It was one of his favorite rapiers.

Sometimes people came out of the books--sometimes shadowy forms came back to claim the weapons that had been theirs--and Cleggett fought them.
There was not an unscarred piece of furniture in the place.

He bent the flexible blade in his hands, tried the point of it, formally saluted, brought the weapon to parade, dallied with his imaginary opponent's sword for an instant....
It seemed as if one of those terrible, but brilliant, duels, with which that room was so familiar, was about to be enacted....

But he laid the rapier down.

After all, the rapier is scarcely a thing of this century.