The Adventures of Sam Spade — 1946

Another pre-series bonus -- Academy Award Theater's half-hour of The Maltese Falcon, with Humphrey Bogart reprising his screen Spade as the deadly statuette draws its circle of liars and killers.

The series premiere: hired to recover a stolen gem called the Guiana Sovereign from a murdered man's partner, Spade finds the 'victim' alive in hiding and a tangle of betrayal and blackmail behind it -- a debut played in the key of The Maltese Falcon.

From Hammett's 'The Farewell Murder': hired to guard a wealthy man threatened by a poison-pen letter, Spade unmasks the daughter-in-law who engineered two deaths to seize the inheritance.

A doom-haunted poet asks Spade to hold a sealed envelope and open it only when the newspapers report his death.

A blackmailed psychiatrist is thrown to his death from an apartment window, and when the blackmailer turns up strangled Spade must work out which of the doctor's secrets was worth two killings.

From Hammett's 'Death and Company': a kidnapping ransom and a separately hired search for a wanted husband prove to be one scheme meant to pin a killing on the wrong man -- and the Blue Bottle Bar makes its first appearance.

From Hammett's 'Two Sharp Knives': an old friend's death in Spade's office sends him back to his days as a small-town detective and a partner who framed and murdered a man to inherit a fortune.

From Hammett's 'Zig Zags of Treachery': a doctor's stolen envelope and sudden death lead Spade to a fifteen-year fraud -- a medical license sold to a drifter, kept quiet by blackmail and murder.

A Suspense crossover bundled into the set (not a series episode): in 'The House in Cypress Canyon,' Howard Duff plays a detective named 'Sam' who hears a young couple's recorded account of the werewolf haunting their new home -- one of Suspense's most celebrated chillers, and a William Spier in-joke.