He was kidding, of course.
Dashiell Hammett was progressive. He was fascinated by technology (the “newest toy,” in his words), whether newfangled electric typewriters and razors or high-tech crossbows. He went to moving pictures when the art was new and bought televisions in the days when both equipment and programming were notoriously fickle. He dabbled in color photography when it was so slow as to require the semi-freezing of his insect subjects. He bought a hearing aid to test its power to eavesdrop on woodland animals. While he clearly loved books, he routinely abandoned book-husks when their subject matter had been digested. Hammett was far more interested in content than collectables—a sentiment that will resonate with today’s e-book shoppers. It was the words, the characters, and the fictional world they created that mattered. Medium was a convenience, not a creed. It’s a good bet that if Hammett were writing and reading in our electronic age he would own and enjoy an array of computers, tablets, and smart phones. And, at least sometimes, he would use them to enjoy ebooks. We hope you enjoy this one.
J.M.R.
INTRODUCTION
The Middle Years: 1924–1925
The character of Black Mask and of Hammett’s fiction changed abruptly when Philip C. Cody, described by H. L. Mencken as “a mild and pleasant fellow who was almost stone deaf,” succeeded Sutton as editor. Cody was spread as thinly as his predecessor with regard to his editorial duties. He was vice-president and general manager of Warner Publications, a growing concern that included Field and Stream, Black Mask, and other pulps, as well as a short-lived book club started in 1925. Cody had doubled as circulation manager of Black Mask, and he brought to the editor’s chair a sense of marketing that Sutton lacked. Cody transformed Black Mask into a magazine that offered increased emphasis on action-packed crime fiction, enlivened by violence and punctuated with sexual titillation. He nurtured a small stable of favorite writers and encouraged them write stories of substantial length.
The effect on Hammett was immediately clear. His stories more than doubled in length after “One Hour,” a story that the editors of this collection assume to have been accepted by Sutton though it was published in the 1 April 1924 Black Mask, the first that carried Cody’s name as editor. With two exceptions (“The Tenth Clew” at 11,419 words and “Zigzags of Treachery” at 14,521 words), Hammett’s Op stories for Sutton averaged just under 6,000 words apiece. The ten Op stories published by Cody between April 1924 and March 1926 averaged about 14,000 words each. And the Op got meaner. During the course of the nine Op stories written for Sutton, the Op usually didn’t carry a gun, and he was not directly involved in any lethal activity. Hammett’s first story for Cody features six murders, three of which are committed with cause by the Op. During the rest of Cody’s tenure, Hammett’s stories average some six dead bodies each. The Op was turning blood simple. The plots become more complicated; the women more seductive and dangerous; the crooks more professional. Dramatic confrontation rather than simple description increasingly served to advance the plot. Notably in “The Girl with the Silver Eyes” (June 1924), the first of a handful of stories in which the Op struggles to overcome a dangerous attraction to a beautiful woman, Hammett’s Op begins to reveal his emotions. And Hammett’s settings began to exhibit an international flair, as in “The Golden Horseshoe” (November 1924), “The Gutting of Couffignal” (December 1925), and “The Creeping Siamese” (March 1926).
Cody may have been the boss, but his vision was implemented by associate editor Harry C. North, who had served under Sutton, as well. North seems to have conducted an extensive editorial correspondence with his authors, and he minced no words in expressing his editorial opinion. Cody unleashed him. The communications with Hammett are lost, but North’s style can be gleaned from his letters to Erle Stanley Gardner, who published more than 100 stories in Black Mask between 1924 and 1943. That correspondence reveals North to be a man with a sharp editorial eye and firm opinions. His entire reply to an early submission by Gardner was “This stinks.” His editorial principle was also simply stated: he advised Gardner: “If you could once appreciate the fact that the publisher of Black Mask is printing the magazine to make money and nothing else, perhaps you would be more nearly able to guess our needs.”
Cody wasted no time asserting his authority, but he let North do the dirty work of rejecting two of Hammett’s stories. The rejection must have taken place almost immediately after Cody took control, but the account of it did not appear until August 1924, four months after Cody’s ascension, when he published Hammett’s response to Harry North’s rejection letter under the headline “Our Own Short Story Course”:
We recently were obliged to reject two of Mr. Hammett’s detective stories. We didn’t like to do it, for Mr. Hammett and his Continental Detective Agency had become more or less fixtures in BLACK MASK. But in our opinion, the stories were not up to the standard of Mr. Hammett’s own work—so they had to go back.
In returning the manuscripts, we enclosed the “Tragedy in One Act,” referred to in the letter which follows. The “Tragedy” was simply a verbatim report of the discussion in this office, which led to the rejection of the stories.
We are printing Mr. Hammett’s letter below; first, to show the difference between a good author and a poor one; and secondly, as a primary course in short story writing. We believe that authors—especially young authors, and also old authors who have fallen into the rut—can learn more about successful writing from the hundred or so words following, than they can possibly learn from several volumes of so-called short story instruction. Mr. Hammett has gone straight to the heart of the whole subject of writing—or of painting, singing, acting … or of just living for that matter. As the advertising gentry would say, here is the “Secret” of success.
I don’t like that “tragedy in one act” at all; it’s too damned true-to-life. The theatre, to amuse me, must be a bit artificial.
I don’t think I shall send “Women, Politics, and Murder” back to you—not in time for the July issue anyway. The trouble is that this sleuth of mine has degenerated into a meal-ticket. I liked him at first and used to enjoy putting him through his tricks; but recently I have fallen into the habit of bringing him out and running him around whenever the landlord, or the butcher, or the grocer shows signs of nervousness.
There are men who can write like that, but I’m not one of them. If I stick to the stuff I want to write—the stuff I enjoy writing—I can make a go of it, but when I try to grind out a yarn because I think there’s a market for it, then I flop.
Whenever, from now on, I get hold of a story that fits my sleuth, I shall put him to work, but I’m through with trying to run him on a schedule.
Possibly I could patch up “The Question’s One Answer” and “Women, Politics, and Murder” enough to get by with them, but my frank opinion of them is that neither is worth the trouble. I have a liking for honest work, and honest work as I see it is work that is done for the worker’s enjoyment as much as for the profit it will bring him. And henceforth that’s my work.
I want to thank both you and Mr. Cody for jolting me into wakefulness. There’s no telling how much good this will do me. And you may be sure that whenever you get a story from me hereafter,—frequently, I hope,—it will be one that I enjoyed writing.
DASHIELL HAMMETT
San Francisco, Cal.
Meanwhile, Cody published “The House on Turk Street” (15 April 1924) and “The Girl with the Silver Eyes” (June 1924), Hammett’s first set of linked stories and the strongest fiction he had written to that point. Together these stories form a 25,000 word novelette and begin to treat the characters and themes Hammett perfected five years later in The Maltese Falcon.
Hammett didn’t like Cody and North, but he needed the money they paid him. Two months after Cody became editor, Hammett’s disability payment from the U.S. Veterans Bureau was discontinued due to his improving health. It is not know
n how much he was paid for his Black Mask stories, but the base rate is believed to have been a penny a word, though Mencken claimed to have paid a bit less. Other pulps were paying their star writers two cents a word by the mid 1920s and as much as three cents a word by the end of the decade. Because of his popularity Hammett presumably commanded the top rate, but his income was limited by a schedule imposed by Cody, and generally observed, of no more than a story every other month. During Cody’s tenure, from 1 April 1924 until Hammett quit writing for him in March 1926, Hammett published 15 stories in Black Mask of which ten featured the Op. If he made two cents a word under Cody, he earned about $4500 in the two years he wrote for him, or an average of about $300 a story. During that time he also published four stories (one of which was narrated by the Op) in other pulps, as well as a smattering of non fiction and poems; those publications would have earned him no more than another $1000. In September 1925, Hammett learned that his wife was pregnant with their second child. With another mouth to feed, Hammett asked Cody for more money, threatening to quit the magazine if he were denied. Gardner, an attorney, claimed he offered to take a cut in his own pay rate for Hammett’s sake, but Cody refused Hammett on the grounds that it would be unfair to other Black Mask authors. The circumstances are unclear, but Hammett claimed Cody owed him $300, which Cody refused to pay. Hammett quit the magazine in anger early in 1926. His last story for Cody was “The Creeping Siamese” published in March.
R.L.
THE HOUSE IN TURK STREET
Black Mask, 15 April 1924
We wouldn’t consider an issue complete without one of Mr. Hammett’s stories in it, and after you’ve read this tale, you’ll understand why.
I had been told that the man for whom I was hunting lived in a certain Turk Street block, but my informant hadn’t been able to give me his house number. Thus it came about that late one rainy afternoon I was canvassing this certain block, ringing each bell, and reciting a myth that went like this:
“I’m from the law office of Wellington and Berkeley. One of our clients—an elderly lady—was thrown from the rear platform of a street car last week and severely injured. Among those who witnessed the accident, was a young man whose name we don’t know. But we have been told that he lives in this neighborhood.” Then I would describe the man I wanted, and wind up: “Do you know of anyone who looks like that?”
All down one side of the block the answers were:
“No,” “No,” “No.”
I crossed the street and started to work the other side. The first house: “No.”
The second: “No.”
The third. The fourth.
The fifth—
No one came to the door in answer to my first ring. After a while, I rang again. I had just decided that no one was at home, when the knob turned slowly and a little old woman opened the door. She was a very fragile little old woman, with a piece of grey knitting in one hand, and faded eyes that twinkled pleasantly behind gold-rimmed spectacles. She wore a stiffly starched apron over a black dress and there was white lace at her throat.
“Good evening,” she said in a thin friendly voice. “I hope you didn’t mind waiting. I always have to peep out to see who’s here before I open the door—an old woman’s timidity.”
She laughed with a little gurgling sound in her throat.
“Sorry to disturb you,” I apologized. “But—”
“Won’t you come in, please?”
“No; I just want a little information. I won’t take much of your time.”
“I wish you would come in,” she said, and then added with mock severity, “I’m sure my tea is getting cold.”
She took my damp hat and coat, and I followed her down a narrow hall to a dim room, where a man got up as we entered. He was old too, and stout, with a thin white beard that fell upon a white vest that was as stiffly starched as the woman’s apron.
“Thomas,” the little fragile woman told him; “this is Mr.—”
“Tracy,” I said, because that was the name I had given the other residents of the block; but I came as near blushing when I said it, as I have in fifteen years. These folks weren’t made to be lied to.
Their name, I learned, was Quarre; and they were an affectionate old couple. She called him “Thomas” every time she spoke to him, rolling the name around in her mouth as if she liked the taste of it. He called her “my dear” just as frequently, and twice he got up to adjust a cushion more comfortably to her frail back.
I had to drink a cup of tea with them and eat some little spiced cookies before I could get them to listen to a question. Then Mrs. Quarre made little sympathetic clicking sounds with her tongue and teeth, while I told about the elderly lady who had fallen off a street car. The old man rumbled in his beard that it was “a damn shame,” and gave me a fat and oily cigar. I had to assure them that the fictitious elderly lady was being taken care of and was coming along nicely—I was afraid they were going to insist upon being taken to see her.
Finally I got away from the accident itself, and described the man I wanted. “Thomas,” Mrs. Quarre said; “isn’t that the young man who lives in the house with the railing—the one who always looks so worried?”
The old man stroked his snowy beard and pondered.
“But, my dear,” he rumbled at last; “hasn’t he got dark hair?”
She beamed upon her husband and then upon me.
“Thomas is so observant,” she said with pride. “I had forgotten; but the young man I spoke of does have dark hair, so he couldn’t be the one who saw the accident at all.”
The old man then suggested that one who lived in the block below might be my man. They discussed this one at some length before they decided that he was too tall and too old. Mrs. Quarre suggested another. They discussed that one, and voted against him. Thomas offered a candidate; he was weighed and discarded. They chattered on:
“But don’t you think, Thomas … Yes, my dear, but … Of course you’re right, Thomas, but. …”
Two old folks enjoying a chance contact with the world that they had dropped out of.
Darkness settled. The old man turned on a light in a tall lamp that threw a soft yellow circle upon us, and left the rest of the room dim. The room was a large one, and heavy with the thick hangings and bulky horse-hair furniture of a generation ago. I burned the cigar the old man had given me, and slumped comfortably down in my chair, letting them run on, putting in a word or two whenever they turned to me. I didn’t expect to get any information here; but I was comfortable, and the cigar was a good one. Time enough to go out into the drizzle when I had finished my smoke.
Something cold touched the nape of my neck.
“Stand up!”
I didn’t stand up: I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. I sat and blinked at the Quarres.
And looking at them, I knew that something cold couldn’t be against the back of my neck; a harsh voice couldn’t have ordered me to stand up. It wasn’t possible!
Mrs. Quarre still sat primly upright against the cushions her husband had adjusted to her back; her eyes still twinkled with friendliness behind her glasses; her hands were still motionless in her lap, crossed at the wrists over the piece of knitting. The old man still stroked his white beard, and let cigar smoke drift unhurriedly from his nostrils.
They would go on talking about the young men in the neighborhood who might be the man I wanted. Nothing had happened. I had dozed.
“Get up!”
The cold thing against my neck jabbed deep into the flesh.
I stood up.
“Frisk him,” the harsh voice came from behind.
The old man carefully laid his cigar down, came to me, and ran his hands over my body. Satisfied that I was unarmed, he emptied my pockets, dropping the contents upon the chair that I had just left.
Mrs. Quarre was pouring herself some more tea.
r /> “Thomas,” she said; “you’ve overlooked that little watch pocket in the trousers.”
He found nothing there.
“That’s all,” he told the man behind me, and returned to his chair and cigar.
“Turn around, you!” the harsh voice ordered.
I turned and faced a tall, gaunt, raw-boned man of about my own age, which is thirty-five. He had an ugly face—hollow-cheeked, bony, and spattered with big pale freckles. His eyes were of a watery blue, and his nose and chin stuck out abruptly.
“Know me?” he asked.
“No.”
“You’re a liar!”
I didn’t argue the point: he was holding a level gun in one big freckled hand.
“You’re going to know me pretty well before you’re through with me,” this big ugly man threatened. “You’re going to—”
“Hook!” a voice came from a portièred doorway—the doorway through which the ugly man had no doubt crept up behind me. “Hook, come here!”
The voice was feminine—young, clear, and musical.
“What do you want?” the ugly man called over his shoulder.
“He’s here.”
“All right!” He turned to Thomas Quarre. “Keep this joker safe.”
From somewhere among his whiskers, his coat, and his stiff white vest, the old man brought out a big black revolver, which he handled with no signs of either weakness or unfamiliarity.
The ugly man swept up the things that had been taken from my pockets, and carried them through the portières with him.
Mrs. Quarre smiled brightly up at me.
“Do sit down, Mr. Tracy,” she said.
I sat.
Through the portières a new voice came from the next room; a drawling baritone voice whose accent was unmistakably British; cultured British.
“What’s up, Hook?” this voice was asking.