Murder in the Gunroom
by H. Beam Piper · English · Gutenberg #17866 · 404,458 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Murder in the Gunroom
Author: H. Beam Piper
Release date: February 26, 2006 [eBook #17866]
Most recently updated: January 27, 2009
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MURDER IN THE GUNROOM ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
MURDER IN THE GUNROOM
By H. BEAM PIPER
NEW YORK
_Alfred A. Knopf_ 1953
FIRST EDITION
TO _Colonel Henry W. Shoemaker_ an old and valued friend, who was
promised this dedication, with an entirely different novel in mind,
twenty-two years ago.
PREFACE
_The Lane Fleming collection of early pistols and revolvers was one of
the best in the country. When Fleming was found dead on the floor of
his locked gunroom, a Confederate-made Colt-type percussion .36 revolver
in his hand, the coroner's verdict was "death by accident." But Gladys
Fleming had her doubts. Enough at any rate to engage Colonel Jefferson
Davis Rand--better known just as Jeff--private detective and a
pistol-collector himself, to catalogue, appraise, and negotiate the
sale of her late husband's collection.
There were a number of people who had wanted the collection. The
question was: had anyone wanted it badly enough to kill Fleming? And if
so, how had he done it? Here is a mystery, told against the fascinating
background of old guns and gun-collecting, which is rapid-fire without
being hysterical, exciting without losing its contact with reason, and
which introduces a personable and intelligent new private detective. It
is a story that will keep your nerves on a hair trigger even if you don't
know the difference between a cased pair of Paterson .34's and a Texas
.40 with a ramming-lever._
CHAPTER 1
It was hard to judge Jeff Rand's age from his appearance; he was
certainly over thirty and considerably under fifty. He looked hard and
fit, like a man who could be a serviceable friend or a particularly
unpleasant enemy. Women instinctively suspected that he would make a
most satisfying lover. One might have taken him for a successful lawyer
(he had studied law, years ago), or a military officer in mufti (he still
had a Reserve colonelcy, and used the title occasionally, to impress
people who he thought needed impressing), or a prosperous businessman,
as he usually thought of himself. Most of all, he looked like King
Charles II of England anachronistically clad in a Brooks Brothers suit.
At the moment, he was looking rather like King Charles II being bothered
by one of his mistresses who wanted a peerage for her husband.
"But, Mrs. Fleming," he was expostulating. "There surely must be somebody
else.... After all, you'll have to admit that this isn't the sort of work
this agency handles."
The would-be client released a series of smoke-rings and watched them
float up toward the air-outlet at the office ceiling. It spoke well for
Rand's ability to subordinate esthetic to business considerations that he
was trying to give her a courteous and humane brush-off. She made even
the Petty and Varga girls seem credible. Her color-scheme was blue and
gold; blue eyes, and a blue tailored outfit that would have looked severe
on a less curvate figure, and a charmingly absurd little blue hat perched
on a mass of golden hair. If Rand had been Charles II, she could have
walked out of there with a duchess's coronet, and Nell Gwyn would have
been back selling oranges.
"Why isn't it?" she countered. "Your door's marked _Tri-State Detective
Agency, Jefferson Davis Rand, Investigation and Protection_. Well, I want
to know how much the collection's worth, and who'll pay the closest to
it. That's investigation, isn't it? And I want protection from being
swindled. And don't tell me you can't do it. You're a pistol-collector,
yourself; you have one of the best small collections in the state. And
you're a recognized authority on early pistols; I've read some of your
articles in the _Rifleman_. If you can't handle this, I don't know who
can."
Rand's frown deepened. He wondered how much Gladys Fleming knew about the
principles of General Semantics. Even if she didn't know anything, she
was still edging him into an untenable position. He hastily shifted from
the attempt to identify his business with the label, "private detective
agency."
"Well, here, Mrs. Fleming," he explained. "My business, including
armed-guard and protected-delivery service, and general investigation
and protection work, requires some personal supervision, but none of
it demands my exclusive attention. Now, if you wanted some routine
investigation made, I could turn it over to my staff, maybe put two or
three men to work on it. But there's nothing about this business of yours
that I could delegate to anybody; I'd have to do it all myself, at the
expense of neglecting the rest of my business. Now, I could do what you
want done, but it would cost you three or four times what you'd gain by
retaining me."
"Well, let me decide that, Colonel," she replied. "How much would you
have to have?"
"Well, this collection of your late husband's consists of some
twenty-five hundred pistols and revolvers, all types and periods," Rand
said. "You want me to catalogue it, appraise each item, issue lists, and
negotiate with prospective buyers. The cataloguing and appraisal alone
would take from a week to ten days, and it would be a couple more weeks
until a satisfactory sale could be arranged. Why, say five thousand
dollars; a thousand as a retainer and the rest on completion."
That, he thought, would settle that. He was expecting an indignant
outcry, and hardened his heart, like Pharaoh. Instead, Gladys Fleming
nodded equably.
"That seems reasonable enough, Colonel Rand, considering that you'd have
to be staying with us at Rosemont, away from your office," she agreed.
"I'll give you a check for the thousand now, with a letter of
authorization."
Rand nodded in return. Being thoroughly conscious of the fact that
he could only know a thin film of the events on the surface of any
situation, he was not easily surprised.
"Very well," he said. "You've hired an arms-expert. I'll be in Rosemont
some time tomorrow afternoon. Now, who are these prospective purchasers
you mentioned, and just how prospective, in terms of United States
currency, are they?"
"Well, for one, there's Arnold Rivers; he's offering ten thousand for the
collection. I suppose you know of him; he has an antique-arms business at
Rosemont."
"I've done some business with him," Rand admitted. "Who else?"
"There's a commission-dealer named Carl Gwinnett, who wants to handle
the collection for us, for twenty per cent. I'm told that that isn't an
unusually exorbitant commission, but I'm not exactly crazy about the
idea."
"You shouldn't be, if you want your money in a hurry," Rand told her.
"He'd take at least five years to get everything sold. He wouldn't dump
the whole collection on the market at once, upset prices, and spoil his
future business. You know, two thousand five hundred pistols of the sort
Mr. Fleming had, coming on the market in a lot, could do just that. The
old-arms market isn't so large that it couldn't be easily saturated."
"That's what I'd been thinking.... And then, there are some private
collectors, mostly friends of Lane's--Mr. Fleming's--who are talking
about forming a pool to buy the collection for distribution among
themselves," she continued.
"That's more like it," Rand approved. "If they can raise enough money
among them, that is. They won't want the stuff for resale, and they may
pay something resembling a decent price. Who are they?"
"Well, Stephen Gresham appears to be the leading spirit," she said. "The
corporation lawyer, you know. Then, there is a Mr. Trehearne, and a Mr.
MacBride, and Philip Cabot, and one or two others."
"I know Gresham and Cabot," Rand said. "They're both friends of mine, and
I have an account with Cabot, Joyner & Teale, Cabot's brokerage firm.
I've corresponded with MacBride; he specializes in Colts.... You're the
sole owner, I take it?"
"Well, no." She paused, picking her words carefully. "We may just run
into a little trouble, there. You see, the collection is part of the
residue of the estate, left equally to myself and my two stepdaughters,
Nelda Dunmore and Geraldine Varcek. You understand, Mr. Fleming and I
were married in 1941; his first wife died fifteen years before."
"Well, your stepdaughters, now; would they also be my clients?"
"Good Lord, no!" That amused her considerably more than it did Rand.
"Of course," she continued, "they're just as interested in selling the
collection for the best possible price, but beyond that, there may be a
slight divergence of opinion. For instance, Nelda's husband, Fred
Dunmore, has been insisting that we let him handle the sale of the
pistols, on the grounds that he is something he calls a businessman.
Nelda supports him in this. It was Fred who got this ten-thousand-dollar
offer from Rivers. Personally, I think Rivers is playing him for a
sucker. Outside his own line, Fred is an awful innocent, and I've never
trusted this man Rivers. Lane had some trouble with him, just before ..."
"Arnold Rivers," Rand said, when it was evident that she was not going
to continue, "has the reputation, among collectors, of being the biggest
crook in the old-gun racket, a reputation he seems determined to live
up--or down--to. But here; if your stepdaughters are co-owners, what's
my status? What authority, if any, have I to do any negotiating?"
Gladys Fleming laughed musically. "That, my dear Colonel, is where you
earn your fee," she told him. "Actually, it won't be as hard as it looks.
If Nelda gives you any argument, you can count on Geraldine to take your
side as a matter of principle; if Geraldine objects first, Nelda will
help you steam-roll her into line. Fred Dunmore is accustomed to dealing
with a lot of yes-men at the plant; you shouldn't have any trouble
shouting him down. Anton Varcek won't be interested, one way or another;
he has what amounts to a pathological phobia about firearms of any sort.
And Humphrey Goode, our attorney, who's executor of the estate, will
welcome you with open arms, once he finds out what you want to do. That
collection has him talking to himself, already. Look; if you come out
to our happy home in the early afternoon, before Fred and Anton get back
from the plant, we ought to ram through some sort of agreement with
Geraldine and Nelda."
"You and whoever else sides with me will be a majority," Rand considered.
"Of course, the other one may pull a Gromyko on us, but ... I think I'll
talk to Goode, first."
"Yes. That would be smart," Gladys Fleming agreed. "After all, he's
responsible for selling the collection." She crossed to the desk and sat
down in Rand's chair while she wrote out the check and a short letter of
authorization, then she returned to her own seat.
"There's another thing," she continued, lighting a fresh cigarette.
"Because of the manner of Mr. Fleming's death, the girls have a horror of
the collection almost--but not quite--as strong as their desire to get
the best possible price for it."
"Yes. I'd heard that Mr. Fleming had been killed in a firearms accident,
last November," Rand mentioned.
"It was with one of his collection-pieces," the widow replied. "One
he'd bought just that day; a Confederate-made Colt-type percussion .36
revolver. He'd brought it home with him, simply delighted with it, and
started cleaning it at once. He could hardly wait until dinner was over
to get back to work on it.
"We'd finished dinner about seven, or a little after. At about half-past,
Nelda went out somewhere in the coupe. Anton had gone up to his
laboratory, in the attic--he's one of these fortunates whose work is also
his hobby; he's a biochemist and dietitian--and Lane was in the gunroom,
on the second floor, working on his new revolver. Fred Dunmore was having
a bath, and Geraldine and I had taken our coffee into the east parlor.
Geraldine put on the radio, and we were listening to it.
"It must have been about 7:47 or 7:48, because the program had changed
and the first commercial was just over, when we heard a loud noise from
somewhere upstairs. Neither of us thought of a shot; my own first idea
was of a door slamming. Then, about five minutes later, we heard Anton,
in the upstairs hall, pounding on a door, and shouting: 'Lane! Lane! Are
you all right?' We ran up the front stairway, and found Anton, in his
rubber lab-apron, and Fred, in a bathrobe, and barefooted, standing
outside the gunroom door. The door was locked, and that in itself was
unusual; there's a Yale lock on it, but nobody ever used it.
"For a minute or so, we just stood there. Anton was explaining that he
had heard a shot and that nobody in the gunroom answered. Geraldine told
him, rather impatiently, to go down to the library and up the spiral. You
see," she explained, "the library is directly under the gunroom, and
there's a spiral stairway connecting the two rooms. So Anton went
downstairs and we stood waiting in the hall. Fred was shivering in his
bathrobe; he said he'd just jumped out of the bathtub, and he had
nothing on under it. After a while, Anton opened the gunroom door from
the inside, and stood in the doorway, blocking it. He said: 'You'd better
not come in. There's been an accident, but it's too late to do anything.
Lane's shot himself with one of those damned pistols; I always knew
something like this would happen.'
"Well, I simply elbowed him out of the way and went in, and the others
followed me. By this time, the uproar had penetrated to the rear of the
house, and the servants--Walters, the butler, and Mrs. Horder, the
cook--had joined us. We found Lane inside, lying on the floor, shot
through the forehead. Of course, he was dead. He'd been sitting on one of
these old cobblers' benches of the sort that used to be all the thing for
cocktail-tables; he had his tools and polish and oil and rags on it. He'd
fallen off it to one side and was lying beside it. He had a revolver in
his right hand, and an oily rag in his left."
"Was it the revolver he'd brought home with him?" Rand asked.
"I don't know," she replied. "He showed me this Confederate revolver when
he came home, but it was dirty and dusty, and I didn't touch it. And I
didn't look closely at the one he had in his hand when he was ... on the
floor. It was about the same size and design; that's all I could swear
to." She continued: "We had something of an argument about what to do.
Walters, the butler, offered to call the police. He's English, and his
mind seems to run naturally to due process of law. Fred and Anton both
howled that proposal down; they wanted no part of the police. At the
same time, Geraldine was going into hysterics, and I was trying to get
her quieted down. I took her to her room and gave her a couple of
sleeping-pills, and then went back to the gunroom. While I was gone, it
seems that Anton had called our family doctor, Dr. Yardman, and then Fred
called Humphrey Goode, our lawyer. Goode lives next door to us, about two
hundred yards away, so he arrived almost at once. When the doctor came,
he called the coroner, and when he arrived, about an hour later, they all
went into a huddle and decided that it was an obvious accident and that
no inquest would be necessary. Then somebody, I'm not sure who, called an
undertaker. It was past eleven when he arrived, and for once, Nelda got
home early. She was just coming in while they were carrying Lane out in a
basket. You can imagine how horrible that was for her; it was days before
she was over the shock. So she'll be just as glad as anybody to see the
last of the pistol-collection."
Through the recital, Rand had sat silently, toying with the ivory-handled
Italian Fascist dagger-of-honor that was doing duty as a letter-opener on
his desk. Gladys Fleming wasn't, he was sure, indulging in any
masochistic self-harrowing; neither, he thought, was she talking to
relieve her mind. Once or twice there had been a small catch in her
voice, but otherwise the narration had been a piece of straight
reporting, neither callous nor emotional. Good reporting, too; carefully
detailed. There had been one or two inclusions of inferential matter in
the guise of description, but that was to be looked for and discounted.
And she had remembered, at the end, to include her ostensible reason for
telling the story.
"Yes, it must have been dreadful," he sympathized. "Odd, though, that an
old hand with guns like Mr. Fleming would have an accident like that. I
met him, once or twice, and was at your home to see his collection, a
couple of years ago. He impressed me as knowing firearms pretty
thoroughly.... Well, you can look for me tomorrow, say around two. In
the meantime, I'll see Goode, and also Gresham and Arnold Rivers."
CHAPTER 2
After ushering his client out the hall door and closing it behind her,
Rand turned and said:
"All right, Kathie, or Dave; whoever's out there. Come on in."
Then he went to his desk and reached under it, snapping off a switch.
As he straightened, the door from the reception-office opened and
his secretary, Kathie O'Grady, entered, loading a cigarette into an
eight-inch amber holder. She was a handsome woman, built on the generous
lines of a Renaissance goddess; none of the Renaissance masters, however,
had ever employed a model so strikingly Hibernian. She had blue eyes, and
a fair, highly-colored complexion; she wore green, which went well with
her flaming red hair, and a good deal of gold costume-jewelry.
Behind her came Dave Ritter. He was Rand's assistant, and also Kathie's
lover. He was five or six years older than his employer, and slightly
built. His hair, fighting a stubborn rearguard action against baldness,
was an indeterminate mousy gray-brown. It was one of his professional
assets that nobody ever noticed him, not even in a crowd of one; when he
wanted it to, his thin face could assume the weary, baffled expression of
a middle-aged book-keeper with a wife and four children on fifty dollars
a week. Actually, he drew three times that much, had no wife, admitted to
no children. During the war, he and Kathie had kept the Tri-State Agency
in something better than a state of suspended animation while Rand had
been in the Army.
Ritter fumbled a Camel out of his shirt pocket and made a beeline for the
desk, appropriating Rand's lighter and sharing the flame with Kathie.
"You know, Jeff," he said, "one of the reasons why this agency never made
any money while you were away was that I never had the unadulterated
insolence to ask the kind of fees you do. I was listening in on the
extension in the file-room; I could hear Kathie damn near faint when
you said five grand."
"Yes; five thousand dollars for appraising a collection they've been
offered ten for, and she only has a third-interest," Kathie said,
retracting herself into the chair lately vacated by Gladys Fleming.
"If that makes sense, now ..."
"Ah, don't you get it, Kathleen Mavourneen?" Ritter asked. "She doesn't
care about the pistols; she wants Jeff to find out who fixed up that
accident for Fleming. You heard that big, long shaggy-dog story about
exactly what happened and where everybody was supposed to have been at
the time. I hope you got all that recorded; it was all told for a
purpose."
Rand had picked up the outside phone and was dialing. In a moment, a
girl's voice answered.
"Carter Tipton's law-office; good afternoon."
"Hello, Rheba; is Tip available?"
"Oh, hello, Jeff. Just a sec; I'll see." She buzzed another phone. "Jeff
Rand on the line," she announced.
A clear, slightly Harvard-accented male voice took over.
"Hello, Jeff. Now what sort of malfeasance have you committed?"
"Nothing, so far--cross my fingers," Rand replied. "I just want a little
information. Are you busy?... Okay, I'll be up directly."
He replaced the phone and turned to his disciples.
"Our client," he said, "wants two jobs done on one fee. Getting the
pistol-collection sold is one job. Exploring the whys and wherefores of
that quote accident unquote is the other. She has a hunch, and probably
nothing much better, that there's something sour about the accident. She
expects me to find evidence to that effect while I'm at Rosemont, going
over the collection. I'm not excluding other possibilities, but I'll work
on that line until and unless I find out differently. Five thousand
should cover both jobs."
"You think that's how it is?" Kathie asked.
"Look, Kathie. I got just as far in Arithmetic, at school, as you did,
and I suspect that Mrs. Fleming got at least as far as long division,
herself. For reasons I stated, I simply couldn't have handled that
collection business for anything like a reasonable fee, so I told her
five thousand, thinking that would stop her. When it didn't, I knew she
had something else in mind, and when she went into all that detail about
the death of her husband, she as good as told me that was what it was.
Now I'm sorry I didn't say ten thousand; I think she'd have bought it at
that price just as cheerfully. She thinks Lane Fleming was murdered.
Well, on the face of what she told me, so do I."
"All right, Professor; expound," Ritter said.
"You heard what he was supposed to have shot himself with," Rand began.
"A Colt-type percussion revolver. You know what they're like. And I know
enough about Lane Fleming to know how much experience he had with old
arms. I can't believe that he'd buy a pistol without carefully examining
it, and I can't believe that he'd bring that thing home and start working
on it without seeing the caps on the nipples and the charges in the
chambers, if it had been loaded. And if it had been, he would have first
taken off the caps, and then taken it apart and drawn the charges. And
she says he started working on it as soon as he got home--presumably
around five--and then took time out for dinner, and then went back to
work on it, and more than half an hour later, there was a shot and he was
killed." Rand blew a Bronx cheer. "If that accident had been the McCoy,
it would have happened in the first five minutes after he started working
on that pistol. No, in the first thirty seconds. And then, when they
found him, he had the revolver in his right hand, and an oily rag in his
left. I hope both of you noticed that little touch."
"Yeah. When I clean a gat, I generally have it in my left hand, and clean
with my right," Ritter said.
"Exactly. And why do you use an oily rag?" Rand inquired.
Ritter looked at him blankly for a half-second, then grinned ruefully.
"Damn, I never thought of that," he admitted. "Okay, he was bumped off,
all right."
"But you use oily rags on guns," Kathie objected. "I've seen both of you,
often enough."
"When we're all through, honey," Ritter told her.
"Yes. When he brought home that revolver, it was in neglected condition,"
Rand said. "Either surface-rusted, or filthy with gummed oil and dirt.
Even if Mrs. Fleming hadn't mentioned that point, the length of time he
spent cleaning it would justify such an inference. He would have taken it
apart, down to the smallest screw, and cleaned everything carefully, and
then put it together again, and then, when he had finished, he would have
gone over the surface with an oiled rag, before hanging it on the wall.
He would certainly not have surface-oiled it before removing the charges,
if there ever were any. I assume the revolver he was found holding,
presumably the one with which he was killed, was another one. And I would
further assume that the killer wasn't particularly familiar with the
subject of firearms, antique, care and maintenance of."
"And with all the hollering and whooping and hysterics-throwing, nobody
noticed the switch," Ritter finished. "Wonder what happened to the one he
was really cleaning."
"That I may possibly find out," Rand said. "The general incompetence with
which this murder was committed gives me plenty of room to hope that it
may still be lying around somewhere."
"Well, have you thought that it might just be suicide?" Kathie asked.
"I have, very briefly; I dismissed the thought, almost at once," Rand
told her. "For two reasons. One, that if it had been suicide, Mrs.
Fleming wouldn't want it poked into; she'd be more than willing to let it
ride as an accident. And, two, I doubt if a man who prided himself on his
gun-knowledge, as Fleming did, would want his self-shooting to be taken
for an accident. I'm damn sure I wouldn't want my friends to go around
saying: 'What a dope; didn't know it was loaded!' I doubt if he'd even
expect people to believe that it had been an accident." He shook his
head. "No, the only inference I can draw is that somebody murdered
Fleming, and then faked evidence intended to indicate an accident." He
rose. "I'll be back, in a little; think it over, while I'm gone."
* * * * *
Carter Tipton had his law-office on the floor above the Tri-State
Detective Agency. He handled all Rand's not infrequent legal
involvements, and Rand did all his investigating and witness-chasing;
annually, they compared books to see who owed whom how much. Tipton was
about five years Rand's junior, and had been in the Navy during the war.
He was frequently described as New Belfast's leading younger attorney and
most eligible bachelor. His dark, conservatively cut clothes fitted him
as though they had been sprayed on, he wore gold-rimmed glasses, and he
was so freshly barbered, manicured, valeted and scrubbed as to give the
impression that he had been born in cellophane and just unwrapped. He
leaned back in his chair and waved his visitor to a seat.
"Tip, do you know anything about this Fleming family, out at Rosemont?"
Rand began, getting out his pipe and tobacco.
"The Premix-Foods Flemings?" Tipton asked. "Yes, a little. Which one of
them wants you to frame what on which other one?"
"That'll do for a good, simplified description, to start with," Rand
commented. "Why, my client is Mrs. Gladys Fleming. As to what she
wants...."
He told the young lawyer about his recent interview and subsequent
conclusions.
"So you see," he finished, "she won't commit herself, even with me. Maybe
she thinks I have more official status, and more obligations to the
police, than I have. Maybe she isn't sure in her own mind, and wants me
to see, independently, if there's any smell of something dead in the
woodpile. Or, she may think that having a private detective called in may
throw a scare into somebody. Or maybe she thinks somebody may be fixing
up an accident for her, next, and she wants a pistol-totin' gent in the
house for a while. Or any combination thereof. Personally, I deplore
these clients who hire you to do one thing and expect you to do another,
but with five grand for sweetening, I can take them."
"Yes. You know, I've heard rumors of suicide, but this is the first whiff
of murder I've caught." He hesitated slightly. "I must say, I'm not
greatly surprised. Lane Fleming's death was very convenient to a number
of people. You know about this Premix Company, don't you?"
"Vaguely. They manufacture ready-mixed pancake flour, and ready-mixed
ice-cream and pudding powders, and this dehydrated vegetable soup--pour
on hot water, stir, and serve--don't they? My colored boy, Buck, got some
of the soup, once, for an experiment. We unanimously voted not to try it
again."
"They put out quite a line of such godsends to the neophyte in the
kitchen, the popularity of which is reflected in a steadily rising
divorce-rate," Tipton said. "They advertise very extensively, including
half an hour of tear-jerking drama on a national hookup during soap-opera
time. Your client, the former Gladys Farrand, was on the air for Premix
for a couple of years; that's how Lane Fleming first met her."
"So you think some irate and dyspeptic husband went to the source of his
woes?" Rand inquired.
"Well, not exactly. You see, Premix is only Little Business, as the foods
industry goes, but they have something very sweet. So sweet, in fact,
that one of the really big fellows, National Milling & Packaging, has
been going to rather extreme lengths to effect a merger. Mill-Pack, par
100, is quoted at around 145, and Premix, par 50, is at 75 now, and
Mill-Pack is offering a two-for-one-share exchange, which would be a
little less than four-for-one in value. I might add, for what it's worth,
that this Stephen Gresham you mentioned is Mill-Pack's attorney,
negotiator, and general Mr. Fixit; he has been trying to put over
this merger for Mill-Pack."
"I'll bear that in mind, too," Rand said.
"Naturally, all this is not being shouted from the housetops," Tipton
continued. "Fact is, it's a minor infraction of ethics for me to mention
it to you."
"I'll file it in the burn-box," Rand promised. "What was the matter;
didn't Premix want to merge?"
"Lane Fleming didn't. And since he held fifty-two per cent of the common
stock himself, try and do anything about it."
"Anything short of retiring Fleming to the graveyard, that is," Rand
amended. "That would do for a murder-motive, very nicely.... What were
Fleming's objections to the merger?"
"Mainly sentimental. Premix was his baby, or, at least, his kid brother.
His father started mixing pancake flour back before the First World War,
and Lane Fleming peddled it off a spring wagon. They worked up a nice
little local trade, and finally a state-wide wholesale business. They
incorporated in the early twenties, and then, after the old man died,
Lane Fleming hired an advertising agency to promote his products, and
built up a national distribution, and took on some sidelines. Then,
during the late Mr. Chamberlain's 'Peace in our time,' he picked up a
refugee Czech chemist and foods-expert named Anton Varcek, who whipped
up a lot of new products. So business got better and better, and they
made more money to spend on advertising to get more money to buy more
advertising to make more money, like Bill Nye's Puritans digging clams
in the winter to get strength to hoe corn in the summer to get strength
to dig clams in the winter.
"So Premix became a sort of symbol of achievement to Fleming. Then, he
was one of these old-model paternalistic employers, and he was afraid
that if he relinquished control, a lot of his old retainers would be
turned out to grass. And finally, he was opposed in principle to
concentration of business ownership. He claimed it made business more
vulnerable to government control and eventual socialization."
"I'm not sure he didn't have something there," Rand considered. "We get
all our corporate eggs in a few baskets, and they're that much easier for
the planned-economy boys to grab.... Just who, on the Premix side, was in
favor of this merger?"
"Just about everybody but Fleming," Tipton replied. "His two sons-in-law,
Fred Dunmore and Varcek, who are first and second vice presidents.
Humphrey Goode, the company attorney, who doubles as board chairman.
All the directors. All the New York banking crowd who are interested
in Premix. And all the two-share tinymites. I don't know who inherits
Fleming's voting interest, but I can find out for you by this time
tomorrow."
"Do that, Tip, and bill me for what you think finding out is worth," Rand
said. "It'll be a novel reversal of order for you to be billing me for an
investigation.... Now, how about the family, as distinct from the
company?"
"Well, there's your client, Gladys Fleming. She married Lane Fleming
about ten years ago, when she was twenty-five and he was fifty-five. In
spite of the age difference, I understand it was a fairly happy marriage.
Then, there are two daughters by a previous marriage, Nelda Dunmore and
Geraldine Varcek, and their respective husbands. They all live together,
in a big house at Rosemont. In the company, Dunmore is Sales, and Varcek
is Production. They each have a corner of the mantle of Lane Fleming in
one hand and a dirk in the other. Nelda and Geraldine hate each other
like Greeks and Trojans. Nelda is the nymphomaniac sister, and Geraldine
is the dipsomaniac. From time to time, temporary alliances get formed,
mainly against Gladys; all of them resent the way she married herself
into a third-interest in the estate. You're going to have yourself a
nice, pleasant little stay in the country."
"I'm looking forward to it." Rand grimaced. "You mentioned suicide
rumors. Such as, and who's been spreading them?"
"Oh, they are the usual bodyless voices that float about," Tipton told
him. "Emanating, I suspect, from sources interested in shaking out the
less sophisticated small shareholders before the merger. The story is
always approximately the same: That Lane Fleming saw his company drifting
reefward, was unwilling to survive the shipwreck, and performed
_seppuku_. The family are supposed to have faked up the accident
afterward. I dismiss the whole thing as a rather less than subtle bit of
market-manipulation chicanery."
"Or a smoke screen, to cover the defects in camouflaging a murder as an
accident," Rand added.
Tipton nodded. "That could be so, too," he agreed. "Say somebody dislikes
the looks of that accident, and starts investigating. Then he runs into
all this miasma of suicide rumors, and promptly shrugs the whole thing
off. Fleming killed himself, and the family made a few alterations and
are passing it off as an accident. The families of suicides have been
known to do that."
"Yes. Regular defense-in-depth system; if the accident line is
penetrated, the suicide line is back of it," Rand said. "Well, in the
last few years, we've seen defenses in depth penetrated with monotonous
regularity. I've jeeped through a couple, myself, to interrogate the
surviving ex-defenders. It's all in having the guns and armor to smash
through with."
CHAPTER 3
Humphrey Goode was sixty-ish, short and chunky, with a fringe of
white hair around a bald crown. His brow was corrugated with wrinkles,
and he peered suspiciously at Rand through a pair of thick-lensed,
black-ribboned glasses. His wide mouth curved downward at the corners
in an expression that was probably intended to be stern and succeeded
only in being pompous. His office was dark, and smelled of dusty books.
"Mr. Rand," he began accusingly, "when your secretary called to make this
appointment, she informed me that you had been retained by Mrs. Gladys
Fleming."
"That's correct." Rand slowly packed tobacco into his pipe and lit it.
"Mrs. Fleming wants me to look after some interests of hers, and as
you're executor of her late husband's estate, I thought I ought to talk
to you, first of all."
Goode's eyes narrowed behind the thick glasses.
"Mr. Rand, if you're investigating the death of Lane Fleming, you're
wasting your time and Mrs. Fleming's money," he lectured. "There is
nothing whatever for you to find out that is not already public
knowledge. Mr. Fleming was accidentally killed by the discharge of an old
revolver he was cleaning. I don't know what foolish feminine impulse led
Mrs. Fleming to employ you, but you'll do nobody any good in this matter,
and you may do a great deal of harm."
"Did my secretary tell you I was making an investigation?" Rand demanded
incredulously. "She doesn't usually make mistakes of that sort."
The wrinkles moved up Goode's brow like a battalion advancing in platoon
front. He looked even more narrowly at Rand, his suspicion compounded
with bewilderment.
"Why should I investigate the death of Lane Fleming?" Rand continued.
"As far as I know, Mrs. Fleming is satisfied that it was an accident. She
never expressed any other belief to me. Do you think it was anything
else?"
"Why, of course not!" Goode exclaimed. "That's just what I was telling
you. I--" He took a fresh start. "There have been rumors--utterly without
foundation, of course--that Mr. Fleming committed suicide. They are, I
may say, nothing but malicious fabrications, circulated for the purpose
of undermining public confidence in Premix Foods, Incorporated. I had
thought that perhaps Mrs. Fleming might have heard them, and decided, on
her own responsibility, to bring you in to scotch them; I was afraid that
such a step might, by giving these rumors fresh currency, defeat its
intended purpose."
"Oh, nothing of the sort!" Rand told him. "I'm not in the least
interested in how Mr. Fleming was killed, and the question is simply
not involved in what Mrs. Fleming wants me to do."
He stopped there. Goode was looking at him sideways, sucking in one
corner of his mouth and pushing out the other. It was not a facial
contortion that impressed Rand favorably; it was too reminiscent of
a high-school principal under whom he had suffered, years ago, in
Vicksburg, Mississippi. Rand began to suspect that Goode might be just
another such self-righteous, opinionated, egotistical windbag. Such men
could be dangerous, were usually quite unscrupulous, and were almost
always unpleasant to deal with.
"Then why," the lawyer demanded, "did Mrs. Fleming employ you?"
"Well, as you know," Rand began, "the Fleming pistol-collection, now the
joint property of Mrs. Fleming and her two stepdaughters, is an extremely
valuable asset. Mr. Fleming spent the better part of his life gathering
it. At one time or another, he must have owned between four and five
thousand different pistols and revolvers. The twenty-five hundred left to
his heirs represent the result of a systematic policy of discriminating
purchase, replacement of inferior items, and general improvement. It's
one of the largest and most famous collections of its kind in the
country."
"Well?" Goode was completely out of his depth by now. "Surely Mrs.
Fleming doesn't think...?"
"Mrs. Fleming thinks that expert advice is urgently needed in disposing
of that collection," Rand replied, carefully picking his words to fit
what he estimated to be Goode's probable semantic reactions. "She has
the utmost confidence in your ability and integrity, as an attorney;
however, she realized that you could hardly describe yourself as an
antique-arms expert. It happens that I am an expert in antique firearms,
particularly pistols. I have a collection of my own, I am the author of
a number of articles on the subject, and I am recognized as something
of an authority. I know arms-values, and understand market conditions.
Furthermore, not being a dealer, or connected with any museum, I have no
mercenary motive for undervaluing the collection. That's all there is to
it; Mrs. Fleming has retained me as a firearms-expert, in connection with
the collection."
Goode was looking at Rand as though the latter had just torn off a mask,
revealing another and entirely different set of features underneath. The
change seemed to be a welcome one, but he was evidently having trouble
adjusting to it. Rand grinned inwardly; now he was going to have to find
himself a new set of verbal labels and identifications.
"Well, Mr. Rand, that alters the situation considerably," he said, with
noticeably less hostility. He was still a bit resentful; people had no
right to confuse him by jumping about from one category to another, like
that. "Now understand, I'm not trying to be offensive, but it seems a
little unusual for a private detective also to be an authority on antique
firearms."
"Mr. Fleming was an authority on antique firearms, and he was a
manufacturer of foodstuffs," Rand parried, carefully staying inside
Goode's Aristotelian system of categories and verbal identifications. "My
own business does not occupy all my time, any more than his did, and I
doubt if an interest in the history and development of deadly weapons is
any more incongruous in a criminologist than in an industrialist. But if
there's any doubt in your mind as to my qualifications, you can check
with Colonel Taylor, at the State Museum, or with the editor of the
_American Rifleman_."
"I see." Goode nodded. "And as you point out, being a sort of
non-professional expert, you should be free from mercenary bias." He
nodded again, taking off his glasses and polishing them on an outsize
white handkerchief. "Frankly, now that I understand your purpose, Mr.
Rand, I must say that I am quite glad that Mrs. Fleming took this step.
I was perplexed about how to deal with that collection. I realized that
it was worth a great deal of money, but I haven't the vaguest idea how
much, or how it could be sold to the best advantage.... At a rough guess,
Mr. Rand, how much do you think it ought to bring?"
Rand shook his head. "I only saw it twice, the last time two years ago.
Ask me that after I've spent a day or so going over it, and I'll be able
to give you an estimate. I will say this, though: It's probably worth a
lot more than the ten thousand dollars Arnold Rivers has offered for it."
That produced an unexpected effect. Goode straightened in his chair,
gobbling in surprised indignation.
"Arnold Rivers? Has he had the impudence to try to buy the collection?"
he demanded. "Where did you hear that?"
"From Mrs. Fleming. I understand he made the offer to Fred Dunmore.
That's his business, isn't it?"
"I believe the colloquial term is 'racket,'" Goode said. "Why, that man
is a notorious swindler! Mr. Rand, do you know that only a week before
his death, Mr. Fleming instructed me to bring suit against him, and also
to secure his indictment on criminal charges of fraud?"
"I didn't know that, but I'm not surprised," Rand answered. "What did he
burn Fleming with?"
"Here; I'll show you." Goode rose from his seat and went to a rank of
steel filing-cabinets behind the desk. In a moment, he was back, with a
large manila envelope under his arm, and a huge pistol in either hand.
"Here, Mr. Rand," he chuckled. "We'll just test your firearms knowledge.
What do you make of these?"
Rand took the pistols and looked at them. They were wheel locks,
apparently sixteenth-century South German; they were a good two feet in
over-all length, with ball-pommels the size of oranges, and long steel
belt-hooks. The stocks were so covered with ivory inlay that the wood
showed only in tiny interstices; the metal-work was lavishly engraved and
gold-inlaid. To the trigger-guards were attached tags marked _Fleming vs.
Rivers_.
Rand examined each pistol separately, then compared them. Finally, he
took a six-inch rule from his pocket and made measurements, first with
one edge and then with the other.
"Well, I'm damned," he said, laying them on the desk. "These things are
the most complete fakes I ever saw--locks, stocks, barrels and mountings.
They're supposed to be late sixteenth-century; I doubt if they were made
before 1920. As far as I can see or measure, there isn't the slightest
difference between them, except on some of the decorative inlay. The
whole job must have been miked in ten-thousandths, and what's more,
whoever made them used metric measurements. You'll find pairs of English
dueling pistols as early as 1775 that are almost indistinguishable, but
in 1575, when these things were supposed to have been made, a gunsmith
was working fine when he was working in sixteenth-inches. They just
didn't have the measuring instruments, at that time, to do closer work.
I won't bother taking these things apart, but if I did, I'd bet all
Wall Street to Junior's piggy-bank that I'd find that the screws were
machine-threaded and the working-parts interchanged. I've heard about
fakes like these,"--he named a famous, recently liquidated West Coast
collection--"but I'd never hoped to see an example like this."
Goode gave a hacking chuckle. "You'll do as an arms-expert, Mr. Rand," he
said. "And you'd win the piggy-bank. It seems that after Mr. Fleming
bought them, he took them apart, and found, just as you say, that the
screw-threads had been machine-cut, and that the working-parts were
interchangeable from one pistol to the other. There were a lot of papers
accompanying them--I have them here--purporting to show that they had
been sold by some Austrian nobleman, an anti-Nazi refugee, in whose
family they had been since the reign of Maximilian II. They are, of
course, fabrications. I looked up the family in the _Almanach de Gotha_;
it simply never existed. At first, Mr. Fleming had been inclined to take
the view that Rivers had been equally victimized with himself. However,
when Rivers refused to take back the pistols and refund the purchase
price, he altered his opinion. He placed them in my hands, instructing me
to bring suit and also start criminal action; he was in a fearful rage
about it, and swore that he'd drive Rivers out of business. However,
before I could start action, Mr. Fleming was killed in that accident, and
as he was the sole witness to the fact of the sale, and as none of the
heirs was interested, I did nothing about it. In fact, I advised them
that action against Rivers would cost the estate more than they could
hope to recover in damages." He picked up one of the pistols and examined
it. "Now, I don't know what to do about these."
"Take them home and hang them over the mantel," Rand advised. "If I'm
going to have anything to do with selling the collection, I don't want
anything to do with them."
Goode was peering at the ivory inlay on the underbelly of the stock.
"They are beautiful, and I don't care when they were made," he said. "I
think, if nobody else wants them, I'll do just that.... Now, Mr. Rand,
what had you intended doing about the collection?"
"Well, that's what I came to see you about, Mr. Goode. As I understand
it, it is you who are officially responsible for selling the collection,
and the proceeds would be turned over to you for distribution to Mrs.
Fleming, Mrs. Dunmore and Mrs. Varcek. Is that correct?"
"Yes. The collection, although in the physical possession of Mrs.
Fleming, is still an undistributed asset."
"I thought so." Rand got out Gladys Fleming's letter of authorization and
handed it to Goode. "As you'll see by that, I was retained by, and only
by, Mrs. Fleming," he said. "I am assuming that her interests are
identical with those of the other heirs, but I realize that this is true
only to a very limited extent. It's my understanding that relations
between the three ladies are not the most pleasant."
Goode produced a short, croaking laugh. "Now there's a cautious
understatement," he commented. "Mr. Rand, I feel that you should know
that all three hate each other poisonously."
"That was rather my impression. Now, I expect some trouble, from Mrs.
Dunmore and/or Mrs. Varcek, either or both of whom are sure to accuse me
of having been brought into this by Mrs. Fleming to help her defraud the
others. That, of course, is not the case; they will all profit equally by
my participation in this. But I'm going to have trouble convincing them
of that."
"Yes. You will," Goode agreed. "Would you rather carry my authorization
than Mrs. Fleming's?"
"Yes, indeed, Mr. Goode. To tell the truth, that was why I came here,
for one reason. You will not be obligated in any way by authorizing me
to act as your agent--I'm getting my fee from Mrs. Fleming--but I would
be obligated to represent her only as far as her interests did not
improperly conflict with those of the other heirs, and that's what I
want made clear."
Goode favored the detective with a saurian smile. "You're not a lawyer,
too, Mr. Rand?" he asked.
"Well, I am a member of the Bar in the State of Mississippi, though I
never practiced," Rand admitted. "Instead of opening a law-office, I went
into the F.B.I., in 1935, and then opened a private agency a couple of
years later. But if I had to, which God forbid, I could go home tomorrow
and hang out my shingle."
"You seem to have had quite an eventful career," Goode remarked, with a
queer combination of envy and disapproval. "I understand that, until
recently, you were an officer in the Army Intelligence, too.... I'll have
your authorization to act for me made out immediately; to list and
appraise the collection, and to negotiate with prospective purchasers.
And by the way," he continued, "did I understand you to say that you had
heard some of these silly rumors to the effect that Lane Fleming had
committed suicide?"
"Oh, that's what's always heard, under the circumstances," Rand shrugged.
"A certain type of sensation-loving mind..."
"Mr. Rand, there is not one scintilla of truth in any of these scurrilous
stories!" Goode declared, pumping up a fine show of indignation. "The
Premix Company is in the best possible financial condition; a glance at
its books, or at its last financial statement, would show that. I ought
to know, I'm chairman of the board of directors. Just because there was
some talk of retrenchment, shortly before Mr. Fleming's death ..."
"Oh, no responsible person pays any attention to that sort of talk," Rand
comforted him. "My armed-guard and armored-car service brings me into
contact with a lot of the local financial crowd. None of them is taking
these rumors seriously."
"Well, of course, nobody wants the responsibility of starting a panic,
even a minor one, but people are talking, and it's hurting Premix on the
market," Goode gloomed. "And now, people will hear of Mrs. Fleming's
having retained you, and will assume, just as I did at first, that you
are making some kind of an investigation. I hope you will make a prompt
denial, if you hear any talk like that." He pressed a button on his desk.
"And now, I'll get a letter of authorization made out for you, Mr.
Rand ..."
CHAPTER 4
Stephen Gresham was in his early sixties, but he could have still worn
his World War I uniform without anything giving at the seams, and buckled
the old Sam Browne at the same hole. As Rand entered, he rose from behind
his desk and advanced, smiling cordially.
"Why, hello, Jeff!" he greeted the detective, grasping his hand heartily.
"You haven't been around for months. What have you been doing, and why
don't you come out to Rosemont to see us? Dot and Irene were wondering
what had become of you."
"I'm afraid I've been neglecting too many of my old friends lately,"
Rand admitted, sitting down and getting his pipe out. "Been busy as the
devil. Fact is, it was business that finally brought me around here. I
understand that you and some others are forming a pool to buy the Lane
Fleming collection."
"Yes!" Gresham became enthusiastic. "Want in on it? I'm sure the others
would be glad to have you in with us. We're going to need all the money
we can scrape together, with this damned Rivers bidding against us."
"I'm afraid you will, at that, Stephen," Rand told him. "And not
necessarily on account of Rivers. You see, the Fleming estate has just
employed me to expertize the collection and handle the sale for them."
Rand got his pipe lit and drawing properly. "I hate doing this to you,
but you know how it is."
"Oh, of course. I should have known they'd get somebody like you in
to sell the collection for them. Humphrey Goode isn't competent to
handle that. What we were all afraid of was a public auction at some
sales-gallery."
Rand shook his head. "Worst thing they could do; a collection like
that would go for peanuts at auction. Remember the big sales in the
twenties?... Why, here; I'm going to be in Rosemont, staying at the
Fleming place, working on the collection, for the next week or so. I
suppose your crowd wouldn't want to make an offer until I have everything
listed, but I'd like to talk to your associates, in a group, as soon as
possible."
"Well, we all know pretty much what's in the collection," Gresham said.
"We were neighbors of his, and collectors are a gregarious lot. But we
aren't anxious to make any premature offers. We don't want to offer more
than we have to, and at the same time, we don't want to underbid and see
the collection sold elsewhere."
"No, of course not." Rand thought for a moment. "Tell you what; I'll give
you and your friends the best break I can in fairness to my clients. I'm
not obliged to call for sealed bids, or anything like that, so when I've
heard from everybody, I'll give you a chance to bid against the highest
offer in hand. If you want to top it, you can have the collection for any
kind of an overbid that doesn't look too suspiciously nominal."
"Why, Jeff, I appreciate that," Gresham said. "I think you're entirely
within your rights, but naturally, we won't mention this outside. I can
imagine Arnold Rivers, for instance, taking a very righteous view of such
an arrangement."
"Yes, so can I. Of course, if he'd call me a crook, I'd take that as
a compliment," Rand said. "I wonder if I could meet your group, say
tomorrow evening? I want to be in a position to assure the Fleming family
and Humphrey Goode that you're all serious and responsible."
"Well, we're very serious about it," Gresham replied, "and I think we're
all responsible. You can look us up, if you wish. Besides myself, there
is Philip Cabot, of Cabot, Joyner & Teale, whom you know, and Adam
Trehearne, who's worth about a half-million in industrial shares, and
Colin MacBride, who's vice president in charge of construction and
maintenance for Edison-Public Power & Light, at about twenty thousand a
year, and Pierre Jarrett and his fiancee, Karen Lawrence. Pierre was a
Marine captain, invalided home after being wounded on Peleliu; he writes
science-fiction for the pulps. Karen has a little general-antique
business in Rosemont. They intend using their share of the collection,
plus such culls and duplicates as the rest of us can consign to them, to
go into the arms business, with a general-antique sideline, which Karen
can manage while Pierre's writing.... Tell you what; I'll call a meeting
at my place tomorrow evening, say at eight thirty. That suit you?"
That, Rand agreed, would be all right. Gresham asked him how recently he
had seen the Fleming collection.
"About two years ago; right after I got back from Germany. You remember,
we went there together, one evening in March."
"Yes, that's right. We didn't have time to see everything," Gresham said.
"My God, Jeff! Twenty-five wheel locks! Ten snaphaunces. And every
imaginable kind of flintlock--over a hundred U.S. Martials, including the
1818 Springfield, all the S. North types, a couple of Virginia
Manufactory models, and--he got this since the last time you saw the
collection--a real Rappahannock Forge flintlock. And about a hundred and
fifty Colts, all models and most variants. Remember that big Whitneyville
Walker, in original condition? He got that one in 1924, at the Fred Hines
sale, at the old Walpole Galleries. And seven Paterson Colts, including
a couple of cased sets. And anything else you can think of. A Hall
flintlock breech-loader; an Elisha Collier flintlock revolver; a pair
of Forsythe detonator-lock pistols.... Oh, that's a collection to end
collections."
"By the way, Humphrey Goode showed me a pair of big ball-butt wheel
locks, all covered with ivory inlay," Rand mentioned.
Gresham laughed heartily. "Aren't they the damnedest ever seen, though?"
he asked. "Made in Germany, about 1870 or '80, about the time
arms-collecting was just getting out of the family-heirloom stage,
wouldn't you say?"
"I'd say made in Japan, about 1920," Rand replied. "Remember, there were
a couple of small human figures on each pistol, a knight and a huntsman?
Did you notice that they had slant eyes?" He stopped laughing, and looked
at Gresham seriously. "Just how much more of that sort of thing do you
think I'm going to have to weed out of the collection, before I can offer
it for sale?" he asked.
Gresham shook his head. "They're all. They were Lane Fleming's one false
step. Ordinarily, Lane was a careful buyer; he must have let himself get
hypnotized by all that ivory and gold, and all that documentation on
crested notepaper. You know, Fleming's death was an undeserved stroke of
luck for Arnold Rivers. If he hadn't been killed just when he was, he'd
have run Rivers out of the old-arms business."
"I notice that Rivers isn't advertising in the _American Rifleman_ any
more," Rand observed.
"No; the National Rifle Association stopped his ad, and lifted his
membership card for good measure," Gresham said. "Rivers sold a rifle to
a collector down in Virginia, about three years ago, while you were still
occupying Germany. A fine, early flintlock Kentuck, that had been made
out of a fine, late percussion Kentuck by sawing off the breech-end of
the barrel, rethreading it for the breech-plug, drilling a new vent, and
fitting the lock with a flint hammer and a pan-and-frizzen assembly, and
shortening the fore-end to fit. Rivers has a gunsmith over at Kingsville,
one Elmer Umholtz, who does all his fraudulent conversions for him. I
have an example of Umholtz's craftsmanship, myself. The collector who
bought this spurious flintlock spotted what had been done, and squawked
to the Rifle Association, and to the postal authorities."
"Rivers claimed, I suppose, that he had gotten it from a family that had
owned it ever since it was made, and showed letters signed 'D. Boone' and
'Davy Crockett' to prove it?"
"No, he claimed to have gotten it in trade from some wayfaring
collector," Gresham replied. "He convinced Uncle Whiskers, but the
N.R.A. took a slightly dimmer view of the transaction, so Rivers doesn't
advertise in the _Rifleman_ any more."
"Wasn't there some talk about Whitneyville Walker Colts that had been
made out of 1848 Model Colt Dragoons?" Rand asked.
"Oh Lord, yes! This fellow Umholtz was practically turning them out on
an assembly-line, for a while. Rivers must have sold about ten of them.
You know, Umholtz is a really fine gunsmith; I had him build a deer-rifle
for Dot, a couple of years ago--Mexican-Mauser action, Johnson
barrel, chambered for .300 Savage; Umholtz made the stock and fitted a
scope-sight--it's a beautiful little rifle. I hate to see him prostitute
his talents the way he does by making these fake antiques for Rivers. You
know, he made one of these mythical heavy .44 six-shooters of the sort
Colt was supposed to have turned out at Paterson in 1839 for Colonel
Walker's Texas Rangers--you know, the model he couldn't find any of in
1847, when he made the real Walker Colt. That story you find in Sawyer's
book."
"Why, that story's been absolutely disproved," Rand said. "There never
was any such revolver."
"Not till Umholtz made one," Gresham replied. "Rivers sold it to,"--he
named a moving-picture bigshot--"for twenty-five hundred dollars. His
story was that he picked it up in Mexico, in 1938; traded a .38-special
to some halfbreed goat-herder for it."
"This fellow who bought it, now; did he see Belden and Haven's Colt book,
when it came out in 1940?"
"Yes, and he was plenty burned up, but what could he do? Rivers was dug
in behind this innocent-purchase-and-sale-in-good-faith Maginot Line of
his. You know, that bastard took me, once, just one-tenth as badly, with
a fake U.S. North & Cheney Navy flintlock 1799 Model that had been made
out of a French 1777 Model." The lawyer muttered obscenely.
"Why didn't you sue hell out of him?" Rand asked. "You might not have
gotten anything, but you'd have given him a lot of dirty publicity.
That's all Fleming was expecting to do about those wheel locks."
"I'm not Fleming. He could afford litigation like that; I can't. I want
my money, and if I don't get it in cash, I'm going to beat it out of that
dirty little swindler's hide," Gresham replied, an ugly look appearing on
his face.
"I wouldn't blame you. You could find plenty of other collectors who'd
hold your coat while you were doing it," Rand told him. Then he inquired,
idly: "What sort of a pistol was it that Lane Fleming is supposed to have
shot himself with?"
Gresham frowned. "I really don't know; I didn't see it. It's supposed
to have been a Confederate Leech & Rigdon .36; you know, one of those
imitation Colt Navy Models that were made in the South during the Civil
War."
Rand nodded. He was familiar with the type.
"The story is that Fleming found it hanging back of the counter at some
roadside lunch-stand, along with a lot of other old pistols, and talked
the proprietor into letting it go for a few dollars," Gresham continued.
"It was supposed to have been loaded at the time, and went off while
Fleming was working on it, at home." He shook his head. "I can't believe
that, Jeff. Lane Fleming would know a loaded revolver when he saw one. I
believe he deliberately shot himself, and the family faked the accident
and fixed the authorities. The police never made any investigation; it
was handled by the coroner alone. And our coroner, out in Scott County,
is eminently fixable, if you go about it right; a pitiful little
nonentity with a tremendous inferiority complex."
"But good Lord, why?" Rand demanded. "I never heard of Fleming having any
troubles worth killing himself over."
Gresham lowered his voice. "Jeff, I'm not supposed to talk about this,
but the fact is that I believe Fleming was about to lose control of the
Premix Company," he said. "I have, well, sources of inside information.
This is in confidence, so don't quote me, but certain influences were at
work, inside the company, toward that end." He inspected the tip of his
cigar and knocked off the ash into the tray at his elbow. "Lane Fleming's
death is on record as accidental, Jeff. It's been written off as such. It
would be a great deal better for all concerned if it were left at that."
CHAPTER 5
Rand drove slowly through Rosemont, the next day, refreshing his memory
of the place. It was one of the many commuters' villages strung out for
fifty miles along the railroad lines radiating from New Belfast, and
depended for its support upon a population scattered over a five-mile
radius at estates and country homes. Obviously a planned community, it
was dominated by a gray-walled, green-roofed railroad station which stood
on its passenger-platform like a captain in front of four platoons of
gray-walled, green-roofed houses and stores aligned along as many
converging roads. There was a post office, uniform with the rest of the
buildings; an excessive quantity of aluminum trimming dated it somewhere
in the middle Andrew W. Mellon period. There were four gas stations, a
movie theater, and a Woolworth store with a red front that made it look
like some painted hussy who had wandered into a Quaker Meeting.
Over the door of one of the smaller stores, Rand saw a black-lettered
white sign: _Antiques_. There was a smoke-gray Plymouth coupe parked in
front of it.
Instead of turning onto the road to the Fleming estate, he continued
along Route 19 for a mile or so beyond the village, until he came to a
red brick pseudo-Colonial house on the right. He pulled to the side of
the road and got out, turning up the collar of his trench coat. The air
was raw and damp, doubly unpleasant after the recent unseasonable warmth.
An apathetically persistent rain sogged the seedling-dotted old fields on
either side, and the pine-woods beyond, and a high ceiling of unbroken
dirty gray gave no promise of clearing. The mournful hoot of a distant
locomotive whistle was the only sound to pierce the silence. For a
moment, Rand stood with his back to the car, looking at the gallows-like
sign that proclaimed this to be the business-place of Arnold Rivers,
Fine Antique and Modern Firearms for the Discriminating Collector.
The house faced the road with a long side; at the left, a porch formed
a continuation under a deck roof, and on the right, an ell had been
built at right angles, extending thirty feet toward the road. Although
connected to the house by a shed roof, which acquired a double pitch and
became a gable roof where the ell projected forward, it was, in effect,
a separate building, with its own front door and its own door-path. Its
floor-level was about four feet lower than that of the parent structure.
A Fibber McGee door-chime clanged as Rand entered. Closing the door
behind him, he looked around. The room, some twenty feet wide and fifty
long, was lighted by an almost continuous row of casement windows on the
right, and another on the left for as far as the ell extended beyond the
house. They were set high, a good five feet from lower sill to floor, and
there was no ceiling; the sloping roof was supported by bare timber
rafters. Racks lined the walls, under the windows, holding long-guns
and swords; the pistols and daggers and other small items were displayed
on a number of long tables. In the middle of the room, glaring at the
front door, was a brass four-pounder on a ship's carriage; a Philippine
_latanka_, muzzle tilted upward, stood beside it. Where the ell joined
the house under the shed roof, there was a fireplace, and a short flight
of steps to a landing and a door out of the dwelling, and some
furniture--a davenport, three or four deep chairs facing the fire, a low
cocktail-table, a cellarette, and, in the far corner, a big desk.
As Rand went toward the rear, a young man rose from one of the chairs,
laid aside a magazine, and advanced to meet him. He didn't exactly
harmonize with all the lethal array around him; he would have looked more
at home presiding over an establishment devoted to ladies' items. His
costume ran to pastel shades, he had large and soulful blue eyes and
prettily dimpled cheeks, and his longish blond hair was carefully
disordered into a windblown effect.
"Oh, good afternoon," he greeted. "Is there anything in particular you're
interested in, or would you like to just look about?"
"Mostly look about," Rand said. "Is Mr. Rivers in?"
"Mr. Rivers is having luncheon. He'll be finished before long, if you
care to wait.... Have you ever been here before?"
"Not for some time," Rand said. "When I was here last, there was a young
fellow named Jordan, or Gordon, or something like that."
"Oh. He was before my time." The present functionary introduced himself
as Cecil Gillis. Rand gave his name and shook hands with him. Young
Gillis wanted to know if Rand was a collector.
"In a small way. General-pistol collector," Rand told him. "Have you many
Colts, now?"
There was a whole table devoted to Colts. No spurious Whitneyville
Walkers; after all, a dealer can sell just so many of such top-drawer
rarities before the finger of suspicion begins leveling itself in his
direction, and Arnold Rivers had long ago passed that point. There were
several of the commoner percussion models, however, with lovely, perfect
bluing that was considerably darker than that applied at the Colt factory
during the 'fifties and 'sixties of the last century. The silver plating
on backstraps and trigger-guards was perfect, too, but the naval-battle
and stagecoach-holdup engravings on the cylinders were far from clear--in
one case, completely obliterated. The cylinder of one 1851 Navy bore
serial numbers that looked as though they had been altered to conform to
the numbers on other parts of the weapon. Many of the Colts, however,
were entirely correct, and all were in reasonably good condition.
Rand saw something that interested him, and picked it up.
"That isn't a real Colt," the exquisite Mr. Gillis told him. "It's a
Confederate copy; a Leech & Rigdon."
"So I see. I have a Griswold & Grier, but no Leech & Rigdon."
"The Griswold & Grier; that's the one with the brass frame," Cecil Gillis
said. "Surprising how many collectors think all Confederate revolvers
had brass frames, because of the Griswold & Grier, and the Spiller &
Burr.... That's an unusually fine specimen, Mr. Rand. Mr. Rivers got
it sometime in late December or early January; from a gentleman in
Charleston, I understand. I believe it had been carried during the Civil
War by a member of the former owner's family."
Rand looked at the tag tied to the trigger-guard; it was marked, in
letter-code, with three different prices. That was characteristic of
Arnold Rivers's business methods.
"How much does Mr. Rivers want for this?" he asked, handing the revolver
to young Gillis.
The clerk mentally decoded the three prices and vacillated for a moment
over them. He had already appraised Rand, from his twenty-dollar Stetson
past his Burberry trench coat to his English hand-sewn shoes, and placed
him in the pay-dirt bracket; however, from some remarks Rand had let
drop, he decided that this customer knew pistols, and probably knew
values.
"Why, that is sixty dollars, Mr. Rand," he said, with the air of one
conferring a benefaction. Maybe he was, at that, Rand decided; prices had
jumped like the very devil since the war.
"I'll take it." He dug out his billfold and extracted three twenties.
"Nice clean condition; clean it up yourself?"
"Why, no. Mr. Rivers got it like this. As I said, it's supposed to have
been a family heirloom, but from the way it's been cared for, I would
have thought it had been in a collection," the clerk replied. "Shall I
wrap it for you?"
"Yes, if you please." Rand followed him to the rear, laying aside his
coat and hat. Gillis got some heavy paper out of a closet and packaged
it, then hunted through a card-file in the top drawer of the desk, until
he found the card he wanted. He made a few notes on it, and was still
holding it and the sixty dollars when he rejoined Rand by the fire.
In spite of his effeminate appearance and over-refined manner, the young
fellow really knew arms. The conversation passed from Confederate
revolvers to the arms of the Civil War in general, and they were
discussing the changes in tactics occasioned by the introduction of the
revolver and the repeating carbine when the door from the house opened
and Arnold Rivers appeared on the landing.
He looked older than when Rand had last seen him. His hair was thinner on
top and grayer at the temples. Never particularly robust, he had lost
weight, and his face was thinner and more hollow-cheeked. His mouth still
had the old curve of supercilious insolence, and he was still smoking
with the six-inch carved ivory cigarette-holder which Rand remembered.
He looked his visitor over carefully from the doorway, decided that he
was not soliciting magazine subscriptions or selling Fuller brushes, and
came down the steps. As he did, he must have recognized Rand; he shifted
the cigarette-holder to his left hand and extended his right.
"Mr. Rand, isn't it?" he asked. "I thought I knew you. It's been some
years since you've been around here."
"I've been a lot of places in the meantime," Rand said.
"You were here last in October, '41, weren't you?" Rivers thought for a
moment. "You bought a Highlander, then. By Alexander Murdoch, of Doune,
wasn't it?"
"No; Andrew Strahan, of Edzel," Rand replied.
Rivers snapped his fingers. "That's right! I sold both of those pistols
at about the same time; a gentleman in Chicago got the Murdoch. The
Strahan had a star-pierced lobe on the hammer. Did you ever get anybody
to translate the Gaelic inscription on the barrel?"
"You've a memory like Jim Farley," Rand flattered. "The inscription was
the clan slogan of the Camerons; something like: _Sons of the hound, come
and get flesh!_ I won't attempt the original."
"Mr. Rand just bought 6524, the Leech & Rigdon .36," Gillis interjected,
handing Rivers the card and the money. Rivers looked at both, saw how
much Rand had been taken for, and nodded.
"A nice item," he faintly praised, as though anything selling for less
than a hundred dollars was so much garbage. "Considering the condition in
which Confederate arms are usually found, it's really first-rate. I think
you'll like it, Mr. Rand."
The telephone rang, Cecil Gillis answered it, listened for a moment, and
then said: "For you, Mr. Rivers; long distance from Milwaukee."
Rivers's face lit with the beatific smile of a cat at a promising
mouse-hole. "Ah, excuse me, Mr. Rand." He crossed to the desk, picked
up the phone and spoke into it. "This is Arnold Rivers," he said, much
as Edward Murrow used to say, _This--is London!_ The telephone sputtered
for a moment. "Ah, yes indeed, Mr. Verral. Quite well, I thank you. And
you?... No, it hasn't been sold yet. Do you wish me to ship it to
you?... On approval; certainly.... Of course it's an original flintlock;
I didn't list it as re-altered, did I?... No, not at all; the only
replacement is the small spring inside the patchbox.... Yes, the rifling
is excellent.... Of course; I'll ship it at once.... Good-by, Mr.
Verral."
He hung up and turned to his hireling, fairly licking his chops.
"Cecil, Mr. Verral, in Milwaukee, whose address we have, has just ordered
6288, the F. Zorger flintlock Kentuck. Will you please attend to it?"
"Right away, Mr. Rivers." Gillis went to one of the racks under the
windows and selected a long flintlock rifle, carrying it out the door at
the rear.
"I issued a list, a few days ago," Rivers told Rand. "When Cecil comes
back, I'll have him get you a copy. I've been receiving calls ever since;
this is the twelfth long-distance call since Tuesday."
"Business must be good," Rand commented. "I understand you've offered to
buy the Lane Fleming collection. For ten thousand dollars."
"Where did you hear that?" Rivers demanded, looking up from the drawer in
which he was filing the card on the Leech & Rigdon.
"From Mrs. Fleming." Rand released a puff of pipe smoke and watched it
draw downward into the fireplace. "I've been retained to handle the sale
of that collection; naturally, I'd know who was offering how much."
Rivers's eyes narrowed. He came around the desk, loading another
cigarette into his holder.
"And just why, might I ask, did Mrs. Fleming think it in order to employ
a detective in a matter like that?" he wanted to know.
Rand let out more smoke. "She didn't. She employed an arms-expert, a
Colonel Jefferson Davis Rand, U.S.A., O.R.C., who is a well-known
contributor to the _American Rifleman_ and the _Infantry Journal_ and
_Antiques_ and the old _Gun Report_. You've read some of his articles,
I believe?"
"Then you're not making an investigation?"
"What in the world is there to investigate?" Rand asked. "I'm just
selling a lot of old pistols for the Fleming estate."
"I thought Fred Dunmore was doing that."
"So did Fred. You're both wrong, though. I am." He got out Goode's letter
of authorization and handed it to Rivers, who read it through twice
before handing it back. "You see anything in that about Fred Dunmore,
or any of the other relatives-in-law?" he asked.
"Well, I didn't understand; I'm glad to know what the situation really
is." Rivers frowned. "I thought you were making some kind of an
investigation, and as I'm the only party making any serious offer to buy
those pistols, I wanted to know what there was to investigate."
"Do you consider ten thousand dollars to be a serious offer?" Rand asked.
"And aren't you forgetting Stephen Gresham and his friends?"
"Oh, those people!" Rivers scoffed. "Mr. Rand, you certainly don't expect
them to be able to handle anything like this, do you?"
"Well, the banks speak well of them," Rand replied. "Some of them have
good listings in Dun & Bradstreet's, too."
"Well, so do I," Rivers reported. "I can top any offer that crowd makes.
What do you expect to get out of them, anyhow?"
"I haven't talked price with them, yet. A lot more than ten thousand
dollars, anyhow."
Rivers forced a laugh. "Now, Mr. Rand! That was just an opening offer. I
thought Fred Dunmore was handling the collection." He grimaced. "What do
you think it's really worth?"
Rand shrugged. "It probably has a dealer's piece-by-piece list-value
of around seventy thousand. I'm not nuts enough to expect anything like
that in a lump sum, but please, let's not mention ten thousand dollars in
this connection any more. That's on the order of Lawyer Marks bidding
seventy-five cents for Uncle Tom; it's only good for laughs."
"Well, how much more than that do you think Gresham and his crowd will
offer?"
"I haven't talked price with them, yet," Rand repeated. "I mean to, as
soon as I can."
"Well, you get their offer, and I'll top it," Rivers declared. "I'm
willing to go as high as twenty-five thousand for that collection; they
won't go that high."
Although he just managed not to show it, Rand was really surprised. Even
a consciousness of abstracting had not prepared him for the shock of
hearing Arnold Rivers raise his own offer to something resembling an
acceptable figure. A good case, he reflected, could be made of that
for the actuality of miracles.
He rose, picking up his trench coat.
"Well! That's something like it, now," he said. "I'll see you later; I
don't know how long it's going to take me to get a list prepared, and
circularize the old-arms trade. I should hear from everybody who's
interested in a few weeks. You can be sure I'll keep your offer in mind."
He slipped into the coat and put on his hat, and then picked up the
package containing the Confederate revolver. Rivers had risen, too; he
was watching Rand nervously. When Rand tucked the package under his arm
and began drawing on his gloves, Rivers cleared his throat.
"Mr. Rand, I'm dreadfully sorry," he began, "but I'll have to return your
money and take back that revolver. It should not have been sold." He got
Rand's sixty dollars out of his pocket as though he expected it to catch
fire, and held it out.
Rand favored him with a display of pained surprise.
"Why, I can't do that," he replied. "I bought this revolver in good
faith, and you accepted payment and were satisfied with the transaction.
The sale's been made, now."
Rivers seemed distressed. It was probably the first time he had ever been
on the receiving end of that routine, and he didn't like it.
"Now you're being unreasonable, Mr. Rand," he protested. "Look here; I'll
give you seventy-five dollars' credit on anything else in the shop. You
certainly can't find fault with an offer like that."
"I don't want anything else in the shop; I want this revolver you sold
me." Rand gave him a look of supercilious insolence that was at least a
two hundred per cent improvement on Rivers at his most insolent. "You
know, I'll begin to acquire a poor idea of your business methods before
long," he added.
Rivers laughed ruefully. "Well, to tell the truth, I just remembered a
customer of mine who specializes in Confederate arms, who would pay me at
least eighty for that item," he admitted. "I thought..."
Rand shook his head. "I have a special fondness for Confederate arms,
myself. One of my grandfathers was in Mosby's Rangers, and the other was
with Barksdale, to say nothing of about a dozen great-uncles and so on."
"Well, you're entirely within your rights, Mr. Rand," Rivers conceded. "I
should apologize for trying to renege on a sale, but.... Well, I hope to
see you again, soon." He followed Rand to the door, shaking hands with
him. "Don't forget; I'm willing to pay anything up to twenty-five
thousand for the Fleming collection."
CHAPTER 6
The Fleming butler--Walters, Rand remembered Gladys Fleming having called
him--became apologetic upon learning who the visitor was.
"Forgive me, Colonel Rand, but I'm afraid I must put you to some
inconvenience, sir," he said. "You see, we have no chauffeur, at present,
and I don't drive very well, myself. Would you object to putting up your
own car, sir? The garage is under the house, at the rear; just follow the
driveway around. I'll go through the house and meet you there for the
luggage. I'm dreadfully sorry to put you to the trouble, but...."
"Oh, that's all right," Rand comforted him. "Just as soon do it, myself,
now, anyhow. I expect to be in and out with the car while I'm here, and
I'd better learn the layout of the garage now."
"You may back in, sir, or drive straight in and back out," the butler
told him. "One way's about as easy as the other."
Rand returned to his car, driving around the house. A row of doors opened
out of the basement garage; Walters, who must have gone through the house
on the double, was waiting for him. Having what amounted to a conditioned
reflex to park his car so that he could get it out as fast as possible,
he cut over to the right, jockeyed a little, and backed in. There were
already two cars in the garage; a big maroon Packard sedan, and a
sand-colored Packard station-wagon, standing side by side. Rand put
his Lincoln in on the left of the sedan.
"Bags in the luggage-compartment; it isn't locked," he told the butler,
making sure that the glove-compartment, where he had placed the Leech &
Rigdon revolver, was locked. As he got out, the servant went to the rear
of the car and took out the Gladstone and the B-4 bag Rand had brought
with him.
"If you don't mind entering the house from the rear, sir, we can go up
those steps, there, and through the rear hall," the butler suggested,
almost as though he were making some indecent and criminal proposal.
Rand told him to forget the protocol and lead the way. The butler picked
up the bags and conducted him up a short flight of concrete steps to a
landing and a door opening into a short hall above. An open door from
this gave access to a longer hall, stretching to the front of the house,
and there was a third door, closed, which probably led to the servants'
domain.
Rand followed his guide through the open door and into the long hall,
which passed under an arch to extend to the front door. There was a door
on either side, about midway to the arch under the front stairway; the
one on the right was the dining-room, Walters explained, and the one on
the left was the library. He seemed to be still suffering from the
ignominy of admitting a house-guest through any but the main portal.
Emerging into the front hallway, he put down the bags, took Rand's hat
and coat and laid them on top of the luggage, and then went to an open
doorway on the right, standing in it and coughing delicately, before
announcing that Colonel Rand was here.
Gladys Fleming, wearing a pale blue frock, came forward as Rand entered
the parlor, her hand extended. The two other women in the big parlor
remained motionless. They would be the sisters, Geraldine Varcek and
Nelda Dunmore. Rand didn't wonder that they resented Gladys so bitterly;
economic considerations aside, girls seldom enthuse over a stepmother so
near their own age who is so much more beautiful.
"Good afternoon, Colonel Rand," Gladys said. "This is Mrs. Varcek." She
indicated a very pale blonde who sat slumped in a deep chair beside a low
cocktail-table, a highball in her hand. "And Mrs. Dunmore." She was the
brunette with the full bust and hips, in the short black skirt and the
tight white sweater, who was standing by the fireplace.
"H'lo." The blonde--Geraldine--smiled shyly at him. She had big blue
eyes, and delicately tinted rose-petal lips that seemed to be trying not
to laugh at some private joke. She wasn't exactly blotto, but she had
evidently laid a good foundation for a first-class jag. After all, it was
only two thirty in the afternoon.
The other sister--Nelda--didn't say anything. She merely stood and stared
at Rand distrustfully. Rand doubted that she ordinarily gave men the
hostile eye. The full, dark-red lips; the lush figure; the way she draped
it against the side of the fireplace, to catch the ruddy light on her
more interesting curves and bulges--there was a bimbo just made to be
leered at, and she probably resented it like hell if she weren't.
Rand gave them a general good-afternoon, then turned to Gladys. "I had a
talk with Goode, yesterday afternoon," he said. "I have his authorization
to handle all the details. As soon as I get an itemized list, I'll
circularize dealers and other possible buyers and ask for offers."
"Is that all?" Nelda demanded angrily of Gladys. "Why Fred's done all
that already!"
"Is that correct, Mrs. Fleming?" Rand asked, for the record.
"I told you, yesterday, what's been done," Gladys replied. "Fred has
talked to one dealer, Arnold Rivers. There has been no inventory of any
sort made."
"Mr. Rivers is offering us ten thousand dollars," Nelda retorted. "I
don't see why you had to bring this Colonel What's-his-name into it, at
all. You think he can get us a better offer? If you do, you're crazy!"
"Ten thousand dollars, for a collection that ought to sell for five times
that, in Macy's basement!" Geraldine hooted. "How much is Rivers slipping
Fred, on the side?"
"Oh, go back to your bottle!" Nelda cried. "You're too drunk to know what
you're talking about!"
"They tell me Colonel Rand is a detective, too," Geraldine continued.
"Maybe he can find out why Fred never talked to Stephen Gresham, or Carl
Gwinnett, or anybody else except this Rivers. How much _is_ Fred getting
out of Rivers, anyhow?"
"My God, Geraldine, shut up!" Nelda howled. Then she decided to take
direct notice of Rand's presence. "Colonel Rand, I'm sorry to say that,
in her present condition, my sister doesn't know what she's saying. It's
bad enough for my stepmother to bring an outsider into what's obviously
a family matter, but when my sister begins making these ridiculous
accusations ..."
"What's ridiculous about them?" Geraldine demanded, dumping another two
ounces of whiskey into her glass and freshening it with the siphon. "I
think Rivers's offering ten thousand dollars for the collection, and
Fred's thinking we'd accept it, are the only ridiculous things about it."
"That's rather what I told Rivers, this afternoon," Rand put in. "He
seemed a bit upset about my being brought into this, too, but he finally
admitted that he was willing to pay up to twenty-five thousand dollars
for the collection, and if he buys it, that's exactly what it's going to
cost him."
"_What?_" Nelda fairly screamed. Her hands opened and closed
spasmodically: she was using a dark-red nail-tint that made Rand think
of blood-dripping talons.
"Mr. Arnold Rivers told me, this afternoon, and I quote: I'm willing to
pay up to twenty-five thousand dollars for that collection, unquote,"
Rand said. "And I can tell you now that twenty-five thousand dollars is
just what he will pay for it, unless I can find somebody who's willing to
pay more, which is not at all improbable."
"H'ray!" Geraldine waved her glass and toasted Rand with it. "And
twenty-five G ain't hay, brother!"
Gladys smiled quickly at Rand, then turned to Nelda. "Now I hope you see
why I thought it wise to bring in somebody who knows something about old
arms," she said.
Nelda evidently saw; there was apparently nothing stupid about her. "And
Fred was going to take a miserable ten thousand dollars!" The way she
said it, ten thousand sounded like a fairly generous headwaiter's tip.
"Did Rivers actually tell you he'd pay twenty-five?"
Rand gave, as nearly verbatim as possible, his conversation with the
dealer. "And he can afford it, too," he finished. "He can make a nice
profit on the collection, at that figure."
"My God, do you mean the pistols are worth more than that, even?" she
wanted to know, aghast.
"Certainly, if you're a dealer with an established business, and
customers all over the country, and want to take five or six years to
make your profit," Rand replied. "If you aren't, and want your money in
a hurry, no."
"That's why I was against turning the collection over to Gwinnett on a
commission basis," Gladys said. "It would take him five years to get
everything sold."
Nelda left the fireplace and advanced toward Rand. "Colonel, I owe you an
apology," she said. "I had no idea Father's pistols were worth anywhere
near that much. I don't suppose Fred did, either." She frowned. Wait till
she gets Fred alone, Rand thought; I'd hate to be in his spot.... "You
say you're acting on Humphrey Goode's authority?"
"That's right. I'll negotiate the sale, but the money will be paid
directly to him, for distribution according to the terms of your father's
will." Rand got out Goode's letter and handed it to Nelda.
She read it carefully. "I see." She seemed greatly relieved; she was
looking at Rand, now, as she was accustomed to look at men, particularly
handsome six-footers who were broad across the shoulders and narrow at
the hips and resembled King Charles II. She was probably wondering if
Rand was equal to Old Rowley in another important respect. "I didn't
understand ... I thought...." A dirty look, aimed at Gladys, explained
what she had thought. Then her glance fell on the bottle and siphon on
the table beside Geraldine's chair, and she changed the subject by
inquiring if Colonel Rand mightn't like a drink.
"Well, let's go up to the gunroom," Gladys suggested. "We can have our
drink up there, while Colonel Rand's looking at the pistols.... Coming
with us, Geraldine?"
Geraldine rose, not too steadily, her glass still in her hand, and took
Rand's left arm. Gladys, seeing Nelda moving in on the detective's right,
took his other arm. Nelda was barely successful in suppressing a look of
murderous anger. The double doorway into the hall was just wide enough
for Rand and his two flankers to pass through; Nelda had to fall in a
couple of paces rear of center, and wasn't able to come up into line
until they were in the hall upstairs.
"There's the gunroom." Gladys pointed. "And that's your room, over
there." As she spoke, Walters came out of the doorway she had indicated.
"Your bags are unpacked, sir," he reported. Then he told Rand where he
would find his things, and where the bath was.
There was a brief discussion of drinks. The butler received his
instructions and went down the stairway; Rand broke up the feminine
formation around him and ushered the ladies ahead of him into the
gunroom.
It was much as he remembered it from his visit of two years before.
There was a desk in one corner, and back of it a short workbench and
tool-cabinet. There was a long table in the middle of the room, its top
covered with green baize, upon which many flat rectangular boxes of
hardwood rested--some walnut, some rosewood, some quartered oak. Each
would contain a pistol or pair of pistols, with cleaning and loading
tools. In the corner farthest from the desk, he saw the head of the
spiral stairway from the library below, mentioned by Gladys Fleming.
There were ashstands and a couple of cocktail-tables, and a number of
chairs, and the old maple cobbler's bench on which Lane Fleming had died.
The only books in the room were in a small case over the workbench; they
were all arms-books.
Then he looked at the walls. On both ends, and on the long inside wall,
the pistols hung, hundreds and hundreds of them, the cream of a
lifetime's collecting. Horizontal white-painted boards had been fixed to
the walls about four feet from the floor, and similar boards had been
placed five feet above them. Between, narrow vertical strips, as wide
as a lath but twice as thick, were set. Rows of pistols were hung, the
barrels horizontal, on pairs of these strips, with screwhooks at grip
and muzzle. There were about a hundred such vertical rows of pistols.
Rand was still looking at them when the butler brought in the drinks;
when Gladys told the servant that that would be all, he went out, rather
reluctantly, by the spiral stairs to the library.
"Well, what do you think of them, Colonel Rand?" Gladys asked.
Rand tasted his whiskey and looked around. "It's one of the finest
collections in the country," he said. "I may even be able to find
somebody who'll top Rivers's offer, but don't be disappointed if I
don't.... By the way, did anybody help Mr. Fleming keep this stuff clean?
The room seems dry, but even so, they'd need an occasional wiping-off."
"Oh, Walters was always in here, going over the pistols," Nelda said.
"He's been in here every day, lately."
"I wonder if you could spare him to help me a little? I'll need somebody
who knows his way around here, at first."
"Why, of course," Gladys agreed. "He isn't very busy in the mornings, or
in the afternoons till close to dinner-time. Are you going to start work
today?"
"I'll have to. I'm going to see Stephen Gresham and his associates this
evening, and I'll want to know what I'm talking about."
They spent about fifteen minutes over their drinks, talking about the
collection. Rand and Gladys did most of the talking, in spite of Nelda's
best efforts to monopolize the conversation. Geraldine, after a few
minutes, retired into her private world and only roused herself when her
sister and stepmother were about to leave. When they went out, Gladys
promised to send Walters up directly; Rand heard her speaking to him at
the foot of the main stairway.
CHAPTER 7
When Walters entered, Rand had his pipe lit and was walking slowly around
the room, laying out the work ahead of him. Roughly, the earliest pieces
were on the extreme left, on the short north wall of the room, and the
most recent ones on the right, at the south end. This was, of course,
only relatively true; the pistols seemed to have been classified by type
in vertical rows, and chronologically from top to bottom in each row. The
collection seemed to consist of a number of intensely specialized small
groups, with a large number of pistols of general types added. For
instance, about midway on the long east wall, there were some thirty-odd
all-metal pistols, from wheel lock to percussion. There was a collection
of U.S. Martials, with two rows of the regulation pistols, flintlock and
percussion, of foreign governments, placed on the left, and the
collection of Colts on the right. After them came the other types of
percussion revolvers, and the later metallic-cartridge types.
It was an arrangement which made sense, from the arms student's point
of view, and Rand decided that it would make sense to the dealers and
museums to whom he intended sending lists. He would save time by
listing them as they were hung on the walls. Then, there were the cases
between the windows on the west wall, containing the ammunition
collection--examples of every type of fixed-pistol ammunition--and the
collection of bullet-molds and powder flasks and wheel lock spanners and
assorted cleaning and loading accessories. All that stuff would have to
be listed, too.
"I beg your pardon, sir," Walters broke in, behind him. "Mrs. Fleming
said that you wanted me."
"Oh, yes." Rand turned. "Is this the whole thing? What's on the walls,
here?"
"Yes, sir. There is also a wall-case containing a number of modern
pistols and revolvers, and several rifles and shotguns, in the room
formerly occupied by Mr. Fleming, but they are not part of the
collection, and they are now the personal property of Mrs. Fleming.
I understand that she intends selling at least some of them, on her
own account. Then, there is a quantity of ammunition and
ammunition-components in that closet under the workbench--cartridges,
primed cartridge-shells, black and smokeless powder, cartridge-primers,
percussion caps--but they are not part of the collection, either. I
believe Mrs. Fleming wants to sell most of that, too."
"Well, I'll talk to her about it. I may want to buy some of the
ammunition for myself," Rand said. "So I only need to bother with what's
on the walls, in this room?... By the way, did Mr. Fleming keep any sort
of record of his collection? A book, or a card-index, or anything like
that?"
"Why no, sir." Walters was positive. Then he hedged. "If he did, I never
saw or heard of anything of the sort. Mr. Fleming knew everything in this
room. I've seen him, downstairs, when somebody would ask him about
something, close his eyes as though trying to visualize and then give a
perfect description of any pistol in the collection. Or else, he could
enumerate all the pistols of a certain type; say, all the Philadelphia
Deringers, or all the Allen pepperboxes, or all the rim-fire Smith &
Wesson tip-back types. He had a remarkable memory for his pistols,
although it was not out of the ordinary otherwise, sir."
Rand nodded. Any collector--at least, any collector who was a serious
arms-student--could do that, particularly if he were a good visualizer
and kept his stuff in some systematic order. At the moment, he could have
named and described any or all of his own modest collection of two
hundred-odd pistols and revolvers.
"I was hoping he'd kept a record," he said. "A great many collectors do,
and it would have helped me quite a bit." He made up his mind to compile
such a record, himself, when he got back to New Belfast. It would be a
big help to Carter Tipton, when it came time to settle his own estate,
and a man on whom the Reaper has scored as many near-misses as on Jeff
Rand should begin to think of such things. "And how about writing
materials? And is there a typewriter available?"
There was: a cased portable was on the floor beside the workbench.
Walters showed him which desk drawers contained paper and other things.
There was, Rand noticed, a loaded .38 Colt Detective Special, in the
upper right-hand desk drawer.
"And these phones," the butler continued, indicating them. "This one is
a private outside phone; it doesn't connect with any other in the house.
The other is an extension. It has a buzzer; the outside phone has a
regular bell."
Rand thanked him for the information. Then, picking up a note-pad and
pencil, he started on the left of the collection, meaning to make a
general list and rough approximation of value for use in talking to
Gresham's friends that evening. Tomorrow he would begin on the detailed
list for use in soliciting outside offers.
Twenty-five wheel locks: four heavy South German dags, two singles
and a pair; three Saxon pistols, with sharply dropped grips, a pair
and one single; five French and Italian sixteenth-century pistols;
a pair of small pocket or sash pistols; a pair of French petronels,
and an extremely long seventeenth-century Dutch pistol with an
ivory-covered stock and a carved ivory Venus-head for a pommel; eight
seventeenth-century French, Italian and Flemish pistols. Rand noted them
down, and was about to pass on; then he looked sharply at one of them.
It was nothing out of the ordinary, as wheel locks go; a long Flemish
weapon of about 1640, the type used by the Royalist cavalry in the
English Civil War. There were two others almost like it, but this one was
in simply appalling condition. The metal was rough with rust, and
apparently no attempt had been made to clean it in a couple of centuries.
There was a piece cracked out of the fore-end, the ramrod was missing, as
was the front ramrod-thimble, both the trigger-guard and the butt-cap
were loose, and when Rand touched the wheel, it revolved freely if
sluggishly, betraying a broken spring or chain.
The vertical row next to it seemed to be all snaphaunces, but among them
Rand saw a pair of Turkish flintlocks. Not even good Turkish flintlocks;
a pair of the sort of weapons hastily thrown together by native craftsmen
or imported ready-made from Belgium for bazaar sale to gullible tourists.
Among the fine examples of seventeenth-century Brescian gunmaking above
and below it, these things looked like a pair of Dogpatchers in the
Waldorf's Starlight Room. Rand contemplated them with distaste, then
shrugged. After all, they might have had some sentimental significance;
say souvenirs of a pleasantly remembered trip to the Levant.
A few rows farther on, among some exceptionally fine flintlocks, all
of which pre-dated 1700, he saw one of those big Belgian navy pistols,
_circa_ 1800, of the sort once advertised far and wide by a certain
old-army-goods dealer for $6.95. This was a particularly repulsive
specimen of its breed; grimy with hardened dust and gummed oil, maculated
with yellow-surface-rust, the brasswork green with corrosion. It was
impossible to shrug off a thing like that. From then on, Rand kept his
eyes open for similar incongruities.
They weren't hard to find. There was a big army pistol, of Central
European origin and in abominable condition, among a row of fine
multi-shot flintlocks. Multi-shot ... Stephen Gresham had mentioned an
Elisha Collier flintlock revolver. It wasn't there. It should be hanging
about where this post-Napoleonic German thing was.
There was no Hall breech-loader, either, but there was a dilapidated old
Ketland. There were many such interlopers among the U.S. Martials: an
English ounce-ball cavalry pistol, a French 1777 and a French 1773, a
couple more $6.95 bargain-counter specials, a miserable altered S. North
1816. Among the Colts, there was some awful junk, including a big Spanish
hinge-frame .44 and a Belgian imitation of a Webley R.I.C. Model. There
weren't as many Paterson Colts as Gresham had spoken of, and the
Whitneyville Walker was absent. It went on like that; about a dozen of
the best pistols which Rand remembered having seen from two years ago
were gone, and he spotted at least twenty items which the late Lane
Fleming wouldn't have hung in his backyard privy, if he'd had one.
Well, that was to be expected. The way these pistols were arranged, the
absence of one from its hooks would have been instantly obvious. So, as
the good stuff had moved out, these disreputable changelings had moved
in.
"You had rather a shocking experience here, in Mr. Fleming's death," Rand
said, over his shoulder, to the butler.
"Oh, yes indeed, sir!" Walters seemed relieved that Rand had broken the
silence. "A great loss to all of us, sir. And so unexpected."
He didn't seem averse to talking about it, and went on at some length.
His story closely paralleled that of Gladys Fleming.
"Mr. Varcek called the doctor immediately," he said. "Then Mr. Dunmore
pointed out that the doctor would be obliged to notify either the coroner
or the police, so he called Mr. Goode, the family solicitor. That was
about twenty minutes after the shot. Mr. Goode arrived directly; he was
here in about ten minutes. I must say, sir, I was glad to see him; to
tell the truth, I had been afraid that the authorities might claim that
Mr. Fleming had shot himself deliberately."
Somebody else doesn't like the smell of that accident, Rand thought.
Aloud, he said:
"Mr. Goode lives nearby, then, I take it?"
"Oh, yes, sir. You can see his house from these windows. Over here, sir."
Rand looked out the window. The rain-soaked lawn of the Fleming residence
ended about a hundred yards to the west; beyond it, an orchard was
beginning to break into leaf, and beyond the orchard and another lawn
stood a half-timbered Tudor-style house, somewhat smaller than the
Fleming place. A path led down from it to the orchard, and another led
from the orchard to the rear of the house from which Rand looked.
"Must be comforting to know your lawyer's so handy," he commented. "And
what do you think, Walters? Are you satisfied, in your own mind, that Mr.
Fleming was killed accidentally?"
The servant looked at him seriously. "No, sir; I'm not," he replied.
"I've thought about it a great deal, since it happened, sir, and I just
can't believe that Mr. Fleming would have that revolver, and start
working on it, without knowing that it was loaded. That just isn't
possible, if you'll pardon me, sir. And I can't understand how he would
have shot himself while removing the charges. The fact is, when I came up
here at quarter of seven, to call him for cocktails, he had the whole
thing apart and spread out in front of him." The butler thought for a
moment. "I believe Mr. Dunmore had something like that in mind when he
called Mr. Goode."
"Well, what happened?" Rand asked. "Did the coroner or the doctor choke
on calling it an accident?"
"Oh no, sir; there was no trouble of any sort about that. You see, Dr.
Yardman called the coroner, as soon as he arrived, but Mr. Goode was here
already. He'd come over by that path you saw, to the rear of the house,
and in through the garage, which was open, since Mrs. Dunmore was out
with the coupe. They all talked it over for a while, and the coroner
decided that there would be no need for any inquest, and the doctor wrote
out the certificate. That was all there was to it."
Rand looked at the section of pistol-rack devoted to Colts.
"Which one was it?" he asked.
"Oh it's not here, sir," Walters replied. "The coroner took it away with
him."
"And hasn't returned it yet? Well, he has no business keeping it. It's
part of the collection, and belongs to the estate."
"Yes, sir. If I may say so, I thought it was a bit high-handed of him,
taking it away, myself, but it wasn't my place to say anything about it."
"Well, I'll make it mine. If that revolver's what I'm told it is, it's
too valuable to let some damned county-seat politician walk off with." A
thought occurred to him. "And if I find that he's disposed of it, this
county's going to need a new coroner, at least till the present incumbent
gets out of jail."
The buzzer of the extension phone went off like an annoyed rattlesnake.
Walters scooped it up, spoke into it, listened for a moment, and handed
it to Rand.
"For you, sir; Mrs. Fleming."
"Colonel Rand, Carl Gwinnett, the commission-dealer I told you about is
here," Gladys told him. "Do you want to talk to him?"
"Why, yes. Do I understand, now, that you and the other ladies want cash,
and don't want the collection peddled off piecemeal?... All right, send
him up. I'll talk to him."
A few minutes later, a short, compact-looking man of forty-odd entered
the gunroom, shifting a brief case to his left hand and extending his
right. Rand advanced to meet him and shook hands with him.
"You're Colonel Rand? Enjoyed your articles in the _Rifleman_," he said.
"Mrs. Fleming tells me you're handling the sale of the collection for the
estate."
"That's right, Mr. Gwinnett. Mrs. Fleming tells me you're interested."
"Yes. Originally, I offered to sell the collection for her on a
commission basis, but she didn't seem to care for the idea, and neither
do the other ladies. They all want spot cash, in a lump sum."
"Yes. Mrs. Fleming herself might have been interested in your
proposition, if she'd been sole owner. You could probably get more for
the collection, even after deducting your commission, than I'll be able
to, but the collection belongs to the estate, and has to be sold before
any division can be made."
"Yes, I see that. Well, how much would the estate, or you, consider a
reasonable offer?"
"Sit down, Mr. Gwinnett," Rand invited. "What would you consider a
reasonable offer, yourself? We're not asking any specific price; we're
just taking bids, as it were."
"Well, how much have you been offered, to date?"
"Well, we haven't heard from everybody. In fact, we haven't put out a
list, or solicited offers, except locally, as yet. But one gentleman has
expressed a willingness to pay up to twenty-five thousand dollars."
Gwinnett's face expressed polite skepticism. "Colonel Rand!" he
protested. "You certainly don't take an offer like that seriously?"
"I think it was made seriously," Rand replied. "A respectable profit
could be made on the collection, even at that price."
Gwinnett's eyes shifted over the rows of horizontal barrels on the walls.
He was almost visibly wrestling with mental arithmetic, and at the same
time trying to keep any hint of his notion of the collection's real value
out of his face.
"Well, I doubt if I could raise that much," he said. "Might I ask who's
making this offer?"
"You might; I'm afraid I couldn't tell you. You wouldn't want me to
publish your own offer broadcast, would you?"
"I think I can guess. If I'm right, don't hold your head in a tub of
water till you get it," Gwinnett advised. "Making a big offer to scare
away competition is one thing, and paying off on it is another. I've seen
that happen before, you know. Fact is, there's one dealer, not far from
here, who makes a regular habit of it. He'll make some fantastic offer,
and then, when everybody's been bluffed out, he'll start making
objections and finding faults, and before long he'll be down to about
a quarter of his original price."
"The practice isn't unknown," Rand admitted.
"I'll bet you don't have this twenty-five thousand dollar offer on paper,
over a signature," Gwinnett pursued. "Well, here." He opened his brief
case and extracted a sheet of paper, handing it to Rand. "You can file
this; I'll stand back of it."
Rand looked at the typed and signed statement to the effect that Carl
Gwinnett agreed to pay the sum of fifteen thousand dollars for the Lane
Fleming pistol-collection, in its entirety, within thirty days of date.
That was an average of six dollars a pistol. There had been a time, not
too long ago, when a pistol-collection with an average value of six
dollars, particularly one as large as the Fleming collection, had been
something unusual. For one thing, arms values had increased sharply in
the meantime. For another, Lane Fleming had kept his collection clean of
the two-dollar items which dragged down so many collectors' average
values. Except for the two-dozen-odd mysterious interlopers, there wasn't
a pistol in the Fleming collection that wasn't worth at least twenty
dollars, and quite a few had values expressible in three figures.
"Well, your offer is duly received and filed, Mr. Gwinnett," Rand told
him, folding the sheet and putting it in his pocket. "This is better
than an unwitnessed verbal statement that somebody is willing to pay
twenty-five thousand. I'll certainly bear you in mind."
"You can show that to Arnold Rivers, if you want to," Gwinnett said. "See
how much he's willing to commit himself to, over his signature."
CHAPTER 8
Pre-dinner cocktails in the library seemed to be a sort of household
rite--a self-imposed Truce of Bacchus before the resumption of
hostilities in the dining-room. It lasted from six forty-five to seven;
everybody sipped Manhattans and kept quiet and listened to the radio
newscast. The only new face, to Rand, was Fred Dunmore's.
It was a smooth, pinkly-shaven face, decorated with octagonal rimless
glasses; an entirely unremarkable face; the face of the type that used to
be labeled "Babbitt." The corner of Rand's mind that handled such data
subconsciously filed his description: forty-five to fifty, one-eighty,
five feet eight, hair brown and thinning, eyes blue. To this he added the
Rotarian button on the lapel, and the small gold globule on the watch
chain that testified that, when his age and weight had been considerably
less, Dunmore had played on somebody's basketball team. At that time he
had probably belonged to the Y.M.C.A., and had thought that Mussolini was
doing a splendid job in Italy, that H. L. Mencken ought to be deported to
Russia, and that Prohibition was here to stay. At company sales meetings,
he probably radiated an aura of synthetic good-fellowship.
As Rand followed Walters down the spiral from the gunroom, the radio
commercial was just starting, and Geraldine was asking Dunmore where
Anton was.
"Oh, you know," Dunmore told her, impatiently. "He had to go to
Louisburg, to that Medical Association meeting; he's reading a paper
about the new diabetic ration."
He broke off as Rand approached and was introduced by Gladys, who handed
both men their cocktails. Then the news commentator greeted them out of
the radio, and everybody absorbed the day's news along with their
Manhattans. After the broadcast, they all crossed the hall to the
dining-room, where hostilities began almost before the soup was cool
enough to taste.
"I don't see why you women had to do this," Dunmore huffed. "Rivers has
made us a fair offer. Bringing in an outsider will only give him the
impression that we lack confidence in him."
"Well, won't that be just too, too bad!" Geraldine slashed at him. "We
mustn't ever hurt dear Mr. Rivers's feelings like that. Let him have the
collection for half what it's worth, but never, never let him think we
know what a God-damned crook he is!"
Dunmore evidently didn't think that worth dignifying with an answer.
Doubtless he expected Nelda to launch a counter-offensive, as a matter of
principle. If he did, he was disappointed.
"Well?" Nelda demanded. "What did you want us to do; give the collection
away?"
"You don't understand," Dunmore told her. "You've probably heard somebody
say what the collection's worth, and you never stopped to realize that
it's only worth that to a dealer, who can sell it item by item. You can't
expect ..."
"We can expect a lot more than ten thousand dollars," Nelda retorted. "In
fact, we can expect more than that from Rivers. Colonel Rand was talking
to Rivers, this afternoon. Colonel Rand doesn't have any confidence in
Rivers at all, and he doesn't care who knows it."
"You were talking to Arnold Rivers, this afternoon, about the
collection?" Dunmore demanded of Rand.
"That's right," Rand confirmed. "I told him his ten thousand dollar offer
was a joke. Stephen Gresham and his friends can top that out of one
pocket. Finally, he got around to admitting that he's willing to pay up
to twenty-five thousand."
"I don't believe it!" Dunmore exclaimed angrily. "Rivers told me
personally, that neither he nor any other dealer could hope to handle
that collection profitably at more than ten thousand."
"And you believed that?" Nelda demanded. "And you're a business man? _My
God!_"
"He's probably a good one, as long as he sticks to pancake flour,"
Geraldine was generous enough to concede. "But about guns, he barely
knows which end the bullet comes out at. Ten thousand was probably his
idea of what we'd think the pistols were worth."
Dunmore ignored that and turned to Rand. "Did Arnold Rivers actually tell
you he'd pay twenty-five thousand dollars for the collection?" he asked.
"I can't believe that he'd raise his own offer like that."
"He didn't raise his offer; I threw it out and told him to make one that
could be taken seriously." Rand repeated, as closely as he could, his
conversation with the arms-dealer. When he had finished, Dunmore was
frowning in puzzled displeasure.
"And you think he's actually willing to pay that much?"
"Yes, I do. If he handles them right, he can double his money on the
pistols inside of five years. I doubt if you realize how valuable those
pistols are. You probably defined Mr. Fleming's collection as a 'hobby'
and therefore something not to be taken seriously. And, aside from the
actual profit, the prestige of handling this collection would be worth
a good deal to Rivers, as advertising. I haven't the least doubt that he
can raise the money, or that he's willing to pay it."
Dunmore was still frowning. Maybe he hated being proved wrong in front of
the women of the family.
"And you think Gresham and his friends will offer enough to force him to
pay the full amount?"
Rand laughed and told him to stop being naive. "He's done that, himself,
and what's more, he knows it. When he told me he was willing to go as
high as twenty-five thousand, he fixed the price. Unless somebody offers
more, which isn't impossible."
"But maybe he's just bluffing." Dunmore seemed to be following Gwinnett's
line of thought. "After he's bluffed Gresham's crowd out, maybe he'll go
back to his original ten thousand offer."
"Fred, please stop talking about that ten thousand dollars!" Geraldine
interrupted. "How much did Rivers actually tell you he'd pay? Twenty-five
thousand, like he did Colonel Rand?"
Dunmore turned in his chair angrily. "Now, look here!" he shouted.
"There's a limit to what I've got to take from you...."
He stopped short, as Nelda, beside him, moved slightly, and his words
ended in something that sounded like a smothered moan. Rand suspected
that she had kicked her husband painfully under the table. Then Walters
came in with the meat course, and firing ceased until the butler had
retired.
"By the way," Rand tossed into the conversational vacuum that followed
his exit, "does anybody know anything about a record Mr. Fleming kept of
his collection?"
"Why, no; can't say I do," Dunmore replied promptly, evidently grateful
for the change of subject. "You mean, like an inventory?"
"Oh, Fred, you do!" Nelda told him impatiently. "You know that big gray
book Father kept all his pistols entered in."
"It was a gray ledger, with a black leather back," Gladys said. "He kept
it in the little bookcase over the workbench in the gunroom."
"I'll look for it," Rand said. "Sure it's still there? It would be a big
help to me."
The rest of the dinner passed in relative tranquillity. The conversation
proceeded in fairly safe channels. Dunmore was anxious to avoid any
further reference to the sum of ten thousand dollars; when Gladys induced
Rand to talk about his military experiences, he lapsed into preoccupied
silence. Several times, Geraldine and Nelda aimed halfhearted feline
swipes at one another, more out of custom than present and active
rancor. The women seemed to have erected a temporary tri-partite
_Entente_-more-or-less-_Cordiale_.
Finally, the meal ended, and the diners drifted away from the table. Rand
went to his room for a few moments, then went to the gunroom to get the
notes he had made. Fred Dunmore was using the private phone as he
entered.
"Well, never mind about that, now," he was saying. "We'll talk about
it when I see you.... Yes, of course; so am I.... Well, say about
eleven.... Be seeing you."
He hung up and turned to Rand. "More God-damned union trouble," he said.
"It's enough to make a saint lose his religion! Our factory-hands are
organized in the C.I.O., and our warehouse, sales, and shipping personnel
are in the A.F. of L., and if they aren't fighting the company, they're
fighting each other. Now they have some damn kind of a jurisdictional
dispute.... I don't know what this country's coming to!" He glared
angrily through his octagonal glasses for a moment. Then his voice took
on an ingratiating note. "Look here, Colonel; I just didn't understand
the situation, until you explained it. I hope you aren't taking anything
that sister-in-law of mine said seriously. She just blurts out the first
thing that comes into her so-called mind; why, only yesterday she was
accusing Gladys of bringing you into this to help her gyp the rest of us.
And before that ..."
"Oh, forget it." Rand dismissed Geraldine with a shrug. "I know she was
talking through a highball glass. As far as selling the collection is
concerned, you just let Rivers sell you a bill of something you hadn't
gotten a good look at. He's a smart operator, and he's crooked as a
wagon-load of blacksnakes. Maybe you never realized just how much money
Fleming put into this collection; naturally you wouldn't realize how much
could be gotten out of it again. A lot of this stuff has been here for
quite a while, and antiques of any kind tend to increase in value."
"Well, I want you to know that I'm just as glad as anybody if you can get
a better price out of him than I could." Dunmore smiled ruefully. "I
guess he's just a better poker player than I am."
"Not necessarily. He could see your hand, and you couldn't see his," Rand
told him.
"You going to see Gresham and his friends, this evening?" Dunmore asked.
"Well, when you get back, if you find four cars in the garage, counting
the station-wagon, lock up after you've put your own car away. If you
find only three, then you'll know that Anton Varcek's still out, so leave
it open for him. That's the way we do here; last one in locks up."
CHAPTER 9
Rand found another car, a smoke-gray Plymouth coupe, standing on the
left of his Lincoln when he went down to the garage. Running his car
outside and down to the highway, he settled down to his regular style of
driving--a barely legal fifty m.p.h., punctuated by bursts of absolutely
felonious speed whenever he found an unobstructed straightaway. Entering
Rosemont, he slowed and went through the underpass at the railroad
tracks, speeding again when he was clear of the village. A few minutes
later, he was turning into the crushed-limestone drive that led up to the
buff-brick Gresham house.
A girl met him at the door, a cute little redhead in a red-striped dress,
who gave him a smile that seemed to start on the bridge of her nose and
lift her whole face up after it. She held out her hand to him.
"Colonel Rand!" she exclaimed. "I'll bet you don't remember me."
"Sure I do. You're Dot," Rand said. "At least, I think you are; the last
time I saw you, you were in pigtails. And you were only about so high."
He measured with his hand. "The last time I was here, you were away at
school. You must be old enough to vote, by now."
"I will, this fall," she replied. "Come on in; you're the first one
here. Daddy hasn't gotten back from town yet. He called and said he'd
be delayed till about nine." In the hall she took his hat and coat and
guided him toward the parlor on the right.
"Oh, Mother!" she called. "Here's Colonel Rand!"
Rand remembered Irene Gresham, too; an over-age dizzy blonde who was
still living in the Flaming Youth era of the twenties. She was an
extremely good egg; he liked her very much. After all, insisting upon
remaining an F. Scott Fitzgerald character was a harmless and amusing
foible, and it was no more than right that somebody should try to keep
the bright banner of Jazz Age innocence flying in a grim and sullen
world. He accepted a cigarette, shared the flame of his lighter with
mother and daughter, and submitted to being gushed over.
"... and, honestly, Jeff, you get handsomer every year," Irene Gresham
rattled on. "Dot, doesn't he look just like Clark Gable in _Gone with the
Wind_? But then, of course, Jeff really _is_ a Southerner, so ..."
The doorbell interrupted this slight _non sequitur_. She broke off,
rising.
"Sit still, Jeff; I'm just going to see who it is. You know, we're down
to only one servant now, and it seems as if it's always her night off, or
something. I don't know, honestly, what I'm going to do...."
She hurried out of the room. Voices sounded in the hall; a man's and a
girl's.
"That's Pierre and Karen," Dot said. "Let's all go up in the gunroom, and
wait for the others there."
They went out to meet the newcomers. The man was a few inches shorter
than Rand, with gray eyes that looked startlingly light against the dark
brown of his face. He wasn't using a cane, but he walked with a slight
limp. Beside him was a slender girl, almost as tall as he was, with dark
brown hair and brown eyes. She wore a rust-brown sweater and a brown
skirt, and low-heeled walking-shoes.
Irene Gresham went into the introductions, the newcomers shook hands with
Rand and were advised that the style of address was "Jeff," rather than
"Colonel Rand," and then Dot suggested going up to the gunroom. Irene
Gresham said she'd stay downstairs; she'd have to let the others in.
"Have you seen this collection before?" Pierre Jarrett inquired as he and
Rand went upstairs together.
"About two years ago," Rand said. "Stephen had just gotten a cased
dueling set by Wilkinson, then. From the Far West Hobby Shop, I think."
"Oh, he's gotten a lot of new stuff since then, and sold off about a
dozen culls and duplicates," the former Marine said. "I'll show you
what's new, till the others come."
They reached the head of the stairs and started down the hall to the
gunroom, in the wing that projected out over the garage. Along the way,
the girls detached themselves for nose-powdering.
Unlike the room at the Fleming home, Stephen Gresham's gunroom had
originally been something else--a nursery, or play-room, or party-room.
There were windows on both long sides, which considerably reduced the
available wall-space, and the situation wasn't helped any by the fact
that the collection was about thirty per cent long-arms. Things were
pretty badly crowded; most of the rifles and muskets were in circular
barracks-racks, away from the walls.
"Here, this one's new since you were here," Pierre said, picking a long
musket from one of the racks and handing it to Rand. "How do you like
this one?"
Rand took it and whistled appreciatively. "Real European matchlock; no,
I never saw that. Looks like North Italian, say 1575 to about 1600."
"That musket," Pierre informed him, "came over on the _Mayflower_."
"Really, or just a gag?" Rand asked. "It easily could have. The
_Mayflower_ Company bought their muskets in Holland, from some
seventeenth-century forerunner of Bannerman's, and Europe was full of
muskets like this then, left over from the wars of the Holy Roman Empire
and the French religious wars."
"Yes; I suppose all their muskets were obsolete types for the period,"
Pierre agreed. "Well, that's a real _Mayflower_ arm. Stephen has the
documentation for it. It came from the Charles Winthrop Sawyer
collection, and there were only three ownership changes between the last
owner and the _Mayflower_ Company. Stephen only paid a hundred dollars
for it, too."
"That was practically stealing," Rand said. He carried the musket to the
light and examined it closely. "Nice condition, too; I wouldn't be afraid
to fire this with a full charge, right now." He handed the weapon back.
"He didn't lose a thing on that deal."
"I should say not! I'd give him two hundred for it, any time. Even
without the history, it's worth that."
"Who buys history, anyhow?" Rand wanted to know. "The fact that it came
from the Sawyer collection adds more value to it than this _Mayflower_
business. Past ownership by a recognized authority like Sawyer is a real
guarantee of quality and authenticity. But history, documented or
otherwise--hell, only yesterday I saw a pair of pistols with a wonderful
three-hundred-and-fifty-year documented history. Only not a word of it
was true; the pistols were made about twenty years ago."
"Those wheel locks Fleming bought from Arnold Rivers?" Pierre asked.
"God, wasn't that a crime! I'll bet Rivers bought himself a big drink
when Lane Fleming was killed. Fleming was all set to hang Rivers's scalp
in his wigwam.... But with Stephen, the history does count for
something. As you probably know, he collects arms-types that figured in
American history. Well, he can prove that this individual musket was
brought over by the Pilgrims, so he can be sure it's an example of the
type they used. But he'd sooner have a typical Pilgrim musket that never
was within five thousand miles of Plymouth Rock than a non-typical arm
brought over as a personal weapon by one of the _Mayflower_ Company."
"Oh, none of us are really interested in the individual history of
collection weapons," Rand said. "You show me a collection that's full of
known-history arms, and I'll show you a collection that's either full of
junk or else cost three times what it's worth. And you show me a
collector who blows money on history, and nine times out of ten I'll show
you a collector who doesn't know guns. I saw one such collection, once;
every item had its history neatly written out on a tag and hung onto the
trigger-guard. The owner thought that the patent-dates on Colts were
model-dates, and the model-dates on French military arms were dates of
fabrication."
Pierre wrinkled his nose disgustedly. "God, I hate to see a collection
all fouled up with tags hung on things!" he said. "Or stuck over with
gummed labels; that's even worse. Once in a while I get something with a
label pasted on it, usually on the stock, and after I get it off, there's
a job getting the wood under it rubbed up to the same color as the rest
of the stock."
"Yes. I picked up a lovely little rifled flintlock pistol, once," Rand
said. "American; full-length curly-maple stock; really a Kentucky rifle
in pistol form. Whoever had owned it before me had pasted a slip of paper
on the underside of the stock, between the trigger-guard and the lower
ramrod thimble, with a lot of crap, mostly erroneous, typed on it. It
took me six months to remove the last traces of where that thing had been
stuck on."
"What do you collect, or don't you specialize?"
"Pistols; I try to get the best possible specimens of the most important
types, special emphasis on British arms after 1700 and American arms
after 1800. What I'm interested in is the evolution of the pistol. I have
a couple of wheel locks, to start with, and three miguelet-locks and an
Italian snaphaunce. Then I have a few early flintlocks, and a number of
mid-eighteenth-century types, and some late flintlocks and percussion
types. And about twenty Colts, and so on through percussion revolvers and
early cartridge types to some modern arms, including a few World War II
arms."
"I see; about the same idea Lane Fleming had," Pierre said. "I collect
personal combat-arms, firearms and edge-weapons. Arms that either
influenced fighting techniques, or were developed to meet special combat
conditions. From what you say, you're mainly interested in the way
firearms were designed and made; I'm interested in the conditions under
which they were used. And Adam Trehearne, who'll be here shortly,
collects pistols and a few long-arms in wheel lock, proto-flintlock and
early flintlock, to 1700. And Philip Cabot collects U.S. Martials,
flintlock to automatic, and also enemy and Allied Army weapons from all
our wars. And Colin MacBride collects nothing but Colts. Odd how a Scot,
who's only been in this country twenty years, should become interested
in so distinctively American a type."
"And I collect anything I can sell at a profit, from Chinese matchlocks
to tommy-guns," Karen Lawrence interjected, coming into the room with Dot
Gresham.
Pierre grinned. "Karen is practically a unique specimen herself; the only
general-antique dealer I've ever seen who doesn't hate the sight of a
gun-collector."
"That's only because I'm crazy enough to want to marry one," the
girl dealer replied. "Of all the miserly, unscrupulous, grasping
characters ..." She expressed a doubt that the average gun-collector
would pay more than ten cents to see his Lord and Savior riding to hounds
on a Bren-carrier. "They don't give a hoot whose grandfather owned what,
and if anything's battered up a little, they don't think it looks quaint,
they think it looks lousy. And they've never heard of inflation; they
think arms ought still to sell for the sort of prices they brought at the
old Mark Field sale, back in 1911."
"What were you looking at?" Dot asked Rand, then glanced at the musket in
Pierre's hands. "Oh, Priscilla."
Karen laughed. "Dot not only knows everything in the collection; she
knows it by name. Dot, show Colonel Rand Hester Prynne."
"Hester coming up," Gresham's daughter said, catching another musket out
of the same rack from which Pierre had gotten the matchlock and passing
it over to Rand. He grasped the heavy piece, approving of the easy,
instinctive way in which the girl had handled it. "Look on the barrel,"
she told him. "On top, right at the breech."
The gun was a flintlock, or rather, a dog-lock; sure enough, stamped on
the breech was the big "A" of the Company of Workmen Armorers of London,
the seventeenth-century gunmakers' guild.
"That's right," he nodded. "That's Hester Prynne, all right; the first
American girl to make her letter."
There were footsteps in the hall outside, and male voices.
"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 the _Rifleman_, 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 of _Time_, 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.
CHAPTER 10
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 in _rigor
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-familiar _Gewehr
'98_ in its most recent modification, was a Nazi product, bearing the
eagle and encircled swastika of the Third Reich and the code-letters
_lza_--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 the _J_-sound as though it were _Zh_; 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 the _Wehrmacht_."
"Swell, swell!" McKenna enthused. "Maybe we can pass the case off on the
War Crimes Commission."
CHAPTER 11
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, that _would_ make 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.
CHAPTER 12
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 than _Nude 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
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