Stevenson, cavalry sabers, W. Clark Russell, pistols, and Dumas;
Jack London, poignards, bowie knives, Stanley Weyman, Captain
Marryat, and Dumas; sword canes, Scottish claymores, Cuban
machetes, Conan Doyle, Harrison Ainsworth, dress swords, and
Dumas; stilettos, daggers, hunting knives, Fenimore Cooper, G. P.
R. James, broadswords, Dumas; Gustave Aimard, Rudyard Kipling,
dueling swords, Dumas; F. Du Boisgobey, Malay krises, Walter
Scott, stick pistols, scimitars, Anthony Hope, single sticks,
foils, Dumas; jungles of arms, jumbles of books; arms of all
makes and periods; arms on the walls, in the corners, over the
fireplace, leaning against the bookshelves, lying in ambush under
the bed, peeping out of the wardrobe, propping the windows open,
serving as paper weights; pictures, warlike and romantic prints
and engravings, pinned to the walls with daggers; in the
wardrobe, coats and hats hanging from poignards and stilettos
thrust into the wood instead of from nails or hooks. But of all
the weapons it was the rapiers, of all the books it was Dumas,
that he loved. There was Dumas in French, Dumas in English,
Dumas with pictures, Dumas unillustrated, Dumas in cloth, Dumas
in leather, Dumas in boards, Dumas in paper covers. Cleggett had
been twenty years getting these arms and books together; often he
had gone without a dinner in order to make a payment on some
blade he fancied. And each weapon was also a book to him; he
sensed their stories as he handled them; he felt the
personalities of their former owners stirring in him when he
picked them up. It was in that room that he dreamed; which is to
say, it was in that room that he lived his real life.

Cleggett walked over to his writing desk and pulled out a bulky