SAM SPADE: DASHIELL HAMMETT’S NEGLECTED SHORT STORIES

In the past I’ve covered my fondness for Dashiell Hammett’s mysteries. Given my whole theme here at Balladeer’s Blog, this time I’ll take a look at Hammett’s often overlooked Sam Spade short stories that followed a few years after the novel The Maltese Falcon.

Three of these tales are complete and one other was left tantalizingly unfinished, I’m afraid. 

A MAN CALLED SPADE – Published in the July 1932 issue of The American Magazine.

The Client: Financier Max Bliss, who calls Sam Spade in a panic and wants him to come to his home immediately because his life has been threatened.

The Mystery: When Spade arrives at Max’s 10th floor apartment home on Nob Hill, Bliss has already been strangled to death. Detective Sergeant Tom Polhaus and Lieutenant Dundy from The Maltese Falcon are on the scene but are more cordial than they were in Spade’s most famous case.

        Max lies on the floor, partially undressed. A five-pointed star has been drawn on his bare chest in black ink and with a Greek letter tau in the center. Spade, hoping Max’s daughter will pay him the fee that her father now cannot, tries selling her on the notion that he’s now working for her late father’s estate, and her.

        As the investigation rolls along, Sam seeks out one of his academic sources, Harry Darrell, who recognizes the star with the tau in the center as the mark of assorted Rosicrucian Lodges. The two nearest lodges are in Point Loma/ San Diego and San Jose. The odd design also shows up on a threatening letter found among the murder victim’s papers.

The Suspects:

Miriam Bliss, the aforementioned daughter. Young and pretty, she is dating a man her late father did not like. Upon finding her father’s body she immediately called homicide rather than an ambulance, which has Sam and the two police detectives suspicious. Also, she stands to inherit Max’s money.

Theodore Bliss, Max’s brother and a former co-conspirator with him in financial hanky panky that got the feds involved. Theodore spent 14 years in San Quentin, willingly taking the whole rap himself since he was caught red-handed. He’s recently released from prison and says he and Max are square because Max set aside $25,000.00 ($508,214.00 in 2024) for him over the years AND a thousand shares of stock in National Steel Corporation. 

Elise Barrow Bliss, Max’s secretary and Theodore’s wife as of earlier that day. They tied the knot after a whirlwind courtship in the weeks since Theodore’s release. Elise knows a lot about Max’s ongoing financial deals, both legit and illegit. 

Boris Smekalov, a married man having an affair with Miriam Bliss, and the man her father disapproved of. Spade learns he was with Miriam when she found her father’s body but she let him leave the scene before calling the cops AND withheld the information that he was on hand that day. With Miriam’s inheritance, he will be able to afford to divorce his wife and be with her.

Daniel Talbot, a mysterious man from San Diego who visited the late Max Bliss at home and at his office over the past day and night, yet neither Miriam nor Elise had ever met him or heard of him before. In fact, at the Max Bliss office, Elise says that Talbot and her boss were at first hostile, but Max had her make out a check for him to sign paying Talbot $7,500.00   

Mrs. Hooper, Max Bliss’s housekeeper, stocky as a man and with laborer’s hands from her younger years. She has some unorthodox religious views and feels that Max’s murder was the judgment of God upon him for his shady dealings, even with his family members.     

*** I will refrain from disclosing any spoilers for new readers to these short stories. A Man Called Spade is a pleasant enough little murder mystery which is fun if unspectacular. Throughout the story, we get some interplay between Sam and his secretary Effie Perine, which should warm the hearts of my fellow Maltese Falcon fans.

        Spade and Effie go on a dinner and movie date at the story’s end. No mention is made of Miles Archer’s widow Iva.   

TOO MANY HAVE LIVED – Published in the October 1932 issue of The American Magazine. 

The Client: Gene Colyer, a shady mover and shaker with the unions in California. He hires Spade to find the missing poet Eli Haven, husband of the woman Colyer has the hots for. He makes it clear to Sam that he’s not hiring him to reunite the couple, just to hopefully find that Haven is once again up to his ears in illegal side scams. He hopes such news will convince Haven’s wife to divorce him. 

The Mystery: After Spade spends some time trying to track down Eli Haven through his associates, criminal and literary, the man turns up dead with a few bullets in him. Multiple “friends” of the late Eli had plenty of motive and opportunity to have found him before Sam did and kill him.

       Plus there’s an enigmatic inscription to someone at the front of Haven’s most recent volume of poetry. The title of this story comes from one of Eli’s poems – “Too many have lived/ As we live/ For our lives to be proof of our living.”    

The Suspects (in addition to Gene Colyer himself, of course): 

Julia Haven, Eli’s tough young bride. She plays very coy, making it difficult for Sam Spade to ascertain the truth about her and Eli’s pasts or to tell how much she really knows about the “poet’s” side-scams. She is aware that the much wealthier Gene Colyer wants her and is not averse to it if she is left without Eli in her life. 

Tom Minera and Conny, two criminal associates of Haven’s. They may or may not have been involved with Eli in whatever he was up to when he disappeared.

Louis James, one of Gene Colyer’s union strong-arm men whose loyalties to Colyer become suspect when Spade discovers him meeting with and possibly conspiring with Minera and Conny.

Roger Ferris, well to do owner of a chain of theaters throughout California. He knew Eli Haven when he worked for him back when he owned a carnival instead of theaters. Spade learns Roger has also had union dealings with Gene Colyer in the past. 

*** Again, I will withhold spoilers. I enjoyed this short story at least as much as I did the first one, maybe more. We get Sam Spade at his ballsy best, warily navigating his way among union thugs and outright trigger-happy criminals.

        Effie gets a few brief appearances, like when Gene Colyer and Julia Haven both happen to show up at the same time at Sam’s office after hearing the news about Eli’s bullet-riddled body being found.

        In keeping with The Maltese Falcon‘s depiction of Sam Spade cultivating a reputation for ruthlessness (valid or not), when Colyer hints that he may want Spade to kill Eli Haven, our detective simply says Colyer couldn’t afford his services as a hit man. No comment on the ethics involved or even if he would kill for pay or not, just a noncommittal, vaguely insulting remark. 100% Sam Spade.

THEY CAN ONLY HANG YOU ONCE – Published in the November 1932 issue of Colliers.

The Client: Ira Binnett, a formerly wealthy man fallen on less than prosperous times. He hires Spade to use false pretenses to get a one-on-one meeting with his ailing, elderly uncle, Timothy Binnet. Timothy made a fortune during his years away in Australia and recenty returned to America to die among his only remaining family members – Ira and Ira’s cousin, Wally Binnet, Timothy’s other nephew.

        Both nephews were glad to ingratiate themselves with the old man, since he made it clear they would be his heirs when he finally did pass away. In recent months both Ira and Wally separately began to try convincing old Timothy to cut out the other nephew from his will by blackening each other’s reputations with the elderly man.

        Timothy used to live with Ira and his family, but recently Wally convinced the old man to move in with him and his, and Ira wants Spade to get Timothy alone to determine if Wally is holding him against his will. 

The Mystery: Shrewdly, Sam waits a few days until a ship from Australia has put in at San Francisco to provide a sense of legitimacy to the false identity he will use. (For those of us who enjoyed all the Shipping News bits in the novel The Maltese Falcon here’s more of the same!)

        He then goes to Wally Binnett’s home, introducing himself as Ronald Ames, a business associate of Timothy’s who has just arrived by ship in San Francisco and has confidential news for the old man regarding his Australian business interests.

        After enduring much suspicious sniffing from Wally and his sister-in-law Joyce Court, our detective seems about to get his private meeting with old Timothy, when a woman screams and a shot rings out. Wally’s wife Molly has been shot to death, and a shadowy man attempting to choke the life out of Timothy flees at Spade’s approach. With Dundy and Polhaus showing up to investigate, Sam must drop his false identity and joins the investigation.

The Suspects:

Wally Binnett, whose murdered wife Molly had received most of his assets recently as he tried to rook his creditors by transferring everything to her name. She surprised him by adamantly refusing to let him call the shots any longer, making him practically beg for every expenditure he wanted to make since she held the reins (assets) now.

Joyce Court, Molly’s slinky sister who has had a thing going with Wally behind her sister’s back.

Ira Binnett, Spade’s client, who begins displaying some very odd and furtive behavior as soon as he learns that Molly was killed and someone tried offing old Timothy at the same time.

Jarboe, Wally Binnett’s butler who has been privy to the family’s secrets for a long time and whom Spade catches maintaining a covert surveillance of the bedridden Timothy, seemingly for his own ends. 

*** Another murder victim turns up in the Binnet household overnight, accelerating Spade’s investigation with Polhaus and Dundy nearby, again cooperating with Sam. Needless to say, Spade gets to the bottom of all of the weird goings-on. We get a brief appearance by Effie, but that’s it, unfortunately. 

A KNIFE WILL CUT FOR ANYBODY – Unfinished Sam Spade short story which Hammett started during 1932 but never completed.

The Client: The Argentine Consul’s office in San Francisco

The Mystery: Spade is hired by the above-mentioned client to discretely find Teresa Moncada, a 21-year-old Argentine heiress who has just come into her money recently. She resented her older uncle/ guardian having her under his thumb until she turned 21, so she immediately left the country upon coming of age and has been partying and possibly consorting with unsavory types.

        The uncle pulls strings to get the consul’s office to step in to find the heiress and diplomatically try to talk sense into Teresa before she gets conned out of her fortune – or worse. Sam was hired and, in his usual efficient way, has managed to locate where Teresa and her hangers-on were hiding in San Francisco.

        When he surreptitiously enters the place, Spade finds the plush villa emptied of all furniture and occupants with nothing left behind but the bloody, disfigured corpse of a young woman assumed to be Teresa. The murder weapon, a knife with a six-inch blade, lies beside the body.

        Our man Sam investigates and realizes that the corpse is really that of Camilla Cerro, a distant cousin of Teresa’s who was part of her partying entourage. Spade catches Sanchez Cornejo, an employee at the Argentine Consulate, trying to pass off the body as Teresa to the cops.

*** When Cornejo uses the excuse that he made an honest mistake because he hasn’t seen either Teresa or Camilla in a year and a half, Sam Spade drops a bombshell which will forever go unresolved. He asks Sanchez Cornejo “How do you suppose I found this place?” (meaning the now stripped-down party villa) Cornejo answers that he does not know, and our detective replies “By shadowing you.”

        Hammett later tried expanding this fragment of a mystery from a short story to a novella titled The Darkened Face, but never completed that work, either.

Still, though, for a Dashiell Hammett geek like me it’s terrific to read these additional, canonical Sam Spade mysteries written by Hammett himself.   

FOR MY REVIEW OF DASHIELL HAMMETT’S LAST NOVEL THE THIN MAN CLICK HERE. 

FOR MY REVIEW OF THE MOVIE HAMMETT, ABOUT DASHIELL SOLVING A FICTIONAL MYSTERY, CLICK HERE.