The Golden Horseshoe and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett

in Joplin’s hang-out. They went up there as soon as they seen Pangburn had been croaked.”
    I had no illusions about Porky. I knew he was capable of selling me out and furnishing the poet’s murderer with an alibi. But there was this about it: if Joplin, Kilcourse or the girl had fixed him, and had fixed my informant, then it was hopeless for me to try to prove that they weren’t on the rear porch when the shot was fired. Joplin had a crowd of hangers-on who would swear to anything he told them without batting an eye. There would be a dozen supposed witnesses to their presence on the rear porch.
    Thus the only thing for me to do was to take it for granted that Porky was coming clean with me.
    â€œHave you seen Dick Foley?” I asked, since Dick had been shadowing Kilcourse.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHunt around and see if you can find him. Tell him I’ve gone up to talk to Joplin, and tell him to come on up. Then you can stick around where I can get hold of you if I want you.”
    I went in through a French window, crossed an empty dance-floor and went up the stairs that lead to Tin-Star Joplin’s living quarters in the rear second story. I knew the way, having been up there before. Joplin and I were old friends.
    I was going up now to give him and his friends a shake-down on the off-chance that some good might come of it, though I knew that I had nothing on any of them. I could have tied something on the girl, of course, but not without advertising the fact that the dead poet had forged his brother-in-law’s signature to a check. And that was no go.
    â€œCome in,” a heavy, familiar voice called when I rapped on Joplin’s living-room door.
    I pushed the door open and went in.
    Tin-Star Joplin was standing in the middle of the floor: a big-bodied ex-yegg with inordinately thick shoulders and an expressionless horse face. Beyond him Kilcourse sat dangling one leg from the corner of a table, alertness hiding behind an amused half-smile on his handsome dark face. On the other side of a room a girl whom I knew for Jeanne Delano sat on the arm of a big leather chair. And the poet hadn’t exaggerated when he told me she was beautiful.
    â€œYou!” Joplin grunted disgustedly as soon as he recognized me. “What the hell do you want?”
    â€œWhat’ve you got?”
    My mind wasn’t on this sort of repartee, however; I was studying the girl. There was something vaguely familiar about her—but I couldn’t place her. Perhaps I hadn’t seen her before; perhaps much looking at the picture Pangburn had given me was responsible for my feeling of recognition. Pictures will do that.
    Meanwhile, Joplin had said:
    â€œTime to waste is one thing I ain’t got.”
    And I had said:
    â€œIf you’d saved up all the time different judges have given you, you’d have plenty.”
    I had seen the girl somewhere before. She was a slender girl in a glistening blue gown that exhibited a generous spread of front, back and arms that were worth showing. She had a mass of dark brown hair above an oval face of the color that pink ought to be. Her eyes were wide-set and of a grey shade that wasn’t altogether unlike the shadows on polished silver that the poet had compared them to.
    I studied the girl, and she looked back at me with level eyes, and still I couldn’t place her. Kilcourse still sat dangling a leg from the table corner.
    Joplin grew impatient.
    â€œWill you stop gandering at the girl, and tell me what you want of me?” he growled.
    The girl smiled then, a mocking smile that bared the edges of razor-sharp little animal teeth. And with the smile I knew her!
    Her hair and skin had fooled me. The last time I had seen her—the only time I had seen her before—her face had been marble-white, and her hair had been short and the color of fire. She and an older woman and three men and I had played hide-and-seek one evening in a house in