[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Here's a paragraph from The Big Sleep - selected after no more of 30 seconds perusal.

The boy spun towards me and his right hand darted up to go inside the jerkin. Hes eyes were a wet shine in the glow of the round electroliers. Moist dark eyes shaped like almonds, and a pallid handsome face with wavy black hair growing low on the forehead in two points. A very handsome boy indeed, the boy from Geiger's store.

and then later:

He said: "Go ----- yourself." His hand moved inside the jerkin. I pressed harder on his stomach. He let out a long soft sigh, took his hand away from the jerkin and let it fall limp at his side. His wide shoulders sagged. "What you want?" he whispered.

Mind you I found this text after a very short time of flipping through The Big Sleep. I would submit that there are overtones, or undertones, or allusions aplenty in those two paragraphs and I personally could never write those paragraphs for two reasons - I don't have Chandler's talent, obviously, but also I don't swing that way.

[Rockingham]

Check out Bogart's fruity manner in this clip from The Big Sleep. That was not in the novel, so does its inclusion in the movie suggest that Bogart was gay because he played it that way? Of course not, and similar logic applies as to Chandler.