To Jose...

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 mot...

A telephone bell rang in darkness. When it had rung three times bedsprings creaked, fingers fumbled on wood, something small and hard thudded on a carpeted floor, the springs creaked again, and a man’...

When Spade reached his office at ten o’clock the following morning Effie Perine was at her desk opening the morning’s mail. Her boyish face was pale under its sunburn. She put down the handful of enve...

Miss Wonderly, in a belted green crêpe silk dress, opened the door of apartment 1001 at the Coronet. Her face was flushed. Her dark red hair, parted on the left side, swept back in loose waves over he...

Spade did not look at the pistol. He raised his arms and, leaning back in his chair, intertwined the fingers of his two hands behind his head. His eyes, holding no particular expression, remained focu...

For half an hour after Joel Cairo had gone Spade sat alone, still and frowning, at his desk. Then he said aloud in the tone of one dismissing a problem, “Well, they’re paying for it,” and took a bottl...

In his bedroom that was a living-room now the wall-bed was up, Spade took Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s hat and coat, made her comfortable in a padded rocking chair, and telephoned the Hotel Belvedere. Cairo...

Brigid O’Shaughnessy was huddled in the armchair by the table. Her forearms were up over her cheeks, her knees drawn up until they hid the lower part of her face. Her eyes were white-circled and terri...

Spade returned to the living-room and sat on an end of the sofa, elbows on knees, cheeks in hands, looking at the floor and not at Brigid O’Shaughnessy smiling weakly at him from the armchair. His eye...

Beginning day had reduced night to a thin smokiness when Spade sat up. At his side Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s soft breathing had the regularity of utter sleep. Spade was quiet leaving bed and bedroom and ...

The telephone bell was ringing when Spade returned to his office after sending Brigid O’Shaughnessy off to Effie Perine’s house. He went to the telephone. “Hello.⁠ ⁠… Yes, this is Spade.⁠ ⁠… Yes, I go...

Spade rode down from Gutman’s floor in an elevator. His lips were dry and rough in a face otherwise pale and damp. When he took out his handkerchief to wipe his face he saw his hand trembling. He grin...

Gutman opened the door. A glad smile lighted his fat face. He held out a hand and said: “Ah, come in, sir! Thank you for coming. Come in.” Spade shook the hand and entered. The boy went in behind him....

Spade, coming around the corner from the elevator at a few minutes past six in the morning, saw yellow light glowing through the frosted glass of his office door. He halted abruptly, set his lips toge...

Spade and Detective-sergeant Polhaus ate pickled pigs’ feet at one of big John’s tables at the States Hof Brau. Polhaus, balancing pale bright jelly on a fork halfway between plate and mouth, said: “H...

Spade went into the Hotel Sutler and telephoned the Alexandria. Gutman was not in. No member of Gutman’s party was in. Spade telephoned the Belvedere. Cairo was not in, had not been in that day. Spade...

Carrying the parcel lightly under his arm, walking briskly, with only the ceaseless shifting of his eyes to denote wariness, Spade went, partly by way of an alley and a narrow court, from his office-b...

Spade, with his arms around Brigid O’Shaughnessy, smiled meagerly over her head and said: “Sure, we’ll talk.” Gutman’s bulbs jounced as he took three waddling backward steps away from the door. Spade ...

The boy lay on his back on the sofa, a small figure that was⁠—except for its breathing⁠—altogether corpselike to the eye. Joel Cairo sat beside the boy, bending over him, rubbing his cheeks and wrists...

For all of five minutes after the outer door had closed behind Casper Gutman and Joel Cairo, Spade, motionless, stood staring at the knob of the open living-room door. His eyes were gloomy under a for...