bad sort, but he isn't so satisfactory to work with as some of the others; that is, you can never be sure that he isn't holding out some important detail so that George Dean would shine as the clever sleuth in the end. Working with a man of that sort, you're bound to fall into the same habit—which doesn't make for teamwork.

I arrived in the vestibule as Dean pressed Whitacre's bell-button.

“Hello,” I said. “You in on this?”

“Uh-huh. What d'you know?”

“Nothing. I just got it.”

The front door clicked open, and we went together up to the Whitacre's apartment on the third floor. A plump, blond woman in a light blue house-dress opened the apartment door. She was rather pretty in a thick-featured, stolid way.

“Mrs. Whitacre?” Dean inquired.

“Yes.”

“Is Mr. Whitacre in?”

“No. He went to Los Angeles this morning,” she said, and her face was truthful.

“Know where we can get in touch with him there?”

“Perhaps at the Ambassador, but I think he'll be back by to-morrow or the next day.”

Dean showed her his badge.

“We want to ask you a few questions,” he told her, and with no appearance of astonishment she opened the door wide for us to enter. She led us into a blue and cream living-room, where we found a chair apiece. She sat facing us on a big blue settle.

“Where was your husband last night?” Dean asked.

“Home. Why?” Her round blue eyes were faintly curious.

“Home all night?”

“Yes, it was a rotten rainy night. Why?” She looked from Dean to me.

Dean's glance met mine, and I nodded an answer to the question that I read there.

“Mrs. Whitacre,” he said bluntly, “I have a warrant for your husband's arrest.”

“A warrant? For what?”

“Murder.”

“Murder?” It was a stifled scream.

“Exactly, an' last night.”

“But—but I told you he was—”

“And Ogburn told me,” I interrupted leaning forward, “that you called up his apartment last night, asking if your husband was there.”

She looked at me blankly for a dozen seconds; and then she laughed, the clear laugh of one who has been the victim of some slight joke.

“You win,” she said, and there was neither shame nor humiliation in either face or voice. “Now listen”—the amusement had left her—“I don't know what Herb has done, or how I stand, and I oughtn't to talk until I see a lawyer. But I like to dodge all the trouble I can. If you folks will tell me what's what, on your word of honor, I'll maybe tell you what I know, if anything. What I mean is, if talking will make things any easier for me, if you can show me it will, maybe I'll talk—provided I know anything.”

That seemed fair enough, if a little surprising. Apparently this plump woman who could lie with every semblance of candor, and laugh when she was tripped up, wasn't interested in anything much beyond her own comfort.

“You tell it,” Dean said to me.

I shot it out all in a lump.

“Your husband had been cooking the books for some time, and got into his partner for something like $200,000 before Ogburn got wise to it. Then he had your husband shadowed, trying to find the money. Last night your husband took the man who was shadowing him over on a lot and shot him.”

Her face puckered thoughtfully. Mechanically she reached for a package of a popular brand of cigarettes that lay on a table behind the settle, and proffered them to Dean and me. We shook our heads. She put a cigarette in her mouth, scratched a match on the sole of her slipper, lit the cigarette, and stared at the burning end. Finally she shrugged, her face cleared, and she looked up at us.

“I'm going to talk,” she said. “I never got any of the money, and I'd be a chump to make a goat of myself for Herb. He was all right, but if he's run out and left me flat, there's no use of me making a lot of trouble for myself over it. Here goes: I'm not Mrs. Whitacre, except on the register. My name is Mae Landis. Maybe there is a real Mrs. Whitacre, and maybe not. I don't know. Herb and I have been living together here for over a year.

“About a month ago he began to get jumpy, nervous, even worse than usual. He said he had business worries. Then a couple of days ago I discovered that his pistol was gone from the drawer where it had been kept ever since we came here, and that he was carrying it. I asked him: ‘What's the idea?' He said he thought he was being followed, and asked me if I'd seen anybody hanging around the neighborhood as if watching our place. I told him no; I thought he was nutty.

“Night before last he told me that he was in trouble, and might have to go away, and that he couldn't take me with him, but would give me enough money to take care of me for a while. He seemed excited, packed his bags so they'd be ready if he needed them in a hurry, and burned up all his photos and a lot of letters and papers. His bags are still in the bedroom, if you want to go through them. When he didn't come home last night I had a hunch that he had beat it without his bags and without saying a word to me, much less giving me any money—leaving me with only twenty dollars to my name and not even much that I could hock, and with the rent due in four days.”