- At the courthouse, the district attorney asks Spade who killed Thursby. Haven't we been through this a few times already?
- Spade won't tell him what he knows. This is becoming a running theme.
- Spade says the only way to clear his name is to stay away from the law and bring the bad guys in himself.
- When he leaves, the young kid stops him and says Gutman wants to see him.
- On the way to the room, Spade grabs the kid and removes the guns from his pockets.
- They continue to Gutman's room, and Spade hands him the guns. "You shouldn't let him go around with these on him, he might get himself hurt."
- Gutman decides to tell Spade about the black bird.
- He tells us the story we already knew from the beginning of the movie.
- Templars in Malta sent a jewel-encrusted bird to King Charles of Spain, but it didn't make it to Spain. It disappeared.
- It turned up a few centuries later in Italy, painted with black enamel.
- In 1923 a Greek dealer found it. That is when Gutman found out about it.
- But he was too late. The Greek dealer was murdered and the bird stolen.
- Recently, Gutman traced the bird to the home of a Russian general.
- He wouldn't sell it, so he sent some "agents" to get it, but the agents didn't bring the bird to Gutman.
- Gutman offers Spade $50,000 for the retrieval of the Falcon, or ¼ of what he receives for selling the Falcon, which he believes to be worth $1 million. (That would be over $16 million in 2016 cash.)
- "That's a lot of dough," says Spade, taking a drink offered to him by Gutman.
- The room gets blurry. Spade gets up and staggers a few steps into a table.
- Gutman calls the young man, whose name is Wilmer, and Wilmer knocks Spade over and kicks him in the head.
- While Spade is unconscious on the floor, Joel Cairo comes out of another room and leaves with Wilmer and Gutman.
- When Spade wakes up, the room is dark.
- He washes his face in the sink, then places a phone call to Effie.
- He wants to talk to Brigid, but she isn't there.
- Before leaving, he searches the hotel room and finds a notice in the newspaper that a ship is arriving from Hong Kong that day. Someone circled it in pen.