The Continental Op-1928 by Dashiell Hammett

Book Details

1928 was a seminal year for Dashiell Hammett. He ended the series of stories known as the Poisonville stories that were later turned into the novel “Red Harvest.” Later in the year he began the series of stories that were turned into the novel “The Dain Curse.” In between those two series, Hammett sent his Op to the Balkans to babysit a naive rich boy who thought he might become a king by backing a coup – a lesser known comic opera done in Hammett’s inimitable style….

Dynamite
The Cleansing of Poisonville.
A novelette in nine chapters.

The 19th Murder
The Continental detective cleans up.
A novelette in twelve chapters.

This King Business
The desire to rule is inherent in the breasts of most of us, notwithstanding the number of thrones that have toppled in the past decade. Mr. Hammett tells us of the strange series of events which led an American youth to seek kingship in “the Powder Magazine of Europe”—the Balkans. The consequences were—to put it mildly—exciting.

Chapter I – “Yes”—and “No”
Chapter II – Romaine
Chapter III – Shadowing
Chapter IV – Introductions
Chapter V – A Flogging
Chapter VI – Cards On The Table
Chapter VII – Lionel’s Plans
Chapter VIII – An Enlightening Interview
Chapter IX – Conjectures
Chapter X – Einarson In Control
Chapter XI – A Romantic Interlude
Chapter XII – The Night Before
Chapter XIII – Progress Goes “Betune”
Chapter XIV – Coronation
Chapter XV – Bargain Hunters
Chapter XVI – Lionel Rex
Chapter XVII – Mob Law

Black Lives
The Dain Curse (Part 1)
A novelette in six chapters

The Hollow Temple
The Dain Curse (Part 2)
A novelette in seven chapters

In his obituary in  The New York Times,  Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) was described as “the dean of the… ‘hard-boiled’ school of detective fiction.”

Hammett is remembered for writing some of the seminal novels of crime fiction: Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Glass Key, The Thin Man, and The Maltese Falcon.

Hammett began writing the Continental Op stories in 1923 and continued writing them until 1930. He wrote thirty-six Continental Op stories in all.

The Continental Op -1927 contains 0 illustrations.

Files:

1. Hammett-ContinentalOp1928.epub

Excerpt: Dynamite

I

MICKEY LINEHAN USED the telephone to wake me at noon.

“We’re here,” he told me. “Where’s the reception committee?”

“Probably stopped to get a rope. Check your bags and come up to the hotel. Room 537. Don’t advertise your visit.”

I was dressed when they arrived.

Mickey Linehan was a big slob with sagging shoulders and a shapeless body that seemed to be coming apart at all its joints. His ears stuck out like red wings, and his round red face usually wore the meaningless smirk of a half-wit. Dick Foley was a boy-sized Canadian with a sharp, irritable face. He wore high heels to increase his height, perfumed his handkerchiefs, and saved all the words he could. They were both good operatives.

“What did the Old Man tell you about the job?” I asked when we had settled into seats.

“He didn’t seem to know much,” Mickey said. “Said you’d wired for help, and that he hadn’t got any reports from you for a couple of days.”

“The chances are he won’t for a couple more. Know anything about this Personville?”

Dick shook his head. Mickey said:

“Only that people call it Poisonville as if they meant it.”

“Here’s the way it stacks up,” I said. “Old Elihu Willsson owns the Personville Mining Corporation, the First National Bank, the newspapers—practically the whole city and a fair slice of the state. He used to run it as well as own it—by himself. Now he’s got help—more than he wants. A few years back, when he had a strike and other troubles on his hands, he needed help. Now his helpers have got him by the neck. He has to play along with them whether he likes it or not.

“There seem to be four of these helpers who count. Pete the Finn, who is Poisonville’s bootleg king; Lew Yard; Max Thaler, alias Whisper, who runs a couple of gambling joints; and Noonan, chief of police. I’m told Lew Yard is head man and fence for the burg’s grifters. I don’t know much about him or Pete the Finn. I’ve been too busy to look ’em over.

“Elihu Willsson is old and sick. His doctor told him he’d have to give up handling his affairs. So Elihu brought his son Donald home from Paris. But when the son gets here the old man can’t make up his mind to pass everything over to him. He compromised by giving the boy the newspapers to play with. Donald seems to have been a pretty nice boy, but he wasn’t a wise head. It didn’t take him long to find out that Personville wasn’t exactly a paradise of righteousness, but he didn’t tumble to the fact that his old man was in the mud as deep as the rest.

“The youngster starts a reform campaign in his—or really his father’s—papers. Papa tries to reason with him, but he doesn’t want to admit that he’s tied up with the town’s choicest thugs. So he doesn’t make much headway. Papa’s confederates—knowing he’d shake ’em off if he could—begin to think he’s using Donald to do it. I don’t think he was—but he might have been at that. Anyway, everybody suspects everybody else all around.

“That’s the way it stood last week when we got a check from Donald and a letter asking that an op be sent here to do some work for him. I was the op. I got here Monday. Donald was shot and killed before I saw him. He was killed right after buying some graft evidence from a Dinah Brand, who was Max Thaler’s girl. It comes out afterwards that he couldn’t have used what she sold him—or so she thought. She was gypping him. But—with everybody watching everybody else—Lew Yard, Pete the Finn and Noonan got the idea that Thaler and old Elihu were double crossing them. They hit back by trying to frame Thaler for the killing, and trying to knock off Elihu.

“That was none of my business, then. All I wanted was to nail Donald’s murderer. But these people wouldn’t let me alone. They were afraid I’d dig up stuff they didn’t want dug up. See, they thought the boy’s killing was part of the double-crossing. They ran me ragged for a couple of days, until this thing of being shot at by coppers got on my nerves. Elihu, scared stiff that his ex-friends were going to wipe him out, sent for me. He wanted them wiped out. I was sore enough by then to be glad of the chance.

“I took advantage of his fright to get a certified check out of him, and a letter that was as good as a contract, so he couldn’t call the job off if he and the others patched up their quarrel. It was a good thing I did. When I landed Donald’s murderer—a boy named Albury ex-boy-friend of Dinah Brand’s—everybody found out that the killing had nothing to do with politics, was just the result of crazy jealousy.

“Elihu, Thaler, Yard, Pete and Noonan immediately fell on each other’s necks and kissed their differences away. Elihu tried to call me off. But I had him sewed up too tight for that. He couldn’t block me without raising more stink than he wanted. Since then it’s been me versus Poisonville. I had—”

The telephone bell interrupted me. Dinah Brand’s lazy voice:

“Hello! How’s the wrist?”

“Only a scratch. What do you think of the crush-out?”

“It’s not my fault,” she said. “I did my part. If Noonan couldn’t hold him, it’s just too bad. I’m coming downtown to buy a hat this afternoon I thought I’d drop in and see you for a couple of minutes if you’re going to be there.”

“What time?”

“Oh, around three.”

“Right. I’ll expect you, and I’ll have that two hundred berries and a dime I owe you.”

“Do,” she said. “That’s what I’m coming in for. Cheerio!”

I went back to my seat on the bed and my story:

“I had kept Thaler from being framed for Donald’s murder. That gave me a good stand-in with him. But I had to blow it. This girl of his— Dinah Brand, that was her on the phone—is a money-hungry baby with some local knowledge I could use. So I tried my hand at splitting her and Thaler. He had a fight fixed Thursday night. A pug who called himself Ike Bush was to lay down to another named Kid Cooper.

“With the help of an ex-bull named MacSwain I unfixed it, making Bush win, letting the girl in on it in time to switch her bets. It stirred things up plenty. Bush won but got a knife through his neck before he could get out of the ring. Thaler accused the girl of selling him out. She got mad and tipped me off to where I could dig up proof that Thaler killed Noonan’s brother a year and a half ago.

“That was what I wanted—something to set the boys against one another. I took the dope to Noonan. Later, the girl helped me turn Thaler in to him. That’s where I got this bandaged wrist—we fireworked each other. Last night Thaler’s friends dynamited him out of the hoosegow. I don’t know whether Noonan has caught him again or not. I haven’t been out yet today. I hope he hasn’t. I imagine Lew Yard and Pete the Finn will try to make the chief lay off of Thaler. I don’t know what he’ll do. He’s shifty as hell and he does want his revenge for brother Tim’s bump-off.

Excerpt From: Dashiell Hammett. “The Continental Op -1928.”