The Golden Horseshoe
CONT. OP. NO. 7 UNRAVELS A THRILLING DASHIELL HAMMETT WEB OF MYSERY WITH A STRANGE AND SURPRISING CLIMAX THAT IS IN THE BEST "THIN MAN" TRADITION.
WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE: ALLED in by wealthy Mrs. Norman Ashcraft to locate her husbarid, who had disappeared. after a quarrel, Continental Operative No. 7, hero of ‘‘The Thin Man,’’ traced, his quarry to Tiajuana’s Golden Horseshoe Cafe. He scraped an acquaintance with Ashcraft, who had adopted the name of Ed Bohannon, and with a music hall girl called. Kewpie, Ashcraft’s companion. Returning to San Francisco to report to Mrs. Asheraft, the detective finds her dead, murdered, together with a maid and a Filipino boy. Suspecting the girl and Ashcraft, Cont. Op. No. 7 rushes back to Tiajuana, with two aides, Gorman and Hooper. He contacts Ashcraft and the girl and tells them he suspects one Gooseneck Flinn, the cafe clean-up man, of having done the actual killing, but suggests that Ashcraft and the girl return with him to San Francisco. CHAPTER IV-(Conclusion.) HE Englishman was thinking hard. I knew I had him worried, chiefly through what I had said about Gooseneck Flinn. He bit his lip and frowned. Then he shook hime self and chuckled.
**You’re balmy, Painless,’’ he said. ‘‘But you-"’ I don’t know what he was going to saywhether I was going to win or lose. The front door slammed open, and Gooseneck Flinn came into the room. | ; His clothes were white with dust. His face was thrust forward to the full length of his long, yellow neck. ; His shoe-button eyes focused on me. His hands turned over: That’s all you could see. They simply turned over-and there was a heavy revolver in each. ‘*Your paws on the table, Ed,’’ he snarled. Ed’s gun-if that was what he had in his pocket -was blocked from a shot at the man in the doorway by a corner of the table. He.took his hand out of his pocket, empty, and laid both palms down on the table-top. . ; | Stay where y’r at!’’ Gooseneck barked at the girl. . She was standing on the other side of the room. Her knife was not in sight. ‘ Gooseneck glared at me for nearly a minute, but when he spoke it was to Ed and Kewpie. ‘So this is what y’ wired me to come back for, huh?, A trap! Me the goat for y’r! J’ll be y’r goat! I’m goin’ to speak my piece, an’ then I’m goin’ out 0’ here if I have to smoke my way through the whole damn’.Mex army! I killed y’r wife all right-an’ her help, too. . Killed ’em for the thousand bucks --.’’ The girl took a step toward him, screaming: ‘Shut up, damn you!’’. Her mouth was twisting and working like a ehild’s, ‘Shut wp, yourself!’’ Gooseneck roared back at her, ‘‘I’m doing the talkin’, I killed her for ---.’’
Kewpie bent forward. Her left hand went under the hem of her skirt. The hand came up-empty. The flash from Goosencck’s gun lit on a knife flying like a streak through the air. The girl spun back across the room-hammered back by the bullets that fore through her chest. Her back hit the wall. She pitched forward to the floor. Gooseneck stopped shooting and tried to speak. The brown shaft of the girl’s knife stuck out of his yellow throat. He couldn’t get his words past the blade. He dropped one gun and tried to take hold of the protruding shaft. Halfway up to it his hand came, and dropped. He went down slowly-to his knees-hands and knees-rolled over on his sideand lay still. I jumped for the Englishman. My hand brushed his coat, but he twisted away from me, and got his gun out. oo His eyes were hard and cold and his mouth was shut. He didn’t make a speech. A moment of hesitation in the doorway. The door jerked open and shut. He was gone. I sprang to Gooseneck’s side, tore one of the guns out of his dead hand, and plunged into the street. The maroon roadster was trailing a cloud of dust into the desert behind it. Thirty fect from me stood a dirt-eaked black touring ear.
I jumped for it, climbed in and pointed it at the dust-cloud ahead. The car under me, I discovered, was surprisingly well engined for its battered looks. I nursed it along, not pushing it. There were hours of daylight eft. For half an hour or more the dust-eloud ahead and I held our respective positions, and then I found that I was gaining. The going was roughening. I missed a boulder that would have smashed me up and looked ahead to see that the maroon roadster had stopped. The roadster was empty. I kept on. From behind the roadster a pistol snapped at mae, three times. He fired again from the shelter of his ear, and then dashed for a narrow arroyo off to the left. On the brink, he wheeled to snap another cap at meand jumped down out of sight. I twisted the wheel in my hands, jammed on the brakes and slid the black touring ear to the spot where I had seen him Jast. The edge of the arroyo was crumbling under my front wheels. I released the brake. Tumbled out. Shoved. The car plunged down into the gully after him, Sprawled on my belly, Gooseneck’s gun in my hand, I wormed my hand over the edge. On all fours, the Englishman was scrambling out of the way of the car. One of the man’s fists was bunched around a gun---mine. ‘*Drop it and stand up, Ed!’’ I yelled. Snake-quick, he swung his arm up-and I smashed his forearm with my second shot. ; He was holding the wounded arm with left hand when I slid down beside him. We grinned at me..
**You know," he drawled, ‘*I faney your true name isn’t Painless Parker at all. You don't act like it.’’ Twisting a handkerchief into a tourniquet of a sort, I knotted it around his wounded arm. "Tet? s go upstairs and talk,’’ I suggested. and helped him up the steep side of the gully. We climbed into his roadster. ‘""Out of gas,’’ he said. "We? ve got a nice walls ahead of us.’’: "We'll get a lift. E had a man watehing. your house, and another one shadowing Gouseneck. They’ll be coming out after me, I veckoz. Meanwhile, we have time for a nice heart- to-heart tall.’? mrrers ahead, talk your head. oif,’’ he invited. **You’ve got nothing onme. You saw Kewpie bump Gooseneck off to keep him from peaching on her.’? **So that’s your play?’ I inquired. ‘*The girl hired Gooseneck to kill your wife-out of jealousywhen she learned that you were planning to shake her and return to your own world?"’ ‘*Hixactly."’ "‘Not bad, Ed, but there’s one rough spot in it.*? Veg??? "Yes,’? IT repeated. ‘‘You are not Asheraft 1? He jumped, then laughed: "Now your enthusiasm is getting the hetter of
your judgment,’’ he kidded me. ‘‘Could I have deceived another man’s wife? Don’t you think her lawyer, Richmond, made me prove my identity ?’’ "Well, Vl tell you Ed, I think Vm a smarter baby than either of them. Suppose you had a lot of stuff that belonged to Ashcraft-papers, letters, things in his handwriting? If you were even a fair hand with a pen, you could have fooled his wife. She thought her husband had had four tough years and had become a hop-head. That would account for irregularities in his writing. And I don’t imagine you ever got very familiar in your letters-not enough so to risk any mis-steps. As for the lawyerhis making you identify yourself was only a matter of form. It never occurred to him that you weren't Asheraft. Identification is easy, anway. Give me a week and I’ll prove that I’m the Sultan of Turkey." He shook his head sadly. ‘""That comes from riding around in the sun."’ _ I went on. ‘At first your game was to bleed Mrs. Asheraft for an allowance-to take the cure. But after she closed out her affairs in England and came here, you decided to wipe her out and take everything. You knew she was an orphan and had-no elose relatives to come butting in. Now if you want to, you can do your stalling for just as long as it takes us to send a photograph of you to England-to be shown to the people that knew him there, But you understand that you will do your stalling in the can, so I don’t see what it will get you.’’ . ‘‘Where do you think Asheraft would be while I was spending his money?" There were only two possible guesses. J took the more reasonable one. ‘‘Dead.’’ I imagined his mouth tightened a little, so I took another shot, and added: "Up North." That got to him, though he didn’t get excited. But his eyes became thoughtful behind hig smile. It was even betting that he thought I meant Seattle, where the last record of Ashcraft had come from, "‘You may be right, of course,’’ he drawled. ‘But even at that, I don’t see just how you expeet to hang me. Can you prove that Kewpie didn’t think I was Ashcraft? Can you prove that she knew why Mrs, Asheraft was sending me money? Can
you prove that she knew anything about my game? I rather think not. "T’ll do my bit for fraud, Painless, but you’re not going to.swing me. The only two who could possibly tie anything on me are dead behind us.’’ "You may get away with it,’? I admitted. ‘Juries are funny, and I don’t mind telling you that I’d be happier if I knew a few things about those murders that I don’t know. Do you mind tell- . ing me about the ins and outs of your switch with Asheraft-in Seattle?’’ He squinted his blue eyes at me. **You’re a puzzling chap, Painless,’’ he said. ‘‘I ean’t tell whether you know everything, or are just sharp-shooting.’’ He puckered his lips and then shrugged. ‘‘I’ll tell you. It won’t matter greatly. I’m due to go over for this impersonation, so a confession to a little additional larceny won’t matter.’’ ‘‘The hotel-sneak used to be my racket,’’ the Englishman said after a pause. ‘‘I eame to the States after England and the Continent got uncomfortable. I could do the gentleman without sweating over it, you know. *‘T had rather a successful tour on my first American voyage. I visited most of the better hotels petween New York and Seattle, and profited nicely. Rhen, one night in a Seattle hotel, I put myself into a‘room on the fourth floor. I had hardly closed the door behind me before another key was rattling in it. The room was night-dark. I risked a flash from my light, picked out a closet door, and got behind it just in time. "‘The clothes closet was empty; rather a stroke of luck, since there was nothing in it for the room’s occupant to come for. He-it was’ a man--had switched on the lights by then. ‘"‘He began pacing the floor. He paced it for three solid hours while I stood behind the closet door with my gun in my hand. Then he sat down and I.heard a pen scratching on paper. Ten minutes of that and he was back at his pacing; but he kept it up for only a few minutes this time. I heard the latches of a valise click. And a shot! **T bounded out of my retreat. He was stretched on the floor, with a hole in the side of his head. A bad break for me, and no mistake! I eould hear excited voices in the corridor, I stepped over the dead chap, found the letter he had been writing on the writing-desk. It was addressed to Mrs. Norman Asheraft; in, Bristol, ‘England. I fore it open. He.
had written that he was going to kill himself, and it was signed Norman. I felt better. ‘‘Nevertheless, I was here in this room with a flashlight, skeleton keys, and a guu-to say nothing of a handful of jewellery that I had picked up on the next floor. Somebody was knocking on the door. ‘¢ ‘Get the police!’ I called through the door. ‘Then I turned to the man who had let me in» for all this. I would have pegged him for a fellow Britisher even if I hadn’t seen the address on his letter. His hat and topcoat were on a chair. I put them on and dropped my hat beside him. Kneeling, I emptied his pockets, and my own. gave him all my stuff, pouched all of his. Then I traded guns with him and opened the door. ‘‘What I had in mind was that the first arrivals might not know him by sight, or not well enough to recognise him immediately. That would give me several seconds to arrange my disappearance in. But when I opened the door I found that my idea wouldn’t work out as I had planned. The house detective was there, and a policeman, and I knew I was licked. But I played my hand out. I told them I had come up to my room and found this ehap on the floor going through my belongings. EF had seized him, and in the struggle had shot him. ‘‘Minutes went by like hours, and nobody denounced me. People were calling me Mr. Asheraft. My impersonation was suececeding. It had me gasping then, but after I learned more about Asheraft it wasn’t so surprising. He had arrived at the hotel only that afternoon, and no one had seen him except in his hat and coat-the hat and coat I was wearing. We were of the same size and type. ‘‘Then I got another surprise. When the detective examined the dead man’s clothes he found that the maker’s labels had been ripped out. When I got a look at his diary, later, I found the explanation of that. He had been tossing mental coins with himself, alternating between a deiermination to kill himself, and another to change his name and make a new place for himself in the world-putting his old life, belfind him. It was while he was consider- ing the second plan that he had removed the markers from all of his clothing. ‘But I didn’t know that while I stood there among those people. All I knew wes that miracles were happening. I met the miracles half-way, not turning a hair. : I think the police sinelled something wrong, but they couldn’t put their hands on it.
There was the dead man on the floor, with a, prowe ler’s outfit in his pockets, a pocketful of stolen jewellery, and the labels gone from his clothes-a burelar’s trick.: And there 1 was-a well-to-do Englishman whom the hotel people recognised as the room’s rightful occupant. "T had to talk small just then, but after I went through the dead man’s stuff 1 knew him inside and outside, backward and- forward. He had nearly a bushel of papers, and a diary that had everything he had ever done or thought in it. L put in the first: night studying those things-memorising them-and. practising his signature. .Among the other things 1 had taken from his pockets were fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of travellers’ checks, and I wanted to be able to get them cashed in the morning. ‘I stayed in Seattle for three days-as Norman. Asheraft. The letter to his wife would keep me from being charged with murder if anything slipped, and I knew I was safer seeing the thing through than running. When the excitement had quieted down I packed up‘ and came down to San Francisco, resuming my own name-Edward Bohannon, But T held on to all of Asheraft’s property, because T had learned from it that his wife had money, and J knew I could get some of it if I played my eards right. "She saved me the trouble of figuring out a deal for myself. I ran across one of her advertisements, answered it, and-here we are."’ I looked ioward Tiajuana. A eloud of yellow dust showed in a notch between two iow hills. That would be the machine in which Gorman and Hooper were tracking me. IT turned to the Englishman. ‘"‘But you didn’t have Mrs. Ashcraft killed?"’ He shook his head. ‘You'll never prove it.’ ‘*Maybe not,’’ I admitted. I took a package of cigarettes out of my pocket and put two of them on the seat between us. ‘‘Suppose we play a game. This is just for my own satisfaction. It won't tie anybody to anything -won’t prove anything. If you did a certain thing, pick up the cigarctte that is nearer me, If you didn’t do that thing, pick up the one nearer you. Will you play?’’ ‘‘No, I won’t,’’:-he said emphatically. ‘‘I don’t like your game. But I do want a cigarette."’ He reached out his uninjured arm and picked up the cigarette nearer me. "‘Thanks, Ed,’’? I said. ‘‘Now I hate to tell you this, but I’m going to swing you.’’ *‘You’re balmy, my son."’ ""You’re thinking of the San Frauciseo job, Kd,’" I explained. ‘‘I’m talking about Seattle. You, a hotel sneak-thief, were discovered in a room with a man who had just died with a bullet in his head. | wat do you think a jury will make out of that, Ed?"’ ‘ He laughed at me. And then something went wrong with the laugh. It faded to a sickly grin. "‘Of course, you did,’’ I said. ‘‘When you started to work out your plan to inherit all of Mrs. Asheraft’s wealth by having her killed, the first thing you did was to destroy that suicide letter of her husband’s. No matter how carefully you guarded it, there was always a chanee that somebody would stumble into it and knock your game on the head. Tt had served its purpose-you wouldn’t need it. It would be foolish to take a chance on it turning up. "T ean’t put you up for the murders you engineered in San Francisco, but I ean sock you with the one you didn’t do in Seattle-so justice won't. be cheated. You’re going to Seattle, Ed, to hang for Asheraft’s suicide ’’ And he did. ba
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Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 30, 6 January 1939, Page 20
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3,077The Golden Horseshoe Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 30, 6 January 1939, Page 20
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