Jubal's old police special

Jubal's old police special is the weapon Jubal uses in a controlled test of Mike's ability to respond to danger. The pistol begins as an ordinary, tangible threat, but disappears from Jubal's hand before he can aim it; recorded images later confirm the event. Its sudden absence makes the gun evidence of Mike's power and changes how the people around him assess the risk of confronting him.

Identity and Introduction

The pistol is described as a very elderly police special kept in a lower drawer of Jubal's desk. It is introduced not in combat, but as an object in an experiment: Jubal wants Mike to understand the danger of a gun and to demonstrate how quickly he can act if a weapon is turned against him. The object’s age and familiar function make the test legible. It is a recognizable instrument of human violence, placed in the hands of a man who means to test rather than injure.

Jubal takes care to make the demonstration explicit. He shows Mike the gun, says that he will pick it up, instructs him not to act until told, and directs the women to move aside so the weapon will not be pointed at them. Only once Mike is ready does Jubal give the signal and try to aim. The arrangement makes the pistol’s disappearance a response to a deliberately staged threat, rather than an unexplained event detached from the people present.

The Test and Its Result

At Jubal's signal, the pistol vanishes from his hand. The account emphasizes the lack of an accompanying shock, jolt, or twisting movement: Jubal simply finds his hand empty. The test therefore overturns the expected relation between gun and target. Although Jubal has picked up the weapon and is trying to point it at Mike, Mike removes the threat before it can be brought to bear.

Jubal is shaking afterward, but stops himself and calls the result perfect. His reaction registers both the force of the demonstration and its successful outcome: Mike has acted before the gun was aimed at him, just as the test was designed to establish. Mike says he is happy, and Jubal agrees. The exchange frames the event as a completed lesson, not an attack: the pistol has been neutralized, and the people in the room can move from uncertainty toward a clearer understanding of what Mike can do.

Evidence and Interpretation

The camera recordings give the vanished pistol a second role: it is not only part of what the witnesses experienced but also something they can review. Jubal asks whether the event was captured, then later watches the films with Duke. The ashtray's slow descent is recorded as well, but it is the pistol footage that bears directly on the gun. Its image is small in the stereoscopic display; nevertheless, it appears to shrink away into the far distance without moving.

The recording matters because Jubal had been gripping the pistol when it disappeared. On reviewing the image, he regards that detail as confirmation that the weapon did not merely slip from his hand. He is not wholly reassured by what he sees: he qualifies his reaction to the evidence, settling on conviction rather than comfort. The camera thus makes the object's disappearance available for scrutiny without making the underlying power familiar or safe.

Duke initially suggests that the scene may be sleight of hand and expects the films to show it. Jubal instead tells him to believe what the cameras show rather than dismiss their evidence because it conflicts with expectation. The old pistol consequently becomes a point of conflict between direct evidence and habitual disbelief. Its disappearance is not explained away by the recorded image; the image strengthens the case that the ordinary explanation does not suffice.

Consequences and Significance

Jubal later uses the pistol's disappearance to challenge Duke's confidence that he could overpower Mike. He asks Duke where the gun is and directs him to find it before deciding whether he could break Mike in two. The missing weapon turns bravado into a practical question: Duke cannot treat Mike as physically vulnerable merely because Mike looks like someone who could be attacked. Jubal's warning is that a gun used against Mike would disappear as the first had, and that a more hurried attack could put the attacker at risk as well.

The pistol also alters the household's understanding of what safety requires. Jubal describes Mike as neither harmlessly gentle nor simply savage, and admits that he too does not fully understand the danger. The weapon establishes a narrow but consequential certainty: a direct attempt to shoot Mike is not a reliable way to control him. When Jubal tells Duke to stop working on the projector and later asks for duplicate prints of the films, the vanished gun remains both a warning and a record—evidence the household needs to preserve as it confronts abilities it cannot yet explain.