Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1891 — A Detective’s Deadly Cane. [ARTICLE]

A Detective’s Deadly Cane.

Cincinnati Enquirer.. Detective John T. Norris is in the city, and as usual has a new firearm to display. Detective Norris has a hobby for collecting odd weapons of various kinds, but his latest acquisition is perhaps the most formidable of his whole collection. It is a cane about three feet two inches long and seemingly harmless. It has a rather long steel-pointed ferule, which, when the cane is used in walking, keeps its owner from when he is cornered by a crowd it can be turned to use as a bayonet. The cane, with this exception, shows no signs of being the dangerous weapon it is. By a simple device the long steel ferule can be loosened in a second and in its place appears the barrel of a 32-caliber gun. Another second suffices to pull back the handle of the cane and the weapon is cocked and loaded. The detective can kill a sparrow off the top of the highest telegraph pole or hit his man a square away with this little Winchester. If the first load doesn’t bring him there are five more cartridges in the handle which can be fired with light-niug-like rapidity. The hammer and trigger q,re just at the beginning of the curve in the handle of the cane. The whole barrel of the gun and the restated handle as with thousands of feet of plaited fish-lines, the work of Evan Jones, a watchman of the snag bout C. S. Senter, which plies up and down the Mississippi river.