The Crusades

The Crusades are invoked as the historical setting for the wealth and plunder behind the Knights Hospitaller’s legendary falcon. In Casper Gutman’s account, the Holy Wars connect military conquest to the accumulation of Eastern riches, supplying the black bird with a grand history that contrasts with the hard bargaining and professional obligations of the present-day investigation.

Gutman’s account of the Order

Gutman tells Sam Spade that the Knights had enriched themselves over years of fighting the Saracens, taking gems, precious metals, silks, and ivories. He presents this accumulation as historical fact and characterizes the Holy Wars as largely a matter of loot, placing the Order’s supposed wealth within a story of conquest and material gain.

From plunder to the tribute falcon

Gutman’s account moves from the Order’s wealth to Malta. After Emperor Charles gave the Knights the island, Gutman says, the rent he required was one bird each year. The Knights supposedly answered this obligation by sending, for the first year’s tribute, not a live bird but a golden falcon encrusted with the finest jewels in their Eastern treasure. The Crusades thus serve as the remote backstory for the object that drives the novel’s present-day pursuit.

History within a negotiation

The account is delivered not as an independent historical narrative but as part of Gutman’s effort to explain the falcon’s value to Spade. Its luxuriant inventory and emphasis on immeasurable wealth help establish the scale of the prize Gutman seeks. Spade remains placid as Gutman describes it and answers that he does not know what to think; the story’s persuasive force is therefore left distinct from Spade’s willingness to accept it.

A contrast with present obligations

The historical story of the Knights’ wealth belongs to a world of conquest and tribute, but the investigation turns on the immediate demands of professional conduct. Spade tells Gutman that he will withstand pressure from the authorities by producing a culprit when a day of reckoning arrives. Later, explaining why he cannot release Brigid, he argues that a detective must act when a partner is killed and that allowing the killer to escape would damage the profession as a whole. Against Gutman’s grand account of wealth obtained through war, the novel sets Spade’s insistence on a concrete, present-tense obligation: the killer must not simply go free.