Please answer the following question: Build a movie plot around this: who had been following him earlier? Wilmer
A:
In San Francisco, private investigator Sam Spade (Ricardo Cortez) and his partner Miles Archer (Walter Long) are approached by Ruth Wonderly (Bebe Daniels) to follow a man, Floyd Thursby, who allegedly ran off with her younger sister. The two accept the assignment because the money is good, even though they disbelieve her story.Late that night, police detective Tom Polhaus (J. Farrell MacDonald) informs Spade that Archer has been shot and killed while tailing Thursby, but Spade turns down the opportunity to examine the body at the scene. As he's leaving, he has a brief conversation in Chinese with a man loitering in a doorway. Later, Polhaus and his superior, Lt. Dundy (Robert Elliott), visit Spade at his apartment. Thursby has been killed, and they want to know where Spade's been in the last few hours they suspect him of killing Thursby to avenge the death of his partner. With no real evidence against Spade, they leave.The next day, Spade calls on Ruth Wonderly in an attempt to find out her real reasons for hiring them. She uses several different ploys to keep Spade on the case in spite of the two murders, but Spade sees through them. Despite this, he gets only a little information from her: Thursby was her accomplice whom she no longer trusted, and she feels she's in danger but she won't tell Spade what she and Thursby were trying to pull off. Frustrated, Spade begins to leave, but then thinks better of it. He takes $500 from Wonderly, supposedly the last of her money, and goes.At the office, Spade tells his secretary, Effie (Una Merkel) to have Archer's name removed from the door, and he receives a visit from a Dr. Joel Cairo (Otto Matieson), who offers Spade $5,000 if he can retrieve an enamel figurine of a black bird that he is trying to recover for the "rightful owner". Not knowing anything about this statuette, Spade plays along, overpowering Cairo when he pulls a gun and attempts to frisk him and search the office. Nevertheless, he agrees to try to recover the statuette.That night, at his...