  Honestly, I don't know whether I was surprised or not. On the whole I hardly think I was. If he had produced another candlestick or jar of liqueur I think I should have felt like getting up and walking out; but here at last was something on the fuller scale. Thank heaven, we had done with broken glass and sweeping-brushes and dark blue linen blinds. We might now hope to get a little farther. For a pistol is a pistol at all times and all the world over. No other weapon has quite so exclusively sinister a meaning. Among the honorable swords and rifles of war it is a low and sneaking thing, and in peace-time an Apache's tool, something for the common So Philip put the revolting thing on his desk, and for a moment we sat looking at its roughened grip, black as crape, and the glossy blackness of the rest of it. Then without a word Hubbard took it up, glanced at the safety-catch and slid back the breach. A cartridge lay ready in the chamber. Then he withdrew the magazine. Six nickel steel bullets showed through the perforations of the clip. The capacity of the W. & S. 7.65 is eight shots. One shot had therefore been fired. Hubbard replaced the pistol on the desk. "And where did that come from?" he asked with pursed lips. Philip shrugged his shoulders. Somehow the answer was "Rooke" as plainly as if he had spoken the name. "And where did he get it?" "Up there." Philip's eyes made the slightest of turns up towards the ceiling. "From one of those two fellows?" "I suppose so." "How do you mean, you 'suppose' so? Don't you know?" "I'm not perfectly sure yet. You see, just at that moment Audrey Cunningham came in, and it isn't the kind of thing you discuss with women there. I thought she'd gone, or I should have waited a bit." "Well, don't you think it's time you told us a little more now?" This is the narrative that followed, with that beastly object still lying there in the silky light of the mignonette-shaded lamp. |
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