1
Arson Plus
Dashiell Hammett
First published in the October 1923 issue of Black Mask magazine.
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JIM TARR PICKED up the cigar I rolled across his desk, looked at the band, bit off an end, and reached for a match.
"Three for a buck," he said. "You must want me to break a couple of laws for you this time."
I had been doing business with this fat sheriff of Sacramento County for four or five years -- ever since I came to the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco office -- and I had never known him to miss an opening for a sour crack; but it didn't mean anything.
"Wrong both times," I told him. "I get them for two bits each, and I'm here to do you a favor instead of asking for one. The company that insured Thornburgh's house thinks somebody touched it off."
"That's right enough, according to the fire department. They tell me the lower part of the house was soaked with gasoline, but the Lord knows how they could tell -- there wasn't a stick left standing. I've got McClump working on it, but he hasn't found anything to get excited about yet."
"What's the layout? All I know is that there was a fire."
Tarr leaned back in his chair and bellowed:
"Hey, Mac!"
The pearl push buttons on his desk are ornaments so far as he is concerned. Deputy sheriffs McHale, McClump, and Macklin came to the door together -- MacNab apparently wasn't within hearing.
"What's the idea?" the sheriff demanded of McClump. "Are you carrying a bodyguard around with you?"
The two other deputies, thus informed as to whom "Mac" referred this time, went back to their cribbage game.
"We got a city slicker here to catch our firebug for us," Tarr told his deputy. "But we got to tell him what it's all about first."
McClump and I had worked togeth