CHAPTER 13
Rand found Gladys alone in the library. As she rose to greet him, he cameclose to her, gesturing for silence with finger on lips.
"There's a perfect hell of a mess," he whispered. "Somebody murderedArnold Rivers last night."
She looked at him in horror. "Murdered? Who was it? How did it...?"
"I haven't time to talk about that right now," he told her. "StephenGresham and Pierre Jarrett are on their way here, and I'd like you tokeep the servants, and particularly Walters, out of earshot of thegunroom while they're here. It seems that a number of the best pistolshave been stolen from the collection, sometime between the death of Mr.Fleming and the time I saw the collection yesterday. Stephen and Pierreare going to help me find out just what's been taken. I have an idea theymight have been sold to Rivers. That may have been why he was killed--toprevent him from implicating the thief."
"You think somebody here--the servants?" she asked.
"I can't see how it could have been an outsider. The stuff wasn't alltaken at once; it must have been moved out a piece at a time, andworthless pistols moved in and hung on the racks to replace valuablepistols taken." He had left the library door purposely open; when thedoorbell rang, he heard it. "I'll let them in," he said. "You go and headWalters off."
Rand hurried to the front door and admitted Gresham and Pierre, hustlingthem down the hall, into the library, and up the spiral to the gunroom,while Gladys went to the foot of the front stairs. Through the opengunroom door, Rand could hear her speaking to Walters, as though sendinghim on some errand to the rear of the house. He closed the door andturned to the others.
"We'll have to make it fast," he said. "Mrs. Fleming can't hold thebutler off all day. Let's start over here, and go around the racks."
They began at the left, with the wheel locks. Pierre put his fingerimmediately on the shabby and disreputable specimen Rand had firstnoticed.
"Phew! Is that one a stinker!" he said. "What used to be there was anice late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century North Italian pistol,all covered with steel filigree-work. A real beauty; much better thanaverage."
"Those Turkish atrocities," Gresham pointed out. "They're filling in fora pair of Lazarino Cominazo snaphaunces that Lane Fleming paid sevenhundred for, back in the mid-thirties, and didn't pay a cent too muchfor, even then. Worth an easy thousand, now. Remember the pair ofCominazo flintlocks illustrated in Pollard's _Short History of Firearms_?These were even better, and snaphaunces."
"Well, you go over the collection," Rand told them. "Note down anythingyou find missing." He handed them a pad of paper and a pencil from thedesk. "I have something else to do, for a few minutes."
With that he left them scrutinizing the pistols on the wall, and went tothe workbench in the corner, drawing the .36 Colt from under hiswaistband. Working rapidly, he dismounted it, taking off the barrel andcylinder, and cleaned it thoroughly before putting it together again.Pierre and Gresham had just started on the Colts when he slipped therevolver out of sight and rejoined them.
It took over a half-hour to finish; when they had gotten completelyaround the collection, Rand had a list of twenty-six missing items,including four cased sets. At a conservative estimate, the missingpistols were worth ten to twelve thousand dollars, dealer's list value;the stuff that had been moved in to replace them might have a value oftwo or three hundred, but no serious collector would buy any of it at anyprice. There had been no attempt to replace the cased items; the caseshad been merely rearranged on the table to avoid any conspicuousvacancies.
"See that thing?" Pierre asked, tapping a small .25 Webley & Scottautomatic with his finger. Rand looked at it; it had been fitted with anEnglish-made silencer. "That thing," Pierre said, "is the one illustratedin Pollard's book. The identical pistol; it used to be in the Pollardcollection."
"Lane had a lot of stuff from some famous collections," Gresham said."Pollard collection, Sawyer collection, Fred Hines collection, Meekscollection, even the old Mark Field collection, that was sold at LibbieGalleries in 1911. His own could rank with any of them. Think you can getany of this stuff back?"
"I hope so. By the way, where does this fellow Umholtz, the fabricator ofspurious Whitneyville Walker Colts, hang out? I believe he ought to belooked into."
"Say, that's an idea!" Pierre ejaculated. "He might have bought thepistols, instead of Rivers. Why, he has a gunshop at Kingsville, on Route22, about fifteen miles west of here, just this side of the village. Hehad a big sign along the road, and his shop's in the barn, behind thehouse."
"I'll have to check up on him. But first, I want to see if any of thisstuff's at Rivers's shop. I won't ask you to come along," he toldGresham. "No use you sticking your head into the lion's mouth. I'vetalked the State Police temporarily off your trail, but I still haveFarnsworth to worry about."
"He'd like to prosecute a big corporation lawyer, if he thought he hadany chance of getting a conviction," Pierre said. "Make a nice impressionon the proletarian vote in the south end of the county."
"You're a member of the Mohawk Club in New Belfast, aren't you?" Randasked Gresham. "Well, go there and stay there for a couple of days, tillthe heat's off. Pierre, you can come with me to Rivers's; I'll run youhome in my car when we're through."
Gresham let himself out the front door; Pierre and Rand went out throughthe garage and got into Rand's car.
"You have any idea, so far, about who could have killed Rivers?" theex-Marine asked, as they coasted down the drive to the highway.
"I haven't even the start of an idea," Rand said. He ran briefly overwhat he knew, or at least those items which were likely to become publicknowledge soon. "From what I've observed at the shop, and from what Iknow of Rivers's character, I'd think that he'd been in some kind of acrooked deal with somebody, and got double-crossed, or else the other mancaught Rivers double-crossing him. Or else, Rivers and somebody else hadsome secret in common, and the other man wanted a monopoly on it andkilled Rivers as a security measure."
"Think it might be the Fleming pistols?"
"That depends. I'll have to see whether any of the Fleming pistols turnup anywhere in Rivers's former possession. Personally, I've about decidedthat the man who was drinking with Rivers killed him. There aren't anyindications that anybody else was in the shop afterward. If that's thecase, I doubt if the killer was Walters. You know what a snobbish guyRivers was. And from what I know of him, he seems to have had athoroughly Aristotelian outlook; he identified individuals withclass-labels. Walters, of course, would be identified with the label'butler,' and I can't imagine Rivers sitting down and drinking with a'butler.' He would only drink with people whom he thought of as hisequals, that is, people whom he identified with class-labels of equalsocial importance to his own labels of 'antiquarian' and 'businessman.'"
"That sounds like Korzybski," Pierre said, as they turned onto Route 19in the village and headed east. "You've read _Science and Sanity_?"
Rand nodded. "Yes. I first read it in the 1933 edition, back about 1936;I've been rereading it every couple of years since. The principles ofGeneral Semantics come in very handy in my business, especially incriminal-investigation work, like this. A consciousness of abstracting,a realization that we can only know something about a thin film of eventson the surface of any given situation, and a habit of thinkingstructurally and of individual things, instead of verbally and ofcategories, saves a lot of blind-alley chasing. And they suggest agreat many more avenues of investigation than would be evident to onewhose thinking is limited by intensional, verbal, categories."
"Yes. I find General Semantics helpful in my work, too," Pierre said. "Ican use it in plotting a story.... Oh-oh!"
"The Gentlemen of the Press," Rand said, looking ahead as the carapproached the Rivers house and shop. "There hasn't been a good,sensational, murder story for some time; this is a gift from the gods."
A swarm of cars were parked in front and beside the red-brick house.Among them, Rand spotted a gold-lettered green sedan o
f the New Belfast_Dispatch_ and _Evening Express_, a black coupe bearing the blazonry ofthe New Belfast _Mercury_, cars from a couple of papers at Louisburg, thestate capital, and cars from papers as far distant as Pittsburgh,Buffalo, and Cincinnati. In front of the shop, a motley assemblage ofjournalists was interviewing and photographing an undersized runt ina tan Chesterfield topcoat and a gray Homburg hat, whom they wereaddressing as Mr. Farnsworth. The District Attorney of Scott County hada mustache which failed miserably to make him look like Tom Dewey; heimpressed Rand as the sort of offensive little squirt who compensatesfor his general insignificance by bad manners and loud-mouthedself-assertion. Corporal Kavaalen, standing in the doorway of the shop,caught sight of Rand and his companion as they got out of the car andcame to meet them, hustling them around the crowd and into the shopbefore anybody could notice and recognize them.
"That was a good tip, about the telephone," he said softly. "Mick checkedat the Rosemont exchange. Rivers got a long-distance call from Topekalast night; ten fifteen to ten seventeen. We got the night long distanceoperator out of bed, and she confirmed it; Rivers took the call himself.He gets a lot of long distance calls in the evenings; she knew hisvoice." He corrected himself, shifting to the past tense and glancing, ashe did, at the chalk outline on the floor, now scuffed by many feet, andthe dried bloodstains. "You say this puts Gresham in the clear?"
"Absolutely," Rand assured him. "He was at home from nine twenty-two on."He introduced Pierre Jarrett, and explained their mission. "You findanything except what's here in the shop?"
"Only Rivers's own .38 Smith & Wesson, in his room, and a lot of pistolsout in the garage, that look like junk to me," Kavaalen said. "I'll showthem to you."
Rand nodded. "Pierre, you look around the shop; I'll see what this otherstuff is."
He followed Kavaalen through a door at the rear of the shop; the same onethrough which Cecil Gillis had carried the Kentucky rifle the afternoonbefore. Beside Rivers's car, there was a long workbench in the garage,and piles of wood and cardboard cartons, and stacks of newspapers, anda barrel full of excelsior, all evidently used in preparing arms forshipment. There was also a large pile of old pistols, and a number oflong-arms.
Rand pawed among the pistols; they were, as the State Police corporal hadsaid, all junk. The sort of things a dealer has to buy, at times, inorder to get something really good. Many of them had been partiallydismantled for parts. When he was certain that the heap of junk-weaponsdidn't conceal anything of value, he returned to the shop. Pierre waswaiting for him by Rivers's desk.
He shook his head. "Not a thing," he reported. "I found a couple ofout-and-out fakes, and about ten or fifteen that had been altered in oneway or another, and a lot of reblued stuff, but nothing from Fleming'scollection. What did you find?"
Rand laughed. "I found Rivers's scrap-heap, and some pistols thatprobably contributed parts to some of the stuff you found," he said. "Ofcourse, all we can say is that the stuff isn't here; Rivers could havebought it, and stored it outside somewhere. But even so, I'm not takingthe Fleming butler too seriously as a suspect for the murder."
"What's this about Fleming's butler?" a voice broke in. "Have you beenwithholding information from me?"
Rand turned, to find that Farnsworth had left the press conference infront and crepe-soled up on him from behind.
"I withheld a theory, which seems to have come to nothing," he replied.
Kavaalen told the D.A. who Rand was. "He's cooperating with us," headded. "Sergeant McKenna instructed us to give him every consideration."
"It seems that a number of valuable pistols were stolen from thecollection of the late Lane Fleming," Rand said. "We suspected thatthe butler had stolen them and sold them to Rivers; I thought itpossible that he might also have killed Rivers to silence him about thetransaction." He shrugged. "None of the stolen items have turned up here,so there's nothing to connect the thefts with the death of Rivers."
"Good heavens, you certainly didn't suspect a prominent and respectedcitizen like Mr. Rivers of receiving stolen goods?" Farnsworth demanded,aghast.
"Who respects him?" Rand hooted. "Rivers was a notorious swindler; hehad that reputation among arms-collectors all over the country. He wasexpelled from membership in the National Rifle Association formisrepresentation and fraud. Why, he even swindled Lane Fleming on a pairof fake pistols, a week or so before Fleming's death. And the very reasonwhy your man Olsen was inclined to suspect Stephen Gresham was that hehad had trouble with Rivers about a crooked deal Rivers had put over onhim. Fortunately, Mr. Gresham has since been cleared of any suspicion,but--"
"Who says he's been cleared?" Farnsworth snapped. "He's still a suspect."
"Sergeant McKenna says so," Corporal Kavaalen declared. "He has beencleared. I guess we just didn't get around to telling you about that."He went on to explain about the long distance call that had furnishedStephen Gresham's alibi.
"And Gresham was at home from nine twenty-two on," Rand added. "There areeight witnesses to that: His wife and daughter; myself; Captain Jarrett,here; and his fiancee, Miss Lawrence; Philip Cabot; Adam Trehearne; ColinMacBride."
Farnsworth looked bewildered. "Why wasn't I told about that?" he demandedsulkily.
"Sergeant McKenna's been too busy, and I didn't think of it," Kavaalensaid insolently. "I'm not supposed to report to you, anyhow. Why didn'tyour man Olsen tell you; he was with us when we checked with thetelephone company."
Farnsworth tried to ignore that by questioning Pierre about the time ofGresham's arrival home, then turned to Rand and wanted to know what thelatter's interest in the case was.
Rand told him about his work in connection with the Fleming collection,producing Humphrey Goode's letter of authorization. Farnsworth seemedimpressed in about the same way as the coroner, Kirchner, but he wasstill puzzled.
"But I understood that you had been retained by Stephen Gresham, toinvestigate this murder," he said.
"So you did talk to Olsen, after I saw him," Rand pounced. "Odd he didn'tmention this telephone thing.... Why, yes; that's true. My agency handlesall sorts of business. The two operations aren't mutually exclusive; fora while, I even thought they might be related, but now--" He shrugged.
"Well, you believe, now, that Rivers had nothing to do with the pistolsyou say were stolen from the Fleming collection?" Farnsworth asked. Randshook his head ambiguously; Farnsworth took that for a negative answerto his question, as he was intended to. "And you say Mr. Gresham has beencompletely cleared of any suspicion of complicity in this murder?"
"Mr. Rand's helping us; we want him to stick around till the case isclosed," Corporal Kavaalen threw in, perceiving the drift of Farnsworth'squestions. "He and Sergeant McKenna have worked together before; he'sgiven us a lot of good tips."
"You understand," Rand took over, "Mr. Gresham didn't retain me merelyto help him clear himself. I don't accept that kind of retainers. I wasretained to find the murderer of Arnold Rivers, and I intend to continueworking on this case until I do. I hope that the same friendly spirit ofmutual cooperation will exist between your office and my agency as existsbetween me and the State Police. I certainly don't want to have to workat cross purposes with any of the regular law-enforcement agencies."
"Oh, certainly; of course." Farnsworth didn't seem to like the idea, butthere was no apparent opening for objection. He and Rand exchangedmendacious compliments, pledged close cooperation, and did practicallyeverything but draw up and sign a treaty of alliance. Then Farnsworth andCorporal Kavaalen accompanied Rand and Pierre Jarrett to the front door.
Some of the reporters who were ravening outside must have spotted Rand ashe had entered; they were all waiting for him to come out, and set up amonstrous ululation when he appeared in the doorway. With Farnsworthbeaming approval, Rand assured the Press that he was no more than a merespectator, that the State Police and the efficient District Attorney ofScott County had the situation well in hand, and that an arrest wasexpected within a matter of hours. Then he and Pierre hurried
to his carand drove away.
Murder in the Gunroom Page 13