Read Online The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett - Free Book Online

back door fastened by a Yale lock, and let himself out into a narrow court. The court led to a dark back street, up which Spade walked for two blocks. Then he crossed over to California Street and went to the Coronet. It was not quite half-past nine o’clock.
    The eagerness with which Brigid O’Shaughnessy welcomed Spade suggested that she had been not entirely certain of his coming. She had put on a satin gown of the blue shade called Artoise that season, with chalcedony shoulder-straps, and her stockings and slippers were Artoise.
    The red and cream sitting-room had been brought to order and livened with flowers in squat pottery vases of black and silver. Three small rough-barked logs burned in the fireplace. Spade watched them burn while she put away his hat and coat.
    “Do you bring me good news?” she asked when she came into the room again. Anxiety looked through her smile, and she held her breath.
    “We won’t have to make anything public that hasn’t already been made public.”
    “The police won’t have to know about me?”
    “No.”
    She sighed happily and sat on the walnut settee. Her face relaxed and her body relaxed. She smiled up at him with admiring eyes. “However did you manage it?” she asked more in wonder than in curiosity.
    “Most things in San Francisco can be bought, or taken.”
    “And you won’t get into trouble? Do sit down.” She made room for him on the settee.
    “I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble,” he said with not too much complacence.
    He stood beside the fireplace and looked at her with eyes that studied, weighed, judged her without pretense that they were not studying, weighing, judging her. She flushed slightly under the frankness of his scrutiny, but she seemed more sure of herself than before, though a becoming shyness had not left her eyes. He stood there until it seemed plain that he meant to ignore her invitation to sit beside her, and then crossed to the settee.
    “You aren’t,” he asked as he sat down, “exactly the sort of person you pretend to be, are you?”
    “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said in her hushed voice, looking at him with puzzled eyes.
    “Schoolgirl manner,” he explained, “stammering and blushing and all that.”
    She blushed and replied hurriedly, not looking at him: “I told you this afternoon that I’ve been bad—worse than you could know.”
    “That’s what I mean,” he said. “You told me that this afternoon in the same words, same tone. It’s a speech you’ve practiced.”
    After a moment in which she seemed confused almost to the point of tears she laughed and said: “Very well, then, Mr. Spade, I’m not at all the sort of person I pretend to be. I’m eighty years old, incredibly wicked, and an iron-molder by trade. But if it’s a pose it’s one I’ve grown into, so you won’t expect me to drop it entirely, will you?”
    “Oh, it’s all right,” he assured her. “Only it wouldn’t be all right if you were actually that innocent. We’d never get anywhere.”
    “I won’t be innocent,” she promised with a hand on her heart.
    “I saw Joel Cairo tonight,” he said in the manner of one making polite conversation.
    Gaiety went out of her face. Her eyes, focused on his profile, became frightened, then cautious. He had stretched his legs out and was looking at his crossed feet. His face did not indicate that he was thinking about anything.
    There was a long pause before she asked uneasily:
    “You—you know him?”
    “I saw him tonight.” Spade did not look up and he maintained his light conversational tone. “He was going to see George Arliss.”
    “You mean you talked to him?”
    “Only for a minute or two, till the curtain-bell rang.”
    She got up from the settee and went to the fireplace to poke the fire. She changed slightly the position of an ornament on the mantelpiece, crossed the room to get a box of cigarettes from a table in a corner, straightened a curtain, and returned