Floyd Sessum murder case

The Murder of Floyd Thursby is the shooting that turns the search for the black bird into a two-death investigation and places Sam Spade under police suspicion. Thursby is killed outside his hotel shortly after Spade leaves Burritt Street; the police later link the weapon used against him to Miles Archer’s murder, making the gun evidence central to the case without, by itself, settling every question about who fired it.

The Shooting and the Police Case

Lieutenant Dundy tells Spade that Thursby was shot outside his hotel just thirty-five minutes after Spade left Burritt Street. The police reconstruction is specific about the attack: Thursby was hit four times in the back with a large-caliber weapon fired from across the street as he began to enter the hotel. No one saw the shooting, so the account is presented as the police’s conclusion from the available evidence rather than as a witnessed scene.

Thursby had been carrying a Luger in a shoulder holster, but it had not been fired. That detail matters because it establishes that the gun on his person was not the weapon used in the attack, while leaving the shooter unseen. Hotel staff could add little about Thursby beyond the fact that he had been staying there for a week.

The Webley-Fosbery Connection

The investigation’s strongest physical link between the two murders is a Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver. At the scene where Miles Archer lies below a broken fence, Spade reconstructs the shot: Archer had been standing with his back to the fence when the gunman fired, and the force of the shot sent him backward through the damaged rail and down the slope to a boulder. The account at the scene notes that the blast burned Archer’s coat.

Later, Tom Polhaus tells Spade that the Webley belonged to Thursby and that the slug recovered from Archer came from it. The police say a bellhop at Thursby’s hotel had seen the revolver in Thursby’s room that same morning and recognized it as unusual. Polhaus argues that the weapon’s rarity, the bellhop’s identification, and the ballistic match together establish the connection. This evidence ties Thursby to Archer’s death, but it does not provide an eyewitness to either shooting.

Timelines, Suspicion, and Missing Witnesses

The timing of the killings makes Thursby’s murder an immediate source of suspicion for Spade. Dundy points out that Thursby was killed only thirty-five minutes after Spade left Burritt Street, and Tom faults Spade for not stopping to look at his murdered partner. Spade responds by demanding that Dundy keep his hands off him; the confrontation makes plain that the police are treating the close timing as a reason to scrutinize him.

The account of Iva Archer’s movements supplies another, less conclusive timeline. She says she first drove to Spade’s place between half past nine and ten, waited, and returned around ten-thirty. Finding him still out, she went to a movie on Powell Street, stayed until it closed after midnight, ate at Tait’s on Ellis Street, and then went home alone. She says she avoided going home earlier because she did not want to be there when Miles arrived, particularly around midnight, when his presence tended to make him angry. Her account situates her that night but does not establish who killed Thursby.

The Black Bird and the Gang’s Pursuit

The later account of the gang’s actions connects the killings to the pursuit of the black bird. Casper Gutman says that the group searched for it throughout the day and found Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s apartment late in the afternoon. When those inside heard the visitors identify themselves through the closed door, they heard a window being raised. Wilmer Cook ran to cover the fire escape and encountered Captain Jacobi fleeing with the bird. Wilmer shot Jacobi, but Jacobi kept the bird and escaped; Wilmer withdrew when he saw a police officer approaching.

Gutman further explains that Brigid was persuaded to phone Spade’s office in an effort to draw him away before Jacobi arrived, while Wilmer was sent after Jacobi. The episode does not establish Thursby’s precise role in the gang’s later actions, but it places his death within a larger contest over the bird, in which information, pursuit, and violence repeatedly intersect.

Consequences and Significance

Thursby’s murder sharply changes the stakes of Spade’s investigation. Once the police associate Thursby’s Webley with Archer’s fatal wound, the two deaths become linked by evidence, and Spade must contend not only with the people pursuing the bird but also with police suspicion. His later account of his professional code explains why Archer’s death cannot be treated as a private matter: a detective, he argues, cannot simply let his murdered partner’s killer go free. The case therefore turns on more than identifying the gun or reconstructing a route. It tests whether Spade can bring a criminal before the authorities while navigating a conflict in which the missing bird, the surviving participants, and the two killings are entangled.