Fly Paper and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett Page A

seat. I talked to a deputy named Hilden. When I had told him my story he said the sheriff would be at the house within half an hour.
    I went to my room and dressed. By the time I had finished, the valet came up to tell me that everybody was assembled in the front room—everybody except the Ringgos and Mrs. Ringgo’s maid.
    I was examining Kavalov’s bedroom when the sheriff arrived. He was a white-haired man with mild blue eyes and a mild voice that came out indistinctly under a white mustache. He had brought three deputies, a doctor and a coroner with him.
    â€œRinggo and the valet can tell you more than I can,” I said when we had shaken hands all around. “I’ll be back as soon as I can make it. I’m going to Sherry’s. Ringgo will tell you where he fits in.”
    In the garage I selected a muddy Chevrolet and drove to the bungalow. Its doors and windows were tight, and my knocking brought no answer.
    I went back along the cobbled walk to the car, and rode down into Farewell. There I had no trouble learning that Sherry and Marcus had taken the two-ten train for Los Angeles the afternoon before, with three trunks and half a dozen bags that the village expressman had checked for them.
    After sending a telegram to the Agency’s Los Angeles branch, I hunted up the man from whom Sherry had rented the bungalow.
    He could tell me nothing about his tenants except that he was disappointed in their not staying even a full two weeks. Sherry had returned the keys with a brief note saying he had been called away unexpectedly.
    I pocketed the note. Handwriting specimens are always convenient to have. Then I borrowed the keys to the bungalow and went back to it.
    I didn’t find anything of value there, except a lot of fingerprints that might possibly come in handy later. There was nothing there to tell me where my men had gone.
    I returned to Kavalov’s.
    The sheriff had finished running the staff through the mill.
    â€œCan’t get a thing out of them,” he said. “Nobody heard anything and nobody saw anything, from bedtime last night, till the valet opened the door to call him at eight o’clock this morning, and saw him dead like that. You know any more than that?”
    â€œNo. They tell you about Sherry?”
    â€œOh, yes. That’s our meat, I guess, huh?”
    â€œYeah. He’s supposed to have cleared out yesterday afternoon, with his black man, for Los Angeles. We ought to be able to find the work in that. What does the doctor say?”
    â€œSays he was killed between three and four this morning, with a heavyish knife—one clean slash from left to right, like a left-handed man would do it.”
    â€œMaybe one clean cut,” I agreed, “but not exactly a slash. Slower than that. A slash, if it curved, ought to curve up, away from the slasher, in the middle, and down towards him at the ends—just the opposite of what this does.”
    â€œOh, all right. Is this Sherry a southpaw?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I wondered if Marcus was. “Find the knife?”
    â€œNary hide nor hair of it. And what’s more, we didn’t find anything else, inside or out. Funny a fellow as scared as Kavalov was, from all accounts, didn’t keep himself locked up tighter. His windows were open. Anybody could of got in them with a ladder. His door wasn’t locked.”
    â€œThere could be half a dozen reasons for that. He—”
    One of the deputies, a big-shouldered blond man, came to the door and said:
    â€œWe found the knife.”
    The sheriff and I followed the deputy out of the house, around to the side on which Kavalov’s room was situated. The knife’s blade was buried in the ground, among some shrubs that bordered a path leading down to the farm hands’ quarters.
    The knife’s wooden handle—painted red—slanted a little toward the house. A little blood was smeared on the blade, but the