The Thin Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

anything I’d—”
    Knuckles drummed on the corridor door, three times, sharply. Morelli’s gun was in his hand before the noise stopped. His eyes seemed to move in all directions at once. His voice was a metallic snarl deep in his chest: “Well?”
    “I don’t know.” I sat up a little higher in bed and nodded at the gun in his hand. “That makes it your party.” The gun pointed very accurately at my chest. I could hear the blood in my ears, and my lips felt swollen. I said: “There’s no fire-escape.” I put my left hand out towards Nora, who was sitting on the far side of the bed.
    The knuckles hit the door again, and a deep voice called: “Open up. Police.”
    Morelli’s lower lip crawled up to lap the upper, and the whites of his eyes began to show under the irises. “You son of a bitch,” he said slowly, almost as if he were sorry for me. He moved his feet the least bit, flattening them against the floor.
    A key touched the outer lock. I hit Nora with my left hand, knocking her down across the room. The pillow I chucked with my right hand at Morelli’s gun seemed to have no weight; it drifted slow as a piece of tissue paper. No noise in the world, before or after, was ever as loud as Morelli’s gun going off. Something pushed my left side as I sprawled across the floor. I caught one of his ankles and rolled over with it, bringing him down on me, and he clubbed my back with the gun until I got a hand free and began to hit him as low in the body as I could.
    Men came in and dragged us apart. It took us five minutes to bring Nora to. She sat up holding her cheek and looked around the room until she saw Morelli, nippers on one wrist, standing between two detectives. Morelli’s face was a mess: the coppers had worked him over a little just for the fun of it. Nora glared at me. “Youdamned fool,” she said, “you didn’t have to knock me cold. I knew you’d take him, but I wanted to see it.”
    One of the coppers laughed. “Jesus,” he said admiringly, “there’s a woman with hair on her chest.”
    She smiled at him and stood up. When she looked at me she stopped smiling. “Nick, you’re—” I said I didn’t think it was much and opened what was left of my pyjama-coat. Morelli’s bullet had scooped out a gutter perhaps four inches long under my left nipple. A lot of blood was running out of it, but it was not very deep.
    Morelli said: “Tough luck. A couple of inches over would make a lot of difference the right way.” The copper who had admired Nora—he was a big sandy man of forty-eight or fifty in a gray suit that did not fit him very well—slapped Morelli’s mouth.
    Keyser, the Normandie’s manager, said he would get a doctor and went to the telephone. Nora ran to the bathroom for towels. I put a towel over the wound and lay down on the bed. “I’m all right. Don’t let’s fuss over it till the doctor comes. How’d you people happen to pop in?”
    The copper who had slapped Morelli said: “We happen to hear this is getting to be kind of a meeting-place for Wynant’s family and his lawyer and everybody, so we think we’ll kind of keep an eye on it in case he happens to show up, and this morning when Mack here, who was the eye we were kind of keeping on it at the time, sees this bird duck in, he gives us a ring and we get hold of Mr. Keyser and come on up, and pretty lucky for you.”
    “Yes, pretty lucky for me, or maybe I wouldn’t’ve got shot.”
    He eyed me suspiciously. His eyes were pale gray and watery. “This bird a friend of yours?”
    “I never saw him before.”
    “What’d he want of you?”
    “Wanted to tell me he didn’t kill the Wolf girl.”
    “What’s that to you?”
    “Nothing.”
    “What’d he think it was to you?”
    “Ask him. I don’t know.”
    “I’m asking you.”
    “Keep on asking.”
    “I’ll ask you another one: you’re going to swear to the complaint on him shooting you?”
    “That’s another one I can’t answer right now.