Free Fly Paper and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett Page A

didn’t find the black man.
    The tunnel was empty.
    If I had known the exact spot in which he had been lying, I might have been able to find something to show how he had been removed. But I hadn’t had time to pick out a landmark, and now any one of four or five places looked like the spot.
    With the help of the coach’s lamps I went over the left side of the road from one end of the tunnel to the other.
    I didn’t find any blood. I didn’t find any footprints. I didn’t find anything to show that anybody had been lying in the road. I didn’t find anything.
    It was too dark by now for me to try searching the woods.
    I returned to where I had left the flat-faced man.
    He was gone.
    It looked, I thought, as if Mr. Kavalov might be right in thinking he needed a detective.
    II
    Half a mile beyond the place where the flat-faced man had deserted me, I stopped the Stutz in front of a grilled steel gate that blocked the road. The gate was padlocked on the inside. From either side of it tall hedging ran off into the woods. The upper part of a brown-roofed small house was visible over the hedge-top to the left.
    I worked the Stutz’s horn.
    The racket brought a gawky boy of fifteen or sixteen to the other side of the gate. He had on bleached whipcord pants and a wildly striped sweater. He didn’t come out to the middle of the road, but stood at one side, with one arm out of sight as if holding something that was hidden from me by the hedge.
    â€œThis Kavalov’s?” I asked.
    â€œYes, sir,” he said uneasily.
    I waited for him to unlock the gate. He didn’t unlock it. He stood there looking uneasily at the car and at me.
    â€œPlease, mister,” I said, “can I come in?”
    â€œWhat—who are you?”
    â€œI’m the guy that Kavalov sent for. If I’m not going to be let in, tell me, so I can catch the six-fifty back to San Francisco.”
    The boy chewed his lip, said, “Wait till I see if I can find the key,” and went out of sight behind the hedge.
    He was gone long enough to have had a talk with somebody.
    When he came back he unlocked the gate, swung it open, and said:
    â€œIt’s all right, sir. They’re expecting you.”
    When I had driven through the gate I could see lights on a hilltop a mile or so ahead and to the left.
    â€œIs that the house?” I asked.
    â€œYes, sir. They’re expecting you.”
    Close to where the boy had stood while talking to me through the gate, a double-barrel shotgun was propped up against the hedge.
    I thanked the boy and drove on. The road wound gently uphill through farm land. Tall, slim trees had been planted at regular intervals on both sides of the road.
    The road brought me at last to the front of a building that looked like a cross between a fort and a factory in the dusk. It was built of concrete. Take a flock of squat cones of various sizes, round off the points bluntly, mash them together with the largest one somewhere near the center, the others grouped around it in not too strict accordance with their sizes, adjust the whole collection to agree with the slopes of a hilltop, and you would have a model of the Kavalov house. The windows were steel-sashed. There weren’t very many of them. No two were in line either vertically or horizontally. Some were lighted.
    As I got out of the car, the narrow front door of this house opened.
    A short, red-faced woman of fifty or so, with faded blonde hair wound around and around her head, came out. She wore a high-necked, tight-sleeved, gray woolen dress. When she smiled her mouth seemed wide as her hips.
    She said:
    â€œYou’re the gentleman from the city?”
    â€œYeah. I lost your chauffeur somewhere back on the road.”
    â€œLord bless you,” she said amiably, “that’s all right.”
    A thin man with thin dark hair plastered down above a thin, worried face came past her to take my bags when I had lifted