The Collected Dashiell Hammett

The Dimple

Saucy Stories, October 15,1923; (aka: In the Morgue, 1962)

Walter Dowe took the last sheet of the manuscript from his typewriter, with a satisfied sigh, and leaned back in his chair, turning his face to the ceiling to ease the stiffened muscles of his neck. Then he looked at the clock: three-fifteen. He yawned, got to his feet, switched off the lights, and went down the hall to his bedroom.

In the doorway of the bedroom, he halted abruptly. The moonlight came through the wide windows to illuminate an empty bed. He turned on the lights, and looked around the room. None of the things his wife had worn that night were there. She had not undressed, then; perhaps she had heard the rattle of his typewriter and had decided to wait downstairs until he had finished. She never interrupted him when he was at work, and he was usually too engrossed by his labors to hear her footsteps when she passed his study door.

He went to the head of the stairs and called:

“Althea!”

No answer.

He went downstairs, into all the rooms, turning on the lights; he returned to the second story and did the same. His wife was not in the house. He was perplexed, and a little helpless. Then he remembered that she had gone to the theater with the Schuylers. His hands trembled as he picked up the telephone.

The Schuylers’ maid answered his call... There had been a fire at the Majestic theater; neither Mr. nor Mrs. Schuyler had come home. Mr. Schuylers father had gone out to look for them, but had not returned yet. The maid understood that the fire had been pretty bad... Lots of folks hurt...

Dowe was waiting on the sidewalk when the taxicab for which he had telephoned arrived. Fifteen minutes later he was struggling to get through the fire lines, which were still drawn about the theater. A perspiring, red-faced policeman thrust him back.

“You’ll find nothing here! The building’s been cleared. Everybody’s been taken to the hospitals.”

Dowe found his cab again and was driven to the City Hospital. He forced his way through the clamoring group on the grey stone steps. A policeman blocked the door. Presently a pasty-faced man, in solid white, spoke over the policeman’s shoulder:

“There’s no use waiting. We’re too busy treating them now to either take their names, or let anybody in to see them. We’ll try to have a list in the late morning edition; but we can’t let anybody in until later in the day.”

Dowe turned away. Then he thought: Murray Bornis, of course! He went back to the cab and gave the driver Bornis’ address.

Bornis came to the door of his apartment in pajamas. Dowe clung to him.

“Althea went to the Majestic tonight, and hasn’t come home. They wouldn’t let me in at the hospital. Told me to wait; and I can’t! You’re a police commissioner; you can get me in!”

While Bornis dressed, Dowe paced the floor, talking, babbling. Then he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror, and stood suddenly still. The sight of his distorted face and wild eyes shocked him back into sanity. He was on the verge of hysterics. He must take hold of himself. He must not collapse before he found Althea. Deliberately, he made himself sit down; made himself stop visualizing Altheas soft, white body charred and crushed. He must think about something else: Bornis, for instance... But that brought him back to his wife in the end. She had never liked Bornis. His frank sensuality, and his unsavory reputation for numerous affairs with numerous women, had offended her strict conception of morality. To be sure, she had always given him all the courtesy due her husband’s friend; but it was generally a frigid giving. And Bornis, understanding her attitude, and perhaps a little contemptuous of her narrow views, had been as coolly polite as she. And now she was lying somewhere, moaning in agony, perhaps already cold...

Bornis caught up the rest of his clothes and they went down to the street. He finished dressing in the taxicab.

They went to the City Hospital first, where the police commissioner and his companion were readily admitted. They walked down long rooms, between rows of groaning and writhing bodies; looking into bruised and burned faces, seeing no one they knew. Then to Mercy Hospital, where they found Sylvia Schuyler. She told them that the crush in the theater had separated her from her husband and Althea, and she had not seen them afterward. Then she lapsed into unconsciousness again.

When they got back to the taxicab, Bornis gave directions to the driver in an undertone, but Dowe did not have to hear them to know what they were: “To the morgue.” There was no place else to go.

Now they walked between row s of bodies that were mangled horribly; denuded, discolored, and none the less terrible because they could not scream. Dowe had exhausted his feelings: he felt no pity, no loathing now. He looked into a face; it was not Althea’s; then it was nothing; he passed on to the next.

Bornis’ fingers closed convulsively around Dowe’s arm.

“There! Althea!”

Dowe turned. A face that stampeding leather heels had robbed of features; a torso that was battered and blackened and cut, and from which the clothing had been torn. All that was human of it were the legs; they had somehow escaped disfigurement.

“No! No!” Dowe cried.

He would not have this begrimed, mangled thing his exquisite white Althea!

Through the horror that for the moment shut Dowe off from the world, Bornis’s vibrant, anguished voice penetrated — a shriek:

“I tell you it is!” Flinging out a hand to point at one smooth knee. “See! The dimple!”