"Adam and Colin," Pierre recognized them before they entered.
Both men were past fifty. Colin MacBride was a six-foot black Highlander; black eyes, black hair, and a black weeping-willow mustache, from under which a stubby pipe jutted. Except when he emptied it of ashes and refilled it, it was a permanent fixture of his weather-beaten face. Trehearne was somewhat shorter, and fair; his sandy mustache, beginning to turn gray at the edges, was clipped to micrometric exactness.
They shook hands with Rand, who set Hester back in her place. Trehearne took the matchlock out of Pierre's hands and looked at it wistfully.
"Some chaps have all the luck," he commented. "What do you think of it, Mr. Rand?" Pierre, who had made the introductions, had respected the detective's present civilian status. "Or don't you collect long-arms?"
"I don't collect them, but I'm interested in anything that'll shoot. That's a good one. Those things are scarce, too."
"Yes. You'll find a hundred wheel locks for every matchlock, and yet there must have been a hundred matchlocks made for every wheel lock."
"Matchlocks were cheap, and wheel locks were expensive," MacBride suggested. He spoke with the faintest trace of Highland accent. "Naturally, they got better care."
"It would take a Scot to think of that," Karen said. "Now, you take a Scot who collects guns, and you have something!"
"That's only part of it," Rand said. "I believe that by the last quarter of the seventeenth century, most of the matchlocks that were lying around had been scrapped, and the barrels used in making flintlocks. Hester Prynne, over there, could easily have started her career as a matchlock. And then, a great many matchlocks went into the West African slave and ivory trade, and were promptly ruined by the natives."
"Yes, and I seem to recall having seen Spanish and French miguelet muskets that looked as though they had been altered directly from matchlock, retaining the original stock and even the original lock-plate," Trehearne added.
"So have I, come to think of it." Rand stole a glance at his wrist-watch. It was nine five; he was wishing Stephen Gresham would put in an appearance.
MacBride and Trehearne joined Pierre and the girls in showing him Gresham's collection; evidently they all knew it almost as well as their own. After a while, Irene Gresham ushered in Philip Cabot. He, too, was past middle age, with prematurely white hair and a thin, scholarly face. According to Hollywood type-casting, he might have been a professor, or a judge, or a Boston Brahmin, but never a stockbroker.
Irene Gresham wanted to know what everybody wanted to drink. Rand wanted Bourbon and plain water; MacBride voted for Jamaica rum; Trehearne and Cabot favored brandy and soda, and Pierre and the girls wanted Bacardi and Coca-Cola.
"And Stephen'll want rye and soda, when he gets here," Irene said. "Come on, girls; let's rustle up the drinks."
Before they returned, Stephen Gresham came in, lighting a cigar. It was just nine twenty-two.
"Well, I see everybody's here," he said. "No; where's Karen?"
Pierre told him. A few minutes later the women returned, carrying bottles and glasses; when the flurry of drink-mixing had subsided, they all sat down.
"Let's get the business over first," Gresham suggested. "I suppose you've gone over the collection already, Jeff?"
"Yes, and first of all, I want to know something. When was the last that any of you saw it?"
Gresham and Pierre had been in Fleming's gunroom just two days before the fatal "accident."
"And can you tell me if the big Whitneyville Colt was still there, then?" Rand asked. "Or the Rappahannock Forge, or the Collier flintlock, or the Hall?"
"Why, of course ... My God, aren't they there now?" Gresham demanded.
Rand shook his head. "And if Fleming still had them two days before he was killed, then somebody's been weeding out the collection since. Doing it very cleverly, too," he added. "You know how that stuff's arranged, and how conspicuous a missing pistol would be. Well, when I was going over the collection, I found about two dozen pieces of the most utter trash, things Lane Fleming wouldn't have allowed in the house, all hanging where some really good item ought to have been." He took a paper from his pocket and read off a list of the dubious items, interpolating comments on the condition, and a list of the real rarities which Gresham had mentioned the day before, which were now missing.
"All that good stuff was there the last time I saw the collection," Gresham said. "What do you say, Pierre?"
"I had the Hall pistol in my hands," Pierre said. "And I remember looking at the Rappahannock Forge."
Trehearne broke in to ask how many English dog-locks there were, and if the snaphaunce Highlander and the big all-steel wheel lock were still there. At the same time, Cabot was inquiring about the Springfield 1818 and the Virginia Manufactory pistols.
"I'll have a complete, itemized list in a few days," Rand said. "In the meantime, I'd like a couple of you to look at the collection and help me decide what's missing. I'm going to try to catch the thief, and then get at the fence through him."
"Think Rivers might have gotten the pistols?" Gresham asked. "He's the crookedest dealer I know of."
"He's the crookedest dealer anybody knows of," Rand amended. "The only thing, he's a little too anxious to buy the collection, for somebody who's just skimmed off the cream."
"Ten thousand dollars isn't much in the way of anxiety," Cabot said. "I'd call that a nominal bid, to avoid suspicion."
"The dope's changed a little on that." Rand brought him up to date. "Rivers's offer is now twenty-five thousand."
There was a stunned hush, followed by a gust of exclamations.
"Guid Lorrd!" The Scots accent fairly curdled on Colin MacBride's tongue. "We canna go over that!"
"I'm afraid not; twenty would be about our limit," Gresham agreed. "And with the best items gone ..." He shrugged.
Pierre and Karen were looking at each other in blank misery; their dream of establishing themselves in the arms business had blown up in their faces.
"Oh, he's talking through his hat!" Cabot declared. "He just hopes we'll lose interest, and then he'll buy what's left of the collection for a song."
"Maybe he knows the collection's been robbed," Trehearne suggested. "That would let him out, later. He'd accuse you or the Fleming estate of holding out the best pieces, and then offer to take what's left for about five thousand."
"Well, that would be presuming that he knows the collection has been robbed," Cabot pointed out. "And the only way he'd know that would be if he, himself, had bought the stolen pistols."
"Well, does anybody need a chaser to swallow that?" Trehearne countered. "I'm bloody sure I don't."
Karen Lawrence shook her head. "No, he'd pay twenty-five thousand for the collection, just as it stands, to keep Pierre and me out of the arms business. This end of the state couldn't support another arms-dealer, and with the reputation he's made for himself, he'd be the one to go under." She stubbed out her cigarette and finished her drink. "If you don't mind, Pierre, I think I'll go home."
"I'm not feeling very festive, myself, right now." The ex-Marine rose and held out his hand to Rand. "Don't get the idea, Jeff, that anybody here holds this against you. You have your clients' interests to look out for."
"Well, if this be treason make the most of it," Rand said, "but I hope Rivers doesn't go through with it. I'd like to see you people get the collection, and I'd hate to see a lot of nice pistols like that get into the hands of a damned swindler like Rivers.... Maybe I can catch him with the hot-goods on him, and send him up for about three-to-five."
"Oh, he's too smart for that," Karen despaired. "He can get away with faking, but the dumbest jury in the world would know what receiving stolen goods was, and he knows it."
Dorothy and Irene Gresham accompanied Pierre and Karen downstairs. After they had gone, Gresham tried, not very successfully, to inject more life into the party with another round of drinks. For a while they discussed the personal and commercial iniquities of Arnold Rivers. Trehearne and MacBride, who had come together in the latter's car, left shortly, and half an hour later, Philip Cabot rose and announced that he, too, was leaving.
"You haven't seen my collection since before the war, Jeff," he said. "If you're not sleepy, why don't you stop at my place and see what's new? You're staying at the Flemings'; my house is along your way, about a mile on the other side of the railroad."
They went out and got into their cars. Rand kept Cabot's taillight in sight until the broker swung into his drive and put his car in the garage. Rand parked beside the road, took the Leech & Rigdon out of the glove-box, and got out, slipping the Confederate revolver under his trouser-band. He was pulling down his vest to cover the butt as he went up the walk and joined his friend at the front door.
Cabot's combination library and gunroom was on the first floor. Like Rand's own, his collection was hung on racks over low bookcases on either side of the room. It was strictly a collector's collection, intensely specialized. There were all but a few of the U.S. regulation single-shot pistols, a fair representation of secondary types, most of the revolvers of the Civil War, and all the later revolvers and automatics. In addition, there were British pistols of the Revolution and 1812, Confederate revolvers, a couple of Spanish revolvers of 1898, the Lugers and Mausers and Steyers of the first World War, and the pistols of all our allies, beginning with the French weapons of the Revolution.
"I'm having the devil's own time filling in for this last war," Cabot said. "I have a want-ad running in theRifleman, and I've gotten a few: that Nambu, and that Japanese Model-14, and the Polish Radom, and the Italian Glisenti, and that Tokarev, and, of course, the P-'38 and the Canadian Browning; but it's going to take the devil's own time. I hope nobody starts another war, for a few years, till I can get caught up on the last one."
Rand was looking at the Confederate revolvers. Griswold & Grier, Haiman Brothers, Tucker & Sherrod, Dance Brothers & Park, Spiller & Burr—there it was: Leech & Rigdon. He tapped it on the cylinder with a finger.
"Wasn't it one of those things that killed Lane Fleming?" he asked.
"Leech & Rigdon? So I'm told." Cabot hesitated. "Jeff, I saw that revolver, not four hours before Fleming was shot. Had it in my hands; looked it over carefully." He shook his head. "It absolutely was not loaded. It was empty, and there was rust in the chambers."
"Then how the hell did he get shot?" Rand wanted to know.
"That I couldn't say; I'm only telling you how he didn't get shot. Here, this is how it was. It was a Thursday, and I'd come halfway out from town before I remembered that I hadn't bought a copy ofTime, so I stopped at Biddle's drugstore, in the village, for one. Just as I was getting into my car, outside, Lane Fleming drove up and saw me. He blew his horn at me, and then waved to me with this revolver in his hand. I went over and looked at it, and he told me he'd found it hanging back of the counter at a barbecue-stand, where the road from Rosemont joins Route 22. There had been some other pistols with it, and I went to see them later, but they were all trash. The Leech & Rigdon had been the only decent thing there, and Fleming had talked it out of this fellow for ten dollars. He was disgustingly gleeful about it, particularly as it was a better specimen than mine."
"Would you know it, if you saw it again?" Rand asked.
"Yes. I remember the serials. I always look at serials on Confederate arms. The highest known serial number for a Leech & Rigdon is 1393; this one was 1234."
Rand pulled the .36 revolver from his pants-leg and gave it a quick glance; the number was 1234. He handed it to Cabot.
"Is this it?" he asked.
Cabot checked the number. "Yes. And I remember this bruise on the left grip; Fleming was saying that he was glad it would be on the inside, so it wouldn't show when he hung it on the wall." He carried the revolver to the desk and held it under the light. "Why, this thing wasn't fired at all!" he exclaimed. "I thought that Fleming might have loaded it, meaning to target it—he had a pistol range back of his house—but the chambers are clean." He sniffed at it. "Hoppe's Number Nine," he said. "And I can see traces of partly dissolved rust, and no traces of fouling. What the devil, Jeff?"
"It probably hasn't been fired since Appomattox," Rand agreed. "Philip, do you think all this didn't-know-it-was-loaded routine might be an elaborate suicide build-up, either before or after the fact?"
"Absolutely not!" There was a trace of impatience in Cabot's voice. "Lane Fleming wasn't the man to commit suicide. I knew him too well ever to believe that."
"I heard a rumor that he was about to lose control of his company," Rand mentioned. "You know how much Premix meant to him."
"That's idiotic!" Cabot's voice was openly scornful, now, and he seemed a little angry that Rand should believe such a story, as though his confidence in his friend's intelligence had been betrayed. "Good Lord, Jeff, where did you ever hear a yarn like that?"
"Quote, usually well-informed sources, unquote."
"Well, they were unusually ill-informed, that time," Cabot replied. "Take my word for it, there's absolutely nothing in it."
"So it wasn't an accident, and it wasn't suicide," Rand considered. "Philip, what is the prognosis on this merger of Premix and National Milling & Packaging, now that Lane Fleming's opposition has been, shall we say, liquidated?"
Cabot's head jerked up; he looked at Rand in shocked surprise.
"My God, you don't think...?" he began. "Jeff, are you investigating Lane Fleming's death?"
"I was retained to sell the collection," Rand stated. "Now, I suppose, I'll have to find out who's been stealing those pistols, and recover them, and jail the thief and the fence. But I was not retained to investigate the death of Lane Fleming. And I do not do work for which I am not paid," he added, with mendacious literalness.
"I see. Well, the merger's going through. It won't be official until the sixteenth of May, when the Premix stockholders meet, but that's just a formality. It's all cut and dried and in the bag now. Better let me pick you up a little Premix; there's still some lying around. You'll make a little less than four-for-one on it."
"I'd had that in mind when I asked you about the merger," Rand said. "I have about two thousand with you, haven't I?" He did a moment's mental arithmetic, then got out his checkbook. "Pick me up about a hundred shares," he told the broker. "I've been meaning to get in on this ever since I heard about it."
"I don't see how you did hear about it," Cabot said. "For obvious reasons, it's being kept pretty well under the hat."
Rand grinned. "Quote, usually well-informed sources, unquote. Not the sources mentioned above."
"Jeff, you know, this damned thing's worrying me," Cabot told him, writing a receipt and exchanging it for Rand's check. "I've been trying to ignore it, but I simply can't. Do you really think Lane Fleming was murdered by somebody who wanted to see this merger consummated and who knew that that was an impossibility as long as Fleming was alive?"
"Philip, I don't know. And furthermore, I don't give a damn," Rand lied. "If somebody wants me to look into it, and pays me my possibly exaggerated idea of what constitutes fair compensation, I will. And I'll probably come up with Fleming's murderer, dead or alive. But until then, it is simply no epidermis off my scrotum. And I advise you to adopt a similar attitude."
They changed the subject, then, to the variety of pistols developed and used by the opposing nations in World War II, and the difficulties ahead of Cabot in assembling even a fairly representative group of them. Rand promised to mail Cabot a duplicate copy of his list of the letter-code symbols used by the Nazis to indicate the factories manufacturing arms for them, as well as copies of some old wartime Intelligence dope on enemy small-arms. At a little past one, he left Cabot's home and returned to the Fleming residence.
There were four cars in the garage. The Packard sedan had not been moved, but the station-wagon was facing in the opposite direction. The gray Plymouth was in the space from which Rand had driven earlier in the evening, and a black Chrysler Imperial had been run in on the left of the Plymouth. He put his own car in on the right of the station-wagon, made sure that the Leech & Rigdon was locked in his glove-box, and closed and locked the garage doors. Then he went up into the house, through the library, and by the spiral stairway to the gunroom.
The garage had been open, he recalled, at the time of Lane Fleming's death. The availability of such an easy means of undetected ingress and egress threw the suspect field wide open. Anybody who knew the habits of the Fleming household could have slipped up to the gunroom, while Varcek was in his lab, Dunmore was in the bathroom, and Gladys and Geraldine were in the parlor. As he crossed the hall to his own room, Rand was thinking of how narrowly Arnold Rivers had escaped a disastrous lawsuit and criminal action by the death of Lane Fleming.
When Rand came down to breakfast the next morning, he found Gladys, Nelda, and a man whom he decided, by elimination, must be Anton Varcek, already at the table. The latter rose as Rand entered, and bowed jerkily as Gladys verified the guess with an introduction.
He was about Rand's own age and height; he had a smooth-shaven, tight-mouthed face, adorned with bushy eyebrows, each of which was almost as heavy as Rand's mustache. It was a face that seemed tantalizingly familiar, and Rand puzzled for a moment, then nodded mentally. Of course he had seen a face like that hundreds of times, in newsreels and news-photos, and, once in pre-war Berlin, its living double. Rudolf Hess. He wondered how much deeper the resemblance went, and tried not to let it prejudice him.
Nelda greeted him with a trowelful of sweetness and a dash of bedroom-bait. Gladys waved him to a vacant seat at her right and summoned the maid who had been serving breakfast. After Rand had indicated his preference of fruit and found out what else there was to eat, he inquired where the others were.
"Oh, Fred's still dressing; he'll be down in a minute," Nelda told him. "And Geraldine won't; she never eats with her breakfast."
Varcek winced slightly at this, and shifted the subject by inquiring if Rand were a professional antiques-expert.
"No, I'm a lily-pure amateur," Rand told him. "Or was until I took this job. I have a collection of my own, and I'm supposed to be something of an authority. My business is operating a private detective agency."
"But you are here only as an arms-expert?" Varcek inquired. "You are not making any sort of detective investigation?"
"That's right," Rand assured him. "This is practically a paid vacation, for me. First time I ever handled anything like this; it's a real pleasure to be working at something I really enjoy, for a change."
Varcek nodded. "Yes, I can understand that. My own work, for instance. I would continue with my research even if I were independently wealthy and any sort of work were unnecessary."
"Tell Colonel Rand what you're working on now," Nelda urged.
Varcek gave a small mirthless laugh. "Oh, Colonel Rand would be no more interested than I would be in his pistols," he objected, then turned to Rand. "It is a series of experiments having to do with the chemical nature of life," he said. Another perfunctory chuckle. "No, I am not trying to re-create Frankenstein's monster. The fact is, I am working with fruit flies."
"Something about heredity?" Rand wanted to know.
Varcek laughed again, with more amusement. "So! One says: 'Fruit flies,' and immediately another thinks: 'Heredity.' It is practically a standard response. Only, in this case, I am investigating the effect of diet changes. I use fruit flies because of their extreme adaptability. If I find that I am on the right track, I shall work with mice, next."
"Fred Dunmore mentioned a packaged diabetic ration you'd developed," Rand mentioned.
"Oh, yes." Varcek shrugged. "Yes. Something like an Army field-ration, for diabetics to carry when traveling, or wherever proper food may be unobtainable. That is for the company; soon we put it on the market, and make lots of money. But this other, that is my own private work."
Dunmore had come in while Varcek was speaking and had seated himself beside his wife.
"Don't let him kid you, Colonel," he said. "Anton's just as keen about that dollar as the rest of us. I don't know what he's cooking up, up there in the attic, but I'll give ten-to-one we'll be selling it in twenty-five-cent packages inside a year, and selling plenty of them.... Oh, and speaking about that dollar; how did you make out with Gresham and his friends?"
"I didn't. They'd expected to pay about twenty thousand for the collection; Rivers's offer has them stopped. And even if they could go over twenty-five, I think Rivers would raise them. He's afraid to let them get the collection; Pierre Jarrett and Karen Lawrence intended using their share of it to go into the old-arms business, in competition with him."
"Uh-huh, that's smart," Dunmore approved. "It's always better to take a small loss stopping competition than to let it get too big for you. You save a damn-sight bigger loss later."
"How soon do you think the pistols will be sold?" Gladys asked.
"Oh, in about a month, at the outside," Rand said, continuing to explain what had to be done first.
"Well, I'm glad of that," Varcek commented. "I never liked those things, and after what happened ... The sooner they can be sold, the better."
Breakfast finally ended, and Varcek and Dunmore left for the Premix plant. Rand debated for a moment the wisdom of speaking to Gladys about the missing pistols, then decided to wait until his suspicions were better verified. After a few minutes in the gunroom, going over Lane Fleming's arms-books on the shelf over the workbench without finding any trace of the book in which he had catalogued his collection, he got his hat and coat, went down to the garage, and took out his car.
It had stopped raining for the time being; the dingy sky showed broken spots like bits of bluing on a badly-rusted piece of steel. As he got out of his car in front of Arnold Rivers's red-brick house, he was wondering just how he was going to go about what he wanted to do. After all ...
The door of the shop was unlocked, and opened with a slow clanging of the door-chime, but the interior was dark. All the shades had been pulled, and the lights were out. For a moment Rand stood in the doorway, adjusting his eyes to the darkness within and wondering where everybody was.
Then, in the path of light that fell inward from the open door, he saw two feet in tan shoes, toes up, at the end of tweed-trousered legs, on the floor. An instant later he stepped inside, pulled the door shut after him, and was using his pen-light to find the electric switch.
For a second or so after he snapped it nothing happened, and then the darkness was broken by the flickering of fluorescent tubes. When they finally lit, he saw the shape on the floor, arms outflung, the inverted rifle above it. For a seemingly long time he stood and stared at the grotesquely transfixed body of Arnold Rivers.
The dead man lay on his back, not three feet beyond the radius of the door, in a pool of blood that was almost dried and gave the room a sickly-sweet butchershop odor. Under the back of Rand's hand, Rivers's cheek was cold; his muscles had already begun to stiffen inrigor mortis. Rand examined the dead man's wounds. His coat was stained with blood and gashed in several places; driven into his chest by a downward blow, the bayonet of a short German service Mauser pinned him to the floor like a specimen on a naturalist's card. Beside the one in which the weapon remained, there were three stab-wounds in the chest, and the lower part of the face was disfigured by what looked like a butt-blow. Bending over, Rand could see the imprint of the Mauser butt-plate on Rivers's jaw; on the butt-plate itself were traces of blood.
The rifle, a regulation German infantry weapon, the long-familiarGewehr '98in its most recent modification, was a Nazi product, bearing the eagle and encircled swastika of the Third Reich and the code-letterslza—the symbol of the Mauserwerke A.G. plant at Karlsruhe. It had doubtless been sold to Rivers by some returned soldier. In a rack beside the door were a number of other bolt-action military rifles—a Krag, a couple of Arisakas, a long German infantry rifle of the first World War, a Greek Mannlicher, a Mexican Mauser, a British short model Lee-Enfield. All had fixed bayonets; between the Lee-Enfield and one of the Arisakas there was a vacancy.
Rivers's carved ivory cigarette-holder was lying beside the body, crushed at the end as though it had been stepped on. A half-smoked cigarette had been in it; it, too, was crushed. There was no evidence of any great struggle, however; the attack which had ended the arms-dealer's life must have come as a complete surprise. He had probably been holding the cigarette-holder in his hand when the butt-blow had been delivered, and had dropped it and flung up his arms instinctively. Thereupon, his assailant had reversed his weapon and driven the bayonet into his chest. The first blow, no doubt, had been fatal—it could have been any of the three stabs in the chest—but the killer had given him two more, probably while he was on the floor. Then, grasping the rifle in both hands, he had stood over his victim and pinned the body to the floor. That last blow could have only been inspired by pure anger and hatred.
Yet, apparently, Rivers had been unaware of his visitor's murderous intentions, even while the rifle was being taken from the rack. Rand strolled back through the shop, looking about. Someone had been here with Rivers for some time; the dealer and another man had sat by the fire, drinking and smoking. On the low table was a fifth of Haig & Haig, a siphon, two glasses, a glass bowl containing water that had evidently melted from ice-cubes, and an ashtray. In the ashtray were a number of River's cigarette butts, all holder-crimped, and a quantity of ash, some of it cigar-ash. There was no cigar-butt, and no band or cellophane wrapper.
The fire on the hearth had burned out and the ashes were cold. They were not all wood-ashes; a considerable amount of paper—no, cardboard—had been burned there also. Poking gently with the point of a sword he took from a rack, Rand discovered that what had been burned had been a number of cards, about six inches by four, one of which had, somehow, managed to escape the flames with nothing more than a charred edge. Improvising tweezers from a pipe-cleaner, he picked this up and looked at it. It had been typewritten:
4850:
English Screw-Barrel F/L Pocket Pistol.Queen Anne type, side hammer with pan attached to barrel, steel barrel and frame. Marked: Wilson, Minories, London. Silver masque butt-cap, hallmarked for 1723. 4-1/2" barrel; 9-1/4" O.A.; cal. abt .44. Taken in trade, 3/21/'38, from V. Sparling, for Kentuck #2538, along with 4851, 4852, 4853. App. cost, RLss; Replacement, do. NLss, OSss, LSss.
To this had been added, in pen:
Sold, R. Kingsley, St. Louis, Mo., Mail order, 12/20/'42, OSss.
Rand laid the card on the cocktail-table, along with the drinking equipment. At least, he knew what had gone into the fire: Arnold Rivers's card-index purchase and sales record. He doubted very strongly if that would have been burned while its owner was still alive. Going over to the desk, he checked; the drawer from which he had seen Cecil Gillis get the card for the Leech & Rigdon had been cleaned out.
Picking up the phone in an awkward, unnatural manner, he used a pencil from his pocket to dial a number with which he was familiar, a number that meant the same thing on any telephone exchange in the state.
"State Police, Corporal Kavaalen," a voice singsonged out of the receiver.
"My name is Rand," he identified himself. "I am calling from Arnold Rivers's antique-arms shop on Route 19, about a mile and a half east of Rosemont. I am reporting a homicide."
"Yeah, go ahead—Hey! Did you say homicide?" the other voice asked sharply. "Who?"
"Rivers himself. I called at his shop a few minutes ago, found the front door open, and walked in. I found Rivers lying dead on the floor, just inside the door. He had been killed with a Mauser rifle—not shot; clubbed with the butt, and bayoneted. The body is cold, beginning to stiffen; a pool of blood on the floor is almost completely dried."
"That's a good report, mister," the corporal approved. "You stick around; we'll be right along. You haven't touched anything, have you?"
"Not around the body. How long will it take you to get here?"
"About ten minutes. I'll tell Sergeant McKenna right away."
Rand hung up and glanced at his watch. Ten twenty-two; he gave himself seven minutes and went around the room rapidly, looking only at pistols. He saw nothing that might have come from the Fleming collection. Finally, he opened the front door, just as a white State Police car was pulling up at the end of the walk.
Sergeant Ignatius Loyola McKenna—customarily known and addressed as Mick—piled out almost before it had stopped. The driver, a stocky, blue-eyed Finn with a corporal's chevrons, followed him, and two privates got out from behind, dragging after them a box about the size and shape of an Army footlocker. McKenna was halfway up the drive before he recognized Rand. Then he stopped short.
"Well, Jaysus-me-beads!" He turned suddenly to the corporal. "My God, Aarvo; you said his name was Grant!"
"That's what I thought he said." Rand recognized the singsong accent he had heard on the phone. "You know him?"
"Know him?" McKenna stepped aside quickly, to avoid being overrun by the two privates with the equipment-box. He sighed resignedly. "Aarvo, this is the notorious Jefferson Davis Rand. Tri-State Agency, in New Belfast." He gestured toward the Finn. "Corporal Aarvo Kavaalen," he introduced. "And Privates Skinner and Jameson.... Well, where is it?"
"Right inside." Rand stepped backward, gesturing them in. "Careful; it's just inside the doorway."
McKenna and the corporal entered; the two privates set down their box outside and followed. They all drew up in a semicircle around the late Arnold Rivers and looked at him critically.
"Jesus!" Kavaalen pronounced theJ-sound as though it wereZh; he gave all his syllables an equally-accented intonation. "Say, somebody gave him a good job!"
"Somebody's been seeing too many war-movies." McKenna got a cigarette out of his tunic pocket and lit it in Rand's pipe-bowl. "Want to confess now, or do you insist on a third degree with all the trimmings?"
Kavaalen looked wide-eyed at Rand, then at McKenna, and then back at Rand. Rand laughed.
"Now, Mick!" he reproved. "You know I never kill anybody unless I have a clear case of self-defense, and a flock of witnesses to back it up."
McKenna nodded and reassured his corporal. "That's right, Aarvo; when Jeff Rand kills anybody, it's always self-defense. And he doesn't generally make messes like this." He gave the body a brief scrutiny, then turned to Rand. "You looked around, of course; what do you make of it?"
"Last night, sometime," Rand reconstructed, "Rivers had a visitor. A man, who smoked cigars. He and Rivers were on friendly, or at least sociable, terms. They sat back there by the fire for some time, smoking and drinking. The shades were all drawn. I don't know whether that was standard procedure, or because this conference was something clandestine. Finally, Rivers's visitor got up to leave.
"Now, of course, he could have left, and somebody else could have come here later, been admitted, and killed Rivers. That's a possibility," Rand said, "but it's also an assumption without anything to support it. I rather like the idea that the man who sat back there drinking and smoking with Rivers was the killer. If so, Rivers must have gone with him to the door and was about to open it when this fellow picked up that rifle, probably from that rack, over there, and clipped him on the jaw with the butt. Then he gave him the point three times, the second and third probably while Rivers was down. Then he swung it up and slammed down with it, and left it sticking through Rivers and in the floor."
McKenna nodded. "Lights on when you got here?" he asked.
"No; I put them on when I came in. The killer must have turned them off when he left, but the deadlatch on the door wasn't set, and he doesn't seem to have bothered checking on that."
"Think he left right after he killed Rivers?"
Rand shook his head. "No, that was just the first part of it. After he'd finished Rivers, he went back to that desk and got all the cards Rivers used to record his transactions on—an individual card for every item. He destroyed the lot of them, or at least most of them, in the fireplace. Now, I'm only guessing, here, but I think he took out a card or cards in which he had some interest, and then dumped the rest in the fire to prevent anybody from being able to determine which ones he was interested in. I am further guessing that the cards which the killer wanted to suppress were in the 'sold' file. But I am not guessing about the destruction of the record-file; I found the fireplace full of ashes, found one card that had escaped unburned—you can be sure that one wasn't important—and found the drawer where the record-system was kept empty."
"Think he might have stolen something, and covered up by burning the cards?" McKenna asked.
Rand shook his head again. "I was here yesterday; bought a pistol from Rivers. That's how I noticed this card-index system. Of course, I didn't look at everything, while I was here, but I can't see where any quantity of arms have been removed, and Rivers didn't have any single item that was worth a murder. Fact is, no old firearm is. There are only a very few old arms that are worth over a thousand dollars, and most of them are well-known, unique specimens that would be unsaleable because every collector would know where it came from."
"We can check possible thefts with Rivers's clerk, when he gets here," McKenna said. "Now, suppose you show me these things you found, back at the rear ... Aarvo, you and the boys start taking pictures," he told the corporal, then he followed Rand back through the shop.
He tested the temperature of the water in the ice-bowl with his finger. He looked at the ashtray, and bent over and sniffed at each of the two glasses.
"I see one of them's been emptied out," he commented. "Want to bet it hasn't been wiped clean, too?"
"Huh-unh." Rand smiled slightly. "Even the tiny tots wipe off the cookie-jar, after they've raided it," he said.
A flash-bulb lit the front of the shop briefly. Corporal Kavaalen said something to the others. McKenna picked up the card Rand had found by the edges and looked at it.
"What in hell's this all about, Jeff?" he asked.
"Rivers made it out for one of his pistols. An English flintlock pocket-pistol; I can show you one almost like it, up front. He'd gotten it and three others, back in 1938, in trade for a Kentucky rifle. The numbers are reference-numbers; the letters are Rivers's private price-code. Those three at the end are, respectively, what he absolutely had to get for it, what he thought was a reasonable price, and the most he thought the traffic would stand. He sold it in 1942 for his middle price."
There was another flash by the door, then Kavaalen called out:
"Hey, Mick; we got two of the stiffs, now. All right if we pull out the bayonet for a close-up of his chest?"
"Sure. Better chalkline it, first; you'll move things jerking that bayonet out." He turned back to Rand. "You think, then, that maybe some card in that file would have gotten somebody in trouble, and he had to croak Rivers to get it, and then burned the rest of the cards for a cover-up?"
"That's the way it looks to me," Rand agreed. "Just because I can't think of any other possibility, though, doesn't mean that there aren't any others."
"Hey! You think he might have been selling modern arms to criminals, without reporting the sale?" McKenna asked.
"I wouldn't put it past him," Rand considered. "There was very little that I would put past that fellow. But I wouldn't think he'd be stupid enough to carry a record of such sales in his own file, though."
McKenna rubbed the butt of his .38 reflectively; that seemed to be his substitute for head-scratching, as an aid to cerebration.
"You said you were here yesterday, and bought a pistol," he began. "All right; I know about that collection of yours. But why were you back here bright and early this morning? You working on Rivers for somebody? If so, give."
Rand told him what he was working on. "Rivers wants to buy the Fleming collection. That was the reason I saw him yesterday. But the reason I came here, this morning, is that I find that somebody has stolen about two dozen of the best pistols out of the collection since Fleming's death, and tried to cover up by replacing them with some junk that Lane Fleming wouldn't have allowed inside his house. For my money, it's the butler. Now that Fleming's dead, he's the only one in the house who knows enough about arms to know what was worth stealing. He has constant access to the gunroom. I caught him in a lie about a book Fleming kept a record of his collection in, and now the book has vanished. And furthermore, and most important, if he'd been on the level, he would have spotted what was going on, long ago, and squawked about it."
"That's a damn good circumstantial case, Jeff," McKenna nodded. "Nothing you could take to a jury, of course, but mighty good grounds for suspicion.... You think Rivers could have been the fence?"
"He could have been. Whoever was higrading the collection had to have an outlet for his stuff, and he had to have a source of supply for the junk he was infiltrating into the collection as replacements. A crooked dealer is the answer to both, and Arnold Rivers was definitely crooked."
"You know that?" McKenna inquired. "For sure?"
Another flash lit the front of the shop. Rand nodded.
"For damn good and sure. I can show you half a dozen firearms in this shop that have been altered to increase their value. I don't mean legitimate restorations; I mean fraudulent alterations." He went on to tell McKenna about Rivers's expulsion from membership in the National Rifle Association. "And I know that he sold a pair of pistols to Lane Fleming, about a week before Fleming was killed, that were outright fakes. Fleming was going to sue the ears off Rivers about that; the fact is, until this morning, I'd been wondering if that mightn't have been why Fleming had that sour-looking accident. If he'd lived, he'd have run Rivers out of business."
"Hell, I didn't know that!" McKenna seemed worried. "Fleming used to target-shoot with our gang, and he knew too much about gats to pull a Russ Columbo on himself. I didn't like that accident, at the time, but I figured he'd pulled the Dutch, and the family were making out it was an accident. We never were called in; the whole thing was handled through the coroner's office. You really think Fleming could have been bumped?"
"Yes. I think he could have been bumped," Rand understated. "I haven't found any positive proof, but—" He told McKenna about his purchase, from Rivers, of the revolver that had been later identified as the one brought home by Fleming on the day of his death. "I still don't know how Rivers got hold of it," he continued. "Until I walked in here not half an hour ago and found Rivers dead on the floor, I'd had a suspicion that Rivers might have sneaked into the Fleming house, shot Fleming with another revolver, left it in Fleming's hand and carried away the one Fleming had been working on. The motive, of course, would have been to stop a lawsuit that would have put Rivers out of business and, not inconceivably, in jail. But now ..." He looked toward the front of the shop, where another photo-flash glared for an instant. "And don't suggest that Rivers got conscience-stricken and killed himself. Aside from the technical difficulties of pinning himself to the floor after he was dead, that explanation's out. Rivers had no conscience to be stricken with."
"Well, let's skip Fleming, for a minute," McKenna suggested. "You think this butler, at the Fleming place, was robbing the collection. And you say he could've sold the stuff he stole to Rivers. Well, when the family gets you in to work on the collection, Jeeves, or whatever his name is, realizes that you're going to spot what's been going on, and will probably suspect him. He knows you're no ordinary arms-expert; you're an agency dick. So he gets scared. If you catch up with Rivers, Rivers'll talk. So he comes over here, last night, and kills Rivers off before you can get to him. And while Rivers may not keep a record of the stuff he got from Jeeves, or whatever his name is—"
"Walters," Rand supplied.
"Walters, then. While he may not keep a record of what he bought from Walters, the chances are he does keep a record of the stuff Walters got from him, to use for replacements, so the card-file goes into the fire. How's that?"
The flare of another flash-bulb made distorted shadows dance over the walls.
"That would hang together, now," Rand agreed. "Of course, I haven't found anything here, except the revolver I bought yesterday, that came from the Fleming place, but I'll add this: As soon as Rivers found out I was working for the Fleming family, he tried to get that revolver back from me. Offered me seventy-five dollars' worth of credit on anything else in the shop if I'd give it back to him, not twenty minutes after I'd paid him sixty for it."
"See!" McKenna pounced. "Look; suppose you had a lot of hot stuff, in a place like this. You might take a chance on selling something that had gotten mixed in with your legitimate stuff, but would you want to sell it right back to where it had been stolen from?"
"No, I wouldn't. And if I were a butler who'd been robbing a valuable collection, and an agency man moved in and started poking around, I might get in a panic and do something extreme. That all hangs together, too."
While Rand was talking to McKenna, Private Jameson wandered back through the shop.
"Hey, Sarge, is there any way into the house from here?" he asked. "The outside doors are all locked, and I can't raise anybody."
Rand pointed out the flight of steps beside the fireplace. "I saw Rivers come out of the house that way, yesterday," he said.
The State Policeman went up the steps and tried the door; it opened, and he went through.
"Chances are Mrs. Rivers is away," McKenna said. "She's away a lot. They have a colored girl who comes in by the day, but she doesn't generally get here before noon. And the clerk doesn't get here till about the same time."
"You seem to know a lot about this household," Rand said.
"Yeah. We have this place marked up as a bad burglary- and stick-up hazard; we keep an eye on it. Rivers has all these guns, he does a big cash business, he always has a couple of hundred to a thousand on him—it's a wonder somebody hasn't made a try at this place long ago.... Tell you what, Jeff; say you check up on this butler at the Fleming place for us, and we'll check up here and see if we can find any of the stuff that was stolen. We can get together and compare notes. Maybe one or another of us may run across something about that accident of Fleming's, too."
"Suits me. I'll be glad to help you, and I'll be glad for any help you can give me on recovering those pistols. I haven't made any formal report on that, yet, because I'm not sure exactly what's missing, and I don't want any of that kind of publicity while I'm trying to sell the collection. It may be that the two matters are related; there are some points of similarity, which may or may not mean anything. And, of course, I just may find somebody who'll make it worth my time to get interested in this killing, while I'm at it."
McKenna chuckled. "That must hurt hell out of you, Jeff," he said. "A nice classy murder like this, and nobody to pay you to work on it."
"It does," Rand admitted. "I feel like an undertaker watching a man being swallowed by a shark."
"You want to stick around till this clerk of Rivers's gets here?" McKenna asked. "He should be here in about an hour and a half."
"No. I'd just as soon not be seen taking too much of an interest in this right now. Fact is, I'd just as soon not have my name mentioned at all in connection with this. You can charge the discovery of the body up to our old friend, Anonymous Tip, can't you?"
"Sure." McKenna accompanied Rand to the front door, past the white chalked outline that marked the original position of the body. The body itself, with ink-blackened fingertips, lay to one side, out of the way. Corporal Kavaalen was going through the dead man's pockets, and Skinner was working on the rifle with an insufflator.
"Well, we can't say it was robbery, anyhow," Kavaalen said. "He had eight C's in his billfold."
"Migawd, Sarge, is this damn rifle ever lousy with prints," Skinner complained. "A lot of Rivers's, and everybody else's who's been fooling with it around here, and half theWehrmacht."
"Swell, swell!" McKenna enthused. "Maybe we can pass the case off on the War Crimes Commission."
Mick McKenna had put his finger right on the sore spot. It did hurt Rand like hell; a nice, sensational murder and no money in it for the Tri-State Agency. Obviously, somebody would have to be persuaded to finance an investigation. Preferably some innocent victim of unjust suspicion; somebody who could best clear himself by unmasking the real villain.... For "villain," Rand mentally substituted "public benefactor."
He was running over a list of possible suspects as he entered Rosemont. Passing the little antique shop he slowed, backed, read the name "Karen Lawrence" on the window, and then pulled over to the curb and got out. Crossing the sidewalk, he went up the steps to the door, entering to the jangling of a spring-mounted cowbell.
The girl dealer was inside, with a visitor, a sallow-faced, untidy-looking man of indeterminate age who was opening newspaper-wrapped packages on a table-top. Karen greeted Rand by name and military rank; Rand told her he'd just look around till she was through. She tossed him a look of comic reproach, as though she had counted on him to rid her of the man with the packages.
"Now, just you look at this-here, Miss Lawrence," the man was enthusing, undoing another package. "Here's something I know you'll want; I think this-here is real quaint! Just look, now!" He displayed some long, narrow, dark object, holding it out to her. "Ain't this-here an interestin' item, now, Miss Lawrence?"
"Ooooooh!What in heaven's name is that thing?" she demanded.
"That-there's a sword. A real African native sword. Look at that scabbard, now; made out of real crocodile-skin. A whole young crocodile, head, feet, an' all. I tell you, Miss Lawrence, that-there item is unique!"
"It's revolting! It's the most repulsive object that's ever been brought into this shop, which is saying quite a lot. Colonel Rand! If you don't have a hangover this morning, will you please come here and look at this thing?"
Rand laid down the Merril carbine he had been examining and walked over beside Karen. The man—whom Rand judged to be some rural free-lance antique-prospector—extended the object of the girl's repugnance. It was an African sword, all right, with a plain iron hilt and cross-guard. The design looked Berber, but the workmanship was low-grade, and probably attributable to some even more barbarous people. The scabbard was what was really surprising, if you liked that kind of surprises. It was an infant crocodile, rather indifferently smoke-cured; the sword simply went in between the creature's jaws and extended the length of the body and into the tail. Either end of a moldy-green leather thong had been fastened to the two front paws for a shoulder-baldric. When new, Rand thought, it must have given its wearer a really distinctive aroma, even for Africa. He drew the blade gingerly, looked at it, and sheathed it with caution.
"East African; Danakil, or Somali, or something like that," he commented. "Be damn good and careful not to scratch yourself on that; if you do, you'll need about a gallon of anti-tetanus shots."
"Y'think it might be poisoned?" the man with the dirty neck and the month-old haircut inquired eagerly. "See, Miss Lawrence? What I told you; a real African native sword. I got that-there from Hen Sourbaw, over at Feltonville; his uncle, the Reverend Sourbaw, that used to preach at Hemlock Gap Church, brung it from Africa, himself, about fifty years ago. He used to be a missionary, in his younger days.... I can make you an awful good price on that-there item, Miss Lawrence."
"God forbid!" she exclaimed. "All my customers are heavy drinkers; I wouldn't want to answer for what might happen if some of them saw that thing, suddenly."
"Oh, well.... How about that-there little amethyst bottle, then?"
"Well ... I would give you seven dollars for that," she grudged.
"Y'would? Well, it's yours, then. An' how about them-there salt-cellars, an' that-there knife-box?"
Rand wandered back to examining firearms. Eventually, after buying the knife-box, Karen got rid of the man with the antiques. When he had gone, she found a pack of cigarettes, offered it to Rand and lit one for herself.
"Well, now you see why girls leave home and start antique shops," she said. "Never a dull moment.... Wasn't that sword the awfullest thing you ever saw, though?"
"Well, one of the ten awfullest," Rand conceded. "I just stopped in to give you some good news. You won't need to consider that offer of Arnold Rivers's, any more. He is no longer interested in the Fleming collection."
"He isn't?" An eager, happy light danced up in her eyes. "You saw him again this morning? What did he say?"
"He didn't say anything. He isn't talking any more, either. Fact is, he isn't even breathing any more."
"He.... You mean he's dead?" She was surprised, even shocked. The shock was probably a concession to good taste, but the surprise looked genuine. "When did he die? It must have been very sudden; I saw him a few days ago, and he looked all right. Of course, he's been having trouble with his lungs, but—"
"It was very sudden. Some time last night, some person or persons unknown gave him a butt-and-bayonet job with a German Mauser out of a rack in his shop. A most unpleasantly thorough job. I went to see him this morning, hoping to badger something out of him about those pistols that are missing from the Fleming collection, and found the body. I notified the State Police, and just came from there."
"For God's sake!" The shock was genuine, too, now. "Have the police any idea—?"
"Not the foggiest. If some of the Fleming pistols turn up at his place, I might think that had something to do with it. So far, though, they haven't. I gave the shop a once-over-lightly before the cops arrived, and couldn't find anything."
She tried to take a puff from her cigarette and found that she had broken it in her fingers. She lit a new one from the mangled butt.
"When did it happen?" She tried to make the question sound casual.
"That I couldn't say, either. Around midnight, would be my guess. They might be able to fix a no-earlier time." An idea occurred to him, and he smiled.
"But that's dreadful!" She really meant that. "It's a terrible thing to happen to anybody, being killed like that." She stopped just short of adding: "even Rivers." Instead, she continued: "But I can't say I'm really very sorry he's dead, Colonel."
"Outside of maybe his wife, and the gunsmith who made his fake Walker Colts and North & Cheney flintlocks, who is?" he countered. "Oh, yes; Cecil Gillis. He's about due for induction into the Army of the Unemployed, unless Mrs. Rivers intends carrying on the business."
Karen's eyes widened. "Cecil Gillis!" she exclaimed softly. "I wonder, now, if he has an alibi for last night!"
"Think he might need one?" Rand asked. "Of course I only saw him once, but he didn't strike me as a possible candidate. I can't seem to see young Gillis doing a messy job like this was, or going to all that manual labor when he could have used something neat, like a pistol or a dagger."
"Well, Cecil isn't quite the languishing flower he looks," Karen told him. "He does a lot of swimming, and he's one of the few people around here who can beat me at tennis. And he has a motive. Maybe two motives."
"Such as?" Rand prompted.
"Maybe you think Cecil is a—you know—one of those boys," she euphemized. "Well, he isn't. He takes a perfectly normal, and even slightly wolfish, interest in the female of his species. And while Arnold Rivers may have been a good provider from a financial standpoint, he wasn't quite up to his wife's requirements in another important respect. And Rivers was away a lot, on buying trips and so on, and when he was, nobody ever saw Cecil leave the Rivers place in the evenings. At least, that's the story; personally, I wouldn't know. Of course, where there's smoke, there may be nothing more than somebody with a stogie, but, then, there may be a regular conflagration."
"That would be a perfectly satisfactory motive, under some circumstances," Rand admitted. "And the other?"
"Cecil might have been doing funny things with the books, and Rivers might have caught him."
"That would also be a good enough motive." It would also, Rand thought, furnish an explanation for the burning of Rivers's record-cards. "I'll mention it to Mick McKenna; he's hard up for a good usable suspect. And by the way, the news of this killing will be out before evening, but in the meantime I wish you wouldn't mention it to anybody, or mention that I was in here to tell you about it."
"I won't. I'm glad you told me, though.... Do you think there may be a chance that we can get the collection, now?"
"I wouldn't know why not. Rivers's offer was pretty high; there aren't many other dealers who would be able to duplicate it.... Well, don't take any Czechoslovakian Stiegel."
He moved his car down the street to the Rosemont Inn, where he went into the combination bar and grill and had a Bourbon-and-water at the bar. Then he ordered lunch, and, while waiting for it, went into a phone-booth and dialed the number of Stephen Gresham's office in New Belfast.
"I'd hoped to catch you before you left for lunch," he said, when the lawyer answered. "There's been a new development in the Fleming business." He had decided to follow the same line as with Karen Lawrence. "You needn't worry about Arnold Rivers's offer, any more."
"Ha! So he backed out?"
"He was shoved out," Rand corrected. "On the sharp end of a Mauser bayonet, sometime last night. I found the body this morning, when I went to see him, and notified the State Police. They call it murder, but of course, they're just prejudiced. I'd call it a nuisance-abatement project."
"Look here, are you kidding?" Gresham demanded.
"I never kid about Those Who Have Passed On," Rand denied piously. Then he recited the already hackneyed description of what had happened to Rivers, with careful attention to all the gruesome details. "So I called copper, directly. Sergeant McKenna's up a stump about it, and looking in all directions for a suspect."
Gresham was silent for a moment, then swore softly.
"My God, Jeff! This is going to raise all kinds of hell!" He was silent for a moment. "Look here, can you see me, at my home, about two thirty this afternoon? I want to talk to you about this."
Rand smiled happily. This looked like what he had been angling for. Maybe Arnold Rivers hadn't died in vain, after all.
"Why, yes; I can make it," he replied.
"Good. See you there, then."
Rand assured him that he would be on hand. When he returned to his table, he found his lunch waiting for him. He sat down and ate with a good appetite. After finishing, he had another drink, and sat sipping it slowly and smoking his pipe; going over the story Gladys Fleming had told him, and the gossip he had gotten from Carter Tipton, and the other statements which had been made to him by different people about the death of Lane Fleming, and the conclusions he had reached about the theft of the pistols, and the killing of Arnold Rivers; sorting out the inferences from the descriptions, and the descriptive statements of others from the things he himself had observed. When his glass was empty and his pipe burned out, he left a tip beside the ashtray, paid his check and went out.
He had two hours until his meeting with Stephen Gresham; he knew exactly where to spend them. The county seat was a normal twenty minutes' drive from Rosemont, but with the road relatively free from traffic he was able to cut that to fifteen. Parking his car in front of the courthouse, he went inside.
The coroner, one Jason Kirchner, was an inoffensive-looking little fellow with a Caspar Milquetoast mustache and an underslung jaw. He wore an Elks watchcharm, an Odd Fellows ring, and a Knights of Pythias lapel-pin. He looked at Rand's credentials, including the letter Humphrey Goode had given him, with some bewilderment.
"You're working for Mr. Goode?" he asked, rather needlessly. "Yes, I see; handling the sale of Mr. Fleming's pistols, for the estate. Yes. That must be interesting work, Mr. Rand. Now, what can I do for you?"
"Why, I understand you have an item from that collection, here in your office," Rand said. "The pistol with which Mr. Fleming shot himself. Regardless of its unpleasant associations, that pistol is a valuable collector's item, and one of the assets of the estate. If I'm to get full value for the collection, for the heirs, I'll have to have that, to sell with the rest of the weapons."
"Well, now, look here, Mr. Rand," Kirchner started to argue, "that revolver's a dangerous weapon. It's killed one man, already. I don't know as I ought to let it get out, where it might kill somebody else."
Rand estimated that this situation called for a modified version of his hard-boiled act.
"You think you can show cause why that revolver shouldn't be turned over to the Fleming estate?" he demanded. "Well, if I don't get it, right away, Mr. Goode will get a court order for it. You had no right to impound that revolver, in the first place; you removed it from the Fleming home illegally in the second place, since you had no intention of holding any formal inquest, and you're holding it illegally now. A court order might not be all we could get, either," he added menacingly. "Now, if you have any reason to suspect that Mr. Fleming committed suicide ... or was murdered, for instance ..."
"Oh, my heavens, no!" Kirchner cried, horrified. "It was an accident, pure and simple; I so certified it. Death by accident, due to inadvertence of the deceased."
"Well, then," Rand said, "you have no right to hold that revolver, and I want it, right now. As Mr. Goode's agent, I'm responsible for that collection, of which the revolver you're holding is a part. That revolver is too valuable an asset to ignore. You certainly realize that."
"Well, I don't have any intention of exceeding my authority, of course," Kirchner disclaimed hastily. "And I certainly wouldn't want to go against Mr. Goode's wishes." Humphrey Goode must pull considerable weight around the courthouse, Rand surmised. "But you realize, that revolver's still loaded...."
"Oh, that's not your worry. I'll draw the charges, or, better, fire them out. It stood one shot, it can stand the other five."
"Well, would you mind if I called Mr. Goode on the phone?"
Rand did, decidedly. However, he shook his head negligently.
"Certainly not; go ahead and call him, by all means."
The coroner went away. In a few minutes he was back, carrying a revolver in both hands. Evidently Goode had given him the green light. He approached, handling the weapon with a caution that would have been excessive for a Mills grenade; after warning Rand again that it was loaded, he laid it gently on his desk.
It was a .36 Colt, one of the 1860 series, with the round barrel and the so-called "creeping" ramming-lever. Somebody had wound a piece of wire around it, back of the hammer and through the loading-aperture in front of the cylinder; as the hammer was down on a fired chamber, there was no way in God's world, short of throwing the thing into a furnace, in which it could be discharged, but Kirchner was shrinking away from it as though it might jump at his throat.
"I put the wire on," the coroner said. "I thought it might be safer that way."
"It'll be a lot safer after I've emptied it into the first claybank, outside town," Rand told him. "Sorry I had to be a little short with you, Mr. Kirchner, but you know how it is. I'm responsible to Mr. Goode for the collection, and this gun's part of it."
"Oh, that's all right; I really shouldn't have taken the attitude I did," Kirchner met him halfway. "After I talked to Mr. Goode, of course, I knew it was all right, but ... You see, I've been bothered a lot about that pistol, lately."
"Yes?" Rand succeeded in being negligent about it.
"Oh my, yes! The newspaper people wanted to take pictures of me holding it, and then, there was an antique-dealer who was here trying to buy it."
"Who was that—Arnold Rivers?"
"Why yes! Do you know him? He has an antique-shop on the other side of Rosemont; he doesn't sell anything but guns and swords and that sort of thing," Kirchner said. "He was here, making inquiries about it, and my clerk showed it to him, and then he started making offers for it—first ten dollars, and then fifteen, and then twenty; he got up as high as sixty dollars. I suppose it's worth a couple of hundred."
It was probably worth about thirty-five. Rand was intrigued by this second instance of an un-Rivers-like willingness to spare no expense to get possession of a .36-caliber percussion revolver.
"Did he have it in his hands?" he asked.
"Oh, yes; he looked it over carefully. I suppose he thought he could get a lot of money for it, because of the accident, and Mr. Fleming being such a prominent man," Kirchner suggested.
Rand allowed himself to be struck by an idea.
"Say, you know, thatwouldmake it worth more, at that!" he exclaimed. "What do you know! I never thought of that.... Look, Mr. Kirchner; I'm supposed to get as much money for these pistols, for the heirs, as I can. How would you like to give me a letter, vouching for this as the pistol Mr. Fleming killed himself with? Put in how you found it in his hand, and mention the serial numbers, so that whoever buys it will know it's the same revolver." He picked up the Colt and showed Kirchner the serials, on the butt, and in front of the trigger-guard. "See, here it is: 2444."
Kirchner would be more than willing to oblige Mr. Goode's agent; he typed out the letter himself, looked twice at the revolver to make sure of the number, took Rand's word for the make, model, and caliber, signed it, and even slammed his seal down on it. Rand thanked him profusely, put the letter in his pocket, and stuck the Colt down his pants-leg.
About two miles from the county seat Rand stopped his car on a deserted stretch of road and got out. Unwinding the wire Kirchner had wrapped around the revolver, he picked up an empty beer-can from the ditch, set it against an embankment, stepped back about thirty feet and began firing. The first shot kicked up dirt a little over the can—Rand never could be sure just how high any percussion Colt was sighted—and the other four hit the can. He carried the revolver back to the car and put it into the glove-box with the Leech & Rigdon.
After starting the car, he snapped on the radio, in time for the two fifteen news-broadcast from the New Belfast station. As he had expected, the murder was out; the daily budget of strikes and Congressional investigations and international turmoil was enlivened by a more or less imaginative account of what had already been christened the "Rosemont Bayonet Murder." Rand resigned himself to the inevitable influx of reporters. Then he swore, as the newscaster continued:
"District Attorney Charles P. Farnsworth, of Scott County, who has taken charge of the investigation, says, and we quote: 'There is strong evidence implicating certain prominent persons, whom we are not, as yet, prepared to name, and if the investigation, now under way and making excellent progress, justifies, they will be apprehended and formally charged. No effort will be spared, and no consideration of personal prominence will be allowed to deter us from clearing up this dastardly crime....'"
Rand swore again, with weary bitterness, wondering how much trouble he was going to have with District Attorney Charles P. Farnsworth, as he pulled to a stop in Stephen Gresham's driveway.