Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 February 1910 — A VINDICTIVE KNIFE. [ARTICLE]

A VINDICTIVE KNIFE.

The Weapon Th>( Tried Several Timed to Kill Klplln*. My mind has flown back down the years to London and Into the large corner room on the second floor, Villiers street, Embankment Gardens. On the wall fronting the Thames hangs the most vicious looking knife I have ever seen. It is serpentine in shape, and its downward point is as sharp as % needle. “What a villainous weapon!” I said. “Yes,” replied Kipling, and I forgot the name he gave it or the section of India from which it came. “That / knife has tried to kill me several :lmes. It’s always on the watch. When I got it there was affixed to It, like a button on a foil, one joint of a man’s backbone. The knife had been run :nto the vertebrae, given a savage twist and brought away with it a piece of human framework.” As he spoke he approached the glit- ~ tering, snakelike knife. “Don’t touch it!” I cried. ‘Ton ought to keep it in -a locked box.” He didn’t touch it, so far as I saw, but as he raised his hand the knife dropped like a plummet and stood quivering in the floor within an inch of his boot. “Look at that!” he said and stood there without moving a muscle until I saw how nearly the sinister blade had come to Impaling his foot. —Robert Barr in London World.