Free Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett Page A

disposition. Attempted assassinations make me mad.”
    “That won’t get you anything but a box. I’m for you. You kept Noonan from framing me. That’s why I’m telling you, forget it and go back to Frisco.”
    “I’m for you,” I said. “That’s why I’m telling you, split with them. They crossed you up once. It’ll happen again. Anyway, they’re slated for the chutes. Get out while the getting’s good.”
    “I’m sitting too pretty,” he said. “And I’m able to take care of myself.”
    “Maybe. But you know the racket’s too good to last. You’ve had the cream of the pickings. Now it’s get-away day.”
    He shook his little dark head and told me:
    “I think you’re pretty good, but I’m damned if I think you’re good enough to crack this camp. It’s too tight. If I thought youcould swing it, I’d be with you. You know how I stand with Noonan. But you’ll never make it. Chuck it.”
    “No. I’m in it to the last nickel of Elihu’s ten thousand.”
    “I told you he was too damned pig-headed to listen to reason,” Dinah Brand said, yawning. “Isn’t there anything to drink in the dump, Dan?”
    The lunger got up from the table and went out of the room.
    Thaler shrugged, said:
    “Have it your way. You’re supposed to know what you’re doing. Going to the fights tomorrow night?”
    I said I thought I would. Dan Rolff came in with gin and trimmings. We had a couple of drinks apiece. We talked about the fights. Nothing more was said about me versus Poisonville. The gambler apparently had washed his hands of me, but he didn’t seem to hold my stubbornness against me. He even gave me what seemed to be a straight tip on the fights—telling me any bet on the main event would be good if its maker remembered that Kid Cooper would probably knock Ike Bush out in the sixth round. He seemed to know what he was talking about, and it didn’t seem to be news to the others.
    I left a little after eleven, returning to the hotel without anything happening.

9
A BLACK KNIFE

    I woke next morning with an idea in my skull. Personville had only some forty thousand inhabitants. It shouldn’t be hard to spread news. Ten o’clock found me out spreading it.
    I did my spreading in pool rooms, cigar stores, speakeasies, soft drink joints, and on street corners—wherever I found a man or two loafing. My spreading technique was something like this:
    “Got a match? … Thanks…. Going to the fights tonight? … I hear Ike Bush takes a dive in the sixth…. It ought to be straight: I got it from Whisper…. Yeah, they all are.”
    People like inside stuff, and anything that had Thaler’s name to it was very inside in Personville. The news spread nicely. Half the men I gave it to worked almost as hard as I did spreading it, just to show they knew what was what.
    When I started out, seven to four was being offered that Ike Bush would win, and two to three that he would win by a knockout. By two o’clock none of the joints taking bets were offering anything better than even money, and by half-past three Kid Cooper was a two-to-one favorite.
    I made my last stop a lunch counter, where I tossed the newsout to a waiter and a couple of customers while eating a hot beef sandwich.
    When I went out I found a man waiting by the door for me. He had bowed legs and a long sharp jaw, like a hog’s. He nodded and walked down the street beside me, chewing a toothpick and squinting sidewise into my face. At the corner he said:
    “I know for a fact that ain’t so.”
    “What?” I asked.
    “About Ike Bush flopping. I know for a fact that ain’t so.”
    “Then it oughtn’t bother you any. But the wise money’s going two to one on Cooper, and he’s not that good unless Bush lets him be.”
    The hog jaw spit out the mangled toothpick and snapped yellow teeth at me.
    “He told me his own self that Cooper was a set-up for him, last night, and he wouldn’t do nothing like that—not to me.”
    “Friend of