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":
Tribute of the Maltese Falcon the 27th as King of Castile, Granada etc., the 16th of Navarre, the 15th of Aragon, the Two Sicilies, Jerusalem and all our other realms". The grant says: The investiture had to be renewed in every case of a new succession, and completed according to the dispositions of common law. Other conditions included: The order and grand master paid the annual falcon until 1798 when the Order was expelled from the Maltese islands by the French Directory. Tribute of the Maltese Falcon The Grand Master of the Order of St John of Jerusalem had to pay an annual tribute to