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.