My Maltese Falcon

This is going to be the most astounding thing you’ve ever heard and I say that knowing the caliber of person that you are, one who’s heard some incredible things in their time and always ready to hear another.  It was told to me as it had been handed down verbatim since the beginning of the story with each of those involved adding his installment as time passed and as the prize moved from hand to hand.

The Knights of Rhodes were expelled from there in 1523, they settled in Crete and stayed there for seven years when they persuaded the Emperor,  Charles V of Spain, to give them Malta, Goso, and Tripoli.  He gave it to them to use but they couldn’t sell it or give it away; they had to use it or it would revert to Spain, his only condition being that they give him each year the tribute of one falcon. 

You may not understand the extreme power and immeasurable wealth of the Order at that time.  No one has any idea of the wealth they enjoyed; they took spoils of gems, precious metals, silks, and ivory—the crème de la crème of the East as ships passed through their waters.  We all know that the Holy Wars were for them, as for the Knights Templar, a matter of loot.

Rather than give the Emperor an insignificant bird every year as a matter of form, these wealthy Knights looked for a more suitable way of expressing their gratitude.  Instead of a live falcon they gave him a  falcon made of pure gold and encrusted from head to foot with the most valuable jewels in their coffers; remember these were the finest that Asia had at the time.  There are three references to it in the archives of the Order of Saint Jean and more, however oblique, in other unpublished records of the time.

Grand Master Villiers had this foot-high jeweled bird made by Turkish slaves working in the keep, under torchlight and naked to prevent them from stealing precious metals and jewels, of the Castle of St. Angelo and sent it to Charles in Spain on a galley commanded by a French Knight named Cormiere, also member of the order.  It never reached Spain.  

Barbarossa (red beard) took the galley and  the bird back to Algiers where it remained for more than fifty years until it was carried away by Sir Francis Verney, the English adventurer, but there is no evidence that it remained with him or his family because he died a pauper in 1615.

The next reference to the bird is in Sicily when in 1713 Victor Amadeus II gave it to his bride as a wedding present.  They then took it to Turin when he tried to revoke his abdication.

It next turned up in the possession of a Spaniard of the Redondo family after they took Naples in 1734.  There’s nothing to say that it didn’t stay in that family until 1740 when it appeared in Paris when that city was full of Carlists who had to get out of Spain.  Those who took it there probably didn’t know its value because it had been enameled over to look like nothing more than a black statuette.

It knocked around Paris for 170 years with private owners and dealers who had no clue as to its value.  Then in 1911 a Greek dealer named Konstantidines found it in an obscure shop.  He knew what it was, and not being in a hurry to cash-in, he had it re-enameled to look the way it does now.  One year to the day after he acquired it, three months to the day after Gutman made him confess that he had it, his shop was burglarized and the bird was gone.  It was taken along with a lot of other things so the thief probably didn’t know the value of it.

Seventeen years later, and it took Gutman that long to locate the bird but he did, he was not easily discouraged, he wanted it so much that he continued to look for it that long,  he traced it to the home of a Russian general in a Constantinople suburb.  The general didn't know what it was; Gutman made him an offer and because he was afraid that he’d tipped his hand as to its value he sent agents to get it before the general guessed the value of what he had.

Well, the agents got it but Gutman didn’t; they disappeared with it.  He traced it to Hong Kong and a certain Miss O’Shaughnessy and her partner, a Mr. Thursby.  He made a deal with them to have it shipped to San Francisco on board the La Paloma in the personal care of the Captain, Captain Jacoby, to be met there by them and then the statuette would be sold to Gutman.

The ship was set on fire at the dock and Captain Jacoby was shot several times, yet he made it to Sam Spade’s office before he died and gave him the parcel containing the falcon.  It was used as evidence to convict Gutman, O’Shaughnessy, and a third conspirator named Cairo in a Federal Court for a variety of crimes international in nature and in Criminal Court for murder; it then once again disappeared from view, that was 1932.

I was surfing the Internet late one evening in June of 2010 when I saw a vague reference by a person in San Francisco in need of money and willing to put up a valuable black statuette for collateral.  Being a student of the Maltese Falcon, I contacted the person and arranged to get it.  This person, like most others in the long trail of the falcon, had no idea of its worth.  The details of my acquiring the statuette in San Francisco are thrilling and will be told later in long form. At this writing I will tell you that the last time we went there to visit my daughter, I went into the city by myself and at at a very late hour, in a booth in the dimly lit John's Grill, in exchange for a large amount of cash, that person gave me the bird.