You're not going to go around poking at the fire and straightening up the room again, are you?
Yes,' Spade growled. 'And when you're slapped you'll take it and like it.' He released Cairo's wrist and with a thick open hand struck the side of his face three times savagely.
When he awakened again he could stand, and did. He doused his head in cold water and drank four glasses of water. The water made him sick and after that he began to shake with a chill. He went into th...
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...
Our friend Nunheim was filled full of .32s just about an hour after he copped the sneak on us - deader'n hell. The pills look like they come from the same gun that cut down the Wolf dame. The experts...
I found I was repeating myself. It is the beginning of the end when you discover you have style.
You like Nick a lot, don't you, Nora? Dorothy asked.He's an old Greek fool, but I'm used to him.Charles isn't a Greek name.It's Charalambides, I explained. When the old man came over, the mugg that pu...
You always have, I must say, a smooth explanation ready.What do you want me to do? Learn to stutter?
We found a table. Nora said: She's pretty.If you like them like that.She grinned at me. You got types?Only you, darling - lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.And how about the red-head you wandered off w...
To get what he wanted, a man had to give other people what they wanted.
She grinned at me. 'You got types?''Only you darling - lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.
Plans are all right sometimes, I said. And sometimes just stirring things up is all right--if you're tough enough to survive, and keep your eyes open so you'll see what you want when it comes to the t...
Now I'm going to have my fun. I've got ten thousand dollars of your money to play with. I'm going to use it opening Poisonville up from Adam's apple to ankles.
I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit.
He said: I'm going to send you over. The chances are you'll get off with life. That means you'll be out again in twenty years. You're an angel. I'll wait for you. He cleared his throat. If they hang y...
But besides I haven’t the time: I’m too busy trying to see that you don’t lose any of the money I married you for. I kissed her.
Porky Grout, whose yellowness was notorious from Seattle to San Diego, standing rigidly in the path of a charging metal monster, with an inadequate pistol in each hand. She had done that to Porky Grou...
Now I pass up about twenty-five or thirty thousand of honest gain because I like being a detective, like the work. And liking work makes you want to do it as well as you can. Otherwise there’d be no s...
Joel Cairo: You always have a very smooth explanation ready.Sam Spade: What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?
It’s a long while since I burst out crying because policemen didn’t like me.