The Gutting of Couffignal
by Dashiell Hammett
The only contemporary detective novel in the Modern Library series is Dashiell Hammett’s THE MALTESE FALCON. From the standpoints of historical importance, vigor of style, and creative originality, no worthier American standard-bearer could have been selected.
For the Modem Library edition, Mr. Hammett wrote a special introduction in which he mentioned an earlier story called “The Gutting of Couffignal.” He confessed that in this earlier tale he had failed to bring off a “promising dénouement” but thought that he “might have better luck” if he incorporated the same climax in THE MALTESE FALCON, combined with another failure of the past.
Obviously, it was your Editor’s duty to unearth “The Gutting of Couffignal” and find out what Mr. Hammett was talking about. Disguised as a literary detective, your Editor followed up an ingenious clue and nailed “The Gutting” in its hideout. On reading the story, the mystery was solved. Mr. Hammett’s allusion refers to the climactic scene between The Continental Op and Princess Zhukovski which in conception bears a strong resemblance to the climactic scene between Sam Spade and Brigid O’Shaughnessy at the end of THE MALTESE FALCON. Otherwise the two stories are completely different.
Aside from this interesting historical point, “The Gutting” is an excellent example of Hammett’s startling powers — a tremendously effective thriller in which The Continental Op operates at the top of his form. It is a privilege to reprint this “forgotten” Hammett, now destined to become an anthological favorite.
Wedge-shaped Couffignal is not a large island, and not far from the mainland, to which it is linked by a wooden bridge. Its western shore is a high, straight cliff that jumps abruptly up out of San Pablo Bay. From the top of this cliff the island slopes eastward, down to a smooth pebble beach that runs into the water again, where there are piers and a clubhouse and moored pleasure boats.
Couffignal’s main street, paralleling the beach, has the usual bank, hotel, moving-picture theater, and stores. But it differs from most main streets of its size in that it is more carefully arranged and preserved. There are trees and hedges and strips of lawn on it, and no glaring signs. The buildings seem to belong beside one another, as if they had been designed by the same architect, and in the stores you will find goods of a quality to match the best city stores.
The intersecting streets — running between rows of neat cottages near the foot of the slope — become winding hedged roads as they climb toward the cliff. The higher these roads get, the farther apart and larger are the houses they lead to. The occupants of these higher houses are the owners and rulers of the island. Most of them are well-fed old gentlemen who, the profits they took from the world with both hands in their younger days now stowed away at safe percentages, have bought into the island colony so they may spend what is left of their lives nursing their livers and improving their golf among their kind. They admit to the island only as many storekeepers, working-people, and similar riffraff as are needed to keep them comfortably served.
That is Couffignal.
It was some time after midnight. I was sitting in a second-story room in Couffignal’s largest house, surrounded by wedding presents whose value would add up to something between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars.
Of all the work that comes to a private detective (except divorce work, which the Continental Detective Agency doesn’t handle) I like weddings as little as any. Usually I manage to avoid them, but this time I hadn’t been able to. Dick Foley, who had been slated for the job, had been handed a black eye by an unfriendly pickpocket the day before. That let Dick out and me in. I had come up to Couffignal — a two-hour ride from San Francisco by ferry and auto stage — that morning, and would return the next.
This had been neither better nor worse than the usual wedding detail. The ceremony had been performed in a little stone church down the hill. Then the house had begun to fill with reception guests. They had kept it filled to overflowing until some time after the bride and groom had sneaked off to their eastern train.
The world had been well represented. There had been an admiral and an earl or two from England; an ex-president of a South American country; a Danish baron; a tall young Russian princess surrounded by lesser titles, including a fat, bald, jovial and black-bearded Russian general who had talked to me for a solid hour about prize fights, in which he had a lot of interest, but not so much knowledge as was possible; an ambassador from one of the Central European countries; a justice of the Supreme Court; and a mob of people whose prominence and near-prominence didn’t carry labels.
In theory, a detective guarding wedding presents is supposed to make himself indistinguishable from the other guests. In practice, it never works out that way. He has to spend most of his time within sight of the booty, so he’s easily spotted. Besides that, eight or ten people I recognized among the guests were clients or former clients of the Agency, and so knew me. However, being known doesn’t make so much difference as you might think, and everything had gone off smoothly.
Shortly after dark a wind smelling of rain began to pile storm clouds up over the bay. Those guests who lived at a distance, especially those who had water to cross, hurried off for their homes. Those who lived on the island stayed until the first raindrops began to patter down. Then they left.
The Hendrixson house quieted down. Musicians and extra servants left. The weary house servants began to disappear in the direction of their bedrooms. I found some sandwiches, a couple of books and a comfortable armchair, and took them up to the room where the presents were now hidden under grey-white sheeting.
Keith Hendrixson, the bride’s grandfather — she was an orphan — put his head in at the door.
“Have you everything you need for your comfort?” he asked.
“Yes, thanks.”
He said good night and went off to bed — a tall old man, slim as a boy.
The wind and the rain were hard at it when I went downstairs to give the lower windows and doors the up-and-down. Everything on the first floor was tight and secure, everything in the cellar. I went upstairs again.
Pulling my chair over by a floor lamp, I put sandwiches, books, ashtray, gun and flashlight on a small table beside it. Then I switched off the other lights, set fire to a Fatima, sat down, wriggled my spine comfortably into the chair’s padding, picked up one of the books, and prepared to make a night of it.
The book was called The Lord of the Sea, and had to do with a strong, tough and violent fellow named Hogarth, whose modest plan was to hold the world in one hand. There were plots and counterplots, kidnappings, murders, prison-breakings, forgeries and burglaries, diamonds large as hats and floating forts larger than Couffignal. It sounds dizzy here, but in the book it was as real as a dime.
Hogarth was still going strong when the lights went out.
In the dark, I got rid of the glowing end of my cigarette by grinding it in one of the sandwiches. Putting the book down, I picked up gun and flashlight, and moved away from the chair.
Listening for noises was no good. The storm was making hundreds of them. What I needed to know was why the lights had gone off.
I waited. My job was to watch the presents. Nobody had touched them yet. There was nothing to get excited about.
Minutes went by, perhaps ten of them.