“There will be a run on that weapon soon, sir,” remarked the shopman knowingly, “and if all is true that one hears, or indeed only half one hears, the Boers have been buying a heap of them.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that too,” replied Jack, “and also that they take precious good care that none of the Uitlanders get hold of any.”
“That’s so, sir; but still, I dare say there are many of our countrymen who have managed to smuggle in arms. That Mauser you’ve bought could be easily managed if fixed with a good deal of padding beneath the arm.”
“Ah, I dare say!” Jack answered casually, and then left the shop.
“That was a good idea,” he thought, as he walked back to the hotel, “and I’ll just see how I can manage it.”
Arrived at the hotel, he first begged a reel of cotton, a needle, and a small piece of dark serge from the manageress, and then retired to his room. He was wearing a navy-blue suit at the time, and whipping the coat off, he first fitted the Mauser pistol beneath the waistcoat, pushing the muzzle up till it rested in the right armpit.
“Now, all I have to do is to open the seams down each side and let them out,” he murmured. “Then I will sew on a kind of inner pocket, and as soon as it is finished I must pad the waistcoat all round with cotton-wool. It will make it awfully hot, and I dare say I shall make rather a muddle of it, as I never was very grand at sewing. Still, it’s got to be done, and after all, what does it matter how neat the stitching is?”
It took a good two hours to let out the seams and add the pocket, but at last that part was completed, and he sallied out to buy some cotton-wool.
Then he placed the wooden holster of the Mauser in the pocket, and arranged the wool on either side of it and between it and the waistcoat, securing it by cross stitches. An hour later the other side was similarly padded, and he tried the waistcoat on.
The cotton-wool he found had certainly made all the difference. Both sides beneath his arms were well rounded off, and it would require a good deal more than a casual glance to detect that matters were not as they were meant to be. Then he put on the coat, buttoned it up, and, standing in front of the glass, practised drawing the weapon.