The Creaping Siamese
The Creaping Siamese
The Creaping Siamese
Creeping Siamese
Dashiell Hammett
THE ARGUMENT could be made that the most influential writer of the twentieth century was
Dashiell Hammett. As writers turned from the orotund style of Henry James and his Victorian
predecessors to lean and swift prose, later scholars have pointed to the undeniably profound force
of Ernest Hemingway. But who influenced Hemingway? Hammett did.
Publishing dates are hard facts, not esoteric theories. Hammett’s first Continental Op story
appeared in Black Mask on October 1, 1923. The quintessential hard‐boiled private eye appeared
frequently in the ensuing years. Hemingway’s first book, In Our Time, was published in Paris in a
limited edition in 1924, and published in a tiny edition of 1,335 copies in the United States in
October 1925, by which time Hammett was already well established and a highly popular regular
contributor to the most important pulp magazine of its time.
In addition to the nameless operative of the Continental Detective Agency, Hammett (1894‐
1961) created Sam Spade, the hero of the most famous American detective novel ever written or
filmed, The Maltese Falcon, which had been serialized in Black Mask, as were all of his novels
excepting the last, The Thin Man.
Written at the height of his success and powers, “The Creeping Siamese” was published in
Black Mask in March 1926, the year before he began to serialize his first novel, Red Harvest.
The Creeping Siamese
Dashiell Hammett
1 “Do you—?” Tommy began, and jumped
back.
STANDING BESIDE THE CASHIER’S DESK in the
The man had let go the doorknob. He
front office of the Continental Detective
crossed his long arms over his chest, each hand
Agency’s San Francisco branch, I was watching
gripping a shoulder. His mouth stretched wide
Porter check up my expense account when the
in a yawn that had nothing to do with
man came in. He was a tall man, raw‐boned,
relaxation. His mouth clicked shut. His lips
hard‐faced. Grey clothes bagged loosely from
snarled back from clenched yellow teeth.
his wide shoulders. In the late afternoon
sunlight that came through partially drawn
“Hell!” he grunted, full of disgust, and
blinds, his skin showed the color of new tan
pitched down on the floor.
shoes.
I heaved myself over the rail, stepped
He opened the door briskly, and then
across his body, and went out into the corridor.
hesitated, standing in the doorway, holding the
door open, turning the knob back and forth with
Four doors away, Agnes Braden, a plump
one bony hand. There was no indecision in his
woman of thirty‐something who runs a public
face.
stenographic establishment, was going into her
office.
It was ugly and grim, and its expression
was the expression of a man who is
“Miss Braden!” I called, and she turned,
remembering something disagreeable.
waiting for me to come up. “Did you see the
man who just came in our office?”
Tommy Howd, our freckled and snub‐
nosed office boy, got up from his desk and went
“Yes.” Curiosity put lights in her green
to the rail that divided the office.
eyes. “A tall man who came up in the elevator
with me. Why?”
“On his person,” he went on, “I have
“Was he alone?” found some nine hundred dollars in bills of
various denominations, and some silver; a gold
“Yes. That is, he and I were the only ones watch and a pocket knife of English
who got off at this floor. Why?” manufacture; a Japanese silver coin, 50 sen;
tobacco, pipe and matches; a Southern Pacific
“Did you see anybody close to him?” timetable; two handkerchiefs without laundry
marks; a pencil and several sheets of blank
“No, though I didn’t notice him in the paper; four two‐cent stamps; and a key labeled
elevator. Why?” Hotel Montgomery, Room 540.
“Did he act funny?” “His clothes seem to be new. No doubt
we shall learn something from them when we
“Not that I noticed. Why?” make a more thorough examination, which I do
not care to make until the police come.
“Thanks. I’ll drop in and tell you about it Meanwhile, you had better go to the
later.” Montgomery and see what you can learn
there.”
I made a circuit of the corridors on our
floor, finding nothing. The raw‐boned man was In the Hotel Montgomery’s lobby the
still on the floor when I returned to the office, first man I ran into was the one I wanted:
but he had been turned over on his back. He Pederson, the house copper, a blond‐
was as dead as I had thought. The Old Man, who mustached ex‐bartender who doesn’t know any
had been examining him, straightened up as I more about gum‐shoeing than I do about
came in. Porter was at the telephone, trying to saxophones, but who does know people and
get the police. Tommy Howd’s eyes were blue how to handle them, which is what his job calls
half‐dollars in a white face. for.
“Nothing in the corridors,” I told the Old “Hullo!” he greeted me. “What’s the
Man. “He came up in the elevator with Agnes score?”
Braden. She says he was alone, and she saw
nobody close to him.” “Six to one, Seattle, end of the fourth.
Who’s in 540, Pete?”
“Quite so.” The Old Man’s voice and
smile were as pleasantly polite as if the corpse “They’re not playing in Seattle, you
at his feet had been a part of the pattern in the chump! Portland! A man that hasn’t got enough
carpet. Fifty years of sleuthing have left him civic spirit to know where his team—”
with no more emotion than a pawnbroker. “He
seems to have been stabbed in the left breast, a “Stop it, Pete! I’ve got no time to be
rather large wound that was staunched with fooling with your childish pastimes. A man just
this piece of silk”—one of his feet poked at a dropped dead in our joint with one of your
rumpled ball of red cloth on the floor—”which room‐keys in his pocket—540.”
seems to be a sarong.”
Civic spirit went blooey in Pederson’s
Today is never Tuesday to the Old Man: face.
it seems to be Tuesday.
“540?” He stared at the ceiling. “That don’t carry anything to identify ‘em, and that
would be that fellow Rounds. Dropped dead, don’t leave their keys at the desk when they go
you say?” out, ain’t to be trusted too much!”
“Dead. Tumbled down in the middle of We had just finished our search when a
the floor with a knife‐cut in him. Who is this bellhop brought Detective Sergeant O’Gar, of
Rounds?” the police department Homicide Detail, into the
room.
“I couldn’t tell you much off‐hand. A big
bony man with leathery skin. I wouldn’t have “Been down to the Agency?” I asked
noticed him excepting he was such a sour him.
looking body.”
“Yeah, just came from there.”
“That’s the bird. Let’s look him up.”
“What’s new?”
At the desk we learned that the man had
arrived the day before, registering as H. R. O’Gar pushed back his wide‐brimmed
Rounds, New York, and telling the clerk he black village‐constable’s hat and scratched his
expects to leave within three days. There was bullet head.
no record of mail or telephone calls for him.
Nobody knew when he had gone out, since he “Not a heap. The doc says he was
had not left his key at the desk. Neither elevator opened with a blade at least six inches long by a
boys nor bell‐hops could tell us anything. couple wide, and that he couldn’t of lived two
hours after he got the blade—most likely not
His room didn’t add much to our more’n one. We didn’t find any news on him.
knowledge. His baggage consisted of one What’ve you got here?”
pigskin bag, battered and scarred, and covered
with the marks of labels that had been scraped “His name is Rounds. He registered here
off. It was locked, but traveling bags locks don’t yesterday from New York. His stuff is new, and
amount to much. This one held us up about five there’s nothing on any of it to tell us anything
minutes. except that he didn’t want to leave a trail. No
letters, no memoranda, nothing. No blood, no
Rounds’ clothes—some in the bag, some signs of a row, in the room.”
in the closet—were neither many nor
expensive, but they were all new. The washable O’Gar turned to Pederson.
stuff was without laundry marks. Everything was
of popular makes, widely advertised brands that “Any brown men been around the hotel?
could be bought in any city in the country. There Hindus or the like?”
wasn’t a piece of paper with anything written
on it. There wasn’t an identifying tag. There “Not that I saw,” the house copper said.
wasn’t anything in the room to tell where “I’ll find out for you.”
Rounds had come from or why.
“Then the red silk was a sarong?” I
Pederson was peevish about it. asked.
“I guess if he hadn’t got killed he’d of “And an expensive one,” the detective
beat us out of a week’s bill! These guys that sergeant said. “I saw a lot of ‘em the four years I
was soldiering on the islands, but I never saw as
good a one as that.”
“Who wears them?” 2
“Men and women in the Philippines,
I opened my eyes sitting on the side of my bed
Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Malay Peninsula, parts
in the dim light of a moon that was just coming
of India.”
up, with the ringing telephone in my hand.
“Is it your idea that whoever did the
O’Gar’s voice: “1856 Broadway! On the
carving advertised himself by running around in
hump!”
the streets in a red petticoat?”
“1856 Broadway,” I repeated, and he
“Don’t try to be funny!” he growled at
hung up.
me. “They’re often enough twisted or folded up
into sashes or girdles. And how do I know he
I finished waking up while I phoned for a
was knifed in the street? For that matter, how
taxicab, and then wrestled my clothes on. My
do I know he wasn’t cut down in your joint?”
watch told me it was 12:55 a.m. as I went
downstairs. I hadn’t been fifteen minutes in
“We always bury our victims without
bed.
saying anything about ‘em. Let’s go down and
give Pete a hand in the search for your brown
1856 Broadway was a three‐story house
men.”
set behind a pocket‐size lawn in a row of like
houses behind like lawns. The others were dark.
That angle was empty. Any brown men
1856 shed light from every window, and from
who had snooped around the hotel had been
the open front door. A policeman stood in the
too good at it to be caught.
vestibule.
I telephoned the Old Man, telling him
“Hello, Mac! O’Gar here?”
what I had learned—which didn’t cost me much
breath—and O’Gar and I spent the rest of the
“Just went in.”
evening sharp‐shooting around without ever
getting on the target once. We questioned taxi‐
I walked into a brown and buff reception
cab drivers, questioned the three Roundses
hall, and saw the detective sergeant going up
listed in the telephone book, and our ignorance
the wide stairs.
was as complete when we were through as
when we started.
“What’s up?” I asked as I joined him.
The morning papers, on the streets at a
“Don’t know.”
little after eight o’clock that evening, had the
story as we knew it.
On the second floor we turned to the
left, going into a library or sitting room that
At eleven o’clock O’Gar and I called it a
stretched across the front of the house.
night, separating in the direction of our
respective beds.
A man in pajamas and bathrobe sat on a
davenport there, with one bared leg stretched
We didn’t stay apart long.
out on a chair in front of him. I recognized him
when he nodded to me: Austin Richter, owner “You haven’t seen the morning papers?”
of a Market Street moving picture theater. He I asked the theatre owner.
was a round‐faced man of forty‐five or so, partly
bald, for whom the Agency had done some “No.”
work a year or so before in connection with a
ticket‐seller who had departed without turning “Well, a man came into the Continental
in the day’s receipts. office late this afternoon, with a stab in his
chest, and died there. Pressed against the
In front of Richter a thin white‐haired wound, as if to stop the bleeding, was a sarong,
man with doctor written all over him stood which is where we got the brown men idea.”
looking at Richter’s leg, which was wrapped in a
bandage just below the knee. Beside the doctor, “His name?”
a tall woman in a fur‐trimmed dressing‐gown
stood, a roll of gauze and a pair of scissors in her “Rounds, H. R. Rounds.”
hands. A husky police corporal was writing in a
notebook at a long narrow table, a thick hickory The name brought no recognition into
walking stick laying on the bright blue table Richter’s eyes.
cover at his elbow.
“A tall man, thin, with dark skin?” he
All of them looked around at us as we asked. “In a grey suit?”
came into the room. The corporal got up and
came over to us. “All of that.”
“I knew you were handling the Rounds Richter twisted around to look at the
job, sergeant, so I thought I’d best get word to woman.
you as soon as I heard they was brown men
mixed up in this.” “Molloy!” he exclaimed.
“Good work, Flynn,” O’Gar said. “What “Molloy!” she exclaimed.
happened here?”
“So you know him?”
“Burglary, or maybe only attempted
burglary. They was four of them—crashed the Their faces came back toward me.
kitchen door.”
“Yes. He was here this afternoon. He
Richter was sitting up very straight, and left—”
his blue eyes were suddenly excited, as were
the brown eyes of the woman. Richter stopped, to turn to the woman
again, questioningly.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but is
there—you mentioned brown men in “Yes, Austin,” she said, putting gauze
connection with another affair—is there and scissors on the table, and sitting down
another?” beside him on the davenport. “Tell them.”
O’Gar looked at me. He patted her hand and looked up at me
again with the expression of a man who has
seen a nice spot on which to lay down a heavy the paper off. But the inner wrapping was of
load. canvas, tied with silk cord, and sealed, so we
didn’t open that. We put it upstairs in the pack
“Sit down. It isn’t a long story, but sit room, under a pile of old magazines.
down.”
“Then, at about a quarter to twelve
We found ourselves chairs. tonight— I had only been in bed a few minutes,
and hadn’t gone to sleep yet—I heard a noise in
“Molloy—Sam Molloy—that is his name, here. I don’t own a gun, and there’s nothing you
or the name I have always known him by. He could properly call a weapon in the house, but
came here this afternoon. He’d either called up that walking stick”—indicating the hickory stick
the theater or gone there, and they had told on the table—”was in a closet in our bedroom.
him I was home. I hadn’t seen him for three So I got that and came in here to see what the
years. We could see—both my wife and I—that noise was.
there was something the matter with him when
he came in. “Right outside the bedroom door I ran
into a man. I could see him better than he could
“When I asked him, he said he’d been see me, because this door was open and he
stabbed, by a Siamese, on his way here. He showed against the window. He was between
didn’t seem to think the wound amounted to me and it, and the moonlight showed him fairly
much, or pretended he didn’t. He wouldn’t let clear. I hit him with the stick, but didn’t knock
us fix it for him, or look at it. He said he’d go to him down. He turned and ran in here. Foolishly,
a doctor after he left, after he’d got rid of the not thinking that he might not be alone, I ran
thing. That was what he had come to me for. He after him. Another man shot me in the leg just
wanted me to hide it, to take care of it until he as I came through the door.
came for it again.
“I fell, of course. While I was getting up,
“He didn’t talk much. He was in a hurry, two of them came in with my wife between
and suffering, I didn’t ask him any questions. I them. There were four of them. They were
couldn’t refuse him anything. I couldn’t medium‐sized men, brown‐skinned, but not so
question him even though he as good as told us dark. I took it for granted that they were
that it was illegal as well as dangerous. He saved Siamese, because Molloy had spoken of
our lives once—more than my wife’s life—down Siamese. They turned on the lights here, and
in Mexico, where we first knew him. That was in one of them, who seemed to be the leader,
1916. We were caught down there during the asked me:
Villa troubles. Molloy was running guns over the
border, and he had enough influence with the “ ‘Where is it?’ “
bandits to have us released when it looked as if
we were done for. “His accent was pretty bad, but you
could understand his words good enough. Of
“So this time, when he wanted me to do course I knew they were after what Molloy had
something for him, I couldn’t ask him about it. I left, but I pretended I didn’t. They told me, or
said, ‘Yes,’ and he gave me the package. It rather the leader did, that he knew it had been
wasn’t a large package: about the size of— left here, but they called Molloy by another
well—a loaf of bread, perhaps, but quite heavy name—Dawson. I said I didn’t know any
for its size. It was wrapped in brown paper. We Dawson, and nothing had been left here, and I
unwrapped it after he had gone, that is, we took tried to get them to tell me what they expected
to find. They wouldn’t though—they just called ‘What’s the matter, Molloy? Are you hurt, or
it ‘it’. sick?’
“They talked among themselves, but of “Molloy gave a little laugh, putting a
course I couldn’t make out a word of what they hand on his chest, and said, ‘Nothing much. I
were saying, and then three of them went out, run into a Siamese who was looking for me on
leaving one here to guard us. He had a Luger my way here, and got careless and let him
pistol. We could hear the others moving around scratch me. But I kept my little bundle!’ And he
the house. The search must have lasted an hour. laughed again, and patted the package.”
Then the one I took for the leader came in, and
said something to our guard. Both of them “Did he say anything else about the
looked quite elated. Siamese?”
“ ‘It is not wise if you will leave this room “Not directly,” she replied, “though he
for many minutes,’ the leader said to me, and did tell us to watch out for any Asiatics we saw
they left us—both of them—closing the door around the neighborhood. He said he wouldn’t
behind them. leave the package if he thought it would make
trouble for us, but that there was always a
“I knew they were going, but I couldn’t chance that something would go wrong, and
walk on this leg. From what the doctor says, I’ll we’d better be careful. And he told my
be lucky if l walk on it inside of a couple of husband”—nodding at Richter—” that the
months. I didn’t want my wife to go out, and Siamese had been dogging him for months, but
perhaps run into one of them before they’d got now that he had a safe place for the package he
away, but she insisted on going. She found was going to ‘take them for a walk and forget to
they’d gone, and she phoned the police, and bring them back.’ That was the way he put it.”
then ran up to the pack room and found
Molloy’s package was gone.” “How much do you know about
Molloy?”
“And this Molloy didn’t give you any hint
at all as to what was in the package?” O’Gar “Not a great deal, I’m afraid,” Richter
asked when Richter had finished. took up the answering again. “He liked to talk
about the places he had been and the things he
“Not a word, except that it was had seen, but you couldn’t get a word out of
something the Siamese were after.” him about his own affairs. We met him first in
Mexico, as I have told you, in 1916. After he
“Did he know the Siamese who stabbed saved us down there and got us away, we didn’t
him?” I asked. see him again for nearly four years. He rang the
bell one night, and came in for an hour or two.
“I think so,” Richter said slowly, “though He was on his way to China, he said, and had a
I am not sure he said he did.” lot of business to attend to before he left the
next day.
“Do you remember his words?”
“Some months later I had a letter from
“Not exactly, I’m afraid.” him, from the Queen’s Hotel in Kandy, asking
me to send him a list of the importers and
“I think I remember them,” Mrs. Richter exporters in San Francisco. He wrote me a letter
said. “My husband, Mr. Richter, asked him, thanking me for the list, and I didn’t hear from
him again until he came to San Francisco for a
week, about a year later. That was in 1921, I He tried to jump up from the davenport,
think. but his shot leg failed him.
“He was here for another week about a The woman got up slowly.
year after that, telling us that he had been in
Brazil, but, as usual, not saying what he had “And maybe that would leave an out for
been doing there. Some months later I had a you,” O’Gar told her. “Why don’t you try to
letter from him, from Chicago, saying he would persuade him?”
be here the following week. However, he didn’t
come. Instead, some time later, he wrote from “Or maybe it would be better if you
Vladivostok, saying he hadn’t been able to make plead the self‐defense,” I suggested to her. “You
it. Today was the first we’d heard of him since could say that Richter ran to your help when
then.” your husband grabbed you, that your husband
shot him and was turning his gun on you when
“Where’s his home? His people?” you stabbed him. That would sound smooth
enough.”
“He always says he has neither. I’ve an
idea he was born in England, though I don’t “My husband?”
know that he ever said so, or what made me
think so.” “Uh‐huh, Mrs. Rounds‐Molloy‐Dawson.
Your late husband, anyway.”
“Got any more questions?” I asked
O’Gar. Richter got his mouth far enough closed
to get words out of it.
“No. Let’s give the place the eye, and see
if the Siamese left any leads behind ‘em.” “What is the meaning of this damned
nonsense?” he demanded.
The eye we gave the house was
thorough. We didn’t split the territory between “Them’s harsh words to come from a
us, but went over everything together— fellow like you,” O’Gar growled at him. “If this is
everything from roof to cellar—every nook, nonsense, what do you make of that yarn you
drawer, corner. told us about creeping Siamese and mysterious
bundles, and God knows what all?”
The cellar did most for us: it was there,
in the cold furnace, that we found the handful “Don’t be too hard on him,” I told O’Gar.
of black buttons and the fire‐darkened garter “Being around movies all the time has poisoned
clasps. But the upper floors hadn’t been his idea of what sounds plausible. If it hadn’t,
altogether worthless: in one room we had found he’d have known better than to see a Siamese
the crumpled sales slip of an Oakland store, in the moonlight at 11:45, when the moon was
marked 1 table cover, and in another room we just coming up at somewhere around 12:45,
had found no garters. when you phoned me.”
“Of course it’s none of my business,” I Richter stood up on his one good leg.
told Richter when O’Gar and I joined the others
again, “but I think maybe if you plead self‐ The husky police corporal stepped close
defense you might get away with it.” to him.
a suggestion. He could decide for himself, and, if
“Hadn’t I better frisk him, sergeant?” he was wrong, I’d have him to dump the blame
on. He scowled at me, and then nodded to the
O’Gar shook his bullet head. woman.
“Waste of time. He’s got nothing on him. “You can go over into that corner and
They cleaned the place of weapons. The whisper together for a couple of minutes,” he
chances are the lady dropped them in the bay said, “but no foolishness.”
when she rode over to Oakland to get a table
cover to take the place of the sarong her She gave Richter the hickory stick, took
husband carried away with him.” his other arm, helped him hobble to a far
corner, pulled a chair over there for him. He sat
That shook the pair of them. Richter with his back to us. She stood behind him,
pretended he hadn’t gulped, and the woman leaning over his shoulder, so that both their
had a fight of it before she could make her eyes faces were hidden from us.
stay still on mine.
O’Gar came closer to me.
O’Gar struck while the iron was hot by
bringing the buttons and garters clasps we had “What do you think?” he muttered.
salvaged out of his pocket, and letting them
trickle from one hand to another. That used up “I think they’ll come through.”
the last bit of the facts we had.
“That shot of yours about being Molloy’s
I threw a lie at them. wife hit center. I missed that one. How’d you
make it?”
“Never me to knock the press, but you
don’t want to put too much confidence in what “When she was telling us what Molloy
the papers say. For instance, a fellow might say had said about the Siamese she took pains both
a few pregnant words before he died, and the times she said ‘my husband’ to show that she
papers might say he didn’t. A thing like that meant Richter.”
would confuse things.”
“So? Well—”
The woman reared up her head and
looked at O’Gar. The whispering in the far corner had
been getting louder, so that the s’s had become
“May I speak to Austin alone?” she sharp hisses. Now a clear emphatic sentence
asked. “I don’t mean out of your sight.” came from Richter’s mouth.
The detective sergeant scratched his “I’ll be damned if I will!”
head and looked at me. This letting your victims
go into conference is always a ticklish business: Both of them looked furtively over their
they may decide to come clean, and then again, shoulders, and they lowered their voices again,
they may frame up a new out. On the other but not for long. The woman was apparently
hand, if you don’t let them, the chances are trying to persuade him to do something. He
they get stubborn on you, and you can’t get kept shaking his head. He put a hand on her
anything out of them. One way was as risky as arm. She pushed it away, and kept on
another. I grinned at O’Gar and refused to make whispering.
“My husband went in with him, with two
He said aloud, deliberately: other men that were killed. They looted the
natives’ cache, and got away with a whole
“Go ahead, if you want to be a fool. It’s sackful of sapphires, topazes and even a few
your neck. I didn’t put the knife in him.” rubies. The two other men were killed by the
natives and my husband was badly wounded.
She jumped away from him, her eyes
black blazes in a white face. O’Gar and I moved “We didn’t think he could live. We were
softly toward them. hiding in a hut near the Yunnan border. Holley
persuaded me to take the gems and run away
“You rat!” she spat at Richter, and spun with them. It looked as if Sam was done for, and
to face us. if we stayed there long we’d be caught. I can’t
say that I was crazy about Sam anyway; he
“I killed him!” she cried. “This thing in wasn’t the kind you would be, after living with
the chair tried to and—” him for a while.
Richter swung the hickory stick. “So Holley and I took it and lit out. We
had to use a lot of the stones to buy our way
I jumped for it—missed—crashed into through Yunnan and Kwangsi and Kwangtung,
the back of his chair. Hickory stick, Richter, but we made it. We got to San Francisco with
chair, and I sprawled together on the floor. The enough to buy this house and the movie
corporal helped me up. He and I picked Richter theater, and we’ve been here since. We’ve been
up and put him on the davenport again. honest since we came here, but I don’t suppose
that means anything. We had enough money to
The woman’s story poured out of her keep us comfortable.
angry mouth:
“Today Sam showed up. We hadn’t
“His name wasn’t Molloy. It was Lange, heard of him since we left him on his back in
Sam Lange. I married him in Providence in 1913 Burma. He said he’d been caught and jailed for
and went to China with him—to Canton, where three years. Then he’d got away, and had spent
he had a position with a steamship line. We the other three hunting for us. He was that kind.
didn’t stay there long, because he got into some He didn’t want me back, but he did want
trouble through being mixed up in the money. He wanted everything we had. Holley
revolution that year. After that we drifted lost his nerve. Instead of bargaining with Sam,
around, mostly around Asia. he lost his head and tried to shoot him.
“We met this thing”—she pointed at the “Sam took his gun away from him and
now sullenly quiet Richter—”in Singapore, in shot him in the leg. In the scuffle Sam had
1919, I think—right after the World War was dropped a knife—a kris, I think. I picked it up,
over. His name is Holley, and Scotland Yard can but he grabbed me just as I got it. I don’t know
tell you something about him. He had a how it happened. All I saw was Sam staggering
proposition. He knew of a gem‐bed in upper back, holding his chest with both hands—and
Burma, one of many that were hidden from the the kris shining red in my hand.
British when they took the country. He knew
the natives who were working it, knew where “Sam had dropped his gun. Holley got it
they were hiding their gems. and was all for shooting Sam, but I wouldn’t let
him. It happened in this room. I don’t
remember whether I gave Sam the sarong we “And there you are,” she said.
used for a cover on the table or not. Anyway, he
tried to stop the blood with it. He went away “You got anything to say?” I asked
then, while I kept Holley from shooting him. Holley, who was staring at his bandaged leg.
“I knew Sam wouldn’t go to the police, “To my lawyer,” he said without looking
but I didn’t know what he’d do. And I knew he up.
was hurt bad. If he dropped dead somewhere,
the chances are he’d be traced here. I watched O’Gar spoke to the corporal.
from a window as he went down the street, and
nobody seemed to pay any attention to him, “The wagon, Flynn.”
but he looked so conspicuously wounded to me
that I thought everybody would be sure to Ten minutes later we were in the street,
remember him if it got into the papers that he helping Holley and the woman into a police car.
had been found dead somewhere.
Around the corner on the other side of
“Holley was even more scared than I. We the street came three brown‐skinned men,
couldn’t run away, because he had a shot leg. apparently Malay sailors. The one in the middle
So we made up that Siamese story, and I went seemed to be drunk, and the other two were
over to Oakland, and bought the table cover to supporting him. One of them had a package that
take the place of the sarong. We had some guns could have held a bottle under his arm.
and even a few oriental knives and swords here.
I wrapped them up in paper, breaking the O’Gar looked from them to me and
swords, and dropped them off the ferry when I laughed.
went to Oakland.
“We wouldn’t be doing a thing to those
“When the morning papers came out we babies right now if we had fallen for that yarn,
read what had happened, and then we went would we?” he whispered.
ahead with what we had planned. We burned
the suit Holley had worn when he was shot, and “Shut up, you, you big heap!” I growled
his garters—because the pants had a bullet‐hole back, nodding at Holley, who was in the car by
in them, and the bullet had cut one garter. We now. “If that bird sees them he’ll identify ‘em as
fixed a hole in his pajama‐leg, unbandaged his his Siamese, and God knows what a jury would
leg,—I had fixed it as well as I could,—and make of it!”
washed away the clotted blood until it began to
bleed again. Then I gave the alarm.” We made the puzzled driver twist the car six
blocks out of his way to be sure we’d miss the
She raised both hands in a gesture of brown men. It was worth it, because nothing
finality and made a clucking sound with her
interfered with the twenty years apiece that
tongue.
Holley and Mrs. Lange drew.