Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver

The Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver is the weapon found at the scene of Miles Archer’s murder and the central piece of physical evidence in the initial reconstruction of his death. Its uncommon design lets Sam Spade identify it, while its single spent cartridge and the bullet recovered from Archer connect the weapon to the killing. Later, police say the revolver belonged to Floyd Thursby, turning an object at the scene into a link between two murders.

Identification at the Scene

When Sam Spade reaches the alley, Archer lies down the slope beyond a broken fence, and investigators are searching the ground with lights. Tom Polhaus presents a muddy revolver recovered in connection with the scene and asks whether it is English. Spade recognizes it as a Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver, specifying that it is a .38, holds eight shots, and is no longer manufactured. His response establishes expertise without treating the weapon as unfamiliar or mysterious: he has seen Webley-Fosberys before.

The gun’s condition and ammunition provide immediate clues. Polhaus reports that one shot has been fired and points out that Archer must already have been dead when he went through the fence. The evidence places the discharge and the damaged fence within the same physical sequence, but Spade distinguishes what the scene shows from what he infers about the shooting.

Spade’s Reconstruction

Using the position of Archer and the break in the fence, Spade reconstructs a shot fired in the alley. He places Archer with his back to the fence and positions the shooter in front of him; he then demonstrates how the impact would have sent Archer backward through the broken rail and down the slope, where a boulder stopped him. Polhaus confirms the reconstruction and adds that the blast marked Archer’s coat.

The gun therefore does more than identify a possible weapon: its fired round supports a causal account of how Archer came to rest below the alley. Yet the scene alone does not establish who fired it. Spade’s demonstration is a reconstruction of the physical sequence, not proof of the shooter’s identity.

The Thursby Connection

The weapon acquires a more specific history when Polhaus later tells Spade that the Webley was Thursby’s and that the slug recovered from Archer came out of it. Polhaus says a bellhop at Thursby’s hotel had seen the revolver in Thursby’s room that morning, recognizing it because he had never seen one like it. The gun’s discontinued design makes that observation notable, but the account still rests on identifying the hotel weapon with the one recovered in the case.

Polhaus presents the conclusion emphatically, while Spade challenges him to be certain. The detective explains the basis for the identification: the bellhop’s sighting, the bullet’s connection to the revolver, and the question of what could otherwise have happened to Thursby’s gun. The exchange makes clear that the weapon’s evidentiary force comes from a chain of claims about its identity and whereabouts, not from its mere presence beside Archer.

Evidentiary Role

The revolver links a concrete object to a sequence of deductions: one shot was fired; Spade uses the scene to reconstruct Archer’s fall; and the police later associate the weapon with Thursby and the fatal slug. Each step changes what the gun can establish. At first, it is a firearm recovered at the murder scene; later, it is evidence supporting suspicion that Thursby shot Archer.

That distinction matters to the investigation. The weapon strongly connects Thursby to the killing in the police account, but Spade’s insistence on certainty keeps the inference visible as an inference. The Webley-Fosbery is both a material trace of the shooting and a test of how reliably investigators can move from a physical object to a named suspect.