Free The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett

stand beside the bedroom-door. His huge chest moved with his breathing. He said from the side of his mouth, without looking at Ned Beaumont: "Figure out a way of blocking that angle." He took a step towards the telephone and halted. "Never mind," he said and turned to face Ned Beaumont. "I think I'll knock Shad loose from our little city. I'm tired of having him around. I think I'll knock him loose right away, starting tonight."
    Ned Beaumont asked: "For instance?"
    Madvig grinned. "For instance," he replied, "I think I'll have Rainey close up the Dog House and Paradise Gardens and every dive that we know Shad or any of his friends are interested in. I think I'll have Rainey smack them over in one long row, one after the other, this very same night."
    Ned Beaumont spoke hesitantly': "You're putting Rainey in a tough spot. Our coppers aren't used to bothering with Prohibition-enforcement. They're not going to like it very much."
    "They can do it once for me," Madvig said, "without feeling that they've paid all their debts."
    "Maybe." Ned Beaumont's face and voice were dubious still. "But this wholesale stuff is too much like using a cyclone shot to blow off a safe-door when you could get it off without any fuss by using a come-along."
    "Have you got something up your sleeve, Ned?"
    Ned Beaumont shook his head. "Nothing I'm sure of, but it wouldn't hurt to wait a couple of days till-"
    Now Madvig shook his head. "No," he said. "I want action. I don't know a damned thing about opening safes, Ned, but I do know fighting- my kind-going in with both hands working. I never could learn to box and the only times I ever tried I got licked. We'll give Mr. O'Rory the cyclone shot."

6
    The stringy man in horn-rimmed spectacles said: "So you don't have to worry none about that," He sat complacently back in his chair.
    The man on his left-a raw-boned man with a bushy brown mustache and not much hair on his head-said to the man on his left: "It don't sound so God-damned swell to me."
    "No?" The stringy man turned to glare through his spectacles at the raw-boned man. "Well, Paul don't never have to come down to my ward hisself to-"
    The raw-boned man said: "Aw, nurts!"
    Madvig addressed the raw-boned man: "Did you see Parker, Breen?"
    Breen said: "Yes, I saw him and he says five, but I think we can get a couple more out of him."
    The bespectacled man said contemptuously: "My God, I'd think so!"
    Breen sneered sidewise at him. "Yes? And who'd you ever get that much out of?"
    Three knocks sounded on the broad oaken door.
    Ned Beaumont rose from the chair he was straddling and went to the door. He opened it less than a foot.
    The man who had knocked was a small-browed dark man in blue clothes that needed pressing. He did not try to enter the room and he tried to speak in an undertone, but excitement made his words audible to everyone in the room. "Shad O'Rory's downstairs. He wants to see Paul."
    Ned Beaumont shut the door and turned with his back against it to look at Paul Madvig. Only those two of the ten men in the room seemed undisturbed by the small-browed n-man's announcement. All the others did not show their excitement frankly-in some it could be seen in their suddenly acquired stoniness-but there was none whose respiration was exactly as it had been before.
    Ned Beaumont, pretending he did not know repetition was unnecessary, said, in a tone that expressed suitable interest in his words: "O'Rory wants to see you. He's downstairs."
    Madvig looked at his watch. "Tell him I'm tied up right now, but if he'll wait a little while I'll see him."
    Ned Beaumont nodded and opened the door. "Tell him Paul's busy now," he instructed the man who had knocked, "but if he'll stick around awhile Paul'll see him." He shut the door.
    Madvig was questioning a square-faced yellowish man about their chances of getting more votes on the other side of Chestnut Street. The square-faced man replied that he thought they would get more than last time "by a hell