“What is that, doctor? You don’t know? Oh, you think it might be some sample of fertilizer containing concentrated nitrogen? You are mistaken, it is not nitrogen, but nitro-glycerine.”
Buckhurst’s face changed slightly.
“Is it not, Mr. Buckhurst?” I asked.
He was silent.
“Would you permit me to throw this bit of stuff at your feet?” And I made a gesture.
The superb nerve of the man was something to remember. He did not move, but over his face there crept a dreadful pallor, which even the others noticed, and they shrank away from him, shocked and amazed.
“Here, gentlemen,” I continued, “is a box with a German label—‘Oberlohe, Hanover.’ The silicious earth with which nitro-glycerine is mixed to make dynamite comes from Oberlohe, in Hanover.”
I laid my pistol on the table, struck a match, and deliberately lighted my stick of dynamite. It burned quietly with a brilliant flame, and I laid it on the grass and let it burn out like a lump of Greek fire.
“Messieurs,” I said, cocking and uncocking my pistol, “it is not because this man is a dangerous, political criminal and a maker of explosives that the 54 government has sent me here to arrest him ... or kill him. It is because he is a common thief,... a thief who steals crucifixes,... like this one—”
I brushed aside a pile of papers in the drawer and drew out a big gold crucifix, marvellously chiselled from a lump of the solid metal.... “A thief,” I continued, “who strips the diamonds from crucifixes,... as this has been stripped,... and who sells a single stone to a Jew in Strasbourg, named Fishel Cohen,... now in prison to confront our friend Buckhurst.”