The Judas Pair

The culmination in weapons was the true flintlock—faster, and quicker to fire again should you miss. This may not be important, but only if your enemies are all weathercocks. Once the idea caught on, the wheel lock was replaced and the true flintlock came onto the historical scene.

The French had a crack at making them, and wonderful attempts they were. Some superb examples exist. I've had many with knobs on, gold inlay, silver escutcheons, Damascus-barreled beauties with delicate carving on precision locks that would melt your heart. And some beautiful Spanish miquelet pistols—a Mediterranean fancy of a strangely bulky style—are decorated to perfection. I admit that tears come to my eyes writing this, mostly because everybody else has them, not me. And Dutch too, though their taste for carving ugly ivory heads and figurines on the grips gives me the willies. All nations did their stuff on the flintlock, from the early snaphances and English doglocks to the final great explosion of exquisite functional murderous perfection in—you've guessed it—dear old peaceful Britain.

Came the industrial boom days and an outburst of inventive genius which was to catapult these islands into wealth, prominence, and power. Don't think our armies won by unaided valor, though they had it in plenty. They used an improved flintlock, standardized by a thoughtful young English squire, Oliver Cromwell by name. And it fired faster, surer, and noisier than anyone else's, which was a blessing in war.

From then the flintlock didn't look back. Inventors added devices you would hardly believe: flintlocks that fired under water (work it out), flintlock repeating rifles, flintlock revolvers, flintlock machine guns, ingenious safety catches that actually worked even if you forgot to slip them on, breech-loading flintlocks by the score, all the time edging toward a shorter firing time between pulling the trigger and sending regrets to your opponent's widow.

And ladies were at it too—no more than you'd expect—in subtle little ways having a charm all their own. Muff pistols, made for folding away in their hot little hands, were their scene, but they also liked tiny collapsible guns built into their prayer-books—presumably in the Exodus bit. Church was more exciting in those days.

By the 1770s dueling was in, and here comes the Judas pair. Or, rather, here they don't come.

Be careful, O ye innocent purchaser of these valuable—I mean, and repeat, valuable—weapons. They should be Damascus-barreled (i.e., spiral-welded barrels) and, at their best, brown because of a veneer of faint rust skillfully applied to the metal by makers of genius. They should have walnut stocks, and usually be rifle-grooved. But if the barrel measures less than nine inches, utter a loud derisory snort and mentally divide the asking price by three, if not four, because you are being had by some dealer who is trying to pass off a pair of officer's holster pistols as genuine duelers. A sneer is useful at this stage. On the other hand, if, say, they have ten-inch barrels, try to keep cool and go on to the next step, which is to look for decoration. Almost any metallic decoration on the barrels or on the locks disqualifies, because dueling, remember, was naughty, and silver squiggles and gold inlays tended to catch the first gleam of light on Wandsworth Common and reflect it unerringly into the eagle eyes of London's annoyed watchmen. You are allowed one silver escutcheon plate on the butt. And even this displeases you, because the real flintlock geniuses of Regency London knew their onions. Somber perfection was their aim. They achieved it.

Pick up a genuine Regency dueler. Hold it with your arm straight down. Now lift as if about to aim. Its weight makes it wobble in the strongest fist as it rises. Up it comes, wobbling and waggling, and you begin to wonder how they managed to hit anything with the long barrel waving in the breeze. Then, just about on level with your bottom rib, something so remarkable happens you won't believe me, but it's the truth—a genuine flintlock dueler begins to lift itself. Honestly. Try it. The weight evaporates. The wobble disappears. Up it goes, seemingly of its own accord, and all you need to do is point it right. Its perfect balance, its meticulous design, and the love and joy expended in its making have achieved the seemingly impossible. That's the genuine dueler— grim, somber, almost dull of appearance, lying with its identically matched partner in a wooden case with powder flask, bullet molds, flints, separate ramrod, and screwdrivers. It reeks of class. It screams of perfection.

A pair of mint—that is, perfectly preserved—cased flintlock duelers would buy you a couple of new cars nowadays, minimum. A mint pair of them with a pedigree—belonging, say, to some hero, a famous dandy of the time, or perhaps some pal of Beau Brummell's or a member of the then royalty—will virtually buy you anything. If you discover such a pair of old pistols in a dirty old box upstairs, rush to the nearest church and light a candle in thanks to your Maker—Bate, Monlong, Murdoch, Pauly, whoever it turns out to be. Then retire for life in affluence.

Finally, one point more. Just like Queen Anne silver, each weapon is, or should be, named on the lock. Don't throw value away. Your famous silversmith's monogram can double or treble the value of your fruit bowl. So your famous maker's name can send your find ever upward in value. The names are too many to give here, but Joseph Manton; John Manton; Wogden, who gave his name as a nickname to dueling (a 'Wogden affair'); the brilliant Joseph Egg; Henry Nock the Great and his younger relative Sam that he had a terrible row with; Mortimer; Tatham, who blew himself to pieces on a cannon for reasons best not gone into; Freeman; the fashionable Rigby; the Reverend Alexander Forsyth, who invented the percussion system, which did away with flintlocks altogether and doubled the killing speed—they are some you should not lose on your way home.

And last but not least, one 'Durs' (nearly as bad as Lovejoy) Egg, flintlock maker to kings and princes, genius extraordinaire, maker—so they say—of the one and only Judas pair of flintlock duelers. Well.

This young man came to London about 1770 to seek his fortune. With another Swiss, Pauly, he became interested in the science of pneumatics and air propulsion, and between them they produced a variety of odd but lethal air guns. In later years he lost a fortune by inventing a flying machine, the Flying Dolphin, which he kept in a hangar down Knightsbridge way, to London society's huge delight and derision. A genius whose habit it was to pattern the walnut stocks of his flintlocks with a curiously stippled star design, to aid in the grip. He signed himself always by his nickname, Durs.

The legend is that he made twelve—only twelve—pairs of dueling pistols. The legend goes on to say that he privately made a thirteenth pair, when something terrible happened. What it was the legend fails to explain.

That thirteenth pair, sinister weapons of ill-omen, were his last. They were never found or heard of except as obscure rumors. Any antique dealer worth his salt will laugh till he falls down if you ask after them. They don't exist, and everybody knows it.

That thirteenth pair of flintlock duelers is the Judas pair.

I drew breath.

'I've bad news, Mr. Field,' I managed to get out.

'Bad news?'

'The Judas pair. They don't exist,' I said firmly, and rose to get my emergency beer. 'They're a myth, a legend. The antique trade's riddled with myths.'

'Is it really?' He was oddly calm for somebody who'd just been put down.

'Really,' I told him. No use mucking about.