Spade goes to Burlingame to find Brigid

Sam Spade goes to Burlingame to find Brigid O’Shaughnessy, following a lead to a specific house and searching it when he finds it dark and apparently unoccupied. The excursion produces no reunion: the house is empty, and the call that appears to connect him with Brigid is a plant. Its decisive significance is therefore not that Spade locates her, but that the failed search reveals how Gutman’s group has been manipulating his movements while the falcon is being pursued.

The Lead and the Journey

After eating hurriedly at John’s Grill, Spade leaves with a hired chauffeur in a dark Cadillac. He gives the man the name Ancho Avenue, or Road, or Boulevard, in Burlingame, admits that he does not know precisely how to find it, and supplies the crucial house number: 26. He also tells the chauffeur not to stop at the front door. The instructions make the trip a purposeful but cautious search, not a casual visit.

The chauffeur obtains directions at a drugstore in Burlingame. Ten minutes later, he stops near a dark corner, switches off the car’s lights, and points Spade toward the likely block. Spade tells him to keep the engine running because they may have to leave quickly. The practical precautions establish the search’s urgency and uncertainty: Spade is going after a concealed person in a place he does not know, and he wants an immediate way out if the situation changes.

The Empty House

Spade finds the second house from the corner, where pale metal numerals 2 and 6 mark a gatepost. A white card covers the numbers; close inspection shows it is a For Sale or Rent notice. The house itself is dark, with another pale card on the door. Spade pauses on the walk, listens at the entrance, and looks through the uncurtained door and windows, but sees only darkness. Both windows and the front door are locked.

He checks the property from the side and rear as well. The side windows are too high to reach from the ground, while the back door and the one accessible rear window are locked. Returning to the gatepost, he uses his lighter to read the sign: it names a San Mateo real-estate dealer and says, in blue pencil, that the key is at 31. Rather than assume that the house is occupied, Spade follows the key instruction and brings the search into the open with the chauffeur and the person who has the key.

Once the door is unlocked, Spade enters with a flashlight in his left hand. The chauffeur follows, and the key-holder comes in behind them. They search the house from bottom to top, initially cautiously and then more boldly as they find nothing. The result is unambiguous: the house is empty, with no indication that anyone has visited in weeks. The address has brought Spade to a vacant property, not to Brigid.

The False Contact

After the search, Spade goes to the Alexandria Hotel and checks on the Gutmans in room 12C. There, Effie Perine reports hearing a woman’s voice that she takes to be Miss O’Shaughnessy. Spade asks whether she is sure it was Brigid’s voice. When Effie confirms it, he says that he has run into a plant and rejects the apparent contact as false. The failed Burlingame search thus connects to a second deception: the telephone call seemed to offer a way to find Brigid, but Spade does not accept it as genuine.

The episode’s meaning becomes clearer during Spade’s later meeting with Casper Gutman. Spade explains that he went to Burlingame expecting to encounter the sort of meeting that has now taken place, but did not know Gutman’s party was blundering around, half an hour late, trying to get him out of the way so they could find Captain Jacobi again before Jacobi reached him. The search and the false call are therefore part of a wider contest over access to the falcon and its carrier. Spade’s journey fails to find Brigid, but it also places him in the position from which he can recognize that Gutman’s group has been trying to divert him.

The Search in the Larger Pursuit

The reason Jacobi matters is disclosed in Gutman’s account of the day’s events. Gutman says his party had found Brigid’s apartment and heard movement inside. When they announced themselves at the door, they heard a window opening. Wilmer Cook went around to cover the fire escape and encountered Jacobi in the alley, carrying the falcon. Wilmer shot him more than once, but Jacobi kept moving with the bird, knocked Wilmer down, and escaped. Gutman’s party then learned that Brigid had directed Jacobi to take the falcon to Spade and persuaded her to phone Spade’s office in an attempt to draw him away before Jacobi arrived.

Against that sequence, Spade’s trip to Burlingame is an attempted diversion that nearly succeeds in removing him from the route between Jacobi and the falcon. The empty address and the planted contact leave him without Brigid, but the later explanation reveals the stakes concealed inside the errand: while Spade searched the house, Gutman’s group was trying to regain the bird and intercept Jacobi. When Spade confronts Gutman, he states that he had gone to Burlingame expecting a meeting, but not the effort to get him out of the way. The journey’s consequence is thus informational as well as practical: it fails as a search for Brigid, yet helps expose the scheme surrounding the falcon.