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163c260
|
It's probably polite to pretend you don't see people coming out of pawnshops, anyhow.
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humor
polite
pawn-shop
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Dashiell Hammett |
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4559e18
|
Dorothy's coming up. I think she's tight." "That's great." I picked up my bathrobe. "I was afraid I was going to have to get some sleep." She was bending over looking for her slippers. "Don't be such an old fluff. You can sleep all day." She found her slippers and stood up in them. "Is she really as afraid of her mother as she says?" "If she's got any sense. Mimi's poison." Nora screwed up her dark eyes at me and asked slowly: "What are you..
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Dashiell Hammett |
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bdee359
|
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 put him through Ellis Island said Charalambides was too long...too much trouble to write... and whittled it down to Charles. It was all right with the old man; they could have called him X so they let him in."
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Dashiell Hammett |
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6616647
|
But that's the part of it I always liked. He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling.
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Dashiell Hammett |
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044f790
|
If the Old Man said something was so, then it probably was, because he was one of these cautious babies who'll look out the window at a cloudburst and say, "It seems to be raining," on the off-chance that somebody's pouring water off the roof."
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Dashiell Hammett |
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60491de
|
What do you do with all your money?" "Me and the French hoard gold."
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money
funny
humor
hoarding
gold
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Dashiell Hammett |
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a8cb182
|
She laughed. "All right, all right. Still want to leave for San Francisco tomorrow?" Not unless you're in a hurry. Let's stick around awhile. This excitement has put us behind in our drinking." --
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Dashiell Hammett |
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d12c449
|
The hell of it, Miss- Is your name Wonderly or Leblanc?' She blushed and murmured: 'It's really O'Shaughnessy - Brigid O'Shaughnessy
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Dashiell Hammett |
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d02939a
|
Desaparecio - dijo Spade - como desaparece un puno cuando se abre la mano.
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Dashiell Hammett |
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60eaf0f
|
How do you feel?" "Terrible. I must've gone to bed sober."
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Dashiell Hammett |
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80fcf16
|
Quinn came over to refill his glass. He looked towards the bedroom door. "Where'd you find the little blonde?" "Used to bounce it on my knee." "Which knew?" he asked. "Could I touch it?"
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Dashiell Hammett |
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72d84bd
|
Be still while I get up or I'll make an opening in your head for brains to leak in.
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Dashiell Hammett |
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51047aa
|
I was two pavements from my destination when somebodey S-s-s-s-s'd at me. I probably didn't jump twenty feet.
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Dashiell Hammett |
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7f38acf
|
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 are matching 'em up now. I guess he wishes he'd stayed and talked to us.
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|
detective
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Dashiell Hammett |
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732a727
|
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 sense to it. That's the fix I am in. I don't know anything else, don't enjoy anything else, don't want to know or enjoy anything else. You can't weight that against any sum of money. Money's good stuff. I haven't anything against it.
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Dashiell Hammett |
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9bae537
|
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."
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Dashiell Hammett |
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9eb4d73
|
He turned to face her. The two vertical lines above his nose were deep clefts between red wales. "I don't give a damn about your honesty," he told her, trying to make himself speak calmly. "I don't care what kind of tricks you're up to, what your secrets are, but I've got to have something to show that you know what you're doing." "I do know. Please believe that I do, and that it's all for the best, and--" "Show me," he ordered. "I'm will..
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Dashiell Hammett |
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e39fa45
|
He's cute," I said. "Uh-huh," the grey man agreed, "and so's dynamite."
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Dashiell Hammett |
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96cabd1
|
I said: "You don't want to pick a fight with me, Mimi." She looked at me as if she were going to say I love you, and asked: "Is that a threat?"
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Dashiell Hammett |
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6dbb05f
|
My side felt a lot better when Nora called me at noon the next day. "My nice policeman wants to see you," she said. "How do you feel?" "Terrible. I must've gone to bed sober." I pushed Asta out of the way and got up."
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humor
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Dashiell Hammett |
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ed50cec
|
Gilbert put down the magazine he was looking at and politely said he hoped I was recovering from my injury. I said I was. "I've never been hurt, really hurt," he went on, "that I can remember. I've tried hurting myself, of course, but that's not the same thing. It just made me uncomfortable and irritable and sweat a lot." "That's pretty much the same thing," I said."
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humor
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Dashiell Hammett |
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fce676c
|
Nora was eating a piece of cold duck with one hand and working on a jig-saw puzzle with the other when I got home. "I thought you'd gone to live with her," she said. "You used to be a detective: find me a brownish piece shaped something like a snail with a long neck." "Piece of duck or puzzle?..."
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humor
puzzles
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Dashiell Hammett |
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25f16e4
|
Dorothy wants to talk to you. Don't ask her to eat with us." When Nora returned from the telephone she had a look in her eye. "Now what's up?" I asked. "Nothing. Just 'how are you' and all that." I said: "if you're lying to the old man, God'll punish you."
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Dashiell Hammett |
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7a08ab0
|
Alice opened the door when I rang. She had on green pyjamas and held a hairbrush in one hand. She looked wearily at Quinn and spoke wearily: "Bring it in." I took it in and spread it on a bed. It mumbled something I could not make out and moved one hand feebly back and forth, but its eyes stayed shut."
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funny
humor
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Dashiell Hammett |
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a381a36
|
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 motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down--from high flat temples--in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan.
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Dashiell Hammett |
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4fad8eb
|
She's cute, but she's cuckoo. She wouldn't be his daughter if she wasn't. You can't tell how much of what she says is what she thinks. And you can't tell how much of what she thinks ever really happened.
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Dashiell Hammett |
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637429c
|
Are you - who make your living snooping - sneering at my curiosity about people and my attempts to satisfy it?" "We're different," I said. "I do mine with the object of putting people in jail, and I get paid for it, though not as much as I should." "That's not different," he said. "I do mine with the object of putting people in books, and I get paid for it, though not as much as I should." "Yeah, but what good does that do?" "God knows. Wha..
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Dashiell Hammett |
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0748fec
|
Gutman smiled benignly at him and said: "Well, Wilmer, I'm sorry indeed to lose you, and I want you to know that I couldn't be any fonder of you if you were my own son; but--well, by Gad!--if you lose a son it's possible to get another--and there's only one Maltese falcon."
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Dashiell Hammett |
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b3dd4fa
|
You might as well take your punishment and get it over with
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Dashiell Hammett |
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981a0ef
|
It was his wife we objected to. Her name was Leda, but he called her Tip. She was very small and her hair, eyes, and skin, though naturally of different shades, were all muddy. She seldom sat- she perched on things - and liked to cock her head a little to one side. Nora had a theory that once when Edge opened an antique grave, Tip ran out of it,...
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humor
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Dashiell Hammett |
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ca4023a
|
What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?
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comebacks
sam-spade
noir-style
witty
noir
noir-fiction
|
Dashiell Hammett |
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6911ac1
|
Your playmates sent him?" I asked, nodding at the dead man. "I only talked to him with this," he said, patting the automatic on the bed, "but I reckon they did." "How did it happen?" "It happened simple enough. I heard the door opening, and I switched on the light, and there he was, and I shot him, and there he is."
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Dashiell Hammett |
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16d7026
|
You're not going to go around poking at the fire and straightening up the room again, are you?
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Dashiell Hammett |
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6a8d985
|
He's the guy that the joke was wrote about: 'Is he a criminal lawyer?' 'Yes, very.
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red-harvest
|
Dashiell Hammett |
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024cee4
|
She tilted her head to the right. "You didn't even tell me you had taken the case." "I had done what? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, I hadn't and haven't. My getting shot ought to prove I was an innocent bystander." "Does it hurt much?" "It itches. I forgot to have the dressing changed this afternoon." "Wasn't Nora utterly terrified?" "So was I and so was the guy that shot me. There's Halsey. I haven't spoken to him yet."
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shot
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Dashiell Hammett |
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b1b7302
|
What do people think about my staying with Harrison with him chasing everything that's hot and hollow?
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humor
infidelity
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Dashiell Hammett |
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aad7166
|
Dorothy asked timidly: "Did his wife say anything? "She sent her love to you." Nora said: "Stop being nasty."
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humor
infidelity
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Dashiell Hammett |
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b482c33
|
You're good. You're very good. It's chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get into your voice when you say things like 'Be generous, Mr. Spade.
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Dashiell Hammett |
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b32d1e8
|
You know Quinn?" Macaulay asked me. "Ten minutes ago I was putting him to bed." Macaulay grinned. "I hope you keep his acquaintance like that - social" "Meaning what?" Macaulay's grin became rueful. "He used to be my broker, and his advice led me right up to the poorhouse steps." "That's sweet," I said. "he's my broker now and I'm following his advice." Macaulay and the girl laughed. I pretended I was laughing and returned to my table."
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money
funny
humor
broker
|
Dashiell Hammett |
|
fff8500
|
Spade] scowled at Gutman and burst out irritably: "Jesus God! is this the first thing you guys ever stole? You're a fine lot of lollipops! What are you going to do next-- get down and pray?"
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Dashiell Hammett |
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0d825ad
|
Studsy returned alone. "Maybe I'm wrong," he said as he sat down, "but I think somebody could do something with that cluck if they took hold of her right." Morelli said: "By the throat." Studsy grinned good-naturedly. "No. She's trying to get somewhere. She works hard at her singing lessons and -"
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humor
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Dashiell Hammett |
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53c0bec
|
That's Mama, divorces a lunatic and marries a gigolo.
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Dashiell Hammett |
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4812f4e
|
If a man says a thing often enough, he is very likely to acquire some sort of faith in it sooner or later.
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Dashiell Hammett |
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99a51cc
|
And when you're slapped you'll take it and like it." - Detective Sam Spade"
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Dashiell Hammett |