The Maltese Falcon Scene 7 Summary

  • At Spade's apartment, Iva, still pretending to mourn her dead husband, sees Spade get out of a cab with Brigid.
  • Spade looks out the window and sees the kid who has been trailing him.
  • The buzzer buzzes, and Spade lets Cairo in. Cairo saw the boy, too.
  • Brigid says she'll have the Falcon in a week. It's currently where Floyd hid it.
  • She's afraid to touch it…because of what happened to Floyd.
  • What happened to Floyd anyway? Brigid says it was "the fat man," three words that seem to frighten Cairo.
  • Brigid and Cairo argue and Cairo pulls his gun on her.
  • Spade disarms him: "When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it!"
  • Suddenly, the buzzer buzzes again.
  • It's the po-po.
  • Spade tries to keep them in the hall and talk to them, so they don't see his visitors.
  • The cops say there's talk about Spade and Archer's wife. Spade denies it.
  • They're about to leave when Cairo screams for help.
  • The cops push their way in, and Brigid and Cairo are fighting again. Cairo's face is bleeding, and he says Brigid pistol-whipped him.
  • Spade says O'Shaughnessy is working for him, and that Cairo is working for Thursby.
  • The cops are about to take them all downtown, when Spade says it was all a trick.
  • Brigid and Cairo were just pretending to struggle so that the cops would leave them alone. That doesn't make any sense, but okay.
  • Cairo and the cops leave Spade alone with Brigid.
  • Spade asks Brigid what the Falcon is, why is everyone going crazy over it?
  • "It's a black figure as you know, smooth and shiny, a bird, a hawk, about that high," she says, holding her hands about a foot apart.
  • She doesn't know why it's so important, although someone paid Brigid 500 pounds to get it from its previous owner.
  • But Joel Cairo made off with it, so Brigid and Thursby took it from Cairo, and then Thursby hid it.
  • Spade thinks she's lying when she says it's just a plain black statue.
  • Brigid admits there is some truth in her story, but "not very much."
  • Outside, the weird boy in a trench coat is still watching Spade's apartment window.