Francis followed the other's movements with fascinated eyes. The woman scarcely turned her head. Hilditch paused at the further end of the room, where there were a couple of gun cases, some fishing rods and a bag, of golf clubs. From the latter he extracted a very ordinary-looking putter, and with it in his hands strolled back to them. “Do you play golf, Ledsam?” he asked. “What do you think of that?” Francis took the putter into his hand. It was a very ordinary club, which had apparently seen a good deal of service, so much, indeed, that the leather wrapping at the top was commencing to unroll. The maker's name was on the back of the blade, also the name of the professional from whom it had been purchased. Francis swung the implement mechanically with his wrists. “There seems to be nothing extraordinary about the club,” he pronounced. “It is very much like a cleek I putt with myself.” “Yet it contains a secret which would most certainly have hanged me,” Oliver Hilditch declared pleasantly. “See!” He held the shaft firmly in one hand and bent the blade away from it. In a moment or two it yielded and he commenced to unscrew it. A little exclamation escaped from Francis' lips. The woman looked on with tired eyes. “The join in the steel,” Hilditch pointed out, “is so fine as to be undistinguishable by the naked eye. Yet when the blade comes off, like this, you see that although the weight is absolutely adjusted, the inside is hollow. The dagger itself is encased in this cotton wool to avoid any rattling. I put it away in rather a hurry the last time I used it, and as you see I forgot to clean it.” Francis staggered back and gripped at the mantelpiece. His eyes were filled with horror. Very slowly, and with the air of one engaged upon some interesting task, Oliver Hilditch had removed the blood-stained sheath of cotton wool from around the thin blade of a marvellous-looking stiletto, on which was also a long stain of encrusted blood. “There is a handle,” he went on, “which is perhaps the most ingenious thing of all. You touch a spring here, and behold!” He pressed down two tiny supports which opened upon hinges about four inches from the top of the handle. There was now a complete hilt. “With this little weapon,” he explained, “the point is so sharpened and the steel so wonderful that it is not necessary to stab. It has the perfection of a surgical instrument. You have only to lean it against a certain point in a man's anatomy, lunge ever so little and the whole thing is done. Come here, Mr. Ledsam, and I will show you the exact spot.” Francis made no movement. His eyes were fixed upon the weapon. “If I had only known!” he muttered.