The Maltese Falcon

Sam Spade y Miles Archer son contratados por una atractiva joven, Miss Wonderly, para seguir a un hombre, Floyd Thursby, quien se ha fugado con Corinne, la hermana menor de Wonderly.  The Maltese Falcon, una novela de Dashiell Hammett…

Más abajo unos párrafos en inglés y en vocabulario encontramos swivel-chair y blotting paper. También te ponemos un vínculo a un viejo programa de radio. ¡Imperdible!

 

Paragraphs

Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a projected 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 folds 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.

He said to Effie Perine: “Yes, sweetheart?”

She was a tall and thin sunburned girl whose light brown dress of thin woolen stuff clung to her with an effect of dampness. Her eyes were brown and playful in a shiny boyish face. She finished shutting the door behind her, leaned against it, and said: “There’s a girl wants to see you. Her name’s Wonderly.”

“A customer?”

“I guess so. You’ll want to see her anyway: she’s a sensation.”

 “Shoo her in, darling,” said Spade. “Shoo her in.”

Effie Perine opened the door again, following it back into the outer office. Standing with a hand on the knob while saving”: “Will you come in, Miss Wonderly?”

A voice said, “Thank you,” so softly that only the purest articulation made the words intelligible, and a young woman came through the doorway. She advanced slowly, with tentative steps, looking at Spade with cobalt-blue eyes that were both shy and inquisitive.

She was tall and flexible slender, without angularity anywhere. Her body was erected and high-breasted, her legs long, her hands and feet narrow. She wore two shades of blue that had been selected because of her eyes. The hair curling from under her blue hat was darkly red, her full lips more brightly red. White teeth glistened in the crescent her timid smile made.

Spade rose bowing and indicating with a thick-fingered hand the oaken armchair beside his desk. He was quite one eighty two metres tall. The abrupt rounded incline of his shoulders made his body seem almost conical–no broader than it was thick–and kept his freshly pressed grey coat from fitting very well.

Miss Wonderly murmured, “Thank you,” softly as before and sat down on the edge of the chair’s wooden seat.

Spade sank into his swivel-chair, made a quarter-turn to face her, smiled politely. He smiled without separating his lips. All the v’s in his face grew longer.

The tappity-tap-tap and the thin bell and subdued hum of Effie Perine’s typewriting came through the closed door. Somewhere in a neighboring office a power-driven machine vibrated dully. On Spade’s desk a limp cigarette smoldered in a brass tray filled with the re­mains of finished cigarettes. Used grey pieces of cigarette-ash scattered the yellow top of the desk and the green blotter and the papers that were there. A polished-curtained window, twenty or twenty-five centimetres open, let in from the court a current of air faintly scented with ammonia. The ashes on the desk twitched and crawled in the current.

Miss Wonderly watched the grey pieces move and crawl. Her eyes were anxious. She sat on the very edge of the chair. Her feet were flat on the floor, as if she were about to rise. Her hands in dark gloves clasped a flat dark handbag in her lap.

Spade rocked back in his chair and asked: “Now what can I do for you, Miss Wonderly?”

She caught her breath and looked at him. She swallowed and said hurriedly: “Could you–? I thought–I–that is–” Then she tortured her lower lip with glistening teeth and said nothing. Only her dark eyes spoke now, pleading.

Spade smiled and nodded as if he understood her, but pleasantly, as if nothing serious were involved. He said: “Suppose you tell me about it, from the beginning, and then we’ll know what needs doing. Better begin as far back as you can.”

“That was in New York.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know where she met him. I mean I don’t know where in New York. She’s five years younger than I–only seventeen–and we didn’t have the same friends. I don’t suppose we’ve ever been as close as sisters should be. Mama and Papa are in Europe. It would kill them. I’ve got to get her back before they come home.”

“Yes,” he said.

 “They’re coming home the first of the month.”

Spade’s eyes brightened. “Then we’ve two weeks,” he said.

“I didn’t know what she had done until her letter came. I was frantic.” Her lips trembled. Her hands mashed the dark handbag in her lap. “I was too afraid she had done something like this to go to the police, and the fear that something had happened to her kept urging me to go. There wasn’t anyone I could go to for advice. I didn’t know what to do. What could I do?”

“Nothing, of course,” Spade said, “but then her letter came?”

 “Yes, and I sent her a telegram asking her to come home. I sent it to General Delivery here. That was the only address she gave me. I waited a whole week, but no answer came, not another word from her. And Mama and Papa’s return was drawing nearer and nearer. So I came to San Francisco to get her. I wrote her I was coming. I shouldn’t have done that, should I?”… (Párrafos adaptados a un inglés más fácil de The Maltese Falcon, de Dashiell Hammett.)

Humphrey Bogart a la izquierda. La belleza al medio es Mary Astor

Vocabulario

swivel-chair: silla con un pie central que permite que el respaldo gire.

 

blotting paper, bibulous paper: papel secante.

Blotting paper holder from Germany MEK II-297

 

Recursos

Departamento donde viviera Dashiell Hammett:

The apartment of Dashiell Hammett and Sam Spade

Antigua producción de radio de El Halcón Maltés:

The Maltese Falcon, old time radio production, 1946

 

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