Handcuffs

“ Eight ruffians pushed into the cabin; one lay wounded behind the shed and one was dead. Zang they hailed with heavy oaths until a snarling command from him bade them respect the presence of the girl, unguessed by the outlaws and received as a distinct sauce to the situation. One man pawed through Original Bill's pockets and found the key to the handcuffs; he released his leader. Another cut free the wrappings of cloth about Hilma's hands and feet. ”

“ Flournoy snapped. "Three days!"
"I's willin', Marse John," the negro laughed, cutting a caper on the grass.
"All right!" the sheriff said as he stooped and picked up a pair of handcuffs. "Now listen: I intend to cut the little chain on these two manacles and attach each cuff to a ten-foot chain. When you and Pearline are married, I am going to put one of these manacles around her wrist and one around your wrist"—the negro showed the whites of his eyes—"and [87] bind you two honey-loves together with a ten-foot chain." ”

“ I consider you a dangerous man, and propose to put you in a safe place."
At this moment a ring of cold steel touched the temple of Bordine, who regarded the detective in silent astonishment.
A revolver was against his temple.
"What does this mean?" demanded Bordine.
"That you are my prisoner, forger and assassin!" hissed Silas Keene.
The next instant a pair of handcuffs were snapped over the young engineer's wrists.
CHAPTER VIII. THE DETECTIVE PUZZLED. August Bordine stood handcuffed and a prisoner, his face the picture of utter astoundment. ”

“ He pressed her flat up against a building and, holding her fast there with the pressure of his left arm across her throat, he got his nippers out of his pocket. Another second or two more of confused movement and he had her helpless. The little steel curb was twined tight about her right wrist below the rumpled white cuff. By a twist of the handles which he held gripped in his palm he could break the skin. Two twists would dislocate the wrist bone. A strong man doesn’t fight long after the links of the nippers start biting into his flesh. ”

“ Cupples peered again. "How curious," he said. "Yes, there are two large gray finger-marks on the bowl. They were not there before."
"I am Hawkshaw the detective," observed Trent. "Would it interest you to hear a short lecture on the subject of glass finger-bowls? When you take one up with your hand you leave traces upon it, usually practically invisible, which may remain for days or months. You leave the marks of your fingers. The human hand, even when quite clean, is never quite dry, and sometimes—in moments of great anxiety, for instance, Cupples—it is very moist. ”

“ They show men who’ve been crucified with the torture of the ‘human glove.’ The victim gets crucified, nails through his elbows. The hands are treated with a solution which shrivels the skin. The skin is cut out with a razor, round the wrist, and peeled off, till it hangs by the finger nails—the ‘human glove.’ I’m not sparing you. ”

“ They fit better around the neck. It is better to have the collar separate and for some reasons the cuffs also—dress shirts excepted, perhaps. Let your collars always be in and strictly within the fashion, unless you would look like a rowdy, in which case you are at liberty to go to any extreme you please and to gratify any vulgar caprice you may chance to have. Your cuffs should be no larger than is necessary to admit of your slipping your hand through them when they are buttoned. Why should a man wear a cuff so large that one may see up to his elbow? ”

“ Now, with the right hand pull up the left sleeve, but leave the handkerchief in the bend of the left arm, where it will be hidden by the folds of the sleeve, taking care, however, that the small piece of red silk protrudes from the closed right hand, deluding the spectators into the belief that the handkerchief is still in your hand—for do they not see the corner of it? Now, rub the hands together and roll the piece into a small pellet, and palm it between the bend of the thumb and first finger. Slap your hands together, and show both sides. ”

“ Merely a pair of steel rings clamped to one's wrists and coupled together with a scrap of chain, but they'll twist your arms and hamper the movements of your body in a way to constantly catch the eye of the passer-by. When a man is coming toward you, you can tell that he is handcuffed before you see the cuffs. ”

“ A sleeve that falls in lace and frills just below the elbow hides many defects, besides softening, and rendering delicate, the lower arm and the hand.
A sleeve long enough to turn upward as a cuff, is much more effective than a simulated cuff, just as the thing itself is always better than an imitation. A sleeve that stops short at the wrist joint should be relieved by lace to be artistic. ”

“ An individual presents himself before one of the officiating magi, crying and lamenting, and requests him to cut a fillet of skin from his arm, which he extends for that purpose. The devout operator thrusts a sharp instrument through the skin near the wrist, then introduces the knife, and cuts out a piece of the required length, sometimes extending the excision entirely to the shoulder. Another will request bands of skin to be cut from his arm. ”

“ The process by which it is done is slow, and intended to be merciful, as the skin of the hand is turned back, and the wrist then separated at the joint by a small knife, not injuring the bones of the fore- arm, and also allowing some flesh to form a flap. ”

“ I have met thousands of persons who claimed that the rope trick as well as the handcuff trick was accomplished by folding the hand together or by making the wrist larger than the hand, but I have never met the man or woman who could make the hand smaller than the wrist. ”

“ And now let us return to the hand with the reel of cotton.
Having roughly sketched the forefinger, the thumb, and the general proportions of the wrist and hand, we should then pay a little more attention to the hand itself, the back of which lies like a flat upright line breaking into small indications of the second or third knuckle.The first knuckle is slightly indented, and the root of the first finger descends in a firm swelling curve to the folded muscle of the thumb. ”

“ The opposite defect to this is a dragging from forearm to elbow, diagram 51. In this defect a most uncomfortable pressure is felt when the arms rest at the sides, but plenty of ease exists for the arm being brought forward; there is a lot of fulness and foul material at the top of hind-arm, and a general tendency for the cuff to stand away from the hand. ”

“ You can fasten them by a band of elastic without a button, or have the thumb separated from the body of the glove and sewn on to a piece of elastic, the other end of which is fastened to the back of the glove, and long enough to pass once round the wrist ”

“ When you get a pair of cuffs nicely laundried, so that they are stiff and shining, how do you enjoy struggling with them to get the cuff button in, or to get it out—especially if you are in a hurry?"
This query produced much merriment among two of the girls, which the elder sister presently explained:
"You ought to ask that question of our brother Dick. He does have the most trying times with his cuff buttons. He wants his [119] cuffs so stiff they can almost walk alone, and then he fusses and struggles to get the buttons in so as not to break the cuff. ”

“ Then they measured my right thumb, and desired no more; for by a mathematical computation, that twice round the thumb is once round the wrist, and so on to the neck and the waist, and by the help of my old shirt, which I displayed on the ground before them for a pattern, they fitted me exactly. Three hundred tailors were employed in the same manner to make me clothes; but they had another contrivance for taking my measure. ”

“ Lest the hands should be recognized as belonging to the mediums, they are kept in a constant shaking motion while in view; and to make the hands look large or small, they spread or press together the fingers. With that peculiar rapid motion imparted to them, four hands in the aperture will appear to be half-a-dozen. A lady’s flesh colored kid glove, nicely stuffed with cotton, is sometimes exhibited as a female hand—a critical observation of it never being allowed. It does [78] not take the medium long to draw the knots close to their wrists again. ”

“ Pretty and mysterious as this trick is, it is very simple. The handkerchief which is produced from the empty hands is concealed in a hollow metal finger, which is painted a flesh-color, and is open at the lower end, where it is cut in the following shape >. This finger is placed between the second and third fingers of the left hand, and as the performer keeps all the fingers close together, and turns his hands rapidly backward and forward when showing them to be empty, it will be a keen eye indeed that will detect the apparatus. ”

“ The young cutter should locate for himself a permanent mark at the wrist, so that he is able to take such measure always the same, and whenever he finds that his sleeves become too long or too short, he can readily make the necessary change in measuring. ”

“ The candle, “our peculiar and household planet!” as Charles Lamb [Pg 136] designates it, has wellnigh become a thing of the past; but in the old days of candle-light the snuffers were among the most unmanageable of domestic implements to a left-handed man. They are so peculiarly adapted to the right hand that the impediment can only be overcome by the dexterous shift of inserting the left thumb and finger below instead of above. As to the right-handed adaptation of scissors, it is admitted by others, but I am unconscious of any difficulty that their alteration would remove. ”

“ A nineteen-year-old girl and a man in the forties, who had each but one normal hand, the other, instead of fingers, having only little prominences of skin without bones or muscles, thought they bent their absent fingers when they bent the deformed stump. Tickling these eminences, or binding a string about the fore-arm, caused the same sensations as in amputated persons, and a pressure on the ulnar nerve made the outer fingers tingle. ”

“ Make a cap to fit the hand, and drape a pocket-handkerchief over all, fastening it as a shawl in front. The old woman so made may be made to seem to speak by slightly moving the knuckle of the thumb up and down, and to smoke by sticking a pipe between the forefinger and the thumb, the space between which joints will represent the mouth. The above illustration is a fair representation of the apple woman's face, and a careful inspection will show how the thumb and fingers are to be arranged. ”

“ Neck and Pocket Handkerchiefs.—These are made of a great variety of materials, as silk, muslin, cambric, lawn, and net. The neck handkerchiefs are generally a half square, and are hemmed all round. It is a good plan to turn up the extreme corners, as it makes it more strong and durable. A tape is set on, which comes ’round the waist, and ties in front. Sometimes a broad [46] muslin hem is put on the two straight sides, which looks extremely well. Some ladies work a border to their neck handkerchief, which gives to those made of net the appearance of lace. ”

“ I had quarrelled with Lisbeth; had quarrelled beyond all hope of redemption and forgiveness, desperately, irrevocably, and it had all come about through a handkerchief—Mr. Selwyn's handkerchief.
At a casual glance this may appear all very absurd, not to say petty; but then I have frequently noticed that insignificant things very often serve for the foundation of great; and incidentally quite a surprising number of lives have been ruined by a handkerchief. ”

“ But these two chances, multiplied into one another, yield an ultimate chance of about one to four thousand trillions that the prisoner's left thumb will exactly resemble the print of some other person's thumb, both as to the pattern and the scar which crosses the pattern; in other words such a coincidence is an utter impossibility. ”

“ I advance in a stumbling hurry, while the fever consumes me, blazes, and dizzies my brain. My feet stop, but with such a shock that one would believe them caught by invisible hands, risen from the soil; my fingers run over the wall, groping and fumbling that spot in the wall. What do my fingers want? What is the thought of my fingers? I had a pen-knife in my pocket; and all at once I let my green umbrella fall to the ground to take my pen-knife from my pocket. ”

“ The culprit being securely tied to a tree or post receives on his naked back the number of lashes assigned him by a whip formed of several small knotted cords which sometimes cut through the skin at every stroke.61 However, strange it may appear, a soldier will often receive the severest stripes without uttering a groan or once shrinking from the lash even while the blood flows freely from the lacerated wounds. ”

“ You have any number of regular pearl cuff-links, anyhow, that can be worn to society functions, and not as if you were an end-man in a minstrel show, which is all that those big, glaring diamond things are fit for! [Pg 129] Mr. Holmes told me he had replaced all the shoes that disappeared last night, as he took them for the purpose of finding out where the stolen cuff-buttons were by his peculiar hocus-pocus methods, so you can't accuse me of having taken them too. I found my pair of shoes in a corner of my room when I returned there after breakfast. ”

“ There are a few bad habits which older children fall into such as lip-sucking or thumb-sucking or finger-sucking which not only narrow and deform the upper jaw, but likewise deform the hand itself. They should be stopped at the earliest opportunity by pinning the sleeve to the bedding or putting mittens on the hand or putting a slight splint on the anterior bend of the elbow. ”