Gresham must have been waiting inside the door; as soon as Rand came up onto the porch, he opened it, and motioned the detective inside. Beyond a hasty greeting as Rand passed the threshold, he did not speak until they were seated in the gunroom upstairs. Then he came straight to the point.
"Jeff, can you spare the time from this work you're doing at the Flemings' to investigate this Rivers business?" he asked. "And how much would an investigation cost me? It's got to be a blitz job. I'm not interested in getting anybody convicted in court; I just want the case cleared up in a hurry."
"Well—" Rand puffed at the cigar Gresham had given him, watching the ash form on the end. "I don't work by the day, Stephen. I take a lump-sum fee, and, of course, it's to my interest to get a case cleared up as soon as I can. But I can't set any time limit on a job like this. This Rivers killing has more angles thanNude Descending a Staircase; I don't know how much work I'll have to do, or even what kind."
"Well, it'll have to be fast," Gresham told him urgently. "Look. I didn't kill Arnold Rivers. I hated his guts, and I think whoever did it ought to get a medal and a testimonial dinner, but I did not kill him. You believe me?"
"I'm inclined to," Rand replied. "In your law practice, you know what a lying client is letting himself in for. As my client, you wouldn't lie to me. You seem to think you may be suspected of purging Rivers. But why? Is there any reason, aside from that homemade North & Cheney he sold you, why anybody would think you'd killed him?"
"Great God, yes!" Gresham exclaimed. "Now look. I'm not worried about being railroaded for this. I didn't do it, and I can beat any case that half-assed ex-ambulance-chaser, Farnsworth, could dream up against me. But I can't afford even to be mentioned in connection with this. You know what that would do to me, in town. I just can't get mixed up in this, at all. I want you to see to it that I don't."
"That sounds like a large order." The ash was growing on Rand's cigar; he took another heavy drag at it. "But why necessarily you? Rivers had plenty of other enemies."
"Yes, but, dammit, they weren't all in his shop, last evening. Just me. And one other. The one who killed him."
"On your way out from town?" Rand inquired.
"Yes. I stopped at his place, about a quarter to nine. I was sore as hell about the hooking he gave me on that North & Cheney, falsely so-called, and I decided to stop and have it out with him. We had words, most of them unpleasant. I told him, for one thing, that Lane Fleming's death hadn't pulled his bacon off the fire, that I was going to start the same sort of action against him on my own account. But that isn't the point. The point is that when I was going in, this la-de-da clerk of his, Cecil Gillis, was coming out. He got into his car and drove away, leaving me alone with Rivers. He'll be the first one the police talk to, and he'll tell them all about it."
"That does put you back of the eight ball." Rand dropped the ash into a tray and looked at it curiously. It looked like the sort of ash he had seen at Rivers's shop, but he couldn't be sure. "But if it can be proved that Rivers was alive after nine twenty, when you got here, you'll be in the clear."
"I don't want to have to clear myself," Gresham insisted. "I don't want anything to do with it, at all. Here; I'll pay you a thousand down, and two more when you have the case completed; I want you to get the murder cleared up before I can be publicly involved in it. I say publicly, because this damned Gillis has probably involved me with the police already."
"Well, Gillis isn't exactly in a state of pure sanctity, himself," Rand commented. "As a suspect, the smart handicappers are figuring him to run well inside the money. For instance, you know, there have been stories about him and Mrs. Rivers."
Gresham snapped his fingers. "Damned if there haven't, now!" he said. "You talk to Adam Trehearne. He did business with Rivers—there wasn't much in his line Rivers and Umholtz were able to fake—and different times he's gone to Rivers's shop and there'd be nobody around, and then Gillis would come in from the house, smelling of Chanel Number Five. Mrs. Rivers uses Chanel Number Five. Maybe you have something there. If Cecil thought he could marry the business, with Rivers out of the way.... You'll take the case, won't you, Jeff?"
"Oh, certainly," Rand assured him. "Now, all they have on you is that there was ill-feeling between you and Rivers about that fake North & Cheney, and that you were in Rivers's shop yesterday evening?"
Rand's new client grimaced. "I wish that were all!" he said. "The worst part of it is the way Rivers was killed. See, back in Kaiser Willie's war, before I was assigned a company of my own, I was regimental bayonet-instruction officer. And after we got to France, I always carried a rifle and bayonet at the front; hell, I must have killed close to a dozen Krauts just the way Rivers was killed. And during Schicklgruber's war, I volunteered as bayonet instructor for the local Home Guard."
"My God!" Rand made a wry face. "There must be close to a hundred people around here who'd know that, and all of them are probably convinced that you killed Rivers, and are expressing that opinion at the top of their voices to all comers. You don't want a detective, you want a magician!" He took another drag at the cigar, and blew smoke through a circular gun-rack beside him. "What sort of a character is this Farnsworth, anyhow?" he asked. "Before the war, I had all the D.A.'s in the state typed and estimated, but since I got back—"
Gresham slandered the county prosecutor's legitimacy. "God-damn headline-hunting little egotist! He's running for re-election this year, too."
"One way, that could be bad. On the other hand, it might be easy to throw a scare into him.... Stephen, when you were at Rivers's, were you smoking a cigar?"
Gresham shook his head. "No. I threw my cigar away when I got out of the car, and I didn't light another one till I got home. If you remember, I was lighting it when I came in here."
"Yes; so you were. Well, I don't suppose, in view of the state of relations between you and Rivers, that you had a drink with him, either?"
"I wouldn't drink that guy's liquor if I were dying of snakebite, and he wouldn't offer me a drink if he knew I was," Gresham declared.
"Well, did you notice, back near the fireplace, a low table with a fifth of Haig & Haig Pinchbottle, and a couple of glasses, and a siphon, and so on, on it?"
"I saw the table. There was an ashtray on it, and a book—I think it was Gluckman'sUnited States Martial Pistols and Revolvers—but no bottle, or siphon, or glasses."
"All right, then; it was the killer." Rand explained about the drinks, and the cigar-ashes. He went on to tell about the destruction of Rivers's record-cards.
"I don't get that." Gresham was puzzled. "Unless it was young Gillis, after all. He could have been knocking down on Rivers, and Rivers caught him at it."
"I'd thought of that," Rand admitted. "But I doubt if Rivers would sit down and drink with him, while accusing him of theft. And I can't seem to find anything around Rivers's place that looks as though it might have been stolen from the Fleming collection, either.... Oh, and that reminds me: If you have time this afternoon, I wonder if you'd come along with me to the Flemings' and see just what's missing. I'll have to know that, in any case, and there's a good possibility that the thefts from the collection and the killing of Rivers are related."
"Yes, of course," Gresham agreed. "And suppose we take Pierre Jarrett along with us. He knows that collection as well as I do; he'll spot anything I miss. He works at home; I'll call him now. We can pick him up before we go to the Flemings'."
They went into Gresham's bedroom, where there was a phone, and Gresham talked to Pierre Jarrett. It was arranged that he should pick Jarrett up with his car and come to the Flemings', while Rand went there directly.
Then Rand used the phone to call his office in New Belfast. He talked to Dave Ritter, explaining the situation to date.
"I'm going to need some help," he continued. "I want you to come here and get a room at the Rosemont Inn, under your own name. I'll see you there about five thirty. And bring with you a suit of butler's livery, or reasonable facsimile. I believe there will be a vacancy in the Fleming household tomorrow or the next day, and I want you ready to take over. And bring a small gun with you; something you can wear under said livery. That .357 Colt of yours is a little too conspicuous. You'll find a .380 Beretta in the top right-hand drawer of my office desk, with a box of ammunition and a couple of spare clips."
"Right. I'll be at Rosemont Inn at five thirty," Ritter promised. "And say, Tip was in, this morning, with a lot of dope on the Fleming estate. Want me to let you have it now, or shall I give it to you when I see you?"
"You have notes? Bring them along; I'll be seeing you in a couple of hours."
He parted from Gresham, going out and getting in his car. As Gresham got his own car out of the garage and drove off toward Pierre Jarrett's house, Rand started in the opposite direction, toward Rosemont.
About a half-mile from Gresham's he caught an advancing gleam of white on the highway ahead of him and pulled to the side of the road, waiting until the State Police car drew up and stopped. In it were Mick McKenna, Aarvo Kavaalen, and a third man, a Nordic type, in an untidy brown suit.
"Hi, Jeff," McKenna greeted him, as Rand got out of his car and came across the road. "This is Gus Olsen, investigator for the D.A.'s office. Jeff Rand; Tri-State Agency," he introduced.
"Hey!" Olsen yelled. "We been lookin' for you! Where you been?"
Rand raised an eyebrow at McKenna.
"You just came from where we're going," the State Police sergeant surmised. "Was Gresham at home?"
"He was; he's gone now," Rand said. "He and another man are going to help me check up on what's missing from the Fleming collection."
"Hey!" Olsen exploded. "What I told you, now; he run ahead of us with a tip-off! Gresham's skipped out, now!"
"What is all this?" Rand wanted to know. "What's he screaming about, Mick?"
"Like he don't know!" Olsen vociferated. "He tipped off Gresham so's he could skip out; I'll bet he's in it with Gresham!"
"Pay no attention," McKenna advised. "He doesn't know what the score is; hell, he doesn't even know what teams are playing."
"Now you look here!" Olsen bawled. "We'll see what Mr. Farnsworth has to say about this. You're supposed to cooperate with us, not go fraternizin' with a lot of suspects. Why, it's plain as anything; him and Gresham's in it together. I bet that was why he come around, the first thing in the morning, to find the body!"
Kavaalen, behind the wheel, turned around and began jabbering at Olsen, in the back seat, in something that sounded like Swedish. Most Finns can speak Swedish, and Rand was wishing he could understand it. The corporal's remarks ran to about a paragraph, and must have been downright incendiary. At least, Olsen seemed to catch fire from them. He rose in his seat, waving his arms and howling back in the same language.
"Shut up, goddammit,shut up!" McKenna bellowed into his face. "Shut up before I sling your ass to hell out of this car! I'm talking, and I don't want any goddam jaw from you, Olsen. You either," he barked at Kavaalen, winking at him at the same time.
Silence fell with a heavy thump in the car.
"Well, now that the international crisis seems to have been averted, how's about letting me in on it, too?" Rand asked. "For instance, what about Gresham? What's he supposed to be a suspect for?"
"Ah, Olsen suspects him of chopping Rivers up," McKenna replied wearily. "See, we questioned this Cecil Gillis, and he told us that last evening, as he was leaving Rivers's, he saw Stephen Gresham drive up and go into the shop. I wanted to talk to him, myself; I thought he might account for the cigar-ashes, and the drink-fixings on that table. But when Farnsworth heard about the killing, he sent Olsen around, and when Olsen heard that Gresham had been there, he tried him and convicted him on the spot."
"Oh, obscenity! Is that what it's about?" Rand exclaimed in disgust. "Yes, Gresham told me about that. He didn't have the drink, and he wasn't smoking a cigar in the shop, and he left a little after nine. He got home at nine twenty-two. I can testify to that, myself; I was there at the time, and so were seven other people." Rand named them. "They dribbled away at different times during the evening, but Philip Cabot and I stayed till around eleven." He mentioned the approximate time at which the others had left. "What time was Rivers killed, or hasn't the time been fixed?"
"The M.E. says around ten to two," McKenna said.
"He could be wrong; them guys only guess, half the time," Olsen argued. "And besides, Gresham had it in for Rivers. And that ain't all, neither; he knew how to use a bayonet, too. I seen him, myself, during the war, showin' the Home Guard how to do it, just the way Rivers was killed!" he produced triumphantly.
McKenna used a dirty word. "So what? Anybody who's ever had infantry training knows that butt-stroke-and-lunge," he retorted. "I learned it myself, when I was a kid, in '24 and '25, in C.M.T.C. Hell, anybody who's ever seen a war-movie.... If you hadn't lammed out of Sweden when you were sixteen, to duck conscription, you'd of known it, too."
"Well, maybe Olsen, or his boss, can explain why Gresham threw those record-cards in the fire," Rand contributed. "You know why Olsen says Gresham had it in for Rivers? Rivers sold Gresham a fake antique, a flint lock navy pistol that had been worked over into something else. Gresham was going to subpoena those records, when he brought suit against Rivers," Rand lied. "But I can explain why Cecil Gillis might have destroyed them, after killing Rivers, if he'd been cheating Rivers and Rivers caught him at it."
"Yeah, and that might explain why Gillis was in such a hurry to sic us onto Gresham, too," McKenna added. "I thought of something like that. And this high-brown girl that works for Rivers says that Gillis and Mrs. Rivers played all kinds of games together, when Rivers was away."
"Well, who's in charge of the investigation?" Rand wanted to know. "I heard, on the radio ..."
"You're liable to hear anything on the radio, including slanders on Bing Crosby's horses. But for the record, I am in charge of this investigation. And don't anybody forget it, either," he added, in the direction of the rear seat.
"That's what I thought. Well, Stephen Gresham has just retained me to make an independent investigation," Rand said. "It is not that he lacks confidence in the State Police, or in you; he was afraid that other parties might get into the act and try to make political capital out of it. Which appears to have happened."
"Well, if Gresham retained you, I'm satisfied," McKenna said. "You can take care of that end of it. Glad you're in with us."
"Well, I ain't satisfied!" Olsen began yelling, again. "And Mr. Farnsworth won't be, neither. Why, this here private dick is like as not workin' for the very man that killed Rivers!"
McKenna turned slowly in his seat, to face Olsen.
"One time, ten years ago," he began, "Jeff Rand had a client who was guilty of the crime he hired Jeff to investigate. It was an arson case; this guy set fire to his own factory, and then got Jeff to run down a lot of fake clues he'd planted. I know about that; I was on the case, myself. That's where I first met Jeff, and he saved me from making a jackass out of myself. And what happened to this guy who'd hired Jeff was something that oughtn't to happen even to Molotov, and it happened because Jeff fixed it to happen. If anybody hires Jeff Rand, he's one of two things. He's either innocent, or else he's out of luck.... I don't know why the hell I bother telling you this."
"Ten to two, you say," Rand considered. "Look. A couple of days ago, Rivers put out a new price-list to his regular customers. A lot of them, in different parts of the country, order by telephone, and some of them live in the West, where there's a couple of hours' time-difference. One of them, calling at, say, eight o'clock, local time, would get his call in at ten, Eastern Standard. If you checked the long-distance calls to Rivers's number last night, now, you might get something."
"Yeah. And if he took a call after nine twenty-two, that would let Gresham out. Even Farnsworth could figure that out. Sure. I'll check right away."
"Who's at Rivers's now?"
"Skinner and Jameson, of our gang. And Farnsworth, and some of his outfit. And the hell's own slew of reporters, of course," McKenna said. "Aarvo's going back there, in a little. We're still trying to locate Mrs. Rivers; we haven't been able to, yet. The maid says she went to New York day before yesterday."
"I'll probably be around at Rivers's, later in the day. I want to check on that Fleming angle."
"Uh-huh; I'll be there, in half an hour," Corporal Kavaalen said. "Be seeing you."
They exchanged so-longs, and Kavaalen backed, and made a U-turn, moving off in the direction of Rosemont. Olsen's voluble protests drifted back as the car receded. Rand returned to his own car and followed.
Rand found Gladys alone in the library. As she rose to greet him, he came close to her, gesturing for silence with finger on lips.
"There's a perfect hell of a mess," he whispered. "Somebody murdered Arnold Rivers last night."
She looked at him in horror. "Murdered? Who was it? How did it...?"
"I haven't time to talk about that right now," he told her. "Stephen Gresham and Pierre Jarrett are on their way here, and I'd like you to keep the servants, and particularly Walters, out of earshot of the gunroom while they're here. It seems that a number of the best pistols have been stolen from the collection, sometime between the death of Mr. Fleming and the time I saw the collection yesterday. Stephen and Pierre are going to help me find out just what's been taken. I have an idea they might have been sold to Rivers. That may have been why he was killed—to prevent him from implicating the thief."
"You think somebody here—the servants?" she asked.
"I can't see how it could have been an outsider. The stuff wasn't all taken at once; it must have been moved out a piece at a time, and worthless pistols moved in and hung on the racks to replace valuable pistols taken." He had left the library door purposely open; when the doorbell rang, he heard it. "I'll let them in," he said. "You go and head Walters off."
Rand hurried to the front door and admitted Gresham and Pierre, hustling them down the hall, into the library, and up the spiral to the gunroom, while Gladys went to the foot of the front stairs. Through the open gunroom door, Rand could hear her speaking to Walters, as though sending him on some errand to the rear of the house. He closed the door and turned to the others.
"We'll have to make it fast," he said. "Mrs. Fleming can't hold the butler off all day. Let's start over here, and go around the racks."
They began at the left, with the wheel locks. Pierre put his finger immediately on the shabby and disreputable specimen Rand had first noticed.
"Phew! Is that one a stinker!" he said. "What used to be there was a nice late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century North Italian pistol, all covered with steel filigree-work. A real beauty; much better than average."
"Those Turkish atrocities," Gresham pointed out. "They're filling in for a pair of Lazarino Cominazo snaphaunces that Lane Fleming paid seven hundred for, back in the mid-thirties, and didn't pay a cent too much for, even then. Worth an easy thousand, now. Remember the pair of Cominazo flintlocks illustrated in Pollard'sShort History of Firearms? These were even better, and snaphaunces."
"Well, you go over the collection," Rand told them. "Note down anything you find missing." He handed them a pad of paper and a pencil from the desk. "I have something else to do, for a few minutes."
With that he left them scrutinizing the pistols on the wall, and went to the workbench in the corner, drawing the .36 Colt from under his waistband. Working rapidly, he dismounted it, taking off the barrel and cylinder, and cleaned it thoroughly before putting it together again. Pierre and Gresham had just started on the Colts when he slipped the revolver out of sight and rejoined them.
It took over a half-hour to finish; when they had gotten completely around the collection, Rand had a list of twenty-six missing items, including four cased sets. At a conservative estimate, the missing pistols were worth ten to twelve thousand dollars, dealer's list value; the stuff that had been moved in to replace them might have a value of two or three hundred, but no serious collector would buy any of it at any price. There had been no attempt to replace the cased items; the cases had been merely rearranged on the table to avoid any conspicuous vacancies.
"See that thing?" Pierre asked, tapping a small .25 Webley & Scott automatic with his finger. Rand looked at it; it had been fitted with an English-made silencer. "That thing," Pierre said, "is the one illustrated in Pollard's book. The identical pistol; it used to be in the Pollard collection."
"Lane had a lot of stuff from some famous collections," Gresham said. "Pollard collection, Sawyer collection, Fred Hines collection, Meeks collection, even the old Mark Field collection, that was sold at Libbie Galleries in 1911. His own could rank with any of them. Think you can get any of this stuff back?"
"I hope so. By the way, where does this fellow Umholtz, the fabricator of spurious Whitneyville Walker Colts, hang out? I believe he ought to be looked into."
"Say, that's an idea!" Pierre ejaculated. "He might have bought the pistols, instead of Rivers. Why, he has a gunshop at Kingsville, on Route 22, about fifteen miles west of here, just this side of the village. He had a big sign along the road, and his shop's in the barn, behind the house."
"I'll have to check up on him. But first, I want to see if any of this stuff's at Rivers's shop. I won't ask you to come along," he told Gresham. "No use you sticking your head into the lion's mouth. I've talked the State Police temporarily off your trail, but I still have Farnsworth to worry about."
"He'd like to prosecute a big corporation lawyer, if he thought he had any chance of getting a conviction," Pierre said. "Make a nice impression on the proletarian vote in the south end of the county."
"You're a member of the Mohawk Club in New Belfast, aren't you?" Rand asked Gresham. "Well, go there and stay there for a couple of days, till the heat's off. Pierre, you can come with me to Rivers's; I'll run you home in my car when we're through."
Gresham let himself out the front door; Pierre and Rand went out through the garage and got into Rand's car.
"You have any idea, so far, about who could have killed Rivers?" the ex-Marine asked, as they coasted down the drive to the highway.
"I haven't even the start of an idea," Rand said. He ran briefly over what he knew, or at least those items which were likely to become public knowledge soon. "From what I've observed at the shop, and from what I know of Rivers's character, I'd think that he'd been in some kind of a crooked deal with somebody, and got double-crossed, or else the other man caught Rivers double-crossing him. Or else, Rivers and somebody else had some secret in common, and the other man wanted a monopoly on it and killed Rivers as a security measure."
"Think it might be the Fleming pistols?"
"That depends. I'll have to see whether any of the Fleming pistols turn up anywhere in Rivers's former possession. Personally, I've about decided that the man who was drinking with Rivers killed him. There aren't any indications that anybody else was in the shop afterward. If that's the case, I doubt if the killer was Walters. You know what a snobbish guy Rivers was. And from what I know of him, he seems to have had a thoroughly Aristotelian outlook; he identified individuals with class-labels. Walters, of course, would be identified with the label 'butler,' and I can't imagine Rivers sitting down and drinking with a 'butler.' He would only drink with people whom he thought of as his equals, that is, people whom he identified with class-labels of equal social importance to his own labels of 'antiquarian' and 'businessman.'"
"That sounds like Korzybski," Pierre said, as they turned onto Route 19 in the village and headed east. "You've readScience and Sanity?"
Rand nodded. "Yes. I first read it in the 1933 edition, back about 1936; I've been rereading it every couple of years since. The principles of General Semantics come in very handy in my business, especially in criminal-investigation work, like this. A consciousness of abstracting, a realization that we can only know something about a thin film of events on the surface of any given situation, and a habit of thinking structurally and of individual things, instead of verbally and of categories, saves a lot of blind-alley chasing. And they suggest a great many more avenues of investigation than would be evident to one whose thinking is limited by intensional, verbal, categories."
"Yes. I find General Semantics helpful in my work, too," Pierre said. "I can use it in plotting a story.... Oh-oh!"
"The Gentlemen of the Press," Rand said, looking ahead as the car approached the Rivers house and shop. "There hasn't been a good, sensational, murder story for some time; this is a gift from the gods."
A swarm of cars were parked in front and beside the red-brick house. Among them, Rand spotted a gold-lettered green sedan of the New BelfastDispatchandEvening Express, a black coupé bearing the blazonry of the New BelfastMercury, cars from a couple of papers at Louisburg, the state capital, and cars from papers as far distant as Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Cincinnati. In front of the shop, a motley assemblage of journalists was interviewing and photographing an undersized runt in a tan Chesterfield topcoat and a gray Homburg hat, whom they were addressing as Mr. Farnsworth. The District Attorney of Scott County had a mustache which failed miserably to make him look like Tom Dewey; he impressed Rand as the sort of offensive little squirt who compensates for his general insignificance by bad manners and loud-mouthed self-assertion. Corporal Kavaalen, standing in the doorway of the shop, caught sight of Rand and his companion as they got out of the car and came to meet them, hustling them around the crowd and into the shop before anybody could notice and recognize them.
"That was a good tip, about the telephone," he said softly. "Mick checked at the Rosemont exchange. Rivers got a long-distance call from Topeka last night; ten fifteen to ten seventeen. We got the night long distance operator out of bed, and she confirmed it; Rivers took the call himself. He gets a lot of long distance calls in the evenings; she knew his voice." He corrected himself, shifting to the past tense and glancing, as he did, at the chalk outline on the floor, now scuffed by many feet, and the dried bloodstains. "You say this puts Gresham in the clear?"
"Absolutely," Rand assured him. "He was at home from nine twenty-two on." He introduced Pierre Jarrett, and explained their mission. "You find anything except what's here in the shop?"
"Only Rivers's own .38 Smith & Wesson, in his room, and a lot of pistols out in the garage, that look like junk to me," Kavaalen said. "I'll show them to you."
Rand nodded. "Pierre, you look around the shop; I'll see what this other stuff is."
He followed Kavaalen through a door at the rear of the shop; the same one through which Cecil Gillis had carried the Kentucky rifle the afternoon before. Beside Rivers's car, there was a long workbench in the garage, and piles of wood and cardboard cartons, and stacks of newspapers, and a barrel full of excelsior, all evidently used in preparing arms for shipment. There was also a large pile of old pistols, and a number of long-arms.
Rand pawed among the pistols; they were, as the State Police corporal had said, all junk. The sort of things a dealer has to buy, at times, in order to get something really good. Many of them had been partially dismantled for parts. When he was certain that the heap of junk-weapons didn't conceal anything of value, he returned to the shop. Pierre was waiting for him by Rivers's desk.
He shook his head. "Not a thing," he reported. "I found a couple of out-and-out fakes, and about ten or fifteen that had been altered in one way or another, and a lot of reblued stuff, but nothing from Fleming's collection. What did you find?"
Rand laughed. "I found Rivers's scrap-heap, and some pistols that probably contributed parts to some of the stuff you found," he said. "Of course, all we can say is that the stuff isn't here; Rivers could have bought it, and stored it outside somewhere. But even so, I'm not taking the Fleming butler too seriously as a suspect for the murder."
"What's this about Fleming's butler?" a voice broke in. "Have you been withholding information from me?"
Rand turned, to find that Farnsworth had left the press conference in front and crepe-soled up on him from behind.
"I withheld a theory, which seems to have come to nothing," he replied.
Kavaalen told the D.A. who Rand was. "He's cooperating with us," he added. "Sergeant McKenna instructed us to give him every consideration."
"It seems that a number of valuable pistols were stolen from the collection of the late Lane Fleming," Rand said. "We suspected that the butler had stolen them and sold them to Rivers; I thought it possible that he might also have killed Rivers to silence him about the transaction." He shrugged. "None of the stolen items have turned up here, so there's nothing to connect the thefts with the death of Rivers."
"Good heavens, you certainly didn't suspect a prominent and respected citizen like Mr. Rivers of receiving stolen goods?" Farnsworth demanded, aghast.
"Who respects him?" Rand hooted. "Rivers was a notorious swindler; he had that reputation among arms-collectors all over the country. He was expelled from membership in the National Rifle Association for misrepresentation and fraud. Why, he even swindled Lane Fleming on a pair of fake pistols, a week or so before Fleming's death. And the very reason why your man Olsen was inclined to suspect Stephen Gresham was that he had had trouble with Rivers about a crooked deal Rivers had put over on him. Fortunately, Mr. Gresham has since been cleared of any suspicion, but—"
"Who says he's been cleared?" Farnsworth snapped. "He's still a suspect."
"Sergeant McKenna says so," Corporal Kavaalen declared. "He has been cleared. I guess we just didn't get around to telling you about that." He went on to explain about the long distance call that had furnished Stephen Gresham's alibi.
"And Gresham was at home from nine twenty-two on," Rand added. "There are eight witnesses to that: His wife and daughter; myself; Captain Jarrett, here; and his fiancée, Miss Lawrence; Philip Cabot; Adam Trehearne; Colin MacBride."
Farnsworth looked bewildered. "Why wasn't I told about that?" he demanded sulkily.
"Sergeant McKenna's been too busy, and I didn't think of it," Kavaalen said insolently. "I'm not supposed to report to you, anyhow. Why didn't your man Olsen tell you; he was with us when we checked with the telephone company."
Farnsworth tried to ignore that by questioning Pierre about the time of Gresham's arrival home, then turned to Rand and wanted to know what the latter's interest in the case was.
Rand told him about his work in connection with the Fleming collection, producing Humphrey Goode's letter of authorization. Farnsworth seemed impressed in about the same way as the coroner, Kirchner, but he was still puzzled.
"But I understood that you had been retained by Stephen Gresham, to investigate this murder," he said.
"So you did talk to Olsen, after I saw him," Rand pounced. "Odd he didn't mention this telephone thing.... Why, yes; that's true. My agency handles all sorts of business. The two operations aren't mutually exclusive; for a while, I even thought they might be related, but now—" He shrugged.
"Well, you believe, now, that Rivers had nothing to do with the pistols you say were stolen from the Fleming collection?" Farnsworth asked. Rand shook his head ambiguously; Farnsworth took that for a negative answer to his question, as he was intended to. "And you say Mr. Gresham has been completely cleared of any suspicion of complicity in this murder?"
"Mr. Rand's helping us; we want him to stick around till the case is closed," Corporal Kavaalen threw in, perceiving the drift of Farnsworth's questions. "He and Sergeant McKenna have worked together before; he's given us a lot of good tips."
"You understand," Rand took over, "Mr. Gresham didn't retain me merely to help him clear himself. I don't accept that kind of retainers. I was retained to find the murderer of Arnold Rivers, and I intend to continue working on this case until I do. I hope that the same friendly spirit of mutual cooperation will exist between your office and my agency as exists between me and the State Police. I certainly don't want to have to work at cross purposes with any of the regular law-enforcement agencies."
"Oh, certainly; of course." Farnsworth didn't seem to like the idea, but there was no apparent opening for objection. He and Rand exchanged mendacious compliments, pledged close cooperation, and did practically everything but draw up and sign a treaty of alliance. Then Farnsworth and Corporal Kavaalen accompanied Rand and Pierre Jarrett to the front door.
Some of the reporters who were ravening outside must have spotted Rand as he had entered; they were all waiting for him to come out, and set up a monstrous ululation when he appeared in the doorway. With Farnsworth beaming approval, Rand assured the Press that he was no more than a mere spectator, that the State Police and the efficient District Attorney of Scott County had the situation well in hand, and that an arrest was expected within a matter of hours. Then he and Pierre hurried to his car and drove away.
Neither of them spoke for a moment or two. Then, after they had left the criminological-journalistic uproar at the Rivers place behind and were approaching the village of Rosemont, Pierre turned to Rand.
"You know," he said, "for a disciple of Korzybski, you came pretty close to confusing orders of abstraction, a couple of times, back there. You showed that Stephen was at home while Rivers was taking that phone call, a little after ten. But when you talk about clearing him completely, aren't you overlooking the possibility that he came back to Rivers's after you and Philip Cabot left the Gresham place?"
Rand eased the foot-pressure on the gas and spared young Jarrett a side-glance before returning his attention to the road ahead.
"Understand," Pierre hastened to add, "I don't believe that Stephen was fool enough to kill Rivers over that fake North & Cheney, but weren't you producing inferences that hadn't been abstracted from any descriptive data?"
"Pierre, when I'm working on a case like this, any resemblance between my opinions and the statements I may make is purely due to conscious considerations of policy," Rand told him. "I don't want Farnsworth or Mick McKenna going around bitching this operation up for me. If they feel justified in eliminating Gresham on the strength of that phone call, I'm satisfied, regardless of the semantics involved. Right now, the thing that's worrying me is the ease with which I seem to have talked Farnsworth into laying off Gresham. He and Olsen both have single-track minds. They may just dismiss that telephone alibi, such as it is, as mere error of the mortal mind, and go right ahead building some kind of a ramshackle case against Gresham. Since they picked him for their entry, they won't want to have to scratch him.... Damn, I wish I could think of where Walters could have sold those pistols!"
"Well, if Rivers wasn't involved somehow, why was he killed?" Pierre wondered. "Hey! Maybe Walters sold the pistols to Umholtz! He's just as big a crook as Rivers was, only not quite so smart."
Rand nodded thoughtfully. "Maybe so. And suppose Rivers found out about it, and tried to declare himself in on it. That stuff would be worth at least ten thousand; I doubt if whoever bought it paid Walters more than two. In the Umholtz-Rivers income bracket, the difference might be worth killing for."
"That's right. And Umholtz was in the infantry, in the other war; he served in the Twenty-eighth Division. He was trained to use a bayonet. And he'd pick that short Mauser; it has about the same weight and balance as a 1903 Springfield."
"Well, you know, the killer wouldn't need to have been trained to use a bayonet," Rand pointed out. "Mick McKenna made that point, this afternoon. There have been a lot of war-movies that showed bayonet fighting; pretty nearly everybody knows about the technique that was used. And against an unarmed and probably unsuspecting victim like Rivers, a great deal of proficiency wouldn't be needed." He slowed the car. "Up this road?" he asked.
"Yes. That's my place, over there."
Pierre pointed to a white-walled, red-roofed house that lay against a hillside, about a mile ahead, making a vivid spot in the dull grays and greens of the early April landscape. It consisted of a square two-story block, with one-story wings projecting to give it an L-shaped floorplan. It reminded Rand of farmhouses he had seen in Sicily during the War.
"Come on in and see my stuff, if you have time," Pierre invited, as Rand pulled to a stop in the driveway. "I think I told you what I collect—personal combat arms, both firearms and edge-weapons."
They entered the front door, which opened directly into a large parlor, a brightly colored, cheerful room. A woman rose from a chair where she had been reading. She was somewhere between forty-five and fifty, but her figure was still trim, and she retained much of what, in her youth, must have been great beauty.
"Mother, this is Colonel Rand," Pierre said. "Jeff, my mother."
Rand shook hands with her, and said something polite. She gave him a smile of real pleasure.
"Pierre has been telling me about you, Colonel," she said. There was a faint trace of French accent in her voice. "I suppose he brought you here to show you his treasures?"
"Yes; I collect arms too. Pistols," Rand said.
She laughed. "You gun-collectors; you're like women looking at somebody's new hat.... Will you stay for dinner with us, Colonel Rand?"
"Why, I'm sorry; I can't. I have a great many things to do, and I'm expected for dinner at the Flemings'. I really wish I could, Mrs. Jarrett. Maybe some other time."
They chatted for a few minutes, then Pierre guided Rand into one of the wings of the house.
"This is my workshop, too," he said. "Here's where I do my writing." He opened a door and showed Rand into a large room.
On one side, the wall was blank; on the other, it was pierced by two small casement windows. The far end was of windows for its entire width, from within three feet of the floor almost to the ceiling. There were bookcases on either long side, and on the rear end, and over them hung Pierre's weapons. Rand went slowly around the room, taking everything in. Very few of the arms were of issue military type, and most of these showed alterations to suit individual requirements. As Pierre had told him the evening before, the emphasis was upon weapons which illustrated techniques of combat.
At the end of the room, lighted by the wide windows, was a long desk which was really a writer's assembly line, with typewriter, reference-books, stacks of notes and manuscripts, and a big dictionary on a stand beside a comfortable swivel-chair.
"What are you writing?" Rand asked.
"Science-fiction. I do a lot of stories for the pulps," Pierre told him. "Space-Trails, andOther Worlds, andWonder-Stories; mags like that. Most of it's standardized formula-stuff; what's known to the trade as space-operas. My best stuff goes toAstonishing. Parenthetically, you mustn't judge any of these magazines by their names. It seems to be a convention to use hyperbolic names for science-fiction magazines; a heritage from what might be called an earlier and ruder day. What I do forAstonishingis really hard work, and I enjoy it. I'm working now on one for them, based on J. W. Dunne's time-theories, if you know what they are."
"I think so," Rand said. "Polydimensional time, isn't it? Based on an effect Dunne observed and described—dreams obviously related to some waking event, but preceding rather than following the event to which they are related. I read Dunne'sExperiment with Timesome years before the war, and once, when I had nothing better to do, I recorded dreams for about a month. I got a few doubtful-to-fair examples, and two unmistakable Dunne-Effect dreams. I never got anything that would help me pick a race-winner or spot a rise in the stock market, though."
"Well, you know, there's a case on record of a man who had a dream of hearing a radio narration of the English Derby of 1933, including the announcement that Hyperion had won, which he did," Pierre said. "The dream was six hours before the race, and tallied very closely with the phraseology used by the radio narrator. Here." He picked up a copy of Tyrrell'sScience and Psychical Phenomenaand leafed through it.
"Did this fellow cash in on it?" Rand asked.
"No. He was a Quaker, and violently opposed to betting. Here." He handed the book to Rand. "Case Twelve."
Rand sat down on the edge of the desk, and read the section indicated, about three pages in length.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he said, as he finished. The idea of anybody passing up a chance like that to enrich himself literally smote him to the vitals. "I see the British Society for Psychical Research checked that case, and got verification from a couple of independent witnesses. If the S.P.R. vouches for a story, it must be the McCoy; they're the toughest-minded gang of confirmed skeptics anywhere in Christendom. They take an attitude toward evidence that might be advantageously copied by most of the district attorneys I've met, the one in this county being no exception.... What's this story you're working on?"
"Oh, it's based on Dunne's precognition theories, plus a few ideas of my own, plus a theory of alternate lines of time-sequence for alternate probabilities," Pierre said. "See, here's the situation ..."
Half an hour later, they were still arguing about a multidimensional universe when Rand remembered Dave Ritter, who should be at the Rosemont Inn by now. He looked at his watch, saw that it was five forty-five, and inquired about a telephone.
"Yes, of course; out here." Pierre took him back to the parlor, where he dialed the Inn and inquired if a Mr. Ritter, from New Belfast, were registered there yet.
He was. A moment later he was speaking to Ritter.
"Jeff, for Gawdsake, don't come here," Ritter advised. "This place is six-deep with reporters; the bar sounds like the second act ofThe Front Page. Tony Ashe and Steve Drake from theDispatchandExpress; Harry Bentz, from theMercury; Joe Rawlings, the AP man from Louisburg; Christ only knows who all. This damn thing's going to turn into another Hall-Mills case! Look, meet me at that beer joint, about two miles on the New Belfast side of Rosemont, on Route 19; the white-with-red-trimmings place with the big Pabst sign out in front. I'll try to get there without letting a couple of reporters hide in the luggage-trunk."
"Okay; see you directly."
Rand hung up, spent the next few minutes breaking away from Pierre and his mother, and went out to his car. Trust Dave Ritter, he thought, to pick some place where malt beverages were sold, for a rendezvous.
Dave's coupé was parked inconspicuously beside the red-trimmed roadhouse. Opening his glove-box, Rand took out the two percussion revolvers and shoved them under his trench coat, one on either side, pulling up the belt to hold them in place. As he went into the roadhouse, he felt like Damon Runyon's Twelve-Gun Tweeney. He found Ritter in the last booth, engaged in finishing a bottle of beer. Rand ordered Bourbon and plain water, and Ritter ordered another beer.
"I have the stuff Tip left with Kathie," Ritter said, taking out a couple of closely typed sheets and handing them across the table. "He said this was the whole business."
Rand glanced over them. Tipton had neatly and concisely summarized the provisions of Lane Fleming's will, and had also listed all Fleming's life insurance policies, with beneficiaries, including a partnership policy on the lives of Fleming, Dunmore, and Anton Varcek, paying each of the survivors $25,000.
"I see Gladys and Geraldine and Nelda each get a third of Fleming's Premix stock," Rand commented. "But before they can have the certificates transferred to them, they have to sign over their voting-power to the board of directors. Evidently Fleming didn't approve of the feminine touch in business."
"Yeah, isn't that a dandy?" Ritter asked. "The directors are elected by majority vote of the stockholders. They now have the voting-power of a majority of the stock; that makes the present board self-perpetuating, and responsible only to each other."
"So it does, but that wasn't what I was thinking of. According to Tip, the board is one hundred per cent in favor of the merger with National Milling & Packaging. We'll have to suppose Fleming knew that; there must have been considerable intramural acrimony on the subject while he was still alive. Now, since he opposed the merger, if he had intended committing suicide, he would have made some other arrangement, wouldn't he? At least, one would suppose so. Well, then," Rand asked, "why, since he is so worried about these suicide rumors, doesn't Goode use the one argument which would utterly disprove them? Or is there some reason why he doesn't want to call attention to the fact that Fleming's death is what makes the merger possible?"
"Well, that would be calling attention to the fact that the merger made Fleming's death necessary," Ritter pointed out. He poured more beer into his glass. "While we're on it, what's the angle on this butler's livery I was supposed to bring? I brought my tux, and I borrowed a striped vest from the Theatrical Property Exchange, and I brought that Dago .380 of yours. But what makes you think the Flemings are going to be needing a new butler? You going to poison the one they have?"
"The one they have has been exceeding his duties," Rand said. "He was supposed to clean the pistol-collection. Not content with that, he's been cleaning it out. I know it was the butler." He went, at length, into his reasons for thinking so, and described themodus operandiof the thefts. "Now, all this is just theory, so far, but when I'm able to prove it, I'm going to put the arm on this Walters, if it's right in the middle of dinner and he only has the roast half served. And I want you ready to step into the vacancy thus created. I'm going to be busy as a pup in a fireplug factory with this Rivers thing, and I'll need some checking-upping done inside the Fleming household."
He went on, in meticulous detail, to explain about the Rivers murder. "I'll have some work for you, before you're ready to start buttling, too." Disencumbering himself of the two percussion revolvers, he laid them on the table. "I want you to take these and show them to this barbecue man. Get from him a positive statement, preferably in writing, as to which, if either, he sold to Lane Fleming. You might show your Agency card and claim to be checking up on some stolen pistols that have been recovered. Then, if he identifies the Leech & Rigdon, take the Colt and show it to Elmer Umholtz. You want to be careful how you handle him; we may want him for puncturing Rivers, though I'm inclined to doubt that, as of now. Get him to tell you, yes or no, whether he reblued it and replated the back-strap and trigger-guard, and if he did it for Rivers; and if so, when. I know that's been done; the bluing is too dark for a Civil War period job; the frame, which ought to be case-hardened in colors, has been blued like the barrel and cylinder, the cylinder-engraving is almost obliterated, and you can see a few rust-pits that have been blued over. But I want to know if this gun was ever in Rivers's shop; that's the important thing."
"Uh-huh. Got the addresses?"
Rand furnished them, and Ritter noted them down. The waitress wandered back to see if they wanted anything else; she gave a small squeak of surprise when she saw the two big six-shooters on the table. Rand and Ritter repeated their orders, and when she brought back the drinks, the Colt and the Leech & Rigdon were out of sight.
"The way I see it, everybody who's within a light-year of this Rivers killing is trying to pin the medal on somebody else," Ritter was saying. "The Lawrence girl was afraid young Jarrett had done it; right away, she sicced you onto Gillis. Gillis didn't lose any time putting McKenna and Farnsworth onto Gresham. Gresham's the only one who didn't have a pasty ready; you're supposed to dig one up for him. And Jarrett, the first chance he gets, introduces Umholtz." He stared into his beer, as though he thought Ultimate Verity might be lurking somewhere under the suds. "Do you think it might be possible that Rivers bumped Fleming off, in spite of his getting killed later?" he asked.
"Anything's possible," Rand replied, "except where some structural contradiction is involved, like scoring thirteen with one throw of a pair of dice. Yes, he could have. The way the Flemings leave their garage open as long as any of the cars are out, anybody could have sneaked into the house from the garage, and gone up from the library to the gunroom. The only question in my mind is whether Rivers would have known about that. That lawsuit and criminal action that Fleming was going to start—and that's been verified from sources independent of Goode—was a good sound motive. And say he took the Leech & Rigdon away, after leaving the Colt in Fleming's hand; selling it to some collector who'd put it in with a hundred or so other pistols would be a good way of disposing of it. And I can understand his trying to buy the Colt, to get it out of circulation." Rand sipped his Bourbon. "But that leaves us with the question of who killed Rivers, and why."
"Well, because Fleming is dead—and it doesn't matter whether he was murdered or died of old age—Walters starts robbing the collection. He sells the pistols to Rivers," Ritter reconstructed. "And, as Rivers doesn't want them around his shop till they've had time to cool off, he stores them with this Umholtz character, who seems to have been in plenty of crooked deals with Rivers in the past. The pistols are worth about ten grand, and nobody knows where they are but Rivers and Umholtz, and if Rivers drops dead all of a sudden, nobody will know where they are except Umholtz, and in a couple of years he can get them sold off and have the money all to himself."
"Yes, Dave; that's good sound murder, too. And Rivers would sit down and drink with Umholtz, and Umholtz could take that Mauser out of the rack right in front of Rivers and Rivers wouldn't suspect a thing till it was too late. Of course, it depends upon two unverified assumptions: One, that the pistols were sold to Rivers, and, two, that Rivers stored them with Umholtz."
"And, three, that Walters stole the pistols in the first place," Ritter added. "You know, it's possible that somebody else in that house might have stolen them."
"Yes. As I said, anything's possible, within structural limits, but possibilities exist on different orders of probability. We can't try to consider all the possibilities in any case, because they are indefinitely numerous; the best we can do is screen out all the low-order probabilities, list the high-order probabilities, and revise our list when and as new data comes to light. Well, I've told you why I think Walters is a good suspect. From what I've seen of that household, I think Walters was personally loyal to Lane Fleming, and I don't believe he feels any loyalty to anybody else there, with the exception of Gladys Fleming. He might keep quiet about the missing pistols if she were the thief; if Dunmore, or Varcek, or either of the girls had done the stealing, he'd tell Gladys, and she'd pass it on to me. She would be glad of anything that could be used against any of the others. And if, on the other hand, she had stolen the pistols herself, she wouldn't have wanted me poking around, and wouldn't have brought me in, at least not to handle the collection." Rand looked regretfully at his empty glass and decided against ordering another. "Dave, I just thought of something," he said. "How do you think this would work?"
He told Ritter what he had thought of. Ritter drank beer slowly and meditatively.
"It just might work," he considered. "I've seen that gag work a hundred times: hell, I've used something like that, myself, at least fifty times, and so have you. And I don't think Walters would be familiar enough with dick-practice to see what you were doing. But if it turns out that Walters didn't sell the pistols to Rivers at all, what then?"
"Well, if he sold them to Umholtz, Pierre Jarrett's theory is still valid until disproved," Rand said. "And if he didn't sell them either to Rivers or Umholtz, we'll have to conclude that Rivers and Fleming were killed by the same person, the Rivers killing being a security measure. That is, unless we find that Rivers was killed by Pierre Jarrett, which is a sort of medium-high-order probability. Jarrett and the girl left Gresham's early enough for him to have killed Rivers; they were both pretty hard hit by that twenty-five-grand blockbuster Rivers had dropped on them.... Give me back that Colt, Dave. All you have to do is get an identification on the Leech & Rigdon from the barbecue man. I'm going to let Mick McKenna handle Umholtz, one way or another, after we've concluded the Walters experiment. Until then, we don't want to stir Umholtz up, at all."
Parking in the drive, Rand entered the Fleming house by the front door. The butler must have been busy with his pre-dinner tasks in the rear; it was Gladys herself who admitted him.
"Stay out of there," she warned him, taking his arm and guiding him away from the parlor doorway. "Nelda and Geraldine are in there, ignoring each other. If you go in, they'll start talking to you, and then they'll start talking at each other through you, and the air will be full of tomahawks in a jiffy. Let's go up in the gunroom; that's out of the battle zone."
"What started the hostilities this time?" Rand asked, going up the stairway with her.
"Oh, Geraldine lost Nelda's place-marker out of the Kinsey Report, or something." She shrugged. "Mainly reaction to Rivers's death. That was a great blow to all of us; twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of blow. It was a blow to me, too, but I'm not letting it throw me.... What were you doing all afternoon?"
"Trying to keep the rest of our prospects out of jail. This sixteenth-witted District Attorney you have in this county had the idea he could charge Stephen Gresham with the killing. I had a time talking him out of it, and I'm still not sure how far I succeeded. And I was trying to get a line on where those pistols got to."
"Ssssh!" They reached the top of the stairs, and Rand saw Walters approaching down the hall. "It was Colonel Rand, Walters; I let him in myself. Are Mr. Varcek and Mr. Dunmore here, yet?"
"Mr. Dunmore is in the library, ma'am, and Mr. Varcek is upstairs, in his laboratory. Dinner will be ready in three-quarters of an hour."
"Have you mixed the cocktails? You'd better do that. Serve them in about twenty minutes. And you'd better go up and warn Mr. Varcek not to become involved in anything messy before dinner."
Walters yes-ma'am'd her and started toward the attic stairway. Rand and Gladys went into the gunroom; Rand turned to the left, picked a pistol from the wall, and carried it with him as he guided Gladys toward the desk in the corner.
"You think Walters stole them?" she asked.
"So far, I'm inclined to. Have you told any of the others, yet?"
"Oh, Lord, no! They'd all be sure that I stole them myself. I'm counting on you to get them back with as little fuss as possible. Do you think that was why Rivers was killed? After all, when a lot of valuable pistols disappear, and a crooked dealer is murdered, I'd expect there to be a connection."
"There could be. Did you ever hear any stories about Mrs. Rivers and this young fellow Gillis who works in Rivers's shop?"
Gladys laughed. "Is that rearing its ugly head in public, now?" she asked. "Well, there's nothing like a good murder to shake the skeletons out of the closets. Not that this particular skeleton was ever exactly hidden. The stories are numerous, and somewhat repetitious; Cecil and Mrs. Rivers would be seen together, at roadhouses and so on, at what they imagined was a safe distance from Rosemont, and it was said that when Rivers was away over night, Cecil was never seen to leave the Rivers place in the evenings. Might this be relevant to Rivers's sudden demise?"
"It could be." Rand was keeping one eye on the hall door and the other on the head of the spiral stairway. "Don't mention outside what I told you about Farnsworth having this brainstorm about Stephen Gresham. If it got out, it might hurt Gresham professionally. The fact is, Gresham has just retained me to investigate the Rivers murder for him. That won't interfere to any great extent with the work I'm doing here; if necessary, I'll bring a couple of my men in from New Belfast to help me on the Rivers operation." He broke off abruptly, catching a movement at the head of the spiral, and lifted the pistol in his hand, as though showing it to Gladys. "See," he went on, "it has two hammers and two nipples, but only one barrel. It was loaded with two charges, one on top of the other; the bullet of the rear charge acted as the breech-plug for the front charge.... Oh, Walters!" He affected to catch sight of the butler for the first time. "Bring me that .36 Walch revolver, will you?"
"Yes, sir." Walters, crossing the room, veered to the right and went to the middle wall, bringing a revolver over to the desk. It was a percussion weapon with an abnormally long cylinder. "The cocktails are served," he announced.
"We'll be down in a moment; you can put these back where they belong when you find time," Rand told him. "Now, here," he said to Gladys. "This is the same idea, in a revolver. Six chambers, two charges in each. In theory, it was a good idea, but in actual practice ..."
Walters went out the hall door, presumably to call Varcek. Rand continued talking about the superposed-load principle, as used in the Lindsay pistol and the Walch revolver, until he was sure the butler was out of hearing. Gladys was looking at him in appreciative if slightly punch-drunk delight.
"I wondered why you brought that thing over here with you," she said. "Brother, was that a quick shift!... You're really sure he's the one?"
"I'm not really sure of anything, except of my own existence and eventual extinction," Rand told her. "It pretty nearly has to be somebody inside this house. I don't think anybody else here, yourself included, would know enough about arms to rob this collection as selectively as it has been robbed. Did you see what just happened, here? I asked him for one of the most uncommon arms here, and he went straight and got it. He knows this collection as well as your husband did, and I assume he knows values almost as well.... And, of course, there was a musket, too; Mr. Fleming didn't collect long-arms, or he'd have had one. It embodied the same principle as the pistol. The legend is that this man Lindsay's brother was a soldier; he was supposed to have been killed by Indians who drew the fire of the detail he was with and then charged them when their muskets were empty." Rand shrugged. "Actually, the superposed-load principle is ancient; there's a sixteenth-century wheel lock pistol in the Metropolitan Museum, in New York, firing two shots from the same barrel."
Varcek and the butler, who had entered by the hall door, went across the gunroom and down the spiral. Rand laid down the pistol and escorted Gladys after them.
Dunmore and Geraldine were in the library when they went down. Geraldine, mildly potted, was reclining in a chair, sipping her drink. Dunmore was still radiating his synthetic cheerfulness.
"Get many of the pistols listed, Colonel?" he hailed Rand, with jovial condescension.
"No." Rand poured two cocktails, handing one to Gladys. "I went to Arnold Rivers's place this morning, on a little unfinished business, and damn near tripped over Rivers's corpse. I spent the rest of the day getting myself disinvolved from the ensuing uproar," he told Dunmore. "You heard about it, of course."
"Yes, of course. Horrible business. I hope you didn't get mixed up in it any more than you had to. After all, you're working for us, and if the police knew that, we'd be bothered, too.... Look here, you don't think some of these other people who were after the collection might have killed Rivers, to keep him from outbidding them?"
Nelda, entering from the hallway, caught the last part of that.
"Good God, Fred!" she shrieked at him. "Don't say things like that! Maybe they did, but wait till they've bought the collection and paid for it, before you start accusing them!"
"I'm not accusing anybody," Dunmore growled back at her. "I don't know enough about it to make any accusations. All I'm saying is—"
"Well, don't say it, then, if you don't know what you're talking about," his wife retorted.
In spite of this start, dinner passed in relative quiet. For the most part, they talked about the remaining chances of selling the collection, about which nobody was optimistic. Rand tried to build up morale with pictures of large museums and important dealers, all fairly slavering to get their fangs into the Fleming collection, but to little avail. A pall of gloom had settled, and he was forced to concede that he had at last found somebody who had a valid reason to mourn the sudden and violent end of Arnold Rivers.
Dinner finished, he went up to the gunroom and began compiling his list. He found a yardstick, and thumbtacked it to the edge of the desk to get over-all and barrel lengths, and used a pair of inside calipers and a decimal-inch rule from the workbench to get calibers. Sticking a sheet of paper into the portable, he began on the wheel locks, leaving spaces to insert the description of the stolen pistols, when recovered. When he had finished the wheel locks, he began on the snaphaunces, then did the miguelet-locks. He had begun on the true flintlocks when Walters, who had finished his own dinner, came up to help him. Rand put the butler to work fetching pistols from the racks, and replacing those he had already listed. After a while, Dunmore strolled in.
"You say you found Rivers's body yourself, Colonel Rand?" he asked.
Rand nodded, finished what he was typing, and looked up.
"Why, yes. There were a few details I wanted to clear up with him, and I called at his shop this morning. I found him lying dead inside." He went on to describe the manner in which Rivers had met his death. "The radio and newspaper accounts were accurate enough, in the main; there were a few details omitted, at the request of the police, of course."
"Well, you didn't get involved in it, though?" Dunmore inquired anxiously. "I mean, you're not taking any part in the investigation? After all, we don't want to be mixed up in anything like this."
"In that case, Mr. Dunmore, let me advise you not to discuss the matter of Rivers's offer to buy this collection with anybody outside," Rand told him. "So far, the police and the District Attorney's office both seem to think that Rivers was killed by somebody whom he'd swindled in a business deal. Of course, they know about the collection being for sale, and Rivers's offering to buy it."
"They do?" Dunmore asked sharply. "Did you tell them that?"
"Naturally. I had to account for my presence at Rivers's shop, this morning," Rand replied. "I don't know if the idea has occurred to them that somebody might have killed Rivers to eliminate a rival bidder for the collection or not; I wouldn't say anything, if I were you, that might give them the idea."
The extension phone rang shrilly. Walters picked it up, spoke into it, and listened for a moment.
"Yes, Miss Lawrence; he's right here. You wish to speak to him?" He handed the phone across the desk to Rand. "Miss Karen Lawrence, for you, Colonel Rand."
Rand took the phone. Before he had time to say "hello," the antique-shop girl demanded of him:
"Colonel Rand, you must tell me the truth. Did you have anything to do with Pierre Jarrett's being arrested?"
"What?" Rand barked. Then he softened his voice. "No; on my honor, Miss Lawrence. I knew nothing about it until this moment. Who did it? Olsen?"
"I don't know what his name was. He was a State Police sergeant," she replied. "He and another State Policeman came to the Jarrett house about half an hour ago, charged Pierre with the murder of Arnold Rivers, and took him away. His mother phoned me about it a few minutes ago."
"That God-damned two-faced Jesuitical bastard!" Rand exploded. "Where are you now?"
"Here at my shop. Mrs. Jarrett is coming here. She's afraid the reporters will be coming out to the house as soon as they hear about it, and she doesn't want to talk to them."
"All right. I'll be there as soon as I can. If there's anything I can do to help you, you can count on me for it."
He hung up, and turned to Walters. "Is my car still out front?" he asked. "It is? Good. I'll be gone for a while; tell the others I have something to attend to."
"What's happened now?" Dunmore asked sourly.
"Just what I was speaking about. The Gestapo gathered up Pierre Jarrett; they seem to have gotten the idea, now, that the motive may have been competition for the collection. Next thing, Farnsworth will think he has a case against Carl Gwinnett, and he'll land in the jug, too. I hope you realize that every time something like this happens, it peels a thousand or so off the price I'll be able to get for you people for these pistols."
Dunmore didn't try to ask how that would happen, for which Rand was duly thankful; he accepted the statement uncritically. Walters was staring at Rand in horror, saying nothing. Rand picked up the outside phone and dialed the same number he had called from the Rivers place that morning.
"Is Sergeant McKenna about?... He is? Fine; I'd like to speak to him.... Oh, hello, Mick; Jeff Rand."
McKenna chuckled out of the receiver. "Sort of slipped one over on you, didn't I?" he gloated. "Why, I was checking up on those people who were at Gresham's, last evening, and they all agreed that young Jarrett and the Lawrence girl had left the party about ten. So I had a talk with Miss Lawrence, and she tried to tell me that Jarrett was with her at her apartment, over the antique shop, from about ten fifteen until about twelve, when another girl she rooms with got home from a date. I'd of took that, too, only right across the street from the antique shop there is one of these old hens like you find in every neighborhood, the kind that keeps their nose flattened on the window between the curtains, checking up on the neighbors. I spotted her when I came out of the antique shop, so I slipped around to see her, and she told me that young Jarrett went into the apartment with the girl at about quarter past ten, stayed inside for about twenty minutes, then came out and drove away. She says Jarrett came back in about half an hour, and stayed till this girl who shares the Lawrence girl's apartment—a Miss Dupont, who teaches sixth grade at Thaddeus Stevens School—got home, about twelve. So there you are."
"Uh-huh. Dave Ritter said this was going to turn into another Hall-Mills case; well, now you have your Pig Woman," Rand said. "Miss Lawrence shouldn't have lied to you, Mick. I suppose she got worried when you started asking questions, and there's nothing like a good murder in the neighborhood to make liars out of people."
"And damn well I know that!" McKenna agreed. "But that isn't all. It seems our cruise-car crew spotted Jarrett's car standing in Rivers's drive, about eleven. Just when he was away from the antique-shop, and about when the M.E. figures Rivers was getting the business."
"Did they get the number?" Rand asked. "Or how did they identify the car?"
"Oh, they knew it; see, our boys shoot a lot with the Scott County Rifle & Pistol Club, and they've all seen Jarrett's car at the range, different times," McKenna said. "A gray 1947 Plymouth coupé. Like I say, they knew the car, and they knew Jarrett collects guns, and the lights were on inside the shop and the shades were drawn, so they didn't think anything of it, at the time. See, they went to bed about ten this morning, and didn't get up till after five, so I didn't find out about it till after supper."
Rand shrugged, and managed to get some of the shrug into his voice. "Can be, at that," he said. "I hope you're not making a mistake, Mick; if you are, his lawyer's going to crucify you. What are you using for a motive?"
"Rivers was outbidding this crowd Jarrett and the girl were in with. They all told me about that," McKenna said. "And he and the girl were planning to use their end of the collection to go into the arms business, after they got married. Rivers got in the way." McKenna, at the other end of the line, must have shrugged, too. "After all, for about four years, they'd been training Jarrett to overcome resistance with the bayonet, so he did just that."