Part 23 (2/2)
She put her hands up to his cheeks and drew his face down again. ”Look at me,” she said, ”and tell me the truth. Would you have done this to me if the falcon had been real and you had been paid your money?”
”What difference does that make now? Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business-bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy.”
She looked at him, saying nothing.
He moved his shoulders a little and said: ”Well, a lot of money would have been at least one more item on the other side of the scales.”
She put her face up to his face. Her mouth was slightly open with lips a little thrust out. She whispered: ”If you loved me you'd need nothing more on that side.”
Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them: ”I won't play the sap for you.”
She put her mouth to his, slowly, her arms around him, and came into his arms. She was in his arms when the doorbell rang.
Spade, left arm around Brigid O'Shaughnessy, opened the corridor-door. Lieutenant Dundy, Detective-sergeant Tom Polhaus, and two other detectives were there.
Spade said: ”h.e.l.lo, Tom. Get them?”
Polhaus said: ”Got them.”
”Swell. Come in. Here's another one for you.” Spade pressed the girl forward. ”She killed Miles. And I've got some exhibits-the boy's guns, one of Cairo's, a black statuette that all the h.e.l.l was about, and a thousand-dollar bill that I was supposed to be bribed with.” He looked at Dundy, drew his brows together, leaned forward to peer into the Lieutenant's face, and burst out laughing. ”What in h.e.l.l's the matter with your little playmate, Tom? He looks heartbroken.” He laughed again. ”I bet, by G.o.d! when he heard Gutman's story he thought he had me at last.”
”Cut it out, Sam,” Tom grumbled. ”We didn't think-”
”Like h.e.l.l he didn't,” Spade said merrily. ”He came up here with his mouth watering, though you'd have sense enough to know I'd been stringing Gutman.”
”Cut it out,” Tom grumbled again, looking uneasily sidewise at his superior. ”Anyways we got it from Cairo. Gutman's dead. The kid had just finished shooting him up when we got there.”
Spade nodded. ”He ought to have expected that,” he said.
Effie Perine put down her newspaper and jumped out of Spade's chair when he came into the office at a little after nine o'clock Monday morning.
He said: ”Morning, angel.”
”Is that-what the papers have-right?” she asked.
”Yes, ma'am.” He dropped his hat on the desk and sat down. His face was pasty in color, but its lines were strong and cheerful and his eyes, though still somewhat red-veined, were clear.
The girl's brown eyes were peculiarly enlarged and there was a queer twist to her mouth. She stood beside him, staring down at him.
He raised his head, grinned, and said mockingly: ”So much for your woman's intuition.”
Her voice was queer as the expression on her face. ”You did that, Sam, to her?”
He nodded. ”Your Sam's a detective.” He looked sharply at her. He put his arm around her waist, his hand on her hip. ”She did kill Miles, angel,” he said gently, ”off hand, like that.” He snapped the fingers of his other hand.
She escaped from his arm as if it had hurt her. ”Don't, please, don't touch me,” she said brokenly. ”I know-I know you're right. You're right. But don't touch me now-not now.”
Spade's face became pale as his collar.
The corridor-door's k.n.o.b rattled. Effie Perine turned quickly and went into the outer office, shutting the door behind her. When she came in again she shut it behind her.
She said in a small flat voice: ”Iva is here.”
Spade, looking down at his desk, nodded almost imperceptibly. ”Yes,” he said, and s.h.i.+vered. ”Well, send her in.”
Reader's Guide 1.Sam Spade's att.i.tude toward authority is patently clear in remarks like ”It's a long while since I burst out crying because policemen didn't like me” [this page] or ”At one time or another I've had to tell everyone from the Supreme Court down to go to h.e.l.l, and I've got away with it” [this page]. How is Spade's distrust of power manifested in his actions? How important is distrust as an aspect of his character?
2.Of the three women in the book-Brigid O'Shaughnessy, Effie Perine, and Iva Archer-are any fully realized, or are perhaps all three, as stereotypes, three sides of one woman? As a stereotype, what does each woman represent? What does Spade mean, and what does it say about Spade, when he tells Effie, ”You're a d.a.m.ned good man, sister” [this page]?
3.A blatant stereotype is Joel Cairo: ”This guy is queer” [this page], Effie informs Spade when the perfumed Cairo comes to the office. Is a h.o.m.os.e.xual character effective or necessary in the plot? Would he be as effective without sterotyping? Why do you think Hammett created him?
4.Near the end of the story, Spade says to Brigid, ”Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be” [this page]. What evidence is there that he's not crooked? Does honor temper greed in his negotiations with the others in the hunt for the black bird? How are greed and ruthlessness packaged here so that ultimately we might not care whether the characters are crooked or not? Does style compensate for all in the hard-boiled genre?
5.”By Gad, sir, you're a character” [this page], says Gutman, laughing, when Spade suggests making Wilmer the fall-guy. Is the Spade-Gutman relations.h.i.+p one of justice versus corrupt wealth or one of equals competing for the same prize? How does Gutman's sophistication and erudition reveal another side of Spade?
6.When Spade returns to the office in the last scene, Effie does not greet him with her usual verve. What has happened to the breezily affectionate bond between them? What is Effie's relations.h.i.+p to Brigid? Will Effie forgive Spade, or do we not know enough about her to make predictions?
Comparing Hammett, Chandler, and Thompson: 1.How does the way Chandler uses Los Angeles in The Long Goodbye The Long Goodbye resemble or differ from the way Hammett uses San Francisco in resemble or differ from the way Hammett uses San Francisco in The Maltese Falcon The Maltese Falcon? To what extent is this the result of their individual writing styles? Does Thompson resemble either writer with his descriptions of the West Texas oil country in The Killer Inside Me The Killer Inside Me? How important is setting in each of these novels?
2.Although they were brilliant innovators and stylists, Hammett and Chandler were writing for a genre that dictated resolution of the plot. Thompson, on the other hand, in The Killer Inside Me The Killer Inside Me creates a plot rife with ambiguity. What element or elements of his predecessors' style does Thompson retain? Could Thompson have written creates a plot rife with ambiguity. What element or elements of his predecessors' style does Thompson retain? Could Thompson have written The Killer Inside Me The Killer Inside Me without the models of Hammett and Chandler? without the models of Hammett and Chandler?
3.Thompson inverts traditional crime fiction by writing from the viewpoint of the criminal instead of the detective. In the novels of Hammett and Chandler, how different is the criminal from the detective? Where do Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe fall in their respective, or mutual, att.i.tudes toward authority and law?
4.How does the characterization of women in The Maltese Falcon The Maltese Falcon compare with those in compare with those in The Long Goodbye The Long Goodbye? Is Brigid O'Shaughnessy the equivalent of Eileen Wade? Is Effie Perine the equivalent of Linda Loring? What do the differences in these characters tell you about the hard-boiled style? About the authors?
5.Chandler and Thompson write in the first person, and Hammett uses the third person in The Maltese Falcon The Maltese Falcon. How would each of these novels have been affected-for better or worse-if the voice had been reversed? What are the inherent advantages and/or limitations of writing in the first or third person?
Das.h.i.+ell Hammett was born in St. Marys County, Maryland, in 1894. He grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore. He left school at the age of fourteen and held several kinds of jobs thereafter-messenger boy, newsboy, clerk, timekeeper, yardman, machine operator, and stevedore. He finally became an operative for Pinkerton's Detective Agency.
World War I, in which he served as a sergeant, interrupted his sleuthing and injured his health. When he was finally discharged from the last of several hospitals, he resumed detective work. Subsequently, he turned to writing, and in the late 1920s he became the unquestioned master of detective-story fiction in America. During World War II, Mr. Hammett again served as a sergeant in the Army, this time for more than two years, most of which he spent in the Aleutians. He died in 1961.
Books by Das.h.i.+ell HammettThe Big KnockoverThe Continental OPThe Dain CurseThe Gla.s.s KeyThe Maltese FalconNightmare TownRed HarvestThe Thin ManWoman in the Dark
ALSO BY D DAs.h.i.+ELL H HAMMETT.
THE DAIN CURSE.
The Continental Op is a short, squat, and utterly unsentimental tank of a private detective. Miss Gabrielle Dain Leggett is young, wealthy, and a devotee of morphine and religious cults. She has an unfortunate effect on the people around her: they have a habit of dying violently. Is Gabrielle the victim of a family curse? Or is the truth about her weirder and infinitely more dangerous? The Dain Curse The Dain Curse is one of the Continental Op's most bizarre cases, and a tautly crafted masterpiece of suspense. is one of the Continental Op's most bizarre cases, and a tautly crafted masterpiece of suspense.
Fiction/Crime/978-0-679-72260-1 THE GLa.s.s KEY.
Paul Madvig was a cheerfully corrupt ward-heeler who aspired to something better: the daughter of Senator Ralph Bancroft Henry, the heiress to a dynasty of political purebreds. Did he want her badly enough to commit murder? And if Madvig was innocent, which of his dozens of enemies was doing an awfully good job of framing him? Das.h.i.+ell Hammett's tour de force of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of telegraphic crispness.
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