A few minutes after Spade returns to his office, Captain Jacobi of La Paloma bursts through the door, hands Spade a package, and then collapses and dies. Twelve hours later, Spade wakes and searches Cairo’s hotel room for more clues, discovering that the statue of the bird was on a ship called La Paloma that had arrived in San Francisco while he was unconscious. At this point, Spade realizes the drink that Gutman gave him is drugged and he falls to the floor unconscious.

Gutman says she betrayed him and is hiding the bird somewhere in San Francisco. Gutman tells Spade that he employed Brigid to steal it from a Russian general Kemidov in Constantinople.

At the meeting, Gutman reveals the bird’s long history and its priceless value. G, now identified as Casper Gutman, calls to set up a meeting. The next day, Spade arrives at Cairo’s hotel and has a verbal confrontation with a young man named Wilmer Cook who works for Mr. After the meeting, Spade asks Brigid about her relationship to Cairo and the falcon, but she sidetracks the conversation by seducing him. At the meeting, Cairo offers to pay Brigid for the bird, but she claims she doesn’t have it in her possession yet. Brigid, who appears to know Cairo, asks if Spade could arrange a meeting so she can talk with Cairo. Later, Spade and Brigid meet again, and Spade mentions his run in with Cairo and his acceptance of the offer. Although she provides no further details, Spade agrees to continue working for her.īack at his office, Spade meets Joel Cairo who offers him $5,000 if he can retrieve a statue of a falcon. After she leaves, Spade goes to meet Wonderly at her hotel, where he discovers her real name is Brigid O’Shaughnessy, she has no sister, and that Thursby was a dangerous man she met in Hong Kong. The cops reveal that Thursby has also been killed, thirty minutes after Spade left the site of Archer’s murder, and its clear they think it is possible that Spade killed Thursby in revenge.Īt his office the following day, Spade and Archer’s wife, Iva Archer, discuss the secret affair they’ve been having behind Archer’s back.

An hour after Spade returns to his apartment, Polhaus and Lieutenant Dundy, an arrogant and brash cop, show up at his door with questions about the murder. When he arrives at the crime scene, Spade talks with the police officer Tom Polhaus about the possibility that Thursby killed Archer. That evening, Spade awakes to a phone call telling him that his partner has been killed. Eager to get closer with Wonderly, Archer agrees to do the job while Spade, suspicious of the woman, mocks his partner’s rashness. She asks the detectives to follow a man named Floyd Thursby, who she claims has run off with her younger sister Corinne. In San Francisco during the late 1920s, the beautiful Miss Wonderly arrives at Samuel Spade and Miles Archer’s detective agency.

Detective novel the falcon