We had said not a word, but Uvo rattled on with glib vivacity and the laugh that got upon my nerves. His new possession was his only theme. He could no more drop the subject than the thing itself. It was the revolver, the whole revolver, and nothing but the revolver for Uvo Delavoye that night. He was childishly obsessed with its unpleasant possibilities, but he treated them with a grim levity not unredeemed by wit. His bloodthirsty prattle grew into a quaint and horrible harangue eked out with quotations that stuck like burs. More than once I looked to Colonel Cheffins for a disapproval which would come with more weight from him than me; but decanter and syphon had been brought up soon after his arrival, and he only sipped his whisky with an amused air that made me wonder which of us was going daft.
"Talk about bare bodkins, otherwise hollow-ground razors!" cried Uvo, emptying his glass. "I couldn't do the trick with cold steel if I tried; but with a revolver you've only got to press the trigger and it does the rest. Then—I wonder if you even live to hear the row?—then, Gilly, it's a case of that 'big blue mark in his forehead and the back blown out of his head!'"
"That wasn't a revolver," said I, for he had taught me to worship his modern god of letters; "that was the Snider that 'squibbed in the jungle.'"
Delavoye looked it up in his paper-covered copy.
"Quite right, Gilly!" said he. "But what price this from the very next piece?
"'So long as those unloaded guns
We keep beside the bed,
Blow off, by obvious accident,
The lucky owner's head.'
"That's a bit more like it than the big blue mark, eh? And my gifted author is the boy who can handle these little dears better than anybody else in the class; he don't only use 'em for moral suasion under arms, but he makes you smell the blood and hear the thunder!"
Colonel Cheffins seemed to have had enough at last; he rose to go with rather a perfunctory laugh, and I jumped up to see him out on the plea of something I had to say about his damaged door and window.
"For God's sake, sir, get your revolver back from him!" was what I whispered down below. "He's not himself. He hasn't been his own man for over a year. Get it back from him before he takes a turn for the worse and—and——"
"I know what you mean," said the colonel, "but I don't believe it's as bad as you think. I'll see what I can do. I might say I've smashed the other, but I mustn't say it too soon or he'll smell a rat. I must leave him to you meanwhile, Mr. Gillon, but I honestly believe it's all talk."