Chapter 1

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_Title:_ The Maltese Falcon
_Date of first publication:_ 1930
_Author:_ Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)
_Date first posted:_ Dec. 26, 2016
_Date last updated:_ October 26, 2025
Faded Page eBook #20161221

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[Cover Illustration]

THE
MALTESE
FALCON

DASHIELL HAMMETT

ALFRED · A · KNOPF
NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT 1930 BY DASHIELL HAMMETT
COPYRIGHT RENEWED 1957 BY DASHIELL HAMMETT

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form or by any mechanical means,
including mimeograph and tape recorder, without
permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

TO _JOSE_

1

SPADE & ARCHER

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.”

“That was in New York.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know where she met him. I mean I don’t know where in New York.
She’s five years younger than I—only seventeen—and we didn’t have the
same friends. I don’t suppose we’ve ever been as close as sisters should
be. Mama and Papa are in Europe. It would kill them. I’ve got to get her
back before they come home.”

“Yes,” he said.

“They’re coming home the first of the month.”

Spade’s eyes brightened. “Then we’ve two weeks,” he said.

“I didn’t know what she had done until her letter came. I was frantic.”
Her lips trembled. Her hands mashed the dark handbag in her lap. “I was
too afraid she had done something like this to go to the police, and the
fear that something had happened to her kept urging me to go. There
wasn’t anyone I could go to for advice. I didn’t know what to do. What
could I do?”

“Nothing, of course,” Spade said, “but then her letter came?”

“Yes, and I sent her a telegram asking her to come home. I sent it to
General Delivery here. That was the only address she gave me. I waited a
whole week, but no answer came, not another word from her. And Mama and
Papa’s return was drawing nearer and nearer. So I came to San Francisco
to get her. I wrote her I was coming. I shouldn’t have done that, should
I?”

“Maybe not. It’s not always easy to know what to do. You haven’t found
her?”

“No, I haven’t. I wrote her that I would go to the St. Mark, and I
begged her to come and let me talk to her even if she didn’t intend to
go home with me. But she didn’t come. I waited three days, and she
didn’t come, didn’t even send me a message of any sort.”