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Dash Hammett, of course. He wrote The Maltese Falcon. He wrote some of the greatest detective stories ever written in this country. Dash was quite a boy at putting away the liquor, and Hal was no slouch either. And as for Mr. Faulkner, well, I couldn't stand the pace. I went home, saying to Bill, “Remember, there'll be a fellow from the Times at 10 o'clock in the morning at the office.” That was the last we saw of Bill Faulkner for about four days. He vanished. He was off on a wild binge. The way he was found was that he almost burned himself to death. He was at the Algonquin Hotel, and he went into the bathroom there, stark naked, and slipped down against the radiator and was almost scalded to death. They called me up and we rushed him to the hospital. He spent his whole vacation in the hospital.

The maddening thing about Bill Faulkner was that he'd go off on one of these benders, and when he came out of it, he'd come walking into the office clear-eyed, ready for action, as though he hadn't had a drink in six months. That's the way he came out of it. When he came in just the day before he went home, I said, “Bill, aren't you ashamed of yourself? You come up here for your first vacation in five years and you spend the whole time in the hospital.”

Very quietly--he was always very quiet--Bill said, “Bennett, it was my vacation.”

Did he ever write when he was drunk, do you think?