by Unknown
He put his head out of the water with his eyes open and fixed in the direction of the square port. No head was sticking out of the port. No weapon appeared. The tide had taken Sail near the stern of the Whileaway and still carried him.
He got Nola’s head out. Water leaked from her nose and mouth. Sail got an arm up as high as he could, clutching. He missed the first sagging spring line, got the second. The rope with which the anchor had been attached to Nola still clung to her ankles. He tied one of her arms to the spring line so that her head was out.
Sail went up the spring line with his hands until one foot would reach the window sills. From there to the first deck was simpler.
Nola began to gag and cough. It made a racket.
Sail opened his mouth to yell at her to be quiet. She couldn’t hear him yet, or understand. He wheeled and sloped into the houseboat cabin.
The furnishings might have been something once, but that had been fifteen years ago. Varnish everywhere had alligatored.
Sail angled into the galley when he saw it. He came out with a quart brass fire extinguisher which needed polishing, and a rusted ice pick. There had been nothing else in sight.
Nola got enough water out to start screeching.
Beyond the galley was a dining room. Sail had half crossed it when Captain Santorin Gura Andopolis came in the opposite door with a rusty butcher knife.
Andopolis was using a chair for a crutch, riding its bottom with the knee of the leg which Blick and Nola had put a bullet through. Around his eyes—on the lids more than elsewhere—were puffy gray blisters about a size which burning cigarettes would make. Three fingernails were off each hand. Red ran from the three mutilated tips on the right hand down over the rusty butcher knife.
Sail had time to throw the fire extinguisher and made use of the time, but the best he did was bounce the extinguisher off the bulkhead behind Andopolis.
Andopolis said thickly, “I feex you up, mine fran!” and deliberately reversed the butcher knife for throwing.
Sail threw his ice pick. It stuck into Andopolis’ chest over his heart. It did not go in deep enough to bother Andopolis. He did not even bother to jerk it out.
Sail jumped for the door, wanting to go back the way he had come. His wet feet slipped, let him down flat on his face.
Feet came pounding through the door and went overhead. Sail looked up. The feet belonged to the plainclothes detective who had been in the hardware store which sold marine charts.
Andopolis threw his knife. He was good at it, or lucky. The detective put his hands over his middle and looked foolish. He changed his course and ran to the wall. His last steps were spraddling. He leaned against the bulkhead. His hands did not quite cover the handle of the butcher knife.
Andopolis hobbled to Sail on his chair. He stood on one leg and clubbed the chair. Sail rolled. The chair became two pieces and some splinters on the floor. Sail, still lying on the floor, kicked Andopolis’ good leg. Andopolis fell down.
As if that had given him an idea, the detective fell. He kept both hands over the knife handle.
Andopolis used the two largest parts of the chair and flailed at Sail. On all fours, Sail got away. His throat wound was running again. He got up, but there was no weapon except the bent fire extinguisher. He got that. Andopolis hit him with the chair leg and his left side went numb from the belt down. He retreated, as lopsided on his feet as Andopolis, and passed into the main cabin.
Nola was still screaming. A man was swearing at her with young cocky Joey’s voice. Men were jumping around on the decks and in the houseboat rooms.
Blick sat on the main cabin floor, getting his head untangled from the remains of a chair. His face was a mess. It was also smeared with blue ink. The ink bottle was upside down under a table on which a new chart was spread open. A common pen lay on the chart.
Andopolis came in following Sail. Andopolis crawled on one knee and two hands.
Blick squawked, “What’s Nola yellin’ for?”
Andopolis crawled as if he did not see Sail or Blick, had not heard Blick. A tattered divan stood against the starboard bulkhead. Andopolis lay down and put an arm under that. He brought out a little bright pistol, either Blick’s or his sister’s.
Captain Chris jumped in through the door.
Andopolis’ small pistol made the noise of a big one. Blick, sitting on the floor, jumped a foot when there seemed no possible way of his jumping, no muscles to propel him upward. He came down with his head forward between his knees, and remained that way, even after drops began coming out of the center of his forehead.
Captain Chris had trouble with his coattails and his gun. Andopolis’ little gun made its noise again. Captain Chris turned around faster than he could have without some help from lead, and ran out, still having trouble with his gun.
Sail worked the handle of the fire extinguisher. The plunger made ink-sick! noises going up and down. No tetrachloride came out. There was nothing to show it ever would. Then the first squirt ran out about a foot. The second was longer, and the third wet Andopolis’ chest. Sail raised the stream and pumped. He got Andopolis’s eyes full and rolled.
Andopolis fired once at where Sail had been. Then he got up on one foot and hopped for the door. His directions were a little confused. He hopped against a bulkhead.
Andopolis went down on the floor and began having a fit. It was a brief fit, ending by Andopolis turning over on his back and relaxing.
The wall had driven the ice pick the rest of the way into his chest.
Outside, Nola still screamed, but now she made words, scatteredly.
“Andopolis … killing Blick … tried … me … Andopolis … last night … Abel … knife … we … him … tell … broke loose … me … anchor … Blick …”
Sail ran to the table. The chart on the table had two ink lines forming a V with arms that ran to landmarks on Lower Matecumbe, and compass bearings were inked beside each arm, with the point where the lines came together ringed.
Sail left with the chart by the door opposite the one which he had come in by, taking the chart. He found a cabin. He tore the V out of the chart, folded it flat and tucked it under his neck bandages, using the stateroom mirror to adjust the bandages to hide the paper. He threw the rest of the chart out of a port on the river side.
Captain Chris was standing near dead Andopolis. Torn coat lining was hanging from under the right tail of his coat, but he had his gun in his hand.
“Where’d you go to?” he wanted to know.
“Was I supposed to stick around while you drew that gun?”
“The fireworks over?”
“I hope so.”
Captain Chris put his gun in his pants pocket. “You’re pinched. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Young Joey came in, not as cocky and not stamping his feet. Two plainclothesmen followed him, then two uniformed officers walking ahead of and behind the old man who sold the charts in the hardware store.
The old man pointed at Sail and said, “He’s the one who asked about the feller who ordered the chart. Like I told you, I gave him—”
“Save it.” Joey glared at Captain Chris. “We still ain’t got nothing on this fat sailor, Paw. The girl says Andopolis is a party fisherman whose anchor pulled up part of a boat.”
The girl had told about everything. Joey kept telling the story until he got to, “So Sail yanked the dame out, and now what’ve we got to hold him on?”
Captain Chris, looking mysterious and satisfied, told Sail, “Get your clothes on or we’ll book you for indecent exposure along with the rest.”
“What rest?”
“Get your clothes on.”
Sail dressed sitting on the hurricane wreckage, brushed off the bottoms of his feet and put on socks and shoes. He looked up at Captain Chris as he tied the shoestrings.
“Kidding, aren’t you?”
“Sure, sure!”
Sail bristled. “You’ve got to have a charge. Just try running me in on an
INV and see what it gets you.”
“I’ve got a charge.”
“In a gnat’s eye.”
Captain Chris said with relish, “You’ve been playing the slot machines which are so popular in our fair city. You used a slug made of two hollow halves that fit together and hold muriatic or something that eats the works of the machines and puts them on the fritz. We found a box of the slugs on your boat. We have witnesses who saw you play machines before they went bad.”
Sail wore a dark look toward the squad car. “This is a piker trick.”
Captain Chris tooled the car over a bad street. “You put that gambling joint in Bimini on the bum, too. What’s the idea?”
“Nuts.”
“Now, don’t get that way. I’m jugging you, yes. But it’s the principle. It’s to show you that it ain’t a nice idea to football the cops around. Not in Miami, anyway. You’ll get ten days or ten bucks is all. It’s the principle. That, and a bet I made with Joey that if he’d let me handle this and keep his mouth shut, and you beat me to the kill, I’d jug you on this slot machine thing. Joey wanted you jugged. Now, what’s this between you and slot machines and wheels?”
Sail considered for a while, then took in breath.
“I even went to an institution where they cure things, once,” he said. “Kind of a bughouse.”
“Huh?”
“One psychologist called it a fixation. I’ve always had it. Can’t help it. Some people can’t stand being alone, and some can’t stand being shut up in a room, and some can’t take mice. With me, it’s gambling. Can’t stand it. I can’t stand the thought of taking chances to make money.”
“Just a lad who gets his dough the safe and sane method.”
“That’s the idea,” Sail agreed, “in a general way.”
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett
DASHIELL HAMMETT (1894–1961) is arguably the most significant author of the hard-boiled private-eye novel in the history of American letters. Carroll John Daly is credited with inventing the genre, but it is Hammett who popularized it while elevating it to the level of serious literature.
By far his best-known work, and the most famous mystery novel ever written by an American, is The Maltese Falcon. After Hammett had written numerous short stories, novellas and two novels about the Continental Op, the series character that had made him both famous and successful, The Maltese Falcon was a major departure, the protagonist being the newly created but now iconic Sam Spade. Whereas the Op worked for a large firm and had a boss to whom he was answerable, Spade worked only with a partner who was murdered early in the novel, after which he was responsible to no one but himself and his sense of ethics.
Like most of Hammett’s important work, The Maltese Falcon was originally published in Black Mask. It was a five-part serial running from September 1929 to January 1930; Alfred A. Knopf published it in book form on February 14, 1930.
The book was dramatically revised after serialization, with more than two thousand textual differences between the two versions. Some of the changes were made by copy editors at Knopf but the majority appear to have been made by Hammett himself. This is the first time that the original magazine version has been published since its initial appearance eighty years ago.
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett
SPADE AND ARCHER
AMUEL 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-gray 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 audible, 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. She was pliantly slender. Her erect, high-breasted body, her long legs, her narrow hands and feet, had nowhere any angularity. 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 gray 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, and 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 gray 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 twitching and crawling gray flakes uneasily. She sat stiffly on the very edge of her chair, her feet 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 nodded and smiled as if he understood her, but pleasantly, as if nothing really serious were involved. The same assurance was in his voice when he spoke.
“Suppose you tell me all about it, and then we’ll know what needs doing. Better begin as far back as you can, as near the beginning.”
“That was in New York,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“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 were ever 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.”
“They’re returning the first of the month.”
Spade’s eyes brightened. “Then we’ve two whole 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. “The fear that she had done something like this kept me from going 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 amiably, “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 had given me. I waited a week, but no answer came, not a 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. Then you haven’t found her?”
“I haven’t found her. 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 going home with me. But she didn’t come. I waited there three days, and Corinne didn’t come, didn’t even send me a message.”
Spade nodded his blond Satan’s head slowly, frowning sympathetically, his lips tightened together.
“It was horrible,” she said, trying to smile. “I couldn’t sit there like that and wait and wait, not knowing what had happened to her, what might be happening to her.” She stopped trying to smile, and shuddered. “The only address I had was General Delivery. I wrote her another letter, and yesterday afternoon I went to the Post Office. I stayed there until dark, but I didn’t see her. I went there again this morning, and still didn’t see Corinne, but I saw Floyd Thursby.”
Spade nodded again, but his frown had vanished. In its place was a look of sharp attentiveness.
“He wouldn’t tell me where Corinne is,” she went on, hopelessly. “He wouldn’t tell me anything, except that she is well and happy. But how can I believe him? That is what he would tell me anyhow, isn’t it?”
“Exactly,” Spade agreed, “but it might be true.”
“I hope it is. I do hope it is,” she exclaimed. “But I can’t go back home like this, without having seen her, without even having talked to her on the phone. He wouldn’t take me to her. He said she didn’t want to see me. I can’t believe that. He promised to tell her he had seen me, and to bring her to see me if she would come—this evening at the hotel. He said he knew she wouldn’t. He promised to come himself if she wouldn’t. He—”