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The Maltese Falcon Scene 8 Summary

  • We're at the Hotel Belvedere.
  • Spade marches in, picks up a phone, and demands to speak to Joel Cairo.
  • He hangs up the phone when a man reading a newspaper catches his eye.
  • Spade sits down next to the man. It's the young man who had been following him.
  • Spade asks where Cairo is, and the young man tells him to "shove off."
  • So he shoves off, but not very far. He gets a man named Luke to come over and scare the kid off.
  • The kid says, "I won't forget you guys," but Spade doesn't care. He blows smoke in the guy's face.
  • Cairo returns to the hotel and Spade intercepts him.
  • But Cairo doesn't want to talk to him.
  • Cairo says the cops interrogated him, but he repeated the silly story Spade cooked up the night before.
  • Spade leaves him to get some sleep.