His keen gaze was quartering the room; and then it lighted on a big cheap kneehole desk whose well-worn shabbiness looked strangely out of keeping with the other furniture. On it was a litter of coils and wire and ebonite and dials — all the junk out of which amateur wireless sets are created. Simon reached the desk in his next stride, and began pulling open the drawers. Tools of all kinds, various gauges of wire and screws, odd wheels and sleeves and bolts and scraps of sheet-iron and brass, the completely typical hoard of any amateur mechanic's workshop. Then he came to a drawer that was locked. Without hesitation he caught up a large screwdriver and rammed it in above the lock: before anyone could grasp his intentions he had splintered the drawer open with a skilful twist.
Teal let out a shout and started across the room. Simon's hand dived into the drawer, came out with a nickel-plated revolver — it was exactly the same as the one with which Lewis Enstone had shot himself, but Teal wasn't noticing things like that. His impression was that the Saint really had gone raving mad after all, and the sight of the gun pulled him up for a moment as the sight of a gun in the hands of any other raving maniac would have pulled him up.
"Put that down, you fool!" he yelled, and then he let out another shout as he saw the Saint turn the muzzle of the gun close up to his right eye, with his thumb on the trigger, exactly as Enstone must have held it. Teal lurched forward and knocked the weapon aside with a sweep of his arm; then he grabbed Simon by the wrist. "That's enough of that," he said, without realising what a futile thing it was to say.
Simon looked at him and smiled.
"Thanks for saving my life, old beetroot," he murmured kindly. "But it really wasn't necessary. You see, Claud, that's the gun Enstone thought he was playing with!"
The maid was under the table letting out the opening note of a magnificent fit of hysterics. Teal let go the Saint, hauled her out, and shook her till she was quiet. There were more events cascading on him in those few seconds than he knew how to cope with, and he was not gentle.
"It's all right, miss," he growled. "I am from Scotland Yard. Just sit down somewhere, will you?" He turned back to Simon. "Now, what's all this about?"
"The gun, Claud. Enstone's toy."
The Saint raised it again — his smile was quite sane, and with the feeling that he himself was the madman, Teal let him do what he wanted. Simon put the gun to his eye and pulled the trigger — pulled it, released it, pulled it again, keeping up the rhythmic movement. Something inside the gun whirred smoothly, as if wheels were whizzing round under the working of the lever. Then he pointed the gun straight into Teal's face and did the same thing.
Teal stared frozenly down the barrel and saw the black hole leap into a circle of light. He was looking at a flickering cinematograph film of a boy shooting a masked burglar. It was tiny, puerile in subject, but perfect. It lasted about ten seconds, and then the barrel went dark again.