Murder in the Gunroom

by H. Beam Piper

  CHAPTER 9

  Rand found another car, a smoke-gray Plymouth coupe, standing on theleft of his Lincoln when he went down to the garage. Running his caroutside and down to the highway, he settled down to his regular style ofdriving--a barely legal fifty m.p.h., punctuated by bursts of absolutelyfelonious speed whenever he found an unobstructed straightaway. EnteringRosemont, he slowed and went through the underpass at the railroadtracks, speeding again when he was clear of the village. A few minuteslater, he was turning into the crushed-limestone drive that led up to thebuff-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 andlift 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 lasttime 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 atschool. You must be old enough to vote, by now."

  "I will, this fall," she replied. "Come on in; you're the first onehere. Daddy hasn't gotten back from town yet. He called and said he'dbe delayed till about nine." In the hall she took his hat and coat andguided 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 wasstill living in the Flaming Youth era of the twenties. She was anextremely good egg; he liked her very much. After all, insisting uponremaining an F. Scott Fitzgerald character was a harmless and amusingfoible, and it was no more than right that somebody should try to keepthe bright banner of Jazz Age innocence flying in a grim and sullenworld. He accepted a cigarette, shared the flame of his lighter withmother and daughter, and submitted to being gushed over.

  "... and, honestly, Jeff, you get handsomer every year," Irene Greshamrattled on. "Dot, doesn't he look just like Clark Gable in _Gone with theWind_? 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 downto only one servant now, and it seems as if it's always her night off, orsomething. 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 agirl's.

  "That's Pierre and Karen," Dot said. "Let's all go up in the gunroom, andwait for the others there."

  They went out to meet the newcomers. The man was a few inches shorterthan Rand, with gray eyes that looked startlingly light against the darkbrown of his face. He wasn't using a cane, but he walked with a slightlimp. Beside him was a slender girl, almost as tall as he was, with darkbrown hair and brown eyes. She wore a rust-brown sweater and a brownskirt, and low-heeled walking-shoes.

  Irene Gresham went into the introductions, the newcomers shook hands withRand and were advised that the style of address was "Jeff," rather than"Colonel Rand," and then Dot suggested going up to the gunroom. IreneGresham said she'd stay downstairs; she'd have to let the others in.

  "Have you seen this collection before?" Pierre Jarrett inquired as he andRand went upstairs together.

  "About two years ago," Rand said. "Stephen had just gotten a caseddueling 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 adozen culls and duplicates," the former Marine said. "I'll show youwhat's new, till the others come."

  They reached the head of the stairs and started down the hall to thegunroom, 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 hadoriginally been something else--a nursery, or play-room, or party-room.There were windows on both long sides, which considerably reduced theavailable wall-space, and the situation wasn't helped any by the factthat the collection was about thirty per cent long-arms. Things werepretty badly crowded; most of the rifles and muskets were in circularbarracks-racks, away from the walls.

  "Here, this one's new since you were here," Pierre said, picking a longmusket from one of the racks and handing it to Rand. "How do you likethis 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 someseventeenth-century forerunner of Bannerman's, and Europe was full ofmuskets like this then, left over from the wars of the Holy Roman Empireand 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 thedocumentation for it. It came from the Charles Winthrop Sawyercollection, and there were only three ownership changes between the lastowner and the _Mayflower_ Company. Stephen only paid a hundred dollarsfor it, too."

  "That was practically stealing," Rand said. He carried the musket to thelight and examined it closely. "Nice condition, too; I wouldn't be afraidto 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. Evenwithout the history, it's worth that."

  "Who buys history, anyhow?" Rand wanted to know. "The fact that it camefrom the Sawyer collection adds more value to it than this _Mayflower_business. Past ownership by a recognized authority like Sawyer is a realguarantee of quality and authenticity. But history, documented orotherwise--hell, only yesterday I saw a pair of pistols with a wonderfulthree-hundred-and-fifty-year documented history. Only not a word of itwas 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 drinkwhen Lane Fleming was killed. Fleming was all set to hang Rivers's scalpin his wigwam.... But with Stephen, the history does count forsomething. As you probably know, he collects arms-types that figured inAmerican history. Well, he can prove that this individual musket wasbrought over by the Pilgrims, so he can be sure it's an example of thetype they used. But he'd sooner have a typical Pilgrim musket that neverwas within five thousand miles of Plymouth Rock than a non-typical armbrought over as a personal weapon by one of the _Mayflower_ Company."

  "Oh, none of us are really interested in the individual history ofcollection weapons," Rand said. "You show me a collection that's full ofknown-history arms, and I'll show you a collection that's either full ofjunk or else cost three times what it's worth. And you show me acollector who blows money on history, and nine times out of ten I'll showyou 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 thetrigger-guard. The owner thought that the patent-dates on Colts weremodel-dates, and the model-dates on French military arms were dates offabrication."

  Pierre wrinkled his nose disgustedly. "God, I hate to see a collectionall fouled up with tags hung on things!" he said. "Or stuck over withgummed labels; that's even worse. Once in a while I get something with alabel pasted on it, usually on the stock, and after I get it off, there'sa job getting the wood under it rubbed up to the same color as the restof the stock."

  "Yes. I picked up a lovely little rifled flintlock pistol, once," Randsaid. "American; full-length curly-maple stock; really a Kentucky riflein pistol form. Whoever had owned it before me had pasted a slip of paperon the underside of the stock, between the trigger-guard and the lowerramrod thimble, with a lot of crap, mostly erroneous, typed on it. Ittook me six months to remove the last traces of where that thing had beenstuck on."

  "What do you collect, or don't y
ou specialize?"

  "Pistols; I try to get the best possible specimens of the most importanttypes, special emphasis on British arms after 1700 and American armsafter 1800. What I'm interested in is the evolution of the pistol. I havea couple of wheel locks, to start with, and three miguelet-locks and anItalian snaphaunce. Then I have a few early flintlocks, and a number ofmid-eighteenth-century types, and some late flintlocks and percussiontypes. And about twenty Colts, and so on through percussion revolvers andearly cartridge types to some modern arms, including a few World War IIarms."

  "I see; about the same idea Lane Fleming had," Pierre said. "I collectpersonal combat-arms, firearms and edge-weapons. Arms that eitherinfluenced fighting techniques, or were developed to meet special combatconditions. From what you say, you're mainly interested in the wayfirearms were designed and made; I'm interested in the conditions underwhich they were used. And Adam Trehearne, who'll be here shortly,collects pistols and a few long-arms in wheel lock, proto-flintlock andearly flintlock, to 1700. And Philip Cabot collects U.S. Martials,flintlock to automatic, and also enemy and Allied Army weapons from allour wars. And Colin MacBride collects nothing but Colts. Odd how a Scot,who's only been in this country twenty years, should become interestedin so distinctively American a type."

  "And I collect anything I can sell at a profit, from Chinese matchlocksto tommy-guns," Karen Lawrence interjected, coming into the room with DotGresham.

  Pierre grinned. "Karen is practically a unique specimen herself; the onlygeneral-antique dealer I've ever seen who doesn't hate the sight of agun-collector."

  "That's only because I'm crazy enough to want to marry one," thegirl dealer replied. "Of all the miserly, unscrupulous, graspingcharacters ..." She expressed a doubt that the average gun-collectorwould pay more than ten cents to see his Lord and Savior riding to houndson 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; theythink arms ought still to sell for the sort of prices they brought at theold Mark Field sale, back in 1911."

  "What were you looking at?" Dot asked Rand, then glanced at the musket inPierre's hands. "Oh, Priscilla."

  Karen laughed. "Dot not only knows everything in the collection; sheknows it by name. Dot, show Colonel Rand Hester Prynne."

  "Hester coming up," Gresham's daughter said, catching another musket outof the same rack from which Pierre had gotten the matchlock and passingit 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 onthe 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 firstAmerican 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 underwhich a stubby pipe jutted. Except when he emptied it of ashes andrefilled it, it was a permanent fixture of his weather-beaten face.Trehearne was somewhat shorter, and fair; his sandy mustache, beginningto turn gray at the edges, was clipped to micrometric exactness.

  They shook hands with Rand, who set Hester back in her place. Trehearnetook 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 thedetective'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 yetthere must have been a hundred matchlocks made for every wheel lock."

  "Matchlocks were cheap, and wheel locks were expensive," MacBridesuggested. 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 aScot who collects guns, and you have something!"

  "That's only part of it," Rand said. "I believe that by the last quarterof the seventeenth century, most of the matchlocks that were lying aroundhad been scrapped, and the barrels used in making flintlocks. HesterPrynne, over there, could easily have started her career as a matchlock.And then, a great many matchlocks went into the West African slave andivory trade, and were promptly ruined by the natives."

  "Yes, and I seem to recall having seen Spanish and French migueletmuskets that looked as though they had been altered directly frommatchlock, retaining the original stock and even the originallock-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 anappearance.

  MacBride and Trehearne joined Pierre and the girls in showing himGresham's collection; evidently they all knew it almost as well as theirown. After a while, Irene Gresham ushered in Philip Cabot. He, too, waspast middle age, with prematurely white hair and a thin, scholarly face.According to Hollywood type-casting, he might have been a professor, or ajudge, or a Boston Brahmin, but never a stockbroker.

  Irene Gresham wanted to know what everybody wanted to drink. Rand wantedBourbon and plain water; MacBride voted for Jamaica rum; Trehearne andCabot favored brandy and soda, and Pierre and the girls wanted Bacardiand Coca-Cola.

  "And Stephen'll want rye and soda, when he gets here," Irene said. "Comeon, girls; let's rustle up the drinks."

  Before they returned, Stephen Gresham came in, lighting a cigar. It wasjust 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 bottlesand glasses; when the flurry of drink-mixing had subsided, they all satdown.

  "Let's get the business over first," Gresham suggested. "I suppose you'vegone over the collection already, Jeff?"

  "Yes, and first of all, I want to know something. When was the last thatany of you saw it?"

  Gresham and Pierre had been in Fleming's gunroom just two days before thefatal "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 theHall?"

  "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 hewas killed, then somebody's been weeding out the collection since. Doingit very cleverly, too," he added. "You know how that stuff's arranged,and how conspicuous a missing pistol would be. Well, when I was goingover the collection, I found about two dozen pieces of the most uttertrash, things Lane Fleming wouldn't have allowed in the house, allhanging where some really good item ought to have been." He took a paperfrom his pocket and read off a list of the dubious items, interpolatingcomments on the condition, and a list of the real rarities which Greshamhad 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 lookingat the Rappahannock Forge."

  Trehearne broke in to ask how many English dog-locks there were, and ifthe snaphaunce Highlander and the big all-steel wheel lock were stillthere. At the same time, Cabot was inquiring about the Springfield 1818and the Virginia Manufactory pistols.

  "I'll have a complete, itemized list in a few days," Rand said. "In themeantime, I'd like a couple of you to look at the collection and help medecide what's missing. I'm going to try to catch the thief, and then getat the fenc
e through him."

  "Think Rivers might have gotten the pistols?" Gresham asked. "He's thecrookedest dealer I know of."

  "He's the crookedest dealer anybody knows of," Rand amended. "The onlything, he's a little too anxious to buy the collection, for somebodywho's just skimmed off the cream."

  "Ten thousand dollars isn't much in the way of anxiety," Cabot said. "I'dcall 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. "Andwith the best items gone ..." He shrugged.

  Pierre and Karen were looking at each other in blank misery; their dreamof establishing themselves in the arms business had blown up in theirfaces.

  "Oh, he's talking through his hat!" Cabot declared. "He just hopes we'lllose interest, and then he'll buy what's left of the collection for asong."

  "Maybe he knows the collection's been robbed," Trehearne suggested. "Thatwould let him out, later. He'd accuse you or the Fleming estate ofholding out the best pieces, and then offer to take what's left for aboutfive thousand."

  "Well, that would be presuming that he knows the collection has beenrobbed," Cabot pointed out. "And the only way he'd know that would be ifhe, 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 thecollection, just as it stands, to keep Pierre and me out of the armsbusiness. This end of the state couldn't support another arms-dealer, andwith 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 andheld out his hand to Rand. "Don't get the idea, Jeff, that anybody hereholds this against you. You have your clients' interests to look outfor."

  "Well, if this be treason make the most of it," Rand said, "but I hopeRivers doesn't go through with it. I'd like to see you people get thecollection, and I'd hate to see a lot of nice pistols like that get intothe hands of a damned swindler like Rivers.... Maybe I can catch him withthe 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 withfaking, but the dumbest jury in the world would know what receivingstolen goods was, and he knows it."

  Dorothy and Irene Gresham accompanied Pierre and Karen downstairs. Afterthey had gone, Gresham tried, not very successfully, to inject more lifeinto the party with another round of drinks. For a while they discussedthe personal and commercial iniquities of Arnold Rivers. Trehearne andMacBride, who had come together in the latter's car, left shortly, andhalf an hour later, Philip Cabot rose and announced that he, too, wasleaving.

  "You haven't seen my collection since before the war, Jeff," he said. "Ifyou'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 mileon the other side of the railroad."

  They went out and got into their cars. Rand kept Cabot's taillight insight until the broker swung into his drive and put his car in thegarage. Rand parked beside the road, took the Leech & Rigdon out of theglove-box, and got out, slipping the Confederate revolver under histrouser-band. He was pulling down his vest to cover the butt as he wentup the walk and joined his friend at the front door.

  Cabot's combination library and gunroom was on the first floor. LikeRand's own, his collection was hung on racks over low bookcases on eitherside of the room. It was strictly a collector's collection, intenselyspecialized. There were all but a few of the U.S. regulation single-shotpistols, a fair representation of secondary types, most of the revolversof the Civil War, and all the later revolvers and automatics. Inaddition, there were British pistols of the Revolution and 1812,Confederate revolvers, a couple of Spanish revolvers of 1898, the Lugersand Mausers and Steyers of the first World War, and the pistols of allour allies, beginning with the French weapons of the Revolution.

  "I'm having the devil's own time filling in for this last war," Cabotsaid. "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 theItalian Glisenti, and that Tokarev, and, of course, the P-'38 and theCanadian Browning; but it's going to take the devil's own time. I hopenobody starts another war, for a few years, till I can get caught up onthe last one."

  Rand was looking at the Confederate revolvers. Griswold & Grier, HaimanBrothers, Tucker & Sherrod, Dance Brothers & Park, Spiller & Burr--thereit 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 thatrevolver, not four hours before Fleming was shot. Had it in my hands;looked it over carefully." He shook his head. "It absolutely was notloaded. 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 townbefore I remembered that I hadn't bought a copy of _Time_, so I stoppedat Biddle's drugstore, in the village, for one. Just as I was gettinginto my car, outside, Lane Fleming drove up and saw me. He blew his hornat me, and then waved to me with this revolver in his hand. I went overand looked at it, and he told me he'd found it hanging back of thecounter 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 decentthing there, and Fleming had talked it out of this fellow for tendollars. He was disgustingly gleeful about it, particularly as it wasa 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 Confederatearms. The highest known serial number for a Leech & Rigdon is 1393; thisone was 1234."

  Rand pulled the .36 revolver from his pants-leg and gave it a quickglance; 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 leftgrip; Fleming was saying that he was glad it would be on the inside, soit wouldn't show when he hung it on the wall." He carried the revolver tothe desk and held it under the light. "Why, this thing wasn't fired atall!" he exclaimed. "I thought that Fleming might have loaded it, meaningto target it--he had a pistol range back of his house--but the chambersare clean." He sniffed at it. "Hoppe's Number Nine," he said. "And I cansee traces of partly dissolved rust, and no traces of fouling. What thedevil, 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 anelaborate suicide build-up, either before or after the fact?"

  "Absolutely not!" There was a trace of impatience in Cabot's voice. "LaneFleming wasn't the man to commit suicide. I knew him too well ever tobelieve that."

  "I heard a rumor that he was about to lose control of his company," Randmentioned. "You know how much Premix meant to him."

  "That's idiotic!" Cabot's voice was openly scornful, now, and he seemeda little angry that Rand should believe such a story, as though hisconfidence 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. "Takemy word for it, there's absolutely nothing in it."

  "So it wasn't an accide
nt, and it wasn't suicide," Rand considered."Philip, what is the prognosis on this merger of Premix and NationalMilling & Packaging, now that Lane Fleming's opposition has been, shallwe 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 LaneFleming'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 recoverthem, and jail the thief and the fence. But I was not retained toinvestigate the death of Lane Fleming. And I do not do work for whichI am not paid," he added, with mendacious literalness.

  "I see. Well, the merger's going through. It won't be official until thesixteenth of May, when the Premix stockholders meet, but that's just aformality. It's all cut and dried and in the bag now. Better let me pickyou up a little Premix; there's still some lying around. You'll make alittle less than four-for-one on it."

  "I'd had that in mind when I asked you about the merger," Rand said. "Ihave about two thousand with you, haven't I?" He did a moment's mentalarithmetic, then got out his checkbook. "Pick me up about a hundredshares," he told the broker. "I've been meaning to get in on this eversince I heard about it."

  "I don't see how you did hear about it," Cabot said. "For obviousreasons, it's being kept pretty well under the hat."

  Rand grinned. "Quote, usually well-informed sources, unquote. Not thesources 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 tryingto ignore it, but I simply can't. Do you really think Lane Fleming wasmurdered by somebody who wanted to see this merger consummated and whoknew 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 possiblyexaggerated idea of what constitutes fair compensation, I will. And I'llprobably 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 asimilar attitude."

  They changed the subject, then, to the variety of pistols developed andused by the opposing nations in World War II, and the difficulties aheadof Cabot in assembling even a fairly representative group of them. Randpromised to mail Cabot a duplicate copy of his list of the letter-codesymbols used by the Nazis to indicate the factories manufacturing armsfor them, as well as copies of some old wartime Intelligence dope onenemy small-arms. At a little past one, he left Cabot's home and returnedto 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 grayPlymouth was in the space from which Rand had driven earlier in theevening, and a black Chrysler Imperial had been run in on the left of thePlymouth. He put his own car in on the right of the station-wagon, madesure that the Leech & Rigdon was locked in his glove-box, and closed andlocked the garage doors. Then he went up into the house, through thelibrary, and by the spiral stairway to the gunroom.

  The garage had been open, he recalled, at the time of Lane Fleming'sdeath. The availability of such an easy means of undetected ingress andegress threw the suspect field wide open. Anybody who knew the habits ofthe Fleming household could have slipped up to the gunroom, while Varcekwas in his lab, Dunmore was in the bathroom, and Gladys and Geraldinewere in the parlor. As he crossed the hall to his own room, Rand wasthinking of how narrowly Arnold Rivers had escaped a disastrous lawsuitand criminal action by the death of Lane Fleming.