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) meeting, Gutman tells Spade the history of the falcon. It was made of gold and jewels by the 16th-century Knights of Malta as a gift to the King of Spain but was captured by pirates. After passing from owner to owner, at some time it was coated with black enamel to conceal its value. Gutman traced the falcon to General Kemidov, a Russian exile in Constantinople, and hired O'Shaughnessy to get it; she brought in Cairo to help. Then O'Shaughnessy and Thursby fled with it to Hong Kong and from there to San Francisco. During this conversation, Gutman drugs Spade,