The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Mr. Nunheim. He ought to be home: I told him to stick around till I phoned him.”
    Mr. Nunheim’s home was on the fourth floor of a dark, damp, and smelly building made noisy by the Sixth Avenue elevated. Guild knocked on the door. There were sounds of hurried movement inside, then a voice asked: “Who is it?” The voice was a man’s, nasal, somewhat irritable.
    Guild said: “John.”
    The door was hastily opened by a small sallow man of thirty-five or -six whose visible clothes were an undershirt, blue pants, and black silk stockings. “I wasn’t expecting you, Lieutenant,” he whined. “You said you’d phone.” He seemed frightened. His dark eyes were small and set close together; his mouth was wide, thin, and loose; and his nose was peculiarly limber, a long, drooping nose, apparently boneless.
    Guild touched my elbow with his hand and we went in. Through an open door to the left an unmade bed could be seen. The room we entered was a living-room, shabby and dirty, with clothing, newspapers, and dirty dishes sitting around. In an alcove to the right there was a sink and a stove. A woman stood betweenthem holding a sizzling skillet in her hand. She was a big-boned, full-fleshed, red-haired woman of perhaps twenty-eight, handsome in a rather brutal, sloppy way. She wore a rumpled pink kimono and frayed pink mules with lopsided bows on them. She stared sullenly at us. Guild did not introduce me to Nunheim and he paid no attention to the woman. “Sit down,” he said, and pushed some clothing out of the way to make a place for himself on an end of the sofa.
    I removed part of a newspaper from a rocking-chair and sat down. Since Guild kept his hat on I did the same with mine. Nunheim went over to the table, where there was about two inches of whisky in a pint bottle and a couple of tumblers, and said: “Have a shot?”
    Guild made a face. “Not that vomit. What’s the idea of telling me you just knew the Wolf girl by sight?”
    “That’s all I did, Lieutenant, that’s the Christ’s truth.” Twice his eyes slid sidewise towards me and he jerked them back. “Maybe I said hello to her or how are you or something like that when I saw her, but that’s all I knew her. That’s the Christ’s truth.”
    The woman in the alcove laughed, once, derisively, and there was no merriment in her face. Nunheim twisted himself around to face her. “All right,” he told her, his voice shrill with rage, “put your mouth in and I’ll pop a tooth out of it.” She swung her arm and let the skillet go at his head. It missed, crashing into the wall. Grease and eggyolks made fresher stains on the wall, floor, and furniture. He started for her. I did not have to rise to put out a foot and trip him. He tumbled down on the floor. The woman had picked up a paring knife.
    “Cut it out,” Guild growled. He had not stood up either. “We come here to talk to you, not to watch this roughhouse comedy. Get up and behave yourself.”
    Nunheim got slowly to his feet. “She drives me nuts when she’s drinking,” he said. “She’s been ragging me all day.” He moved his right hand back and forth. “I think I sprained my wrist.” Thewoman walked past us without looking at any of us, went into the bedroom, and shut the door.
    Guild said: “Maybe if you’d quit sucking around after other women you wouldn’t have so much trouble with this one.”
    “What do you mean, Lieutenant?” Nunheim was surprised and innocent and perhaps pained.
    “Julia Wolf.”
    The little sallow man was indignant now. “That’s a lie, Lieutenant. Anybody that say I ever—”
    Guild interrupted him by addressing me: “If you want to take a poke at him, I wouldn’t stop on account of his bum wrist: he couldn’t ever hit hard anyhow.”
    Nunheim turned to me with both hands out. “I didn’t mean you were a liar. I meant maybe somebody made a mistake if they—”
    Guild interrupted him again: “You wouldn’t’ve taken her if you could’ve gotten