Maltese Falcon Society Don Herron and private investigator Jayson Wechter. The society's first meeting was held at John's Grill, a restaurant where Dashiell Hammett ate and which he featured in "The Maltese Falcon". The speakers at that first meeting were David Fechheimer, a Hammett researcher and private investigator, and E. Hoffmann Price, a pulp fiction author. The society opened chapters in New York and Japan. By 1982, the society had 110 members in San Francisco, 55 in Japan, and 50 in New York. As its official toast, the society adopted the one used by Sam Spade in Chapter 2 of "The Maltese Falcon":
The Maltese Falcon (novel) this, but pleads that she is in love with Spade. Maybe he does care for her, Spade admits, but "I won't play the sap for you" – for personal as well as professional reasons. If she can get off with a long prison term, he'll wait for her; but if she hangs, so be it. When the police arrive, he turns her in and the police tell him Wilmer has just shot Gutman dead. Although Hammett himself worked for a time as a private detective for the Pinkerton Detective Agency in San Francisco (and used his given name, Samuel, for