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."