Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

gone, but before he passed out he got enough strength to tell her, ‘Max!’
    “She kept asking me, ‘What’ll I do?’ I asked her if anybody else had heard Tim, and she said the dick had. He came running up while she was trying to lift Tim’s head. She didn’t think anybody else had been near enough to hear, but the dick had.
    “I didn’t want Max to get in a jam over killing a mutt like Tim Noonan. Max didn’t mean anything to me then, except that I liked him, and I
didn’t
like any of the Noonans. I knew the dick—MacSwain. I used to know his wife. He had been a pretty good guy, straight as ace-deuce-trey-four-five, till he got on the force. Then he went the way of the rest of them. His wife stood as much of it as she could and then left him.
    “Knowing this dick, I told Myrtle I thought we could fix things. A little jack would ruin MacSwain’s memory, or, if he didn’t like that, Max could have him knocked off. She had Tim’s note threatening suicide. If the dick would play along, the hole in Tim’s head from his own gun and the note would smooth everything over pretty.
    “I left Myrtle under the trees and went out to hunt for Max. He wasn’t around. There weren’t many people there, and I could hear the hotel orchestra still playing dance music. I couldn’t find Max, so I went back to Myrtle. She was all worked up over another idea. She didn’t want Max to know that she had found out that he had killed Tim. She was afraid of him.
    “See what I mean? She was afraid that if she and Max ever broke off he’d put her out of the way if he knew she had enough on him to swing him. I know how she felt. I got the same notion later, and kept just as quiet as she did. So we figured that if it could be fixed up without his knowing about it, so much the better. I didn’t want to show in it either.
    “Myrtle went back alone to the group around Tim and got hold of MacSwain. She took him off a little way and made the deal with him. She had some dough on her. She gave him two hundred and a diamond ring that had cost a fellow named Boyle a thousand. I thought he’d be back for more later, but he wasn’t.He shot square with her. With the help of the letter he put over the suicide story.
    “Noonan knew there was something fishy about the layout, but he could never peg it. I think he suspected Max of having something to do with it. But Max had an air-tight alibi—trust him for that—and I think even Noonan finally counted him out. But Noonan never believed it happened the way it was made to look. He broke MacSwain—kicked him off the force.
    “Max and Myrtle slid apart a little while after that. No row or anything—they just slid apart. I don’t think she ever felt easy around him again, though so far as I know he never suspected her of knowing anything. She’s sick now, as I told you, and hasn’t got long to live. I think she’d not so much mind telling the truth if she were asked. MacSwain’s still hanging around town. He’d talk if there was something in it for him. Those two have got the stuff on Max—and wouldn’t Noonan eat it up! Is that good enough to give your stirring-up a start?”
    “Couldn’t it have been suicide?” I asked. “With Tim Noonan getting a last-minute bright idea to stick it on Max?”
    “That four-flusher shoot himself? Not a chance.”
    “Could Myrtle have shot him?”
    “Noonan didn’t overlook that one. But she couldn’t have been a third of the distance down the slope when the shot was fired. Tim had powder-marks on his head, and hadn’t been shot and rolled down the slope. Myrtle’s out.”
    “But Max had an alibi?”
    “Yes, indeed. He always has. He was in the hotel bar, on the other side of the building, all the time. Four men said so. As I remember it, they said it openly and often, long before anybody asked them. There were other men in the bar who didn’t remember whether Max had been there or not, but those four remembered. They’d remember anything