Neither of them spoke for a moment or two. Then, after they had left the
criminological-journalistic uproar at the Rivers place behind and were
approaching the village of Rosemont, Pierre turned to Rand.
"You know," he said, "for a disciple of Korzybski, you came pretty close
to confusing orders of abstraction, a couple of times, back there. You
showed that Stephen was at home while Rivers was taking that phone call,
a little after ten. But when you talk about clearing him completely,
aren't you overlooking the possibility that he came back to Rivers's
after you and Philip Cabot left the Gresham place?"
Rand eased the foot-pressure on the gas and spared young Jarrett a
side-glance before returning his attention to the road ahead.
"Understand," Pierre hastened to add, "I don't believe that Stephen was
fool enough to kill Rivers over that fake North & Cheney, but weren't you
producing inferences that hadn't been abstracted from any descriptive
data?"
"Pierre, when I'm working on a case like this, any resemblance between
my opinions and the statements I may make is purely due to conscious
considerations of policy," Rand told him. "I don't want Farnsworth or
Mick McKenna going around bitching this operation up for me. If they
feel justified in eliminating Gresham on the strength of that phone
call, I'm satisfied, regardless of the semantics involved. Right now, the
thing that's worrying me is the ease with which I seem to have talked
Farnsworth into laying off Gresham. He and Olsen both have single-track
minds. They may just dismiss that telephone alibi, such as it is, as mere
error of the mortal mind, and go right ahead building some kind of a
ramshackle case against Gresham. Since they picked him for their entry,
they won't want to have to scratch him.... Damn, I wish I could think of
where Walters could have sold those pistols!"
"Well, if Rivers wasn't involved somehow, why was he killed?" Pierre
wondered. "Hey! Maybe Walters sold the pistols to Umholtz! He's just as
big a crook as Rivers was, only not quite so smart."
Rand nodded thoughtfully. "Maybe so. And suppose Rivers found out about
it, and tried to declare himself in on it. That stuff would be worth at
least ten thousand; I doubt if whoever bought it paid Walters more than
two. In the Umholtz-Rivers income bracket, the difference might be worth
killing for."
"That's right. And Umholtz was in the infantry, in the other war; he
served in the Twenty-eighth Division. He was trained to use a bayonet.
And he'd pick that short Mauser; it has about the same weight and balance
as a 1903 Springfield."
"Well, you know, the killer wouldn't need to have been trained to use a
bayonet," Rand pointed out. "Mick McKenna made that point, this
afternoon. There have been a lot of war-movies that showed bayonet
fighting; pretty nearly everybody knows about the technique that was
used. And against an unarmed and probably unsuspecting victim like
Rivers, a great deal of proficiency wouldn't be needed." He slowed the
car. "Up this road?" he asked.
"Yes. That's my place, over there."
Pierre pointed to a white-walled, red-roofed house that lay against a
hillside, about a mile ahead, making a vivid spot in the dull grays and
greens of the early April landscape. It consisted of a square two-story
block, with one-story wings projecting to give it an L-shaped floorplan.
It reminded Rand of farmhouses he had seen in Sicily during the War.
"Come on in and see my stuff, if you have time," Pierre invited, as
Rand pulled to a stop in the driveway. "I think I told you what I
collect--personal combat arms, both firearms and edge-weapons."
They entered the front door, which opened directly into a large parlor, a
brightly colored, cheerful room. A woman rose from a chair where she had
been reading. She was somewhere between forty-five and fifty, but her
figure was still trim, and she retained much of what, in her youth, must
have been great beauty.
"Mother, this is Colonel Rand," Pierre said. "Jeff, my mother."
Rand shook hands with her, and said something polite. She gave him a
smile of real pleasure.
"Pierre has been telling me about you, Colonel," she said. There was a
faint trace of French accent in her voice. "I suppose he brought you here
to show you his treasures?"
"Yes; I collect arms too. Pistols," Rand said.
She laughed. "You gun-collectors; you're like women looking at somebody's
new hat.... Will you stay for dinner with us, Colonel Rand?"
"Why, I'm sorry; I can't. I have a great many things to do, and I'm
expected for dinner at the Flemings'. I really wish I could, Mrs.
Jarrett. Maybe some other time."
They chatted for a few minutes, then Pierre guided Rand into one of the
wings of the house.
"This is my workshop, too," he said. "Here's where I do my writing." He
opened a door and showed Rand into a large room.
On one side, the wall was blank; on the other, it was pierced by two
small casement windows. The far end was of windows for its entire width,
from within three feet of the floor almost to the ceiling. There were
bookcases on either long side, and on the rear end, and over them hung
Pierre's weapons. Rand went slowly around the room, taking everything in.
Very few of the arms were of issue military type, and most of these
showed alterations to suit individual requirements. As Pierre had told
him the evening before, the emphasis was upon weapons which illustrated
techniques of combat.
At the end of the room, lighted by the wide windows, was a long
desk which was really a writer's assembly line, with typewriter,
reference-books, stacks of notes and manuscripts, and a big dictionary
on a stand beside a comfortable swivel-chair.
"What are you writing?" Rand asked.
"Science-fiction. I do a lot of stories for the pulps," Pierre told him.
"_Space-Trails_, and _Other Worlds_, and _Wonder-Stories_; mags like
that. Most of it's standardized formula-stuff; what's known to the trade
as space-operas. My best stuff goes to _Astonishing_. Parenthetically,
you mustn't judge any of these magazines by their names. It seems to be
a convention to use hyperbolic names for science-fiction magazines; a
heritage from what might be called an earlier and ruder day. What I do
for _Astonishing_ is really hard work, and I enjoy it. I'm working now on
one for them, based on J. W. Dunne's time-theories, if you know what they
are."
"I think so," Rand said. "Polydimensional time, isn't it? Based on an
effect Dunne observed and described--dreams obviously related to some
waking event, but preceding rather than following the event to which they
are related. I read Dunne's _Experiment with Time_ some years before the
war, and once, when I had nothing better to do, I recorded dreams for
about a month. I got a few doubtful-to-fair examples, and two
unmistakable Dunne-Effect dreams. I never got anything that would help
me pick a race-winner or spot a rise in the stock market, though."
"Well, you know, there's a case on record of a man who had a dream of
hearing a radio narration of the English Derby of 1933, including the
announcement that Hyperion had won, which he did," Pierre said. "The
dream was six hours before the race, and tallied very closely with the
phraseology used by the radio narrator. Here." He picked up a copy of
Tyrrell's _Science and Psychical Phenomena_ and leafed through it.
"Did this fellow cash in on it?" Rand asked.
"No. He was a Quaker, and violently opposed to betting. Here." He handed
the book to Rand. "Case Twelve."
Rand sat down on the edge of the desk, and read the section indicated,
about three pages in length.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he said, as he finished. The idea of anybody
passing up a chance like that to enrich himself literally smote him to
the vitals. "I see the British Society for Psychical Research checked
that case, and got verification from a couple of independent witnesses.
If the S.P.R. vouches for a story, it must be the McCoy; they're the
toughest-minded gang of confirmed skeptics anywhere in Christendom. They
take an attitude toward evidence that might be advantageously copied by
most of the district attorneys I've met, the one in this county being no
exception.... What's this story you're working on?"
"Oh, it's based on Dunne's precognition theories, plus a few ideas of my
own, plus a theory of alternate lines of time-sequence for alternate
probabilities," Pierre said. "See, here's the situation ..."
Half an hour later, they were still arguing about a multidimensional
universe when Rand remembered Dave Ritter, who should be at the Rosemont
Inn by now. He looked at his watch, saw that it was five forty-five, and
inquired about a telephone.
"Yes, of course; out here." Pierre took him back to the parlor, where he
dialed the Inn and inquired if a Mr. Ritter, from New Belfast, were
registered there yet.
He was. A moment later he was speaking to Ritter.
"Jeff, for Gawdsake, don't come here," Ritter advised. "This place is
six-deep with reporters; the bar sounds like the second act of _The Front
Page_. Tony Ashe and Steve Drake from the _Dispatch_ and _Express_;
Harry Bentz, from the _Mercury_; Joe Rawlings, the AP man from Louisburg;
Christ only knows who all. This damn thing's going to turn into another
Hall-Mills case! Look, meet me at that beer joint, about two miles on the
New Belfast side of Rosemont, on Route 19; the white-with-red-trimmings
place with the big Pabst sign out in front. I'll try to get there without
letting a couple of reporters hide in the luggage-trunk."
"Okay; see you directly."
Rand hung up, spent the next few minutes breaking away from Pierre and
his mother, and went out to his car. Trust Dave Ritter, he thought, to
pick some place where malt beverages were sold, for a rendezvous.
Dave's coupe was parked inconspicuously beside the red-trimmed roadhouse.
Opening his glove-box, Rand took out the two percussion revolvers and
shoved them under his trench coat, one on either side, pulling up the
belt to hold them in place. As he went into the roadhouse, he felt like
Damon Runyon's Twelve-Gun Tweeney. He found Ritter in the last booth,
engaged in finishing a bottle of beer. Rand ordered Bourbon and plain
water, and Ritter ordered another beer.
"I have the stuff Tip left with Kathie," Ritter said, taking out a couple
of closely typed sheets and handing them across the table. "He said this
was the whole business."
Rand glanced over them. Tipton had neatly and concisely summarized the
provisions of Lane Fleming's will, and had also listed all Fleming's life
insurance policies, with beneficiaries, including a partnership policy on
the lives of Fleming, Dunmore, and Anton Varcek, paying each of the
survivors $25,000.
"I see Gladys and Geraldine and Nelda each get a third of Fleming's
Premix stock," Rand commented. "But before they can have the certificates
transferred to them, they have to sign over their voting-power to the
board of directors. Evidently Fleming didn't approve of the feminine
touch in business."
"Yeah, isn't that a dandy?" Ritter asked. "The directors are elected by
majority vote of the stockholders. They now have the voting-power of a
majority of the stock; that makes the present board self-perpetuating,
and responsible only to each other."
"So it does, but that wasn't what I was thinking of. According to Tip,
the board is one hundred per cent in favor of the merger with National
Milling & Packaging. We'll have to suppose Fleming knew that; there must
have been considerable intramural acrimony on the subject while he was
still alive. Now, since he opposed the merger, if he had intended
committing suicide, he would have made some other arrangement, wouldn't
he? At least, one would suppose so. Well, then," Rand asked, "why, since
he is so worried about these suicide rumors, doesn't Goode use the one
argument which would utterly disprove them? Or is there some reason
why he doesn't want to call attention to the fact that Fleming's death
is what makes the merger possible?"
"Well, that would be calling attention to the fact that the merger made
Fleming's death necessary," Ritter pointed out. He poured more beer into
his glass. "While we're on it, what's the angle on this butler's livery
I was supposed to bring? I brought my tux, and I borrowed a striped vest
from the Theatrical Property Exchange, and I brought that Dago .380 of
yours. But what makes you think the Flemings are going to be needing a
new butler? You going to poison the one they have?"
"The one they have has been exceeding his duties," Rand said. "He was
supposed to clean the pistol-collection. Not content with that, he's
been cleaning it out. I know it was the butler." He went, at length,
into his reasons for thinking so, and described the _modus operandi_ of
the thefts. "Now, all this is just theory, so far, but when I'm able to
prove it, I'm going to put the arm on this Walters, if it's right in the
middle of dinner and he only has the roast half served. And I want you
ready to step into the vacancy thus created. I'm going to be busy as a
pup in a fireplug factory with this Rivers thing, and I'll need some
checking-upping done inside the Fleming household."
He went on, in meticulous detail, to explain about the Rivers murder.
"I'll have some work for you, before you're ready to start buttling,
too." Disencumbering himself of the two percussion revolvers, he laid
them on the table. "I want you to take these and show them to this
barbecue man. Get from him a positive statement, preferably in writing,
as to which, if either, he sold to Lane Fleming. You might show your
Agency card and claim to be checking up on some stolen pistols that
have been recovered. Then, if he identifies the Leech & Rigdon, take the
Colt and show it to Elmer Umholtz. You want to be careful how you handle
him; we may want him for puncturing Rivers, though I'm inclined to doubt
that, as of now. Get him to tell you, yes or no, whether he reblued it
and replated the back-strap and trigger-guard, and if he did it for
Rivers; and if so, when. I know that's been done; the bluing is too dark
for a Civil War period job; the frame, which ought to be case-hardened
in colors, has been blued like the barrel and cylinder, the
cylinder-engraving is almost obliterated, and you can see a few rust-pits
that have been blued over. But I want to know if this gun was ever in
Rivers's shop; that's the important thing."
"Uh-huh. Got the addresses?"
Rand furnished them, and Ritter noted them down. The waitress wandered
back to see if they wanted anything else; she gave a small squeak of
surprise when she saw the two big six-shooters on the table. Rand and
Ritter repeated their orders, and when she brought back the drinks, the
Colt and the Leech & Rigdon were out of sight.
"The way I see it, everybody who's within a light-year of this Rivers
killing is trying to pin the medal on somebody else," Ritter was saying.
"The Lawrence girl was afraid young Jarrett had done it; right away, she
sicced you onto Gillis. Gillis didn't lose any time putting McKenna and
Farnsworth onto Gresham. Gresham's the only one who didn't have a patsy
ready; you're supposed to dig one up for him. And Jarrett, the first
chance he gets, introduces Umholtz." He stared into his beer, as though
he thought Ultimate Verity might be lurking somewhere under the suds. "Do
you think it might be possible that Rivers bumped Fleming off, in spite
of his getting killed later?" he asked.
"Anything's possible," Rand replied, "except where some structural
contradiction is involved, like scoring thirteen with one throw of a pair
of dice. Yes, he could have. The way the Flemings leave their garage open
as long as any of the cars are out, anybody could have sneaked into the
house from the garage, and gone up from the library to the gunroom. The
only question in my mind is whether Rivers would have known about that.
That lawsuit and criminal action that Fleming was going to start--and
that's been verified from sources independent of Goode--was a good sound
motive. And say he took the Leech & Rigdon away, after leaving the Colt
in Fleming's hand; selling it to some collector who'd put it in with a
hundred or so other pistols would be a good way of disposing of it. And I
can understand his trying to buy the Colt, to get it out of circulation."
Rand sipped his Bourbon. "But that leaves us with the question of who
killed Rivers, and why."
"Well, because Fleming is dead--and it doesn't matter whether he was
murdered or died of old age--Walters starts robbing the collection. He
sells the pistols to Rivers," Ritter reconstructed. "And, as Rivers
doesn't want them around his shop till they've had time to cool off, he
stores them with this Umholtz character, who seems to have been in plenty
of crooked deals with Rivers in the past. The pistols are worth about ten
grand, and nobody knows where they are but Rivers and Umholtz, and if
Rivers drops dead all of a sudden, nobody will know where they are except
Umholtz, and in a couple of years he can get them sold off and have the
money all to himself."
"Yes, Dave; that's good sound murder, too. And Rivers would sit down and
drink with Umholtz, and Umholtz could take that Mauser out of the rack
right in front of Rivers and Rivers wouldn't suspect a thing till it was
too late. Of course, it depends upon two unverified assumptions: One,
that the pistols were sold to Rivers, and, two, that Rivers stored them
with Umholtz."
"And, three, that Walters stole the pistols in the first place," Ritter
added. "You know, it's possible that somebody else in that house might
have stolen them."
"Yes. As I said, anything's possible, within structural limits, but
possibilities exist on different orders of probability. We can't try to
consider all the possibilities in any case, because they are indefinitely
numerous; the best we can do is screen out all the low-order
probabilities, list the high-order probabilities, and revise our list
when and as new data comes to light. Well, I've told you why I think
Walters is a good suspect. From what I've seen of that household, I think
Walters was personally loyal to Lane Fleming, and I don't believe he
feels any loyalty to anybody else there, with the exception of Gladys
Fleming. He might keep quiet about the missing pistols if she were the
thief; if Dunmore, or Varcek, or either of the girls had done the
stealing, he'd tell Gladys, and she'd pass it on to me. She would be
glad of anything that could be used against any of the others. And if,
on the other hand, she had stolen the pistols herself, she wouldn't have
wanted me poking around, and wouldn't have brought me in, at least not
to handle the collection." Rand looked regretfully at his empty glass and
decided against ordering another. "Dave, I just thought of something," he
said. "How do you think this would work?"
He told Ritter what he had thought of. Ritter drank beer slowly and
meditatively.
"It just might work," he considered. "I've seen that gag work a hundred
times: hell, I've used something like that, myself, at least fifty times,
and so have you. And I don't think Walters would be familiar enough with
dick-practice to see what you were doing. But if it turns out that
Walters didn't sell the pistols to Rivers at all, what then?"
"Well, if he sold them to Umholtz, Pierre Jarrett's theory is still valid
until disproved," Rand said. "And if he didn't sell them either to Rivers
or Umholtz, we'll have to conclude that Rivers and Fleming were killed by
the same person, the Rivers killing being a security measure. That is,
unless we find that Rivers was killed by Pierre Jarrett, which is a sort
of medium-high-order probability. Jarrett and the girl left Gresham's
early enough for him to have killed Rivers; they were both pretty hard
hit by that twenty-five-grand blockbuster Rivers had dropped on
them.... Give me back that Colt, Dave. All you have to do is get an
identification on the Leech & Rigdon from the barbecue man. I'm going
to let Mick McKenna handle Umholtz, one way or another, after we've
concluded the Walters experiment. Until then, we don't want to stir
Umholtz up, at all."