1150 KC · Mystery · ON THE AIR

The Maltese Falcon

by Dashiell Hammett · 1930

The private detective who made the fog famous. Spade and Archer take a tail job; by morning there are two bodies and one very expensive bird. Our flagship production.

Full-story radio adaptation · About 8–17 minutes per episode

The Maltese Falcon Select a chapter below

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THE PROGRAMME

01 A Girl Named Wonderly A frightened young woman calling herself Miss Wonderly hires San Francisco detectives Sam Spade and Miles Archer to find her seventeen-year-old sister, Corinne, who she says ran away with the dangerous Floyd Thursby. Her story is polished in some places and ragged in others, but two hundred dollars is real enough. Archer takes the night watch at the St. Mark Hotel while Spade remains amused, suspicious, and unwilling to say how much he believes. 7′57″
02 Death in the Fog A telephone bell in darkness: Miles Archer is dead in a Burritt Street alley, shot through the heart with a Webley. Spade reconstructs the killing without looking at the body, breaks the news by proxy, and at four-thirty in the morning pours Bacardi for two policemen who have come to tell him Floyd Thursby is dead too — and that Spade had time to do it. 10′25″
03 Three Women The morning after two killings, three women pass through Sam Spade's day: Iva Archer, in mourning that fits like an impromptu costume, asking if he killed her husband; Effie Perine, whose sharp eyes found Iva's bed unslept-in at three in the morning; and the client formerly known as Miss Wonderly, now Miss Leblanc of the Coronet, apartment one thousand and one — a name Spade burns to ash on the office floor. 7′52″
04 The Black Bird At the Coronet, the client sheds her last alias: her story was all a story, her real name is Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and the hole she is in is as bad as could be, though she will not say why. Spade strips her of four hundred dollars and a roll of bills from the neck of her dress, and comes back to his office to find a new customer waiting: Mr. Joel Cairo, a perfumed little Levantine who offers five thousand dollars for the black figure of a bird, and twice in one evening points the same small pistol at Spade for the privilege of searching his office. 15′20″
05 The Undersized Shadow An undersized youth in a neat grey cap follows Sam Spade through the night-lit city, from his office door to the Geary Theatre, where Joel Cairo gives his word of honor that the boy is none of his. At the Coronet, Brigid O'Shaughnessy fences with Spade over the five-thousand-dollar offer until he demands proof that she knows what she is doing, and she asks to talk to Cairo. In Spade's rooms the three of them trade terms for the falcon, until a letter G traced in the air and a taunt about Constantinople end in slaps and a fallen pistol — and with Lieutenant Dundy and Tom Polhaus at the door Spade would not open, Cairo screams for the police, and Spade, smiling without joy, stands out of the way to let the law walk in. 15′54″
06 Horse Feathers The police night ends in vaudeville: with Dundy and Tom inside the apartment at last and Cairo bleeding and bleating, Spade spins two stories in ten minutes — Miss O'Shaughnessy the operative in his employ, then the whole uproar a practical joke on the bulls — and dares Dundy to take the lot of them in. Dundy's fist finds Spade's chin for it, Cairo scuttles out under police escort leaving his pistol on the table, and the law goes home with nothing but the story. Alone with Brigid at three in the morning, Spade walks Post Street, finds it empty of any watcher, and tells her the boy is still out there; over coffee and brandy in the breakfast nook she gives up half a story — a black bird a foot high, a Russian named Kemidov, five hundred pounds promised and a double-cross near Constantinople — and when Spade calls her a liar she owns it: she has always been a liar, and there is not very much truth in the yarn. The night ends with her mouth against his and the truth still untold. 14′43″
07 The Fat Man Before the sun is properly up, Sam Spade borrows the flat brass key from Brigid O'Shaughnessy's coat, searches her Coronet apartment wall to wall, finds nothing but fine jewelry in a locked drawer, scars the kitchen-window lock to leave a burglar's calling card, and is home cooking eggs before she wakes. At the Belvedere he needles the undersized watcher off his divan — some of you will talk to me, and you can tell G. I said so — and patches Joel Cairo back into the alliance; at the office Brigid reports her flat ransacked, and Spade, all innocence, lodges her safely with Effie Perine. Iva Archer confesses she sent the police to his door and is packed off to the lawyer Sid Wise. Then the telephone speaks the name Gutman, and in suite twelve C at the Alexandria the fat man fences over whiskey and siphon: he alone in the whole wide sweet world knows what the black bird is, Spade claims to know where it is, and when the courtesies stall, Spade throws a rage and a whiskey glass and stalks out, giving Gutman till five-thirty — then the curtain. 15′31″
08 The Emperor's Gift Riding down from the fat man's suite, Sam Spade catches his own hand trembling — and grins at it. His lawyer Sid Wise unwinds Iva Archer's night of merry-go-round riding: she was out following Miles the night he was killed, or so she tells lawyers. Then the round turns again — Brigid O'Shaughnessy never reached Effie's house. The taxi man remembers a bought newspaper, a Call, and the Ferry Building; her apartment holds last night's blue gown and an emptied jewelry box. At Spade's own doorway the boy gunsel stands in his path to summon him back to the Alexandria; Spade strips two automatics off him in the corridor and hands them to a beaming Casper Gutman, who at last tells the whole seventeen-year history of the golden falcon of the Knights of Rhodes — the Emperor's tribute bird, jeweled head to foot, lost at sea, painted black, kicked around Paris, found by the murdered Greek Charilaos, traced to a Russian general in Constantinople and stolen once more. Two proposals are on the table, fifty thousand dollars or a quarter share of half a million and up, when the whiskey lands: Spade's eyes go muddy, his tongue thickens, and as the fat man calls Wilmer's name, the detective goes down and out on the suite floor. 16′00″
09 La Paloma Six o'clock Saturday morning finds Effie Perine asleep at her desk and Sam Spade coming in quiet as a thief, a knocked-out temple under his hat and twelve hours missing. He dictates the fat man's four-century falcon history for Effie's professor cousin to appraise — 'could be,' says Berkeley — while the rounds turn up nothing: Brigid gone, Gutman's suite empty, Cairo's bed unslept-in. But in Cairo's wastebasket at the Belvedere waits yesterday's Call with two inches torn from the shipping news, and a bought-fresh copy fills the gap: La Paloma, in from Hongkong at five past eight — the very boat Effie watched burning in the bay from her ferry. Over pickled pigs' feet Tom Polhaus trades peace terms and a police record on Floyd Thursby, Saint Louis gunman and bodyguard to the vanished Chicago gambler Dixie Monahan; and at half past two District Attorney Bryan tries the Monahan theory on for size, an assistant and a stenographer taking it all down. Everybody, Spade tells him mildly, has something to conceal — and his one chance of clearing himself is bringing in the murderers all tied up, far away from police and crackpots alike. He stalks out to keep what is left of Saturday... and Saturday is keeping something for him. 16′02″
10 The Third Murder Saturday runs out with Effie Perine's fury ringing in Sam Spade's ears — 'Oh, Sam, go!' — and the burned La Paloma gives up its story: Brigid O'Shaughnessy went straight from the Ferry Building to Captain Jacobi's cabin, Gutman and Cairo and the boy came calling after supper, a gun went off at eleven, and all five walked away at midnight into thin air. Cairo checks out of the Belvedere bag and baggage while Spade is fifteen minutes late. Then the office door opens for a man nearly seven feet tall who says two words, falls as a tree falls, and dies on the office floor with six bullets in his chest — leaving behind a brown-paper bundle that opens down to a foot-high bird, black as coal: the falcon in Spade's hands at last. Brigid's broken telephone call — the Alexandria, danger, a line gone dead — sends Spade out with the bird under his arm; he checks it at the Pickwick Stage terminal, mails the claim-check to a post-office box in the name of M. F. Holland, and finds suite twelve C holding only Rhea Gutman, drugged and fighting sleep with a bouquet-pin, whispering Burlingame... twenty-six Ancho... hurry. The dark house on Ancho Avenue stands empty under a For Sale sign — a plant — and back at the Alexandria the desk swears nobody was up in twelve C at all. At Effie's mother's house the ledger is read: the police satisfied, the bundle unmentioned, the boy Wilmer watching from the corridor, the dead man Captain Jacobi. And a few minutes before midnight, heels click on Post Street: Brigid, haggard and panting, runs into Spade's arms — and when they are a step from his living-room door, the light snaps on. Gutman smiling, Wilmer with two black pistols, Cairo with a third. 'Well, sir, we're all here.' 16′14″
11 The Russian's Hand All night the guns stay polite in Sam Spade's living-room. The boy is warned off frisking him, a white envelope sails into his lap — ten thousand-dollar bills, 'we were talking about more money than this' — and Spade names the rest of his price: a fall-guy for the police. He offers them the punk; Gutman laughs until he cries, pleads that Wilmer is as dear to him as a son, and hears Spade offer to have the boy killed resisting arrest. When Cairo is offered up next and the whispering starts, the boy breaks — a pistol jerked up, a wrestle, two short punches — and the fat man sighs over the sleeping gunsel: you can have him. Cairo comes in; the killings of Thursby and Jacobi are told out plainly, and the telephone ruse with them; a palmed thousand-dollar bill turns the envelope into the fat man's little joke and sends Brigid to a bathroom search that shames them both. At daylight Effie Perine fetches the bundle from the parcel-room, and Gutman's fat fingers tear down through cord and paper to the black bird at last — until his knife-point peels the enamel and finds soft grey lead. The falcon is a fake, the Russian's hand. Cairo screams, the fat man laughs his way upright and proposes Constantinople, and while they rage the boy slips out and away. One engraved pistol reclaims the envelope — less one bill for time and expenses — and with an adieu and the leaden bird left as a memento, Gutman and Cairo go down the stairs, leaving Sam Spade and Brigid O'Shaughnessy alone with each other at last. 16′56″
12 If They Hang You Alone at last with Brigid O'Shaughnessy, Sam Spade stands five minutes staring at the door the fat man closed — then goes to the telephone and gives Sergeant Polhaus the whole gallery: Wilmer Cook for Thursby and Jacobi, Gutman at the Alexandria, Cairo in with them, the daughter too. With minutes before the police arrive he wrings the story out of her — Constantinople, the double-cross, Thursby pointed out to Miles Archer on a dark street — and then lays the last card down: Thursby never shot Miles. Miles went up that blind alley with his client, grinning, and she put a hole through him with Thursby's own gun. She clings, confesses, swears love; Spade counts his reasons — a man's partner, the detective business, the dog and the rabbit, the gallows, trust, the hole she might someday put in him — eight on one side, and on the other only maybe-you-love-me, maybe-I-love-you. He won't play the sap for her. She is in his arms when the bell rings: Tom and Dundy have the others, Gutman already shot dead by his own boy, and Spade hands over the exhibits — the guns, the leaden bird, the thousand-dollar bill he was supposed to be bribed with — and the woman who killed Miles. Monday morning Effie knows what the papers know, and cannot bear his touch; the knob rattles in the outer office, and it is Iva. Spade shivers, and says: send her in. 16′02″