“It isn’t as bad as that,” said he. “The thing has happened only three or four times in the whole of my experience. The first gift of the kind was a poisoned cigar, which I fortunately detected and which served as a very useful warning. Since then I have kept my weather eyelid lifting, as the mariners express it.”
“But don’t you find it rather wearing to be constantly on the look-out for some murderous attack?”
“Not at all,” he answered with a laugh. “It rather adds to the zest of life. Besides, you see, Mayfield, that on the rare occasions when these trifles come my way, they are so extremely helpful.”
“Helpful!” I repeated. “In the Lord’s name, how?”
“In a number of ways. Consider my position, Mayfield. I am not like an Italian or Russian politician who may have scores of murderous enemies. I am a lawyer and an investigator of crime. Whoever wants to get rid of me has something to fear from me; but at any given time, there will not be more than one or two of such persons. Consequently, when I receive a gift such as the present one, it conveys to me certain items of information. Thus it informs me that some one is becoming alarmed by some proceedings on my part. That is a very valuable piece of information, for it tells me that some one of my inquiries is at least proceeding along the right lines. It is virtually an admission that I have made, or am in the way of making a point. A little consideration of the cases that I have in hand will probably suggest the identity of the sender. But on this question the thing itself will, in most cases yield quite useful information as well as telling us a good deal about the personality of the sender. Take the present case. You heard Polton’s contemptuous observations on the crudity of the device. Evidently the person who sent this is not an engineer or mechanician of any kind. There is an obvious ignorance of mechanism; and yet there is a certain simple ingenuity. The thing is, in fact, as Polton said, on the level of a schoolboy’s booby-trap. You must see that if we had in view two or more possible senders, these facts might enable us to exclude one and select another. But here is Polton with the photograph. Now we can consider the mechanism at our leisure.”
As he spoke, Polton deposited on the bench a large porcelain dish or tray in which was a very odd-looking photograph; for the whole of it was jet-black excepting the pistol, the jar, the hinges, and a small, elongated spot, which all stood out in clear, white silhouette.
“Why,” I exclaimed as I stooped over it, “that is a muzzle-loading pistol!”
“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed, “and a pocket pistol, as you can tell by the absence of a trigger-guard. The trigger is probably hinged and folds forward into a recess. I daresay you know the kind of thing. They were usually rather pretty little weapons—and useful, too, for you could carry one easily in your waistcoat pocket. They had octagon barrels, which screwed off for loading, and the butts were often quite handsomely ornamented with silver mounts. They were usually sent out by the gunsmiths in little baize-lined mahogany cases with compartments for a little powder-flask and a supply of bullets.”
“I wonder why he used a muzzle-loader?” said I.
“Probably because he had it. It answers the purpose as well as a modern weapon, and, as it was probably made more than a hundred years ago, it would be useless to go round the trade enquiring as to recent purchases.”