"I pride myself that there are more horrors comprised in this small room than in most of its size," said Mr. Gooch. "But they are not all connected with tragedies. Here, for instance, is the mace which the White Knight used in his battle with the Red Knight, and I have also—up there on the wall—his sword—made of a lath, you see. Still, weapons are naturally instruments of crime, or, at any rate, of violence, and some very notorious murders are commemorated here."
He picked up a long, blood-stained knife.
"With this," he said, "Markheim killed the shopkeeper. One of the very finest murders in literature, in my opinion. You recall the circumstances: Christmas Day, the two men alone in the shop—"
"I do indeed," I replied, willing to show my familiarity with Stevenson's wonderful tale, "and I remember the terrible moments that followed—the murderer alone with the dead man, the silence, the ticking of the clocks, the man who knocked on the outside door, and all the rest of it."
Mr. Gooch replaced the knife and drew my attention to a shield and a long spear which hung on the wall. These, he said, belonged to a "Fuzzy-Wuzzy"—they were a "coffin-'eaded shield an' shovel-spear," the implements for a 'appy day with Fuzzy on the rush. Near them hung an old flint-lock musket. It was a perfect wreck—the stock worm-eaten, and the lock and barrel covered with rust.
"It was never used to kill anything more dangerous than a squirrel or a wild goose," said my host; "yet its original owner was nearly arrested for carrying it on one occasion. Surely you can guess who that owner was."
I guessed Rip Van Winkle, and Mr. Gooch said that was correct.
"It doesn't improve a musket or a man to lie out on the mountains day and night for twenty years," he added.
Then he showed me Othello's sword of Spain, "of the ice-brook's temper," with which the Moor smote himself, as once in Aleppo he smote a malignant and a turban'd Turk.
"This box," said Mr. Gooch, "contains one of my greatest prizes—nothing less than the dagger which led Macbeth to Duncan's sleeping chamber—"