The Maltese Falcon

by Dashiell Hammett

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.

He stood up and put on his hat. “Have the Spade & Archer taken off the door and Samuel Spade put on. I’ll be back in an hour, or phone you.”

He grinned contentedly. “I think we’ve got a future. I always had an idea that if Miles would go off and die somewhere we’d stand a better chance of thriving. Will you take care of sending flowers for me?”

The life he knew was a clean orderly sane responsible affair. Now a falling beam had shown him that life was fundamentally none of these things. 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.

What disturbed him was the discovery that in sensibly ordering his affairs he had got out of step, and not into step, with life.

But that’s the part of it I always liked. He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling.”

She wrinkled her white forehead and she said: “It’s a black figure, as you know, smooth and shiny, of a bird, a hawk or falcon, about that high.” She held her hands a foot apart. “What makes it important?” She sipped coffee and brandy before she shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “They’d never tell me. They promised me five hundred pounds if I helped them get it. Then Floyd said afterward, after we’d left Joe, that he’d give me seven hundred and fifty.” “So it must be worth more than seventy-five hundred dollars?” “Oh, much more than that,” she said. “They didn’t pretend that they were sharing equally with me. They were simply hiring me to help them.”

“I distrust a man that says when. If he’s got to be careful not to drink too much it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does.”

As far as I can see, my best chance of clearing myself of the trouble you’re trying to make for me is by bringing in the murderers—all tied up. And my only chance of ever catching them and tying them up and bringing them in is by keeping away from you and the police, because neither of you show any signs of knowing what in hell it’s all about.” He rose and turned his head over his shoulder to address the stenographer: “Getting this all right, son? Or am I going too fast for you?” The stenographer looked at him with startled eyes and replied: “No, sir, I’m getting it all right.” “Good work,” Spade said and turned to Bryan again.

Spade and the girl went in together. The boy and Cairo followed them in. Cairo stopped in the doorway. The boy put away one of his pistols and came up close behind Spade. Spade turned his head far around to look down over his shoulder at the boy and said: “Get away. You’re not going to frisk me.” The boy said: “Stand still. Shut up.” Spade’s nostrils went in and out with his breathing. His voice was level. “Get away. Put your paw on me and I’m going to make you use the gun. Ask your boss if he wants me shot up before we talk.”

Spade’s face was yellow-white now. His mouth smiled and there were smile-wrinkles around his glittering eyes. His voice was soft, gentle. He said: “I’m going to send you over. The chances are you’ll get off with life. That means you’ll be out again in twenty years. You’re an angel. I’ll wait for you.” He cleared his throat. “If they hang you I’ll always remember you.”