At the reception of a private detective, Sam Spade, a young and beautiful woman appears. She introduces herself as Miss Wonderley and reports that she arrived in San Francisco after her sister who had run away with her lover. She wants to return her home, and tonight she will meet with a young man who promises then to take her to the runaway. Appearing in the office, Spade's companion Miles Archer expresses his willingness to accompany Miss Wunderley to avoid a trick from a certain Floyd Terzby.
Spade soon receives dark news: Archer is killed. A little later, Terzby is also found dead. Police suspect Spade of billing. The same, protecting, as befits a private detective, the interests of the client, refuses to disclose details of the case. However, it soon turns out that Miss Wonderley misled Spade into a sister story. Her real name is Bridget O’Shaughnessy, and the clouds are actually gathering over her head. She asks for protection, although she refuses to explain what exactly happened.
To Spade is someone Joel Keyro. He is trying to return the thing that was missing from him, which, according to his assumptions, may be in Spade's. After making sure that his suspicions are unfounded, Keiro offers Spade to find this valuable item for a reward of five thousand dollars. When Spade talks about this visit, Bridget O’Shaughnessy is embarrassed and begs not to leave her to the mercy of fate. Spade arranges for her and Keiro something like a confrontation, and the girl agrees to return the statuette with the image of the falcon that interests Keiro for a certain amount.
Policemen come and take Keiro "to clarify the circumstances", and the girl says that the figurine was obtained in Constantinople from the Russian general Kemidov. Suspecting that Keiro was unlikely to pay for this work, she and Terzby hurriedly left Constantinople. However, she did not trust Terzby either, believing that he was likely to try to fool her. Between her and Spade, something more than business collaboration arises. They find themselves in bed. But in the morning, while Bridget is still sleeping, Spade visits her apartment and conducts a search there, but does not find the falcon.
Spade notices that a certain young man is watching him. His name is Wilmer, and he is the right hand of a man named Caspar Gutman, who also longs for contacts with Spade. It is Gutman who tells Spade what a figurine is, around which passions boil. At one time, it was made by the Knights of the Order of St. John as a gift to Emperor Charles V, who transferred the island of Malta to them. But the galley, on which, among other valuable goods, was a figurine, did not reach the port of destination. The ship was captured by Algerian pirates, and then the golden falcon begins to wander through the wide world, passing from hand to hand. One of the owners, as a precaution, covers the falcon with black paint. Gutman goes on the trail of the falcon when he gets to the Greek entrepreneur. It would seem a stone's throw to the cherished goal, but the Greek perishes under mysterious circumstances, and the figurine disappears from his house. Having spent seventeen long years searching, Gutman finally finds a falcon in Constantinople, but his current owner, a retired Russian general, does not want to part with a trinket, which he seems to have no true value. Then you have to go to the theft, nevertheless, the falcon does not fall into the hands of Gutman. Gutman does not doubt that only Miss O’Shaughnessy knows the whereabouts of the falcon, and since her traces were lost in San Francisco, he offers Spade a lot of money for helping to find the falcon. But a tempting offer turns out to be a bluff: a drug is mixed in Spade's whiskey, he is unconscious for several hours and, waking up, realizes that he was simply taken out of the game in order to be able to find Bridget without interference.
Bridget disappears somewhere, and Spade has to work hard before he realizes that she most likely went to meet the Paloma steamer, which arrived from Hong Kong. When a fire breaks out on board the Paloma, Spade realizes that this is only the first link in a chain of new dramatic events. Meanwhile, Spade is told in the police that Archer was shot dead with Terzby’s weapons, who had had trouble with US law enforcement before. As for the one who killed Terzby, there is still no clarity and Spade's suspicions have not yet been removed.
Spade manages to establish that Bridget O’Shaughnessy saw Jacobi, the captain of Paloma, but then Gutman joined them with the company. While Spade and his secretary are pondering what might happen to Bridget, a tall, thin man with a bundle in his hands appears on the threshold of the office. Unable to explain anything, he falls dead - death came as a result of multiple bullet wounds. In the package is the same Maltese falcon, because of which the whole commotion happened ..
The phone rings. Bridget O’Shaughnessy is in the Alexandria Hotel and asks to come - she is allegedly in danger of a terrible danger. Having handed the falcon to the locker, Spade goes to rescue the girl, but the alarm turns out to be false. Spade returns to his home, where Gutman, Keiro, Wilmer and Bridget are already waiting for him.
Trading begins. Spade is ready to take ten thousand dollars in exchange for a bird, but demands that Wilmer be handed over to the police as the killer of Terzby and Jacobi. After long negotiations, Gutman agrees. Soon, Spade's secretary brings a package with a falcon. With tears of tenderness in his eyes, Gutman unfolds the paper, begins to scrape off black paint with a knife, but, to everyone’s shock, under the black protective layer is not gold, but lead. The jewel turns out to be fake. Gutman, however, did not indulge briefly. He expresses his readiness to continue the search to a victorious end. Spade returns most of the amount he received, Gutman, Keiro and Wilmer are removed, but after they leave, Spade contacts the police and surrenders the whole trinity. However, the police only find Keiro and Wilmer alive. The boy did not forgive his boss for treason and shot him with a pistol.
Now Spade makes Bridget O’Shaughnessy tell how it really was. Her story is a bizarre combination of truth and lies, but Sam Spade is hard to wrap around a finger. Thanks to his leading questions, amendments and comments, the truth finally comes to light, which in no way can be called bright.
Miles Archer was shot by Bridget O’Shaughnessy, not Floyd Terzby. Moreover, this was done by cold calculation. Fearing her accomplice, she decided to withdraw him from the game in any way. Having killed Archer with his weapons and knowing about what Terzby had a difficult relationship with the American police, she almost completely took him out of the pursuit of the falcon, which they obtained by joint efforts in Constantinople, and then were forced to quickly leave Gutman and company. It was then that she came up with to send the figurine in a roundabout way through Hong Kong to the "Paloma". But too quick to appear in San Francisco Gutman again forced her to contact the detective agency Sam Spade. An insidious schemer, mercilessly using people to achieve her personal goals, and then discarding them as unnecessary, she now hopes to get out of the water, hoping to play on the feelings that Spade has for her. But that truly cool detective and does not allow emotions to prevail. He understands that having saved Bridget from danger now, he will remain her hostage for life. The love of this woman is just as false as the Maltese falcon. And the police in the final takes custody of the fateful Bridget.
