"Yes, that's what they say," persisted Wake, "but, come to think of it, it isn't quite as easy as that to walk off with a life-size rifle under your arm. Why, even supposing you had the run of the house, would you take a chance on it? Supposing someone was looking out of one of the windows? Supposing you ran into the butler, or a gardener, or someone? Of course, as soon as you started on White, I got to thinking about him returning Mr. Carter's shot-gun in a case of his own, but that's no use, because the rifle wouldn't go into a shot-gun case."
Hemingway turned his head to look at the rifle, still held in the vice. "If I was to find that the fair Ermyntrude was right all along, I don't know that I could bear it," he said slowly. "Can you break a rifle?"
"What, like you do a shot-gun?" said Cook. "No, they're made differently. You can't break any I've ever handled."
"Well, let's have a look at this one," said Hemingway. "Give it here, will you, Wake?"
The Sergeant loosened the vice, and handed over the rifle. Hemingway inspected it. "I must say it doesn't look as though you could. What are these little eyebolts for?"
Cook peered over his shoulder. "They're only to fix a sling on to, if you should want one, aren't they?"
"I can't say, but I believe in trying things out," replied Hemingway, laying the gun on his desk, and beginning to loosen the bolts.
He removed them in a moment or two, and then, with the air of a conjurer sure of his trick, quietly lifted the barrel out of the stock. "As easy as falling off a gate," he said. "Now we know why he chose the Mannlicher Schonauer instead of that classy-looking Rigby. I dare say that doesn't come apart anything like as neatly, if at all. Measure that barrel, Wake - not that I doubt it could have got into the hambone-case."
"Twenty-eight inches over all," Wake announced, closing his foot-rule. "My word, the evidence is piling up, isn't it? But we still haven't got round the main difficulty, sir - though it looks to me as though we will, the way things are shaping."
Hemingway gave him the rifle to fit together again, and sat down at his desk. "Some kind of a battery," he said. "Inside the study window, with a flex running from it to the electro-magnet."