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David, from the window, says, “You’re stalling for time, Nick, and it’s no good. Five minutes’ start or another of your lovely family goes down on the rocks with me.”

Nick. “Don’t be a sap, David. The chances are they’d never hang you. You ought to be able to get off with a few years in an asylum. What jury’s going to believe a sane man did all this?”

David. “That’s a good ideal So I won’t have to jump out the window with her. Either I get my five minutes or she goes down alone.”

Nick turns to Abrams and says, “Lieutenant, I—”

There is a commotion at the window. Nora goes farther out backward. David turns and leans out of the window, looking at something below. Outside, Lum Kee, in his stocking feet, is hanging by his toes and one hand to the rungs of the ladder, with his other around Nora’s waist, and his head bent down, trying to avoid David’s blows. Inside, Nick snatches a pistol from the nearest policeman and shoots David. David somersaults out of the window and crashes to the rocks some sixty feet below. Nick has gone to the window and is pulling Nora in. He shakes her violently by the shoulders and says, “You numbskull, why didn’t you keep away from him after I told you he was a murderer?”

She says just as sharply, “You fool, why didn’t you—”

They both break off and go into each other’s arms.

Abrams turns from looking out of the window and says, “Some of you boys go down and gather him up. A good enough ending for it. I guess that Doc Kammer would have had no trouble at all getting him off.”

Lum Kee climbs over the sill. Nick and Nora turn to him together to thank him for saving her, Nora adding that it was especially wonderful of him inasmuch as Nick had once sent his brother to the pen.

Lum Kee says, “Sure. Mr. Charles send him over — number one detective — I no like my brother — I like his girl — thank you many times — you betcha.”

He moves uncomfortably and looks down at his stocking feet. He is standing in a puddle. He smiles blandly and says, “I go down and get my shoes,” while Nora exclaims reproachfully, “Asta!”

* * * *

After the Thin Man was released fifteen months after the story published here was completed. During the process of preparing a final script, there was one major alteration in the plot.

The produced movie omits the murder of Pedro Dominges at the beginning. Instead, Nick finds Pedro’s body in the basement of the apartment house where Polly lives when he goes there to inspect her apartment after Robert has been murdered. While there, Nick finds the compact sent to Selma and her signed note returning it. Her signature on the note was the model for the forged check on her account. As Nick is leaving, Dancer comes in and a gun battle ensues, without injury to either party and without either man seeing the other’s face. Dancer flees through the basement, Nick chasing him. There Nick finds a trunk with Pedro’s body inside. In the movie, Pedro is demoted from his implausible position as owner of the apartment house to janitor.

The ending in the movie version is also altered slightly. Lum Kee still saves Nora’s life, but again a measure of plausibility is added. Instead of holding Nora out the window, David pulls a gun and holds it to her head. Lum Kee pitches his hat into David’s face, covering his eyes, and the gun is forced from David’s hand. The joke about Lum Kee liking his brother’s girl rather than his brother remains, and David is taken in custody by Lieutenant Abrams.

Most of the dialogue in the movie was supplied by the screenwriters, Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich. Hammett’s contribution was plot and mood.

A Friend to the Limit

Jeffry Scott

Jeffry Scott is better known to British readers as journalist Shaun Usher, entertainment writer and television critic for The London Daily Sketch until 1972, and more recently for the London Daily Mail. With his father, journalist and author Gray Usher, he has edited two collections of stories about the supernatural — The Graveyard Companion (1975), and Festival of Fiends (1976). As Jeffry Scott, he has written a mystery novel, Trust Them and Die (1969) Jeffry Scott has twice won the Crime Writers Association prize for the best short story of the year, in 1972 and 1973.

Terry McNair’s a good enough kid in his way. Dumb rather than stupid, the dumbness of inexperience — seventeen’s the age for that.

Rick McNair and his son had moved into the next apartment a few months back. Terry would run errands, wash my car, feed the cats and like that all without a handful of “gimme.” He just liked feeling useful, helping out. Right now he was about to help his old man into an early grave.

I don’t snoop worth a damn, but this time it was hard to resist. Their apartment door was open, and locking mine, I heard sounds that wouldn’t mean diddly to some folk and said plenty to me. The small noises certain types of machined metal make when you treat them a certain way.

Ready to duck, I put my head round the door. Sure enough, Rick McNair had a handgun there, a big old Colt model 1911, your basic.45 automatic. I’d heard him smacking the magazine home and now he worked the slide and set the safety and put the piece down the back of his jeans; kind of shrugged and wriggled, making sure it set right, and got into a parka. It was loose enough for the gun to be hidden.

“Yo, Rick,” says I, because he’d looked up and caught me peeking. “Gonna rob a liquor store or what?”

“Norm, just mind your own business and leave me mind mine,” McNair told me. He was at the door by then. The faint smell of work sweat — he was a carpenter — had that overlay of anger, a coppery reek. He was looking past me, not at anything solid, but what he meant to do next.

“Sure thing,” I agreed, stepping aside to show sincerity. “Only you’re from out of state... Maybe you aren’t aware that in this state they’re kind of into gun control and suchlike. Kinky for permits. Get caught on the street with that piece, you’ll take a long vacation, all your fellow guests be wearing the selfsame clothes, eating the same meals, if you get my drift.”

Rick McNair stared at me until I came into focus. A lot of stuff was going on behind his poker face. I gave him credit for it not being that the last thing he needed was some nosy black dude giving him a short course on firearms regs in the city.

“I don’t aim to get caught,” he said. “Appreciate your concern though, Norm. But this is fam’ly business.”

He’s a widower with just the one kid, meaning the business concerned young Terry McNair. It was then I noticed Terry in a corner of the living room. He looked pale and sort of sickly, and he’s one healthy kid.

McNair nodded like I’d said something. “Yeah, the jackass got himself a heap of trouble, over the Limit.”

“Makes sense,” I said. The Limit’s a couple — two, three blocks on Republican and the itty cross streets between aforesaid blocks. Every city has a Times Square or Combat Zone. Here we call it the Limit. Good place to stay away from, less you work out of there. Me, I visit some. But up on my tippy-toes, one set of eyes doing duty for maybe four sets.

“Kid got a heap of trouble, and now you going there?” Ricky McNair nodded, zipped up the parka, understood that hampered the pistol, unzipped it again. White folks listen, oftentimes they don’t bother hearing. I’d told the man something, he cared to think about it. So I had to go the i-dotting, t-crossing route. “What you plan on doing, down there at the Limit?”