When he rose, the next morning, Rand noticed something which had escaped
his eye when he had gone to bed the night before. His .38-special, in its
shoulder-holster, was lying on the dresser; he had not bothered putting
it on when he had gone to see Rivers the morning before, and it had lain
there all the previous day. He distinctly remembered having moved it,
shortly after dinner, when he had gone to his room for some notes he had
made on the collection.
However, between that time and the present it had managed to flop itself
over; the holster was now lying back-up. Intrigued by such a remarkable
accomplishment in an inanimate object, Rand crossed the room in the
dress-of-nature in which he slept and looked more closely at it,
receiving a second and considerably more severe surprise. The revolver
in the holster was not his own.
It was, to be sure, a .38 Colt Detective Special, and it was in his
holster, but it was not the Detective Special he had brought with him
from New Belfast. His own gun was of the second type, with the corners
rounded off the grip; this one was of the original issue, with the square
Police Positive grip. His own gun had seen hard service; this one was in
practically new condition. There was a discrepancy of about thirty
thousand in the serial numbers. His gun had been loaded in six chambers
with the standard 158-grain loads; this one was loaded in only five, with
148-grain mid-range wad-cutter loads.
Rand stood for some time looking at the revolver. The worst of it was
that he couldn't be exactly sure when the substitution had been made. It
might have happened at any time between eight o'clock and twelve, when he
had gone to bed. He rather suspected that it had been accomplished while
he had been in the bathroom, however.
Dumping out the five rounds in the cylinder, he inspected the changeling
carefully. It was, he thought, the revolver Lane Fleming had kept in the
drawer of the gunroom desk. There was no obstruction in the two-inch
barrel, the weapon had not been either fired or cleaned recently, the
firing-pin had not been shortened, the mainspring showed the proper
amount of tension, and the mechanism functioned as it should. There was a
chance that somebody had made up five special hand-loads for him, using
nitroglycerin instead of powder, but that didn't seem likely, as it would
not necessitate a switch of revolvers. There were four or five other
possibilities, all of them disquieting; he would have been a great deal
less alarmed if somebody had taken a shot at him.
Getting a box of cartridges out of his Gladstone, he filled the
cylinder with 158-grain loads. When he went to the bathroom, he took
the revolver in his dressing-gown pocket; when he dressed, he put on
the shoulder-holster, and pocketed a handful of spare rounds.
Anton Varcek was loitering in the hall when he came out; he gave Rand
good-morning, and fell into step with him as they went toward the
stairway.
"Colonel Rand, I wish you wouldn't mention this to anybody, but I would
like a private talk with you," the Czech said. "After Fred Dunmore has
left for the plant. Would that be possible?"
"Yes, Mr. Varcek; I'll be in the gunroom all morning, working." They
reached the bottom of the stairway, where Gladys was waiting.
"Understand," Rand continued, "I never really studied biology. I was
exposed to it, in school, but at that time I was preoccupied with the
so-called social sciences."
Varcek took the conversational shift in stride. "Of course," he agreed.
"But you are trained in the scientific method of thought. That, at least,
is something. When I have opportunity to explain my ideas more fully, I
believe you will be interested in my conclusions."
They greeted Gladys, and walked with her to the dining-room. As usual,
Geraldine was absent; Dunmore and Nelda were already at the table, eating
in silence. Both of them seemed self-conscious, after the pitched battle
of the evening before. Rand broke the tension by offering Humphrey Goode
in the role of whipping-boy; he had no sooner made a remark in derogation
of the lawyer than Nelda and her husband broke into a duet of
vituperation. In the end, everybody affected to agree that the whole
unpleasant scene had been entirely Goode's fault, and a pleasant spirit
of mutual cordiality prevailed.
Finally Dunmore got up, wiping his mouth on a napkin.
"Well, it's about time to get to work," he said. "We might as well save
gas and both use my car. Coming, Anton?"
"I'm sorry, Fred; I can't leave, yet. I have some notes upstairs I have
to get in order. I was working on this new egg-powder, last evening, and
I want to continue the experiments at the plant laboratory. I think I
know how we'll be able to cut production costs on it, about five per
cent."
"And boy, can we stand that!" Dunmore grunted. "Well, be seeing you at
the plant."
Rand waited until Dunmore had left, then went across to the library and
up to the gunroom. As soon as he entered the room above, he saw what was
wrong. The previous thefts had been masked by substitutions, but whoever
had helped himself to one of the more recent metallic-cartridge
specimens, the night before, hadn't bothered with any such precaution,
and a pair of vacant screwhooks disclosed the removal. A second look told
Rand what had been taken: the little .25 Webley & Scott from the Pollard
collection, with the silencer.
The pistol-trade which had been imposed on him had disquieted him; now,
he had no hesitation in admitting to himself, he was badly scared.
Whoever had taken that little automatic had had only one thought in
mind--noiseless and stealthy murder. Very probably with one Colonel
Jefferson Davis Rand in mind as the prospective corpse.
He sat down at the desk and started typing, at the same time trying to
keep the hall door and the head of the spiral stairway under observation.
It was an attempt which was responsible for quite a number of
typographical errors. Finally, Anton Varcek came in from the hallway,
approached the desk, and sat down in an armchair.
"Colonel Rand," he began, in a low voice, "I have been thinking over a
remark you made, last evening. Were you serious when you alluded to the
possibility that Lane Fleming had been murdered?"
"Well, the idea had occurred to me," Rand understated, keeping his right
hand close to his left coat lapel. "I take it you have begun to doubt
that it was an accident?"
"I would doubt a theory that a skilled chemist would accidentally poison
himself in his own laboratory," Varcek replied. "I would not, for
instance, pour myself a drink from a bottle labeled HNO_3 in the belief
that it contained vodka. I believe that Lane Fleming should be credited
with equal caution about firearms."
"Yet you were the first to advance the theory that the shooting had been
an accident," Rand pointed out.
"I have a strong dislike for firearms." Varcek looked at the pistols on
the desk as though they were so many rattlesnakes. "I have always feared
an accident, with so many in the house. When I saw him lying dead, with a
revolver in his hand, that was my first thought. First thoughts are so
often illogical, emotional."
"And you didn't consider the possibility of suicide?"
"No! Absolutely not!" The Czech was emphatic. "The idea never occurred to
me, then or since. Lane Fleming was not the man to do that. He was deeply
religious, much interested in church work. And, aside from that, he had
no reason to wish to die. His health was excellent; much better than that
of many men twenty years his junior. He had no business worries. The
company is doing well, we had large Government contracts during the war
and no reconversion problems afterward, we now have more orders than we
have plant capacity to fill, and Mr. Fleming was consulting with
architects about plant expansion. We have been spared any serious labor
troubles. And Mr. Fleming's wife was devoted to him, and he to her. He
had no family troubles."
Rand raised an eyebrow over that last. "No?" he inquired.
Varcek flushed. "Please, Colonel Rand, you must not judge by what you
have seen since you came here. When Lane Fleming was alive, such scenes
as that in the library last evening would have been unthinkable. Now,
this family is like a ship without a captain."
"And since you do not think that he shot himself, either deliberately or
inadvertently, there remains the alternative that he was shot by somebody
else, either deliberately or, very improbably, by inadvertence," Rand
said. "I think the latter can be safely disregarded. Let's agree that it
was murder and go on from there."
Varcek nodded. "You are investigating it as such?" he asked.
"I am appraising and selling this pistol collection," Rand told him
wearily. "I am curious about who killed Fleming, of course; for my own
protection I like to know the background of situations in which I am
involved. But do you think Humphrey Goode would bring me here to stir up
a lot of sleeping dogs that might awake and grab him by the pants-seat?
Or did you think that uproar in the library last evening was just a
prearranged act?"
"I had not thought of Humphrey Goode. It was my understanding that Mrs.
Fleming brought you here."
"Mrs. Fleming wants her money out of the collection, as soon as
possible," Rand said. "To reopen the question of her husband's death and
start a murder investigation wouldn't exactly expedite things. I'm just a
more or less innocent bystander, who wants to know whether there is going
to be any trouble or not.... Now, you came here to tell me what happened
on the night of Lane Fleming's death, didn't you?"
"Yes. We had finished dinner at about seven," Varcek said. "Lane had been
up here for about an hour before dinner, working on his new revolver; he
came back here immediately after he was through eating. A little later,
when I had finished my coffee, I came upstairs, by the main stairway. The
door of this room was open, and Lane was inside, sitting on that old
shoemaker's-bench, working on the revolver. He had it apart, and he was
cleaning a part of it. The round part, where the loads go; the drum, is
it?"
"Cylinder. How was he cleaning it?" Rand asked.
"He was using a small brush, like a test-tube brush; he was scrubbing out
the holes. The chambers. He was using a solvent that smelled something
like banana-oil."
Rand nodded. He could visualize the progress Fleming had made. If Varcek
was telling the truth, and he remembered what Walters had told him, the
last flicker of possibility that Lane Fleming's death had been accidental
vanished.
"I talked with him for some ten minutes or so," Varcek continued, "about
some technical problems at the plant. All the while, he kept on working
on this revolver, and finished cleaning out the cylinder, and also the
barrel. He was beginning to put the revolver together when I left him and
went up to my laboratory.
"About fifteen minutes later I heard the shot. For a moment, I debated
with myself as to what I had heard, and then I decided to come down here.
But first I had to take a solution off a Bunsen burner, where I had been
heating it, and take the temperature of it, and then wash my hands,
because I had been working with poisonous materials. I should say all
this took me about five minutes.
"When I got down here, the door of this room was closed and locked. That
was most unusual, and I became really worried. I pounded on the door, and
called out, but I got no answer. Then Fred Dunmore came out of the
bathroom attached to his room, with nothing on but a bathrobe. His hair
was wet, and he was in his bare feet and making wet tracks on the floor."
From there on, Varcek's story tallied closely with what Rand had heard
from Gladys and from Walters. Everybody's story tallied, where it could
be checked up on.
"You think the murderer locked the door behind him, when he came out of
here?" Varcek asked.
"I think somebody locked the door, sometime. It might have been the
murderer, or it might have been Fleming at the murderer's suggestion. But
why couldn't the murderer have left the gunroom by that stairway?"
Varcek looked around furtively and lowered his voice. Now he looked like
Rudolf Hess discussing what to do about Ernst Roehm.
"Colonel Rand; don't you think that Fred Dunmore could have shot Lane
Fleming, and then have gone to his room and waited until I came
downstairs?" he asked.
Here we go again! Rand thought. Just like the Rivers case; everybody
putting the finger on everybody else....
"And have undressed and taken a bath, while he was waiting?" he inquired.
"You came down here only five minutes after the shot. In that time,
Dunmore would have had to wipe his fingerprints off the revolver, leave
it in Fleming's hand, put that oily rag in his other hand, set the
deadlatch, cross the hall, undress, get into the bathtub and start
bathing. That's pretty fast work."
"But who else could have done it?"
"Well, you, for one. You could have come down from your lab, shot
Fleming, faked the suicide, and then gone out, locking the door behind
you, and made a demonstration in the hall until you were joined by
Dunmore and the ladies. Then, with your innocence well established, you
could have waited until your wife prompted you, as she or somebody else
was sure to, and then have gone down to the library and up the spiral,"
Rand said. "That's about as convincing, no more and no less, as your
theory about Dunmore."
Varcek agreed sadly. "And I cannot prove otherwise, can I?"
"You can advance your Dunmore theory to establish reasonable doubt," Rand
told him. "And if Dunmore's accused, he can do the same with the theory
I've just outlined. And as long as reasonable doubt exists, neither of
you could be convicted. This isn't the Third Reich or the Soviet Union;
they wouldn't execute both of you to make sure of getting the right one.
Both of you had a motive in this Mill-Pack merger that couldn't have been
negotiated while Fleming lived. One or the other of you may be guilty; on
the other hand, both of you may be innocent."
"Then who...?" Varcek had evidently bet his roll on Dunmore. "There is no
one else who could have done it."
"The garage doors were open, if I recall," Rand pointed out. "Anybody
could have slipped in that way, come through the rear hall to the library
and up the spiral, and have gone out the same way. Some of the French
Maquis I worked with, during the war, could have wiped out the whole
family, one after the other, that way."
A look of intense concentration settled upon Varcek's face. He nodded
several times.
"Yes. Of course," he said, his thought-chain complete. "And you spoke of
motive. From what you must have heard, last evening, Humphrey Goode was
no less interested in the merger than Fred Dunmore or myself. And then
there is your friend Gresham; he is quite familiar with the interior of
this house, and who knows what terms National Milling & Packaging may
have made with him, contingent upon his success in negotiating the
merger?"
"I'm not forgetting either of them," Rand said. "Or Fred Dunmore, or you.
If you did it, I'd advise you to confess now; it'll save everybody,
yourself included, a lot of trouble."
Varcek looked at him, fascinated. "Why, I believe you regard all of us
just as I do my fruit flies!" he said at length. "You know, Colonel Rand,
you are not a comfortable sort of man to have around." He rose slowly.
"Naturally, I'll not mention this interview. I suppose you won't want to,
either?"
"I'd advise you not to talk about it, at that," Rand said. "The situation
here seems to be very delicate, and rather explosive.... Oh, as you go
out, I'd be obliged to you for sending Walters up here. I still have this
work here, and I'll need his help."
After Varcek had left him, Rand looked in the desk drawer, verifying his
assumption that the .38 he had seen there was gone. He wondered where his
own was, at the moment.
When the butler arrived, he was put to work bringing pistols to the desk,
carrying them back to the racks, taking measurements, and the like. All
the while, Rand kept his eye on the head of the spiral stairway.
Finally he caught a movement, and saw what looked like the top of a
peak-crowned gray felt hat between the spindles of the railing. He eased
the Detective Special out of its holster and got to his feet.
"All right!" he sang out. "Come on up!"
Walters looked, obviously startled, at the revolver that had materialized
in Rand's hand, and at the two men who were emerging from the spiral. He
was even more startled, it seemed, when he realized that they wore the
uniform of the State Police.
"What.... What's the meaning of this, sir?" he demanded of Rand.
"You're being arrested," Rand told him. "Just stand still, now."
He stepped around the desk and frisked the butler quickly, wondering
if he were going to find a .25 Webley & Scott automatic or his own
.38-Special. When he found neither, he holstered his temporary weapon.
"If this is your idea of a joke, sir, permit me to say that it isn't...."
"It's no joke, son," Sergeant McKenna told him. "In this country, a
police-officer doesn't have to recite any incantation before he makes an
arrest, any more than he needs to read any Riot Act before he can start
shooting, but it won't hurt to warn you that anything you say can be used
against you."
"At least, I must insist upon knowing why I am being arrested," Walters
said icily.
"Oh! Don't you know?" McKenna asked. "Why, you're being arrested for the
murder of Arnold Rivers."
For a moment the butler retained his professional glacial disdain, and
then the bottom seemed to drop suddenly out of him. Rand suppressed a
smile at this minor verification of his theory. Walters had been
expecting to be accused of larceny, and was prepared to treat the charge
with contempt. Then he had realized, after a second or so, what the State
Police sergeant had really said.
"Good God, gentlemen!" He looked from Mick McKenna to Corporal Kavaalen
to Rand and back again in bewilderment. "You surely can't mean that!"
"We can and we do," Rand told him. "You stole about twenty-five pistols
from this collection, after Mr. Fleming died, and sold them to Arnold
Rivers. Then, when I came here and started checking up on the
collection, you knew the game was up. So, last evening, you took out the
station-wagon and went to see Rivers, and you killed him to keep him from
turning state's evidence and incriminating you. Or maybe you killed him
in a quarrel over the division of the loot. I hope, for your sake, that
it was the latter; if it was, you may get off with second degree murder.
But if you can't prove that there was no premeditation, you're tagged for
the electric chair."
"But ... But I didn't kill Mr. Rivers," Walters stammered. "I barely knew
the gentleman. I saw him, once or twice, when he was here to see Mr.
Fleming, but outside of that...."
"Outside of that, you sold him about twenty-five of these pistols, and
got a like number of junk pistols from him, for replacements." He took
the list Pierre Jarrett and Stephen Gresham had compiled out of his
pocket and began reading: "Italian wheel lock pistol, late sixteenth- or
early seventeenth-century; pair Italian snaphaunce pistols, by Lazarino
Cominazo...." He finished the list and put it away. "I think we've missed
one or two, but that'll do, for the time."
"But I didn't sell those pistols to Mr. Rivers," Walters expostulated. "I
sold them to Mr. Carl Gwinnett. I can prove it!"
That Rand had not expected. "Go on!" he jeered. "I suppose you have
receipts for all of them. Fences always do that, of course."
"But I did sell them to Mr. Gwinnett. I can take you to his house, if you
get a search warrant, and show you where he has them hidden in the
garret. He was afraid to offer them for sale until after this collection
had been broken up and sold; he still has every one of them."
McKenna spat out an obscenity. "Aren't we ever going to have any luck?"
he demanded. "Jarrett out on a writ this morning, and now this!"
"But he ain't in the clear," Kavaalen argued. "Maybe he didn't sell
Rivers the pistols, but maybe he did kill him."
"Dope!" McKenna abused his subordinate. "If he didn't sell Rivers the
pistols, why would he kill him?"
"He's only said he sold them to Gwinnett," Rand pointed out. Then he
turned to Walters. "Look here; if we find those pistols in Gwinnett's
possession, you're clear on this murder charge. There's still a slight
matter of larceny, but that doesn't involve the electric chair. You take
my advice and make a confession now, and then accompany these officers to
Gwinnett's place and show them the pistols. If you do that, you may
expect clemency on the theft charge, too."
"Oh, I will, sir! I'll sign a full confession, and take these
police-officers and show them every one of the pistols...."
Rand put paper and carbon sheets in the typewriter. As Walters dictated,
he typed; the butler listed every pistol which Gresham and Pierre Jarrett
had found missing, and a cased presentation pair of .44 Colt 1860's that
nobody had missed. He signed the triplicate copies willingly; he didn't
seem to mind signing himself into jail, as long as he thought he was
signing himself out of the electric chair.
The book in which Fleming had recorded his pistols he still had; he had
removed it from the gunroom and was keeping it in his room. He said he
would get it, along with the things he would need to take to jail with
him. When it was finished, they all went down the spiral stairway into
the library.
Nelda was standing at the foot of it. Evidently she had been listening to
what had been going on upstairs.
"You dirty sneak!" she yelled, catching sight of Walters. "After all
we've done for you, you turn around and rob us! I hope they give you
twenty years!"
Walters turned to McKenna. "Sergeant, I am willing to accept the penalty
of the law for what I have done, but I don't believe, sir, that it
includes being yapped at by this vulgar bitch."
Nelda let out an inarticulate howl of fury and sprang at him, nails
raking. Corporal Kavaalen caught her wrist before she could claw the
prisoner.
"That's enough, you!" he told her. "You stop that, or you'll spend a
night in jail yourself."
She jerked her arm loose from his grasp and flung out of the library. As
she went out, Gladys entered; Rand, who had been bringing up in the rear,
stepped down from the stairway.
"He confessed," he said softly. "We had to bluff it out of him, but he
came across. Sold the pistols to Carl Gwinnett. We're going, now, to pick
up Gwinnett and the pistols."
"I'm glad you found the pistols," she told him. "But what're we going to
do, over the week-end, for a butler...."
Rand snapped his fingers. "Dammit, I never thought of that!" He allowed
his brow to furrow with thought. "I won't promise anything, but I may be
able to dig up somebody for you, for a day or so. Some of my friends are
visiting their son, in a Naval hospital on the West Coast, and their
butler may be glad for a chance to pick up a little extra money. Shall
I call him and find out?"
"Oh, Colonel Rand, would you? I'd be eternally grateful!"
It was just as easy as that.