The Maltese Falcon

by Dashiell Hammett

He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.

“You’ll tell it to me or you’ll tell it in court,” Dundy said hotly. “This is murder and don’t you forget it.” “Maybe. And here’s something for you to not forget, sweetheart. I’ll tell it or not as I damned please. It’s a long while since I burst out crying because policemen didn’t like me.”

Of course you lied to us about your sister and all, but that doesn’t count: we didn’t believe you.”

“I am prepared to pay five thousand dollars for the figure’s return.” Cairo took his hand away from his bruised face and sat up prim and business-like again. “You have it?” “No.” “If it is not here”—Cairo was very politely skeptical—“why should you have risked serious injury to prevent my searching for it?” “I should sit around and let people come in and stick me up?”

And if you know as much about the affair as I suppose—or I should not be here—you know that the means by which it was taken from him shows that his right to it was more valid than anyone else’s—certainly more valid than Thursby’s.” “What about his daughter?” Spade asked. Excitement opened Cairo’s eyes and mouth, turned his face red, made his voice shrill. “He is not the owner!” Spade said, “Oh,” mildly and ambiguously.

Spade blinked his eyes sleepily and suggested: “It might be better all around if we put our cards on the table.” Cairo recovered composure with a little jerk. “I do not think it would be better.” His voice was suave now. “If you know more than I, I shall profit by your knowledge, and so will you to the extent of five thousand dollars. If you do not then I have made a mistake in coming to you, and to do as you suggest would be simply to make that mistake worse.”

“I’ve given you all the money I have.” Tears glistened in her white-ringed eyes. Her voice was hoarse, vibrant. “I’ve thrown myself on your mercy, told you that without your help I’m utterly lost. What else is there?” She suddenly moved close to him on the settee and cried angrily: “Can I buy you with my body?” Their faces were a few inches apart. Spade took her face between his hands and he kissed her mouth roughly and contemptuously. Then he sat back and said: “I’ll think it over.” His face was hard and furious.

Dundy, still speaking through his teeth, said: “It’d pay you to play along with us a little, Spade. You’ve got away with this and you’ve got away with that, but you can’t keep it up forever.” “Stop me when you can,” Spade replied arrogantly.

The fat man looked shrewdly at Spade and asked: “You’re a close-mouthed man?” Spade shook his head. “I like to talk.” “Better and better!” the fat man exclaimed. “I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things.

Spade’s face was expressionless. He asked: “You believe her?” “Don’t you?” Wise replied. “How do I know? How do I know it isn’t something you fixed up between you to tell me?” Wise smiled. “You don’t cash many checks for strangers, do you, Sammy?” “Not basketfuls.

The boy raised his eyes to Spade’s mouth and spoke in the strained voice of one in physical pain: “Keep on riding me and you’re going to be picking iron out of your navel.” Spade chuckled. “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter,” he said cheerfully. “Well, let’s go.”

“Then the bird doesn’t belong to any of you?” Spade asked, “but to a General Kemidov?” “Belong?” the fat man said jovially. “Well, sir, you might say it belonged to the King of Spain, but I don’t see how you can honestly grant anybody else clear title to it—except by right of possession.” He clucked. “An article of that value that has passed from hand to hand by such means is clearly the property of whoever can get hold of it.”

“I wouldn’t,” Spade repeated. He was serene. “My guess might be excellent, or it might be crummy, but Mrs. Spade didn’t raise any children dippy enough to make guesses in front of a district attorney, an assistant district attorney, and a stenographer.” “Why shouldn’t you, if you’ve nothing to conceal?” “Everybody,” Spade responded mildly, “has something to conceal.”

The indelible youngness of his face gave an indescribably vicious—and inhuman—turn to the white-hot hatred and the cold white malevolence in his face. He said to Spade in a voice cramped by passion: “You bastard, get up on your feet and go for your heater!”

Gutman’s attempt at a smile was not successful, but he kept the resultant grimace on his mottled face. He licked dry lips with a dry tongue. His voice was too hoarse and gritty for the paternally admonishing tone it tried to achieve. “Now, now, Wilmer,” he said, “we can’t have any of that. You shouldn’t let yourself attach so much importance to these things. You—” The boy, not taking his eyes from Spade, spoke in a choked voice out the side of his mouth: “Make him lay off me then. I’m going to fog him if he keeps it up and there won’t be anything that’ll stop me from doing it.”

The boy looked at Gutman. Gutman smiled benignly at him and said: “Well, Wilmer, I’m sorry indeed to lose you, and I want you to know that I couldn’t be any fonder of you if you were my own son; but—well, by Gad!—if you lose a son it’s possible to get another—and there’s only one Maltese falcon.”

She put her hand inside her coat, took out the envelope, and gave it to Spade. Spade tossed it into Gutman’s lap, saying: “Sit on it if you’re afraid of losing it.” “You misunderstand me,” Gutman replied suavely. “It’s not that at all, but business should be transacted in a business-like manner.” He opened the flap of the envelope, took out the thousand-dollar bills, counted them, and chuckled so that his belly bounced. “For instance there are only nine bills here now.” He spread them out on his fat knees and thighs. “There were ten when I handed it to you, as you very well know.” His smile was broad and jovial and triumphant.

“I will,” he said. “I’ve got to know what happened to that bill and I’m not going to be held up by anybody’s maidenly modesty.” “Oh, it isn’t that.” She came close to him and put her hands on his chest again. “I’m not ashamed to be naked before you, but—can’t you see?—not like this. Can’t you see that if you make me you’ll—you’ll be killing something?” He did not raise his voice. “I don’t know anything about that. I’ve got to know what happened to the bill. Take them off.”

Well, sir, the shortest farewells are the best. Adieu.”

It’s easy enough to be nuts about you.” He looked hungrily from her hair to her feet and up to her eyes again. “But I don’t know what that amounts to. Does anybody ever? But suppose I do? What of it? Maybe next month I won’t. I’ve been through it before—when it lasted that long. Then what? Then I’ll think I played the sap. And if I did it and got sent over then I’d be sure I was the sap. Well, if I send you over I’ll be sorry as hell—I’ll have some rotten nights—but that’ll pass.