The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon

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 said to Effie Perine: “Yes, sweetheart?”

She was a lanky sunburned girl whose tan dress of thin woolen stuff

clung to her with an effect of dampness. Her eyes were brown and playful

in a shiny boyish face. She finished shutting the door behind her,

leaned against it, and said: “There’s a girl wants to see you. Her

name’s Wonderly.”

“A customer?”

“I guess so. You’ll want to see her anyway: she’s a knockout.”

“Shoo her in, darling,” said Spade. “Shoo her in.”

Effie Perine opened the door again, following it back into the outer

office, standing with a hand on the knob while saying: “Will you come

in, Miss Wonderly?”

A voice said, “Thank you,” so softly that only the purest articulation

made the words intelligible, and a young woman came through the doorway.

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.

Spade rose bowing and indicating with a thick-fingered hand the oaken

armchair beside his desk. He was quite six feet tall. The steep rounded

slope of his shoulders made his body seem almost conical—no broader

than it was thick—and kept his freshly pressed grey coat from fitting

very well.

Miss Wonderly murmured, “Thank you,” softly as before and sat down on

the edge of the chair’s wooden seat.

Spade sank into his swivel-chair, made a quarter-turn to face her,

smiled politely. He smiled without separating his lips. All the v’s in

his face grew longer.

The tappity-tap-tap and the thin bell and muffled whir of Effie Perine’s

typewriting came through the closed door. Somewhere in a neighboring

office a power-driven machine vibrated dully. On Spade’s desk a limp

cigarette smoldered in a brass tray filled with the remains of limp

cigarettes. Ragged grey flakes of cigarette-ash dotted the yellow top of

the desk and the green blotter and the papers that were there. A

buff-curtained window, eight or ten inches open, let in from the court a

current of air faintly scented with ammonia. The ashes on the desk

twitched and crawled in the current.

Miss Wonderly watched the grey flakes twitch and crawl. Her eyes were

uneasy. She sat on the very edge of the chair. Her feet were flat on the

floor, as if she were about to rise. Her hands in dark gloves clasped a

flat dark handbag in her lap.

Spade rocked back in his chair and asked: “Now what can I do for you,

Miss Wonderly?”

She caught her breath and looked at him. She swallowed and said

hurriedly: “Could you—? I thought—I—that is—” Then she tortured her

lower lip with glistening teeth and said nothing. Only her dark eyes

spoke now, pleading.

Spade smiled and nodded as if he understood her, but pleasantly, as if

nothing serious were involved. He said: “Suppose you tell me about it,

from the beginning, and then we’ll know what needs doing. Better begin

as far back as you can.”

A TELEPHONE-BELL rang in darkness. When it had rung three times

bed-springs creaked, fingers fumbled on wood, something small and hard

thudded on a carpeted floor, the springs creaked again, and a man’s

voice said:

“Hello. . . . Yes, speaking. . . . Dead? . . . Yes. . . . Fifteen

minutes. Thanks.”

A switch clicked and a white bowl hung on three gilded chains from the

ceiling’s center filled the room with light. Spade, barefooted in green

and white checked pajamas, sat on the side of his bed. He scowled at the

telephone on the table while his hands took from beside it a packet of

brown papers and a sack of Bull Durham tobacco.

Cold steamy air blew in through two open windows, bringing with it half

a dozen times a minute the Alcatraz foghorn’s dull moaning. A tinny

alarm-clock, insecurely mounted on a corner of Duke’s _Celebrated

Criminal Cases of America_—face down on the table—held its hands at

five minutes past two.

Spade’s thick fingers made a cigarette with deliberate care, sifting a

measured quantity of tan flakes down into curved paper, spreading the

flakes so that they lay equal at the ends with a slight depression in

the middle, thumbs rolling the paper’s inner edge down and up under the

outer edge as forefingers pressed it over, thumbs and fingers sliding to

the paper cylinder’s ends to hold it even while tongue licked the flap,

left forefinger and thumb pinching their end while right forefinger and

thumb smoothed the damp seam, right forefinger and thumb twisting their

end and lifting the other to Spade’s mouth.

He picked up the pigskin and nickel lighter that had fallen to the

floor, manipulated it, and with the cigarette burning in a corner of his

mouth stood up. He took off his pajamas. The smooth thickness 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.

He scratched the back of his neck and began to dress. He put on a thin

white union-suit, grey socks, black garters, and dark brown shoes. When

he had fastened his shoes he picked up the telephone, called Graystone

4500, and ordered a taxicab. He put on a green-striped white shirt, a

soft white collar, a green necktie, the grey suit he had worn that day,

a loose tweed overcoat, and a dark grey hat. The street-door-bell rang

as he stuffed tobacco, keys, and money into his pockets.

Where Bush Street roofed Stockton before slipping downhill to Chinatown,

Spade paid his fare and left the taxicab. San Francisco’s night-fog,

thin, clammy, and penetrant, blurred the street. A few yards from where

Spade had dismissed the taxicab a small group of men stood looking up an

alley. Two women stood with a man on the other side of Bush Street,

looking at the alley. There were faces at windows.

Spade crossed the sidewalk between iron-railed hatchways that opened

above bare ugly stairs, went to the parapet, and, resting his hands on

the damp coping, looked down into Stockton Street.

An automobile popped out of the tunnel beneath him with a roaring swish,

as if it had been blown out, and ran away. Not far from the tunnel’s

mouth a man was hunkered on his heels before a billboard that held

advertisements of a moving picture and a gasoline across the front of a

gap between two store-buildings. The hunkered man’s head was bent almost

to the sidewalk so he could look under the billboard. A hand flat on the

paving, a hand clenched on the billboard’s green frame, held him in this

the billboard, peeping through the few inches of space between it and

the building at that end. The building at the other end had a blank grey