The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett Page A

Levantine’s throat.
    “Who is it?” the girl whispered, coming close to Spade; and Cairo’s eyes jerked back to ask the same question.
    Spade gave his answer irritably: “I don’t know.”
    The bell rang again, more insistently.
    “Well, keep quiet,” Spade said, and went out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

    Spade turned on the light in the passageway and opened the door to the corridor. Lieutenant Dundy and Tom Polhaus were there.
    “Hello, Sam,” Tom said. “We thought maybe you wouldn’t’ve gone to bed yet.”
    Dundy nodded, but said nothing.
    Spade said good-naturedly: “Hello. You guys pick swell hours to do your visiting in. What is it this time?”
    Dundy spoke then, quietly: “We want to talk to you, Spade.”
    “Well?” Spade stood in the doorway, blocking it. “Go ahead and talk.”
    Tom Polhaus advanced saying: “We don’t have to do it standing here, do we?”
    Spade stood in the doorway and said: “You can’t come in.” His tone was very slightly apologetic.
    Tom’s thick-featured face, even in height with Spade’s, took on an expression of friendly scorn, though there was a bright gleam in his small shrewd eyes. “What the hell, Sam?” he protested and put a big hand playfully on Spade’s chest.
    Spade leaned against the pushing hand, grinned wolfishly, and asked: “Going to strong-arm me, Tom?”
    Tom grumbled, “Aw, for God’s sake,” and took his hand away.
    Dundy clicked his teeth together and said through them: “Let us in.”
    Spade’s lip twitched over his eyetooth. He said: “You’re not coming in. What do you want to do about it? Try to get in? Or do your talking here? Or go to hell?”
    Tom groaned.
    Dundy, still speaking through his teeth, said: “It’d pay you to play along with us a little, Spade. You’ve got away with this and you’ve got away with that, but you can’t keep it up forever.”
    “Stop me when you can,” Spade replied arrogantly.
    “That’s what I’ll do.” Dundy put his hands behind him and thrust his hard face up towards the private detective’s. “There’s talk going around that you and Archer’s wife were cheating on him.”
    Spade laughed. “That sounds like something you thought up yourself.”
    “Then there’s not anything to it?”
    “Not anything.”
    “The talk is,” Dundy said, “that she tried to get a divorce out of him so’s she could put in with you, but he wouldn’t give it to her. Anything to that?”
    “No.”
    “There’s even talk,” Dundy went on stolidly, “that that’s why he was put on the spot.”
    Spade seemed mildly amused. “Don’t be a hog,” he said. “You oughtn’t try to pin more than one murder at a time on me. Your first idea that I knocked Thursby off because he’d killed Miles falls apart if you blame me for killing Miles too.”
    “You haven’t heard me say you killed anybody,” Dundy replied. “You’re the one that keeps bringing that up. But suppose I did. You could have blipped them both. There’s a way of figuring it.”
    “Uh-huh. I could’ve butchered Miles to get his wife, and then Thursby so I could hang Miles’s killing on him. That’s a hell of a swell system, or will be when I can give somebody else the bump and hang Thursby’s on them. How long am I supposed to keep that up? Are you going to put your hand on my shoulder for all the killings in San Francisco from now on?”
    Tom said: “Aw, cut the comedy, Sam. You know damned well we don’t like this any more than you do, but we got our work to do.”
    “I hope you’ve got something to do besides pop in here early every morning with a lot of damned fool questions.”
    “And get damned lying answers,” Dundy added deliberately.
    “Take it easy,” Spade cautioned him.
    Dundy looked him up and down and then looked him straight in the eyes. “If you say there was nothing between you and Archer’s wife,” he said, “you’re a liar, and I’m telling you so.”
    A startled look came