The Maltese Falcon Read Online Free

told me it was none of my business. You can’t treat us that way, Sam. It ain’t right and it won’t get you anywheres. We got our work to do.”
    Lieutenant Dundy jumped up, stood close to Spade, and thrust his square face up at the taller man’s.
    “I’ve warned you your foot was going to slip one of these days,” he said.
    Spade made a depreciative mouth, raising his eyebrows. “Everybody’s foot slips sometime,” he replied with derisive mildness.
    “And this is yours.”
    Spade smiled and shook his head. “No, I’ll do nicely, thank you.” He stopped smiling. His upper lip, on the left side, twitched over his eyetooth. His eyes became narrow and sultry. His voice came out deep as the Lieutenant’s. “I don’t like this. What are you sucking around for? Tell me, or get out and let me go to bed.”
    “Who’s Thursby?” Dundy demanded.
    “I told Tom what I knew about him.”
    “You told Tom damned little.”
    “I knew damned little.”
    “Why were you tailing him?”
    “I wasn’t. Miles was—for the swell reason that we had a client who was paying good United States money to have him tailed.”
    “Who’s the client?”
    Placidity came back to Spade’s face and voice. He said reprovingly: “You know I can’t tell you that until I’ve talked it over with the client.”
    “You’ll tell it to me or you’ll tell it in court,” Dundy said hotly. “This is murder and don’t you forget it.”
    “Maybe. And here’s something for you to not forget, sweetheart. I’ll tell it or not as I damned please. It’s a long while since I burst out crying because policemen didn’t like me.”
    Tom left the sofa and sat on the foot of the bed. His carelessly shaven mud-smeared face was tired and lined.
    “Be reasonable, Sam,” he pleaded. “Give us a chance. How can we turn up anything on Miles’s killing if you won’t give us what you’ve got?”
    “You needn’t get a headache over that,” Spade told him. “I’ll bury my dead.”
    Lieutenant Dundy sat down and put his hands on his knees again. His eyes were warm green discs.
    “I thought you would,” he said. He smiled with grim content “That’s just exactly why we came to see you. Isn’t it, Tom?”
    Tom groaned, but said nothing articulate.
    Spade watched Dundy warily.
    “That’s just exactly what I said to Tom,” the Lieutenant went on “I said ‘Tom, I’ve got a hunch that Sam Spade’s a man to keep the family-troubles in the family.’ That’s just what I said to him.”
    The wariness went out of Spade’s eyes. He made his eyes dull with boredom. He turned his face around to Tom and asked with great carelessness: “What’s itching your boy-friend now?”
    Dundy jumped up and tapped Spade’s chest with the ends of two bent fingers.
    “Just this,” he said, taking pains to make each word distinct, emphasizing them with his tapping finger-ends: “Thursby was shot down in front of his hotel just thirty-five minutes after you left Burritt Street.”
    Spade spoke, taking equal pains with his words: “Keep your God-damned paws off me.”
    Dundy withdrew the tapping fingers, but there was no change in his voice: “Tom says you were in too much of a hurry to even stop for a look at your partner.”
    Tom growled apologetically: “Well, damn it, Sam, you did run off like that.”
    “And you didn’t go to Archer’s house to tell his wife,” the Lieutenant said. “We called up and that girl in your office was there, and she said you sent her.”
    Spade nodded. His face was stupid in its calmness.
    Lieutenant Dundy raised his two bent fingers towards Spade’s chest, quickly lowered them, and said: “I give you ten minutes to get to a phone and do your talking to the girl. I give you ten minutes to get to Thursby’s joint—Geary near Leavenworth—you could do it easy in that time, or fifteen at the most. And that gives you ten or fifteen minutes of waiting before he showed up.”
    “I knew where he lived?” Spade