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The Hollow Temple (Part Two of The Dain Curse)

by Dashiel Hammett

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VI

It was tall, yet not so tall as it seemed, because it did not stand on the floor, but hovered with its feet a foot or more above the floor. Its feet—it had feet, but I don’t know what their shape was. They had no shape—just as its legs and torso, arms and hands, head and face were without shape—without fixed form. They writhed, swelling and contracting, stretching and shrinking, not greatly, but without pause. An arm would drift into the body, be swallowed by it, come out again as if poured out. The nose would stretch down over the gaping shapeless mouth, shrink back up, into the face until it was flush with the cheeks, grow out again. The eyes would spread across the face until they were one enormous eye that had blotted out all the upper face, then contract until there was no pedestal, then three, then two again. The legs became one thick leg, like a pedestal, then three, then two again. And no feature or member ever stopped its quivering and writhing until its contours could be determined, its shape recognized.

It, or he, was a thing like a man, who floated above the floor; with a horrible grimacing greenish face and pale flesh that was not flesh, that was visible in the darkness, and that was as fluid, and as unresting, and as transparent, as tidal water.

I knew that I was ninety percent unbalanced, mentally and physically, from breathing the dead-flower stuff. But I couldn’t—though I tried to—tell myself that I didn’t see this thing.

It was there, within reach of my hand if I had leaned forward, shivering, writhing, between me and the door. I didn’t believe in the supernatural—but what of that? Here was a thing that was not a natural thing, and it was not, I knew, a man with a sheet over him, or a trick of luminous paint.

I gave it up. I stood there with my handkerchief jammed to my nose and mouth; not breathing, not stirring—for all I know, my blood may have stopped running. I could say I was waiting to see what happened next; but I wasn’t conscious of any intentions at all at the time.

I was there, and the thing was there, and I stayed where I was.

The thing spoke, though I could not have said whether I heard the words or simply became somehow conscious of them:

“Down, enemy of the Lord God; down on your knees!”

I stirred then, to lick my lips with a tongue drier than they were.

“Down, accursed of the Lord God, before the blow falls!”

I moved my handkerchief enough to say:

“Go to hell.”

It sounded silly, especially in the croaking voice I had.

The thing’s horrible body twisted convulsively, swayed, bent toward me.

I dropped my handkerchief and reached for it with both hands.

I got hold of the thing—and I didn’t. My hands were in it to the wrists—into the center of it—were shut on it. And there was nothing in my hands but dampness that was without temperature, was neither warm nor cold.

That same dampness came into my face as the thing’s face floated into mine.

I bit at its face—yes—and my teeth closed on nothing, though I could see and feel that my face was in its face.

And in my hands, on my arms, against my body, in my face, the thing writhed and squirmed, shuddered and quivered, swirling wildly now, breaking apart, reuniting madly in the black air.

Through the thing’s flesh I could see my hands, clenched in the center of its damp body. I opened them, struck up and down inside it with stiff crooked fingers, trying to gouge it open—could see it being torn apart by my fingers, could see it going together again after my clawing fingers had passed—but I could feel nothing but dampness.

Now another feeling came to me, growing quickly once it had started—of suffocation and of an immense weight bearing me down.

This thing that had no solidity had weight, weight that was pressing me down, smothering me. My knees were going soft.

I tore my right hand free of its body and struck up at its face—felt nothing but its dampness brushing my fist.

I clawed at its insides again with my left hand, tearing at this substance that was so plainly seen, so faintly felt. Then on my left hand I saw something else— blood, dark, thick and real, covering the hand, running out between the fingers, dripping from it.

I laughed, got enough strength to straighten my back against the monstrous weight on me, and wrenched at the thing’s insides again, croaking:

“I’ll gut you plenty.”

More blood washed my left hand.

I tried to laugh again, couldn’t, choked instead. The thing’s weight on me was twice what it had been. I staggered back, sagged against the wall, turning to lie against it.

Pure air from the broken pane, bitter, cold, stung my nostrils, told me—by its difference from the air I had been breathing—that it was not the thing’s weight, but the poisonous flower-smelling stuff that was the weight on me.

The thing’s pale dampness squirmed over my face and body.

Coughing, I stumbled through it, to the door, got the door open, and tumbled down into the corridor that was now as black as the room I had just left.

As I tumbled, somebody fell over me.

This was no indescribable thing. It was human. The knees that hit my back were human, sharp. The grunt that blew hot breath in my ear was human, surprised. The arm my fingers caught was human, thin.

I thanked God for its thinness. The corridor air was doing me a lot of good, but I was in no shape to battle with an athlete.

I put what strength I had into my hold on the thin arm, dragging it under me as I rolled over on the body it belonged to. My other hand, flung out across the man’s thin body as I rolled over, struck something hard and metallic on the floor. Twisting my wrist, I got my fingers on it and knew what it was. It had been in my hand too recently for me to have forgotten the feel of it—the over-sized dagger with which Dr. Riese had been killed.

The man on whom I was rolling had, I guessed, stood beside the door of Minnie’s room, with the dagger in his hand, waiting to stick it into me when I came out. My tumble through the door had saved me, making him miss my body with that blade; and in missing he had gone off-balance, tripping over me.

Now he was kicking, jabbing, butting up at me from his face-down position on the floor, with my hundred and ninety pounds draped over his back, anchoring him down.

Holding on to the dagger with my left hand, I took my right hand away from his arm, found the back of his head in the dark, spread my hand on it, and began grinding his face into the floor, taking it easy, waiting for more of the strength that was coming back to me with each breath. A minute more and I would be ready to pick this baby up and get words out of him.

But I had to move before that.

Something hard pounded my right shoulder, then my back, then struck the carpet close to my noodle. Somebody was swinging a club on me.

I rolled off the thin man, thumping his skull with the heavy bronze dagger hilt as I left him. The club-swinger’s feet stopped my rolling. I looped my right arm above the feet, took another rap on the back, missed the legs with my circling arm, and felt skirts against my hand.

Surprised, I pulled my hand back. Another blow from the club, on my side, reminded me that this was no place for gallantry. I made a fist of my hand and struck back at the skirt. It folded around my fist: a solid, meaty shin stopped my fist.

The shin’s owner snarled in pain above me, and backed off before I could hit out again.

Scrambling up on hands and knees, I bumped my head into wood—a door. A hand on the knob helped me stand up. Not far away the club swished in the darkness again. The knob turned in my hand. I stepped back with the door, into a room, softly closing the door.

Behind me in the room a voice said: “Go right out of here or I’ll shoot you.”

It was plump Mildred’s voice, frightened. I turned, bending low, in case she did shoot. Enough of the dull grayness of approaching daylight came into this room to outline a thick body sitting up in bed holding something small and dark in one outstretched hand.

“It’s me, your little playmate.” 

“Oh, you!” she exclaimed, as if in relief, but she did not lower the thing in her hand.

“You in on the racket?” I asked, risking a slow step toward her.

“I do what I’m told, and I keep my mouth shut, but I’m not going in for any strong-arm work, not for the money they’re paying me.”

“Swell,” I said, taking more and quicker steps toward her. “Could I get down through this window to the one on the floor below if I tied a couple of sheets or blankets together, do you think?”

“I don’t know—Ouch! Stop!”

I had her gun—a .32 automatic—in my right hand, her wrist in my left, twisting,

“Let go of it,” I ordered, and she did.

Dropping her wrist, I stepped away from the bed again, picking up the dagger I had dropped on the foot of the bed. I tiptoed to the door and listened. I heard nothing. I opened the door, and heard nothing; saw nothing in the faint grayness that went through into the corridor.

Minnie Hershey’s door was open. The thing I had fought with was not there. I crossed the corridor and went into her room, switching on the lights.

The mulatto was lying as she had lain before, sleeping heavily. I pocketed my gun, pulled down the covers, picked Minnie up, and carried her over into Mildred’s room.

“See if you can bring her to life,” I told Mildred, dumping the sleeping girl on the bed beside her.

“She’ll come around in a few minutes. They always do.”

I said, “Yeah?” and went out, down to the floor below, to Gabrielle Leggett’s room.

The room was empty.

Collinson’s hat and overcoat were gone; so were the clothes she had taken into the bathroom; and so was her nightgown.

I cursed the pair of them bitterly, snapped off the lights, and ran down the stairs to the first floor, feeling as blood thirsty and violent as I must have looked—battered and torn and bruised, with a bloody dagger in my bloody left hand, a gun in my right.

Going down the stairs, I heard nothing, but when I reached the foot of them, a noise like small thunder suddenly broke out. I stopped until I had identified it as somebody’s knocking on the front door. Then I went to the door, unlocked and opened it.

There was Eric Collinson, wild-eyed, white-faced and frantic.

“Where’s Gaby?” he panted.

“Damn you,” I said, and hit him in the face with the gun.

He drooped, folding forward, stopped himself with his hands on the vestibule walls, hung there a moment, and slowly pulled himself upright again. Blood leaked from a corner of his mouth.

“Where’s Gaby?” he repeated, doggedly.

“Where’d you leave her?”

“Here. I was taking her away. She asked me to. She sent me out first to see if anybody was in the street. Then the door shut.”

“When?”

“Not a minute ago. Where is she?”

“She tricked you,” I grumbled, “still trying to save you from the curse. If you had done what I told— But come on; we’ll have to find her.”

The reception rooms off the lobby were empty. We left the lights burning in them and hurried down the main corridor.

A small figure in white pajamas sprang out of a doorway and fastened itself on me, tangling itself up with my legs, nearly upsetting me.

Unintelligible words came from it. I pulled it loose and saw that it was the boy Manuel. Tears wet his panic-stricken face; sobs mangled the words he was trying to say.

“Take it easy, son. I can’t understand a thing you’re saying.”

“Don’t let him kill her.” 

“Who kill who? And take your time.”

He didn’t take his time, but out of his sobbing my ears fastened on “father” and “mother.”

“Your father’s going to kill your mother?” I asked, not greatly surprised.

His head went up and down.

“Where?”

He fluttered a hand at the iron door ahead.

I started toward it, and stopped.

“Listen, son,” I bargained. “I’d like to save your mother, but I’ve got to find Miss Leggett first. Do you know where she is?”

“She’s in there with them,” he cried. “Oh, hurry! Hurry!”

“Right. Come on, Collinson,” and we raced for the iron door.

Beyond it, another door opened in the corridor, and the big woman I knew as the Village Blacksmith ran out, toward us, limping as she ran—from the crack I’d given her shin upstairs—and firing a heavy automatic pistol. The reports were deafening in the corridor. Her aim was terrible, playing hell with the ceiling.

I fired twice.

She dropped as I yanked the iron door open.

The white altar was dazzling, almost blinding, again in the beam of white light from the roof-edge. At one end of the altar Gabrielle Leggett crouched, her face turned up into’ the light-beam. The light on her face was too glaring for her expression to be made out.

Aaronia Haldorn lay on the altar step where Riese had lain. There was a dark bruise on her forehead. Her hands and feet were tied. Most of her clothes had been torn off. Her eyes, glaring at Joseph, held enough hatred to stock hell; her mask-like face was twisted into a fitting setting for the eyes.

Joseph, white-robed, stood in front of the altar, and of his wife. He stood with both arms held high and widespread, his back and neck bent so that his bearded face was lifted to the sky.

In his right hand he held an ordinary horn-handled carving knife, with a long curved blade; in his left a horn-handled, two-pronged fork.

He was talking to the sky, but his back was to Collinson and me, and we couldn’t hear his words.

As we ran forward, he lowered his arms and bent over his wife. I was still a good thirty feet from him, Collinson at my side. I bellowed:

“Joseph!”

He straightened again, turning, and when the knife and fork came into view I saw that they were still clean, shiny.

I halted ten feet from the man in white, Collinson stopping beside me.

“Who calls Joseph, a name that is no more?” the priest asked, and I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that, standing there, looking at him, listening to him, I didn’t begin to feel that there was nothing so very wrong with anything here or elsewhere in the world. “There is no Joseph,” he went on, not waiting for an answer to his question. “You may know now, as all the world shall know, that he who went among you as Joseph was not Joseph, but God Himself. Now that you know, go!”

To any other man I would have said, “Bunk!” and jumped him. To this one I couldn’t. 

“I’ll have to take Miss Leggett and Mrs. Haldorn with me,” and said it weakly, indecisively.

He drew himself up taller, and his white-bearded face became stern.

“Go!” he commanded, his voice deep and vibrant. “Go from me before your defiance leads to destruction.”

Aaronia Haldorn spoke to me from where she lay tied on the altar steps:

“Shoot. Shoot now—quick. Shoot.” 

“You can be Joseph, or God, or Barney Google, but you’re going along to police headquarters. Now put down the knives and things.”

“You have blasphemed,” he thundered, and took a step toward me. “You must die.”

“Stop!” I barked.

He wouldn’t stop. I was afraid. I fired.

The bullet hit his cheek. I saw the hole it made.

No muscle twitched in his face; he did not even blink an eye.

He walked deliberately, unhurriedly, toward me.

I worked the trigger, pumping seven more bullets into his face and body. I saw the holes they made.

He came on, deliberately, unhurriedly, no muscle twitching, no sign that he had felt the bullets.

His eyes and face were calm, stern. When he was close to me, the knife in his hand went up high above his head.

He was not fighting; he was bringing retribution to me; and he paid as little attention to my attempts to stop him as a father would to the struggles of a small boy he was punishing.

I was fighting.

The knife glistened up high, and started down.

I went in under it, bending my right forearm against his knife arm, driving the dagger in my left hand at his throat.

I drove the heavy blade into his throat, all the way in till the hilt’s cross stopped it. Then I knew I could do nothing more . . .

I didn’t know I had closed my eyes until I opened them. The first thing I saw was Eric Collinson kneeling beside Gabrielle Leggett, turning her face from the glaring light, trying to rouse her. Next I saw Aaronia Haldorn, still lying bound on the altar steps, but unconscious now. Then I discovered that I was standing with my legs apart, and that Joseph was on the floor between my feet, dead, with the dagger through his neck.

“Thank God he wasn’t really God,” I mumbled to myself.

A brown body in white brushed past me, and Minnie Hershey was throwing herself down in front of Gabrielle Leggett, crying:

“Oh, Miss Gabrielle, I thought that Satan had come alive and was after you again!”

I went over and took the mulatto by the shoulders, lifting her up, turning her to face me.

“How could he? Didn’t you kill him dead?”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“But he might have come back in some other shape than Dr. Riese?”

“Yes, sir, I thought he was—” She stopped and worked her lips together.

“Me?” 

She nodded, not looking at me.

VII

I was waiting in Madison Andrews’ reception room when he arrived at ten-thirty that morning. He looked anxiously into my face and at my bandaged left hand, and as soon as we were in his private office he asked:

“What is it? Anything gone wrong?”

“Plenty did, but most of it’s all right now—except that Dr. Riese is dead.”

Andrews looked sharply at my face and bandaged hand again, sat down at his desk, motioned me to a chair, cut off a piece of tobacco, put it in his mouth, pushed a box of cigars at me, and said:

“I’m listening.”

“These Temple of the Holy Grail people—Aaronia and Joseph Haldorn—were actors originally. I’m giving it to you as I got it from her and some of the other survivors. As actors they were pretty good—not getting on as well as they wanted to. This religious cult racket had been getting a lot of publicity, and they decided to give it a whirl. They rigged up a cult that was supposed to be a revival of an old Gaelic church back in the days of King Arthur. They brought it to California because our state’s known to be a green meadow for anything in that line, and picked San Francisco instead of Los Angeles because the competition was less.

“With them they brought a little fellow named Tom Fink, who had taken care of the mechanical end of things for most of the well-known stage magicians and illusionists at one time or another; and Fink’s wife, a big village blacksmith of a woman. They didn’t want a lot of converts; they wanted few but wealthy ones. The racket went slow at first, until they lauded Mrs. Rodman. She fell plenty, and they worked her for one of her apartment buildings. She also footed the remodeling bill. The stage mechanic Fink had a lot to do with the remodeling, and did a good job.

“They didn’t need the kitchens that each apartment in the building had, but Fink found that part of the kitchen space could be used for concealed rooms and cabinets, and that the gas and water pipes and the electric wires that were in them could be adapted to his hocus-pocus with little trouble. I can’t give you all the mechanical details now—not until we’ve had time to take the joint apart. It’s going to be interesting.

“I saw some of their work in action—a ghost that was made by an arrangement of lights thrown up on a body of steam rising from a padded pipe which had been pushed into a dark room from a concealed opening in the wainscoating under the bed. The part of the steam that wasn’t lighted was invisible in the darkness, showing only a man-shape that quivered and writhed, and that was damp and real without any solidity to the touch. You’d be surprised how weird a trick like that can be, especially when you’ve been filled with that stuff they pump into the room before they start the vision going. I don’t know whether it was ether or chloroform or something else; its odor was nicely disguised with some sort of flower perfume. This ghost—I fought with it—on the level—and even thought I had it bleeding, not knowing that I had cut my hand breaking a window to let in fresh air. It made a few minutes seem like a lot of hours to me.

“There wasn’t until the very last—when he went off his base—anything crude about the Haldorns’ work. Their services were as dignified and orderly as any could be. The hocus-pocus was all worked in the privacy of the victim’s room. First the perfumed gas was pumped in, to get him groggy. Then the lighted steam vision was shown him, with a voice coming out of the same pipe to give him his orders, or whatever he was to be given. The gas kept him from being too sharp-eyed and suspicious, and also weakened his will so that he would be more likely to do what he was told. It was slick enough. The victim could talk about it afterward or not, just as he wished, but it’s happening in his own room, and the way it was handled, gave it a lot of authority. I imagine they squeezed a lot of pennies out of the customers that way.

“Some friends of Gabrielle Leggett’s ran her into the Temple a little while back, and she went there a couple of times. She had enough money—or her parents did then—to make her eligible. When her trouble came and she broke up, the Haldorns decided it was time to play her, and Joseph went to see her. Have you ever seen Joseph?”

“No,” the lawyer said.

“Well, he had what he needed. He looked at you and spoke to you, and things happened inside you. I’m not the easiest guy in the world to flimflam, but he had me going. I came damned near thinking he was God at the last. He was young, but he had grown a beard and had had the coloring killed in its hairs as well as in the hairs of his head. His wife tells me that she used to hypnotize him before he went into action, and that most of his effect on people was a result of that. Later he got so that he could get himself in the same condition of his own accord, and toward the last it became permanent.

“Aaronia Haldorn didn’t know her husband had fallen for Gabrielle until after she came to the Temple. Until then she thought that he looked on the girl simply as another customer. But he had fallen in love with her, or wanted her, anyway. I don’t know how far he had gone in working on her, using his hocus-pocus and her fear of her curse to sew her up, but Dr. Riese finally discovered that everything wasn’t going well with her. That was yesterday morning. He told me he was coming back later to see her, and he did come back, but he didn’t see her, and I didn’t see him—not then.

“He went in to see Joseph before he came upstairs, and overheard Joseph giving instructions to the Finks. He was foolish enough to let Joseph know he had overheard him. Joseph locked him up—a prisoner. They had sent one of the maids up to try to pump me when I first arrived, but after that they let me alone. It was wiser to let me see nothing funny than to try to stir me up with their supernatural stuff. But they had cut loose on Minnie Hershey from the first.

“She was a mulatto, and her negro blood made her susceptible to that sort of thing, and she was devoted to Gabrielle Leggett. They chucked visions and voices at the poor girl until she was dizzy. I had told Dr. Riese that she was going queer, but he refused to take it seriously. Now they decided to make her kill Riese. They drugged him and put him on the altar. They ghosted her into believing that he was Satan, come up from hell to carry her mistress down there so she couldn’t become a saint. Minnie was ripe for it—poor girl—and when the spirit told her that she had been selected to save her mistress, that she’d find the anointed weapon on her table, she followed the instructions the spirit gave her. She got out of bed, picked up the dagger that had been put on her table, went down to the altar, and killed Riese.

“That was the first time they did anything to me. I used to wander around the joint at night. To play safe, they pumped some gas into my room to keep me out of the way—slumbering—while Minnie was doing her stuff. But I was nervous, jumpy, and was sleeping in a chair in the center of the room instead of on the bed, close to the gas-pipe, so I came out of the dope before the night was over.

“By this time Aaronia Haldorn had discovered two things. First, that her husband’s interest in the girl wasn’t altogether financial. Second, that he had gone off center, was a dangerous maniac. Going around hypnotized all the time, what mind he had—not a whole lot, his wife says-—had gone under completely. His success in flimflamming his followers had gone to his head. He thought he could do anything, get away with anything. He had dreams, she says, of the entire world deluded into belief in his divinity, he didn’t see that that was any—or much—more difficult than fooling the handful that he had fooled.

“Aaronia Haldorn didn’t like either of these things, but the first of them seemed the easiest remedied. She decided that if Gabrielle were sent down to find the murdered doctor, she would probably be shocked into complete insanity, and would be put out of Joseph’s reach, in an asylum. She turned a vision and a voice loose on the girl and sent her down to the altar. The shock did upset Gabrielle still further, and worked out, for the time, even better than Aaronia had expected. The curse was never out of Gabrielle’s thoughts. Now she took it for granted that this curse was responsible for Riese’s death, because of his contact with her. Collinson and I met her in the hall saying she had killed him and should be hanged for it.

“I suspected then that she hadn’t really killed him, from the way she talked of the curse; and when I saw him I was sure of it. He was lying in an orderly position. It was plain that he had been drugged before he was stabbed. The door leading to the altar—always kept locked—was unlocked, and she knew nothing about its key. There was a chance that she had been somebody’s tool in the murder, but I doubted that.

“Haldorn and his wife both heard Gabrielle’s confession that she had killed Riese. The place was scientifically equipped for eavesdropping. Haldorn didn’t like that confession. His wife did. He decided that if the body were removed, and I were killed, Collinson would be the only sane witness to the whole thing—except the Haldorns and their allies—and he had heard Collinson trying to persuade me to hush it up. He could count on Collinson’s silence.

“Aaronia, planning to spoil her hubby’s scheme, went up to Gabrielle’s room, got her kimono, wrapped the bloody dagger in it, and stuck it in a corner where the police could easily find it. Meanwhile her husband and the Finks, having removed Riese’s remains and cleaned up the place, started to work on Minnie again, to make her kill me. Aaronia crossed them up again, turning on the flower-smelling stuff so strong that it knocked the maid out—put her so soundly asleep that a dozen voices and visions couldn’t have stirred her into action,

“Haldorn discovered then what his wife was doing, and he found the dagger wrapped in the kimono. I crashed into Minnie’s room just about then, intending to wake her, and Haldorn—or the Finks—turned their ghost loose on me. It gave me hell, and when I finally tottered out of the room, I was jumped by the Finks. I beat them off, got a gun, and went downstairs.

“Meanwhile, Haldorn, up to his neck in a killing spree, condemned his wife to death for her treachery. He had got himself into a fine muddle by this time, and I suppose the only way out that he could see was through continued killing. He still had enough belief in his divinity-shield to take his wife down to the altar before he carved her. She was tied up there when Collinson and I, steered by their son, arrived. I killed Haldorn, but I almost didn’t. I put eight bullets in him. Steel-jacketed .32’s go in clean, without much of a thump, true enough. But I put eight of them in him—in his face and body—standing close to him and firing point-blank—and he didn’t even know it. That’s how completely hypnotized he had himself. I finally got him down by driving the dagger through his neck, cutting the spinal cord. God! it was—That’s the story.”

“And Gabrielle?” Andrews asked.

“The last I heard of her, Collinson was bearing her off to Reno, for marriage, not wanting to wait the three days the California law calls for.”

The old lawyer’s eyes burned at me from under his ragged brows.

“You’d no right to let them go,” he roared. “You know she’s in no condition to know what she’s doing.”

“She’s not. But I didn’t let them go. I was busy, and the first I knew of it was when I got Collinson’s note, saying they had gone, two hours later.”

Andrews pulled at a mustache corner and glowered at me.

“What about the police? The inquest? You know they’ve got to be here for that.”

“Sure you and I know it, but what do they care?”

“I care, and I engaged you, and I had a right to expect you to protect my interests.”

“Yeah. Well, you’re her guardian, or whatever you are, and you’re a lawyer, so you ought to be able to do something about it—besides yelling.”

He glowered at me for another moment and then his face slowly cleared.

“I’m sorry. I don’t like it though, not a damned bit. But it may work out all right, may take her mind off that curse foolishness.”

“I hope so, but I doubt it. I don’t think we’re through with the curse yet.”

His gaunt body jerked upright in his chair.

“What?” he demanded. “You haven’t started believing in—?”

“I haven’t started believing anything,” I growled, standing up, “except that whatever it is that’s hanging over Miss Leggett hasn’t been smoked out yet, and that it’ll probably be good for a lot more trouble before it is. And I don’t believe in curses either—unless they have arms and legs and the rest of the things that make up a human being.”

He leaned forward to ask, “Who?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know.

He sat back in his chair, smiling.

“Preposterous,” he said, and waved me out of his office

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Host Commentary

PseudoPod Episode 935

August 23rd 2024

The Hollow Temple by Dashiell Hammet

Narrated by Dave Robison

Hosted by Alasdair Stuart with audio by Chelsea Davis

 

Hey everyone, hope you’re all doing okay. I’m Alasdair, your host and this week we’re finishing our 18th birthday celebrations with the final part of The Hollow Temple by Dasheill Hammet.

 

If you’re coming into Part 3 first, don’t. This is a great story and Alex and Josh have got a ton of background info for you on Hammett who remains as complex and hard to pin down as his leads. For my part, I want to say how delighted I am that Hammett gave the world the Thin Man series and all the stories that have followed in its mildly inebriated and delightfully snippy footsteps. Without Nick and Nora in The Thin Man, you don’t get Moonlighting. Without Nick and Nora we wouldn’t get Beyond Belief. And Sam Spade as well?! The man left his mark for sure. Also if none of the shows I just referenced are familiar, the trained professionals of our show notes ar standing by.

Your two fisted, hard travelling narrator for this story is Dave Robison. Dave Robison is an avid Literary and Sonic Alchemist who pursues a wide range of creative explorations. A Brainstormer, Keeper of the Buttery Man-Voice (patent pending), Pattern Seeker, Dream Weaver, and Eternal Optimist, Dave’s efforts to boost the awesomeness of the world can be found at The Roundtable Podcast, the Vex Mosaic e-zine, and through his creative studio, Wonderthing Studios. Dave is the creator of ARCHIVOS, an online story development and presentation app, as well as the curator of the Palaethos Patreon feed where he explores a fantasy mega-city one street at a time. Dave is the absolute best, as a friend, a human and a narrator and I’m so glad to know him.

 

So gear up. This is a true story and the only way out is through.

 

Regular listeners will know about my magpie brain and there are two [phrases in here that just jump out at me because they’re so shiny. Oh three actually, that early reference to her eyes ‘having jokes in them’ is just the sweetest damn thing and I’m honestly still charmed by that. But the first one that jump outs is:

 

‘I was there, and the thing was there, and I stayed where I was.’

 

Put that next to Raymond Chandler’s:

 

“down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.

Same instrument, different tune. I love how Chandler’s fundamental optimism is embodied alongside Hammett’s fundamental pragmatism. I especially love how the Hammett line resonates so hard for that moment at the core of horror. Seeing it approach. Seeing it. Sharing space with it. Facing it down. There’s a refreshing acknowledgement of terror here, an openness to emotion I did not in any way expect. The hero is terrified. The hero is the only one there. Heroism not through being the best man in his world but the only man in the room. To continue our proud dissection of Friedkin’s ‘true horror is seeing something approach’, here Hammett would argue that true horror is seeing something approach and staying in the room.

Then there’s this:

‘So plainly seen, so faintly felt.’

Damn, Hammett! We’re in this genre and we LOVE IT.

 

That’s horror, for me. Not just for this story but in general. You see something impossible but you barely feel it. Or the trauma is so absolute that it wipes out your ability to perceive it. Or a whisper on a tape. A flicker on an image. A sense of something approaching and letting itself be seen just…enough. How elegant, how honest. How open, how perfectly, gloriously horrific. Hell of an anthology title too.

 

Massive thanks to the PseudoPod team for putting this together and to Alex and Josh for doing such a great job on the previous two parts. And thanks to you! 18 years! We can rent horror movies legally in the UK now!

 

Onto the subject of subscribing and support: PseudoPod is funded by you, our listeners, and we’re formally a non-profit. One-time donations are gratefully received and much appreciated, but what really makes a difference is subscribing. A $5 monthly Patreon donation gives us more than just money; it gives us stability, reliability, dependability and a well-maintained tower from which to operate, and trust us, you want that as much as we do.

If you can, please go to pseudopod.org and sign up by clicking on “feed the pod”. If you have any questions about how to support EA and ways to give, please reach out to us at donations@escapeartists.net.

If you can’t afford to support us financially, then please consider leaving reviews of our episodes, or generally talking about them on whichever form of social media you… can’t stay away from this week. We now have a Bluesky account and we’d love to see you there: find us at @pseudopod.org. If you like merch, you can also support us by buying hoodies, t-shirts and other bits and pieces from the Escape Artists Voidmerch store. The link is in various places, including our pinned tweet.

 

PseudoPod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International license. Download and listen to the episode on any device you like, but don’t change it or sell it. Theme music is by permission of Anders Manga.

 

Join us next week for Flash on the Borderlands LXXI (71): A Gibbet of Flesh featuring stories by Lyndsey Croal, Hannah Greer and S.L. Harris with narration by Lindz McLeod, Kitty Sarkozy and Elie Hirschman with audio production by Chelsea Davis and hosting by me. Thanks so much for joining us and we’ll see you then but before we go PseudoPod’s friend Harry wants to remind you You can’t have too many saviors.