>>(Marlowe and Spade come to mind)
>
> We don't know for certain about Spade. Remember, he
mentioned being in
> England and had a familiarity with Webley-Fosbury
automatic revolvers,
> which were for the most part used by British military
officers who were
> expected to furnish their own sidearms. Spade could
well have been in
> the AEF, or, like Chandler, gone to Canada to join a
Canadian regiment
> before American participation.
The .38 Webley Fosbery Automatic Revolver was not in
production for
long.
I'm not at all familar with gunsmithery or gun collecting,
but I have
looked up the WFAR precisely because of its role in the
Maltese Falcon.
I don't think that one could say with any safety or certainty
that this
particular model
> [was] for the most part used by British military
officers
Here's what I know:
The .38 used rimless cartridges which required an additional
loading
disk or clip to be fitted to the revolving cylinder. Because
of this,
this model was less popular than the .38 semi-automatic (ie
*non*
revolver) and few of the revolvers were sold. According to
Peter P.
Gillis, "The model 1902, thirty-eight calibre, Webley Fosbery
automatic
revolver is, and always was, a very scarce item." Too rare in
fact,
according to Gillis, to be dumped at the scene of Archer's
killing or to
be carried in Thursby's pocket.
Production of this unpopular firearm ceased and about a
hundred of the
.38s were dismantled in the factory to provide parts for
forty-fives.
Gillis suggests that Hammett might not have been aware of the
rarity of
the .38 automatic revolver; in Huston's 1941 film the weapon
used to
kill Archer is referred to as a '.45' because, Gillis
suggests, someone
involved in the film *was* aware of the extreme rarity of
this .38.
However, while Hammett's book refers to a very rare gun,
Huston's film
refers to a non-existent one: no eight-shot .45s were ever
made.
See Peter P. Gillis, 'An Anomaly in _The Maltese Falcon_',
_American
Notes & Queries_ 8 (1995) 29-31.
ED
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