The Thin Man

by Dashiell Hammett

“Don’t you ever think you’d like to go back to detecting once in a while just for the fun of it? You know, when something special comes up, like the Lindb—”

“But besides I haven’t the time: I’m too busy trying to see that you don’t lose any of the money I married you for.”

So far I had known just where I stood on the Wolf-Wynant-Jorgensen troubles and what I was doing—the answers were, respectively, nowhere and nothing—but

“How do you feel?” “Terrible. I must’ve gone to bed sober.”

“To a mugg like him, once a sleuth always a sleuth, and I’d rather lie to him than have him think I’m lying.

His dark eyes were small and set close together; his mouth was wide, thin, and loose; and his nose was peculiarly limber, a long, drooping nose, apparently boneless.

“I don’t like crooks, and even if I did, I wouldn’t like crooks that are stool-pigeons, and if I liked crooks that are stool-pigeons, I still wouldn’t like you.”

It’s a funny thing—I suppose you’ve noticed it—the people who lie the most are nearly always the clumsiest at it, and they’re easier to fool with lies than most people, too. You’d think they’d be on the look-out for lies, but they seem to be the very ones that will believe almost anything at all.

“You’re like everybody else: some people like you, some people don’t, and some have no feeling about it one way or the other.”

I guess I can put two and two together.” “Sometimes the answer’s four,” I said, “and sometimes it’s twenty-two.

“The chief thing,” I advised them, “is not to let her tire you out. When you catch her in a lie, she admits it and gives you another lie to take its place and, when you catch her in that one, admits it and gives you still another, and so on. Most people—even women—get discouraged after you’ve caught them in the third or fourth straight lie and fall back on either the truth or silence, but not Mimi. She keeps trying and you’ve got to be careful or you’ll find yourself believing her, not because she seems to be telling the truth, but simply because you’re tired of disbelieving her.”

“It’d be swell if just once one of you people would make a clear and complete statement about something—it wouldn’t matter what.”

She made an impatient face. “Really, Nick, I think you’re a half-wit sometimes with your silly suspicions.” “I’m studying to be one. Three more lessons and I get my diploma.

Murder doesn’t round out anybody’s life except the murdered’s and sometimes the murderer’s.”