"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.
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