From the Bookshelf of Classics Without All the Class…

"Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down - from high flat temples - in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan."

"...She advanced slowly, with tentative steps, looking at Spade with cobalt-blue eyes that were both shy and probing.

She was tall and pliantly slender, without angularity anywhere. Her body was erect and high-breasted, her legs long, her hands and feet narrow. She wore two shades of blue that had been selected because of her eyes. The hair curling from under her blue hat was darkly red, her full lips more brightly red. White teeth glistened in the crescent her timid smile made."

"He took off his pajamas. The smooth thickness of his of his arms, legs, and body, the sag of his big rounded shoulders, made his body like a bear's. It was like a shaved bear's: his chest was hairless. His skin was childishly soft and pink."

"Mr. Joel Cairo was a small-bones dark man of medium height. His hair was black and smooth and very glossy. His features were Levantine. ...His black coat, cut tight to narrow shoulders, flared a little over slightly plump hips. His trousers fitted his round legs more snugly than was the current fashion. The uppers of his patent-leather shoes were hidden by fawn spats. He held a black derby hat in a chamois-gloved hand and came towards Spade with short, mincing, bobbing steps. The fragrance of chypre came with him.

"...He, the good citizen-husband-father, could be wiped out between office and restaurant by the accident of a falling beam. He knew then that men died at haphazard like that, and lived only while blind chance spared them.
...Life could be ended for him at random by a falling beam: he would change his life at random by simply going away."

"His clothing was neither new nor of more than ordinary quality, but it, and his manner of wearing it, was marked by a hard masculine neatness."

"The fat man was flabbily fat with bulbous pink cheeks and lips and chins and neck, with a great soft egg of a belly that was all his torso, and pendant cones for arms and legs. As he advanced to meet Spade all his bulbs rose and shook and fell separately with each step, in the manner of clustered soap-bubbles not yet released from the pipe through which they had been blown. His eyes, made small by fat puffs around them, were dark and sleek.

"Spade took two long steps and caught Effie Perine by the shoulders. "She didn't get there?" he bawled into her frightened face.

[plot stuff here regarding "oh no, where is Person X!"]

...He said "You ought to know better than to pay any attention to me when I talk like that."

"If you think I pay any attention to you you're crazy, she replied, "only" - she crossed he arms and felt her shoulders, and her mouth twitched uncertainly - "I won't be able to wear an evening gown for two weeks, you big brute."

"He grinned humbly, said, "I'm no damned good, darling," made an exaggerated bow, and went out again."

"...Then Spade asked pleasantly: "How long have you been off the goose-berry lay, son?"

The boy did not show that he had heard the question.

...Spade lagged a little, so that when they were within fifteen feet of Gutman's door, he was perhaps a foot and a half behind the boy. He leaned sidewise suddenly and grasped the boy from behind by both arms, just beneath the boys elbows. He forced the boy's arms forward so that the boy's hands, in his overcoat-pockets, lifted up before him. The boy struggled and squirmed but he was impotent in the big man's grip. The boy kicked back, but his feet went between Spade's spread legs.

Spade lifted the boy straight up from the floor and brought him down hard on his feet again. The impact made little noise on the thick carpet. At the moment of impact Spade's hands slide down and got a fresh grip on the boy's wrists. The boy, teeth set hard together, did not stop straining against the big man's hands, but he could not tear himself loose, could not keep the man's hands from crawling down over his own hands. The boy's teeth ground together audibly, making a noise that mingled with the noise of Spade's breathing as Spade crushed the boy's hands."

Book link here, p 250 of The Web of Iniquity: Early Detective Fiction by American Women, By Catherine Rossnickerson (I think this is from a footnote):

"Both punk and gunsel, the terms by which Hammett and Chandler's characters refer to young men in the employ of villains, have definite connotations of homosexuality. Both were used in the nineteenth century to refer derisively to young tramps who formed sexual pairs with older men on the road; it was in the mid-twentieth century that punk came to mean a worthless, no-account young man. The connection to the world of the vagabonds is underlined when Spade taunts Wilmer by asking "[H]ow long have you been off the goose-berry lay, son?"(120) - that is to say, in tramps' lingo, "How long has it been since you were stealing garments off clotheslines?" ...Tramps, vagabonds, and drifters became increasingly visible to mainstream culture in the Depression, and according to Estelle Freedman, they were associated with dangerous and deviant sexual values."

"...Sweetheart, you've got an uncle who teaches history or something over at the University?"
"A cousin. Why?"
"If we brightened his life with (view spoiler)[an alleged historical secret four centuries old (hide spoiler)] could we trust him to keep it dark awhile?"
"Oh yes, he's good people."

"...He put his other arm around Effie Perine and crushed her body against his. "We've got the damned thing, angel," he said.
"Ouch!" she said, "you're hurting me."

"He said: "Listen. This isn't a damned bit of good. (view spoiler)[You'll never understand me, but I'll try once more and then we'll give it up. Listen. When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around - bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I'm a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it's not the natural thing. (hide spoiler)]"