The Hand in the Dark
the crevice between the white paper and the side bars of the grate.
Wondering what it was, he succeeded in getting it out with his finger
and thumb. It was a percussion cap.
This discovery, strange as it was, seemed at first sight far enough
removed from the circumstances of the murder, except so far as it
brought the thought of lethal weapons to the imagination. But a weapon
which required a percussion cap for its discharge had nothing to do with
Violet Heredith's death. She had been killed by a bullet which fitted
Nepcote's revolver, which was a pinfire weapon. The medical evidence had
established that fact beyond the shadow of a doubt. Moreover, the
percussion cap was unexploded, which seemed to make its presence in the
grate even more difficult of explanation. It looked as though it had
been dropped accidentally, but how came it to be there at all? The
strangeness of the discovery was intensified by the knowledge that
percussion caps and muzzle-loading weapons had become antiquated with
the advent of the breech-loader. Who used such things nowadays?
By the prompting of that mysterious association of ideas which is called
memory, Colwyn was reminded of his earlier visit to the gun-room
downstairs, and Musard's statement about the famous pair of pistols in
the brass-bound mahogany box, which "carried as true as a rifle up to
fifty yards, but had a heavy recoil." They belonged to the period
between breech-loaders and the ancient flint-locks, and were probably
muzzle-loaders. With that sudden recollection, Colwyn also recalled that
Musard had been unable to show him the pistols because the key of the
case had been mislaid or lost.
This incident, insignificant as it had appeared at the time, seemed
hardly to gain in importance when considered in conjunction with the
discovery of the cap in the grate. Apart from the stimulus to memory the
percussion cap had produced, there was no visible co-ordination between
the two facts, because it was, apparently, quite certain that Mrs.
Heredith had been shot by Nepcote's revolver, and by no other weapon.
But the balance of probabilities in crime are sometimes turned by
apparently irrelevant trifles which assume importance on investigation.
Was it possible that the key of the pistol-case had been deliberately
concealed because the box had something to hide which formed a
connection between the pistols and the presence of the cap in the grate?
That inference could only be tested by an examination of the case of
pistols. The experiment was undoubtedly worth trying. Colwyn left the
room and descended the stairs.
CHAPTER XXVII
The gun-room was dark and silent as a vault. In the deep recesses the
armoured phantoms of dead and gone Herediths seemed to be watching the
intruder with hidden eyes behind the bars of their tilting helmets and
visored salades. The light of Colwyn's electric torch fell on the shell
of a mighty warrior who stood with one steel gauntlet raised as though
in readiness to defend the honour of his house. His initials, "P.H.,"
were engraved on his giant steel breast, and his steel heels flourished
a pair of fearful spurs, with rowels like daggers. Standing by this
giant was a tiny suit of armour, not more than three feet in height,
which might have been worn by a child.
"A strange pair," murmured Colwyn, pausing a moment to glance at them.
As he turned his light in their direction his eye was caught by an
inscription cut in the stone above their heads, and he drew nearer and
read that the large suit had been worn by the former Philip Heredith, "A
True Knight of God." The smaller suit had been made for a dwarf attached
to his house, who had followed his master through the Crusades, and
fought gallantly by his side.
Colwyn turned away and flashed his light along the walls in search of
the case of pistols. His torch glanced over the numerous trophies
adorning the walls, lances, swords, daggers, steel head-pieces,
bascinets, peaked morions--relics of a departed age of chivalry, when
knights quarrelled prettily for ladies, and fighting was fair and open,
before civilization had enriched warfare with the Christian attributes
of gas-shells, liquid fire, and high explosives. Then the light fell on
that which he was seeking--a dark oblong box, with brass corners, and a
brass handle closing into the lid.
Colwyn lifted the case down from the embrasure in which it was placed,
and carried it to the bagatelle table. A brief examination of the lock
satisfied him that it was too complicated and strong to be picked or
broken. It was curiously wrought in brass, of an intricate antique
pattern which would have puzzled a modern locksmith. He turned the case
over, and saw that the bottom had been mortised and screwed. The screws
had been deeply countersunk, and were embedded in rust, but a few were
loose with age. Colwyn unscrewed these loose ones with his pocket-knife,
and then set about unloosening the others.
It was a tedious task, but Colwyn lightened it with the aid of a bottle
of gun oil which he found in one of the presses. Some of the screws
yielded immediately to that bland influence, and came out easily. Others
remained fast in the intractable way of rusty screws, but Colwyn
persevered, and by dint of oiling, coaxing, and unscrewing, finally had
the satisfaction of seeing all the screws lying in a little greasy brown
heap on the faded green cloth of the bagatelle table. The next thing was
to lever off the bottom of the lid. That was not difficult, because the
glue in the mortises had long since perished. Soon the bottom was lying
on the table beside the screws, and the interior of the case revealed.
The pair of weapons which Colwyn lifted from the case were horse pistols
of a period when countryfolk feared to ride abroad without some such
protection against highwaymen. They were superior specimens of their
type. They were beautifully made, rich in design and solid in form, with
ebony stocks and chased silver mountings. The long barrels were
damascened, and the carved handles terminated in flat steel butts which
would have cracked the pate of any highwayman if the shot missed fire.
As Colwyn anticipated, the pistols were muzzle-loaders. The cock, which
laid over considerably, was in the curious form of a twisted snake. When
the trigger was pulled the head of the snake fell on the nipple.
Colwyn examined them carefully. He first ascertained that they were
unloaded by probing them with the ramrod which was attached to each by a
steel hinge. Then he ran his finger round the inside of the muzzles to
ascertain whether either pistol had been recently fired. One was clean,
but from the muzzle of the other he withdrew a finger grimed with
gunpowder. While he was doing this his other hand came in contact with
something slightly uneven in the smooth metal surface of the butt. He
turned the pistol over, and noticed a small inner circle in the flat
steel. It was a small hinged lid, which hid a pocket in the handle. He
raised the little lid with his finger-nail, and a shower of percussion
caps fell on the bagatelle table. This contrivance for holding caps was
not new to Colwyn. He had seen it in other old-fashioned muzzle-loaders.
Colwyn compared the caps which had dropped on the table with the one he
had found upstairs. They were the same size. He tried the solitary cap
on the nipple, and found that it fitted perfectly. As he did so, he saw
something resembling a thread of yellow wool caught in the twisted steel
of the hammer. It was a minute fragment, so small as to be hardly
noticeable. Colwyn was quite unable to determine what it was, but its
presence there puzzled him considerably, and he was at a loss to
understand how it had got caught in the hammer of the pistol. It struck
him that the thread might be khaki, and his mind reverted to his earlier
discovery of the patch of khaki in the wood outside the moat-house.
It was with the hope of finding out whether this pistol had been lately
used that Colwyn turned his attention to the velvet-lined interior of
the case. The inside was divided into a large compartment for the
pistols and several small lidded spaces. In one of these he found some
shot, a box of percussion caps, and a powder-flask half-full of common
gunpowder. Another space contained implements for cleaning the pistols.
The contents of the next compartment puzzled him. There were some odd
lengths of knotted string, and a coil of yellow tubular fabric, about
the thickness of his little finger, some inches in length. Colwyn
recognized it at once. It was the wick of a tinder-lighter, then being
sold by thousands by English tobacconists to replace a war-time scarcity
of matches, and greatly used by cigarette smokers.
The mystery of the presence of the wick in the pistol-case was not
lessened because it enabled Colwyn to identify the tiny yellow fragment
adhering to the cock of the pistol. He picked up the wick and observed
that one end was cut clean, but the other end was blackened and burnt.
At that discovery there entered his mind the first prescient warning of
the possibility of some deep plan in which the pistol and the wick
played important parts. With his brain seeking for a solution of that
possibility, he proceeded to examine the pieces of string.
They were odd lengths of ordinary thick twine, but they all seemed to
consist of loose ends which had been knotted together. It was not until
Colwyn took them out of the compartment that he noticed an amazing
peculiarity about them. Each piece of knotted string was burnt at both
ends.
There are some discoveries which spring into the mind with shattering
swiftness. This was one of them. A revelation seemed to come to Colwyn
as light from the sky at midnight, which, lays everything bare in one
frightful flash.
"Is it possible?"
He felt as though these words rushed from him like a thunder-roll
reverberating through the empty space around him. But his set lips had
not uttered a single sound. With tingling nerves he proceeded to carry
out an experiment. He first laid the wick of the tinder-lighter along
the stock of the pistol, just behind the hammer. He next took up one of
the lengths of string, and pulling back the hammer and the trigger of
the pistol, proceeded to bind them both firmly back with the string,
which he passed twice round the wick. When he had tied the string tight
he lit a match and applied it to the end of the wick which was farthest
from the string. His idea was to see whether this extemporized fuse
would creep along the stock of the pistol, burn the string, and release
the bound cock and trigger.
The wick smouldered and glowed, and began to creep towards the string,
which crossed the stock of the pistol about three inches from the
burning end. Colwyn took out his watch and timed its progress. In four
minutes the first inch of the wick was consumed, and the spark at the
end continued to creep sullenly forward in a dull red glow. In another
eight minutes it reached the string, and Colwyn eagerly watched the
process of the burning of the binding. The string singed, smouldered,
and when nearly severed, sprang apart under the pressure of the hammer
and trigger it had been holding back. The released hammer fell with full
force on the cap on the nipple, and exploded it.
There, then, seemed the explanation. Mrs. Heredith had been shot with
Nepcote's revolver, but it was not the deliberately deadened sound of
that slight weapon which had startled the guests in the dining-room on
the night of the murder. The report they had heard was made by the
heavier pistol in front of him. It was a ruse of terrifying simplicity
but diabolical ingenuity. The wick of the tinder-lighter was an
admirable slow match, obtainable in any tobacconist's shop for a few