Dave Ritter, driving his small coupe, kept his eye on the white State
Police car ahead. Rand, who had come away from the Fleming home in the
white car, had called Ritter from the office of the Justice of the Peace
while waiting for Walters to put up bail, after his hearing. Now, en
route to Gwinnett's, he was briefing his assistant on what had happened.
"So everything's set," he concluded. "Mrs. Fleming jumped at it; she
knows you're coming in your own car, which you may keep in the garage
there. You've left New Belfast about now; if you show up around three,
you'll be safe on the driving time. Your name is Davies; I decided on
that in case I suffer a _lapsus linguae_ and call you Dave in front of
somebody."
"Yeah. I'll have to watch and not call you Jeff, Colonel Rand, sir." He
nodded toward the glove-box. "That Leech & Rigdon's in there; you'd
better get it out before I go to the Flemings'. The guy at the drive-in
made a positive identification; it's the one he sold Fleming. I saw the
rest of the pistols he has there; don't waste time looking him up about
them. They stink. And I saw Tip this morning. He got young Jarrett sprung
on a writ." He thought for a moment. "What does this do to the Rivers and
Fleming murders?"
"We can look for one man for both jobs, now," Rand said. "Probably the
motive for Fleming was that merger he was so violently opposed to, and
the Rivers killing must have been a security measure of some sort. There;
that must be Gwinnett's, now."
The State Police car had pulled up in front of a large three-story frame
house with faded and discolored paint and jigsaw scrollwork around the
cornices, standing among a clump of trees beside the road. McKenna and
Kavaalen got out, with Walters between them, and started up the path to
the front steps. Ritter stopped behind the white sedan, and he and Rand
got out. By that time, Walters and the two policemen were on the front
porch.
Suddenly Ritter turned and sprinted around the right side of the house.
Rand stood looking after him for a moment, then started to follow more
slowly; as he did, a shot slammed in the rear. Jerking out the changeling
.38-special, he whirled and ran around the left side of the house,
arriving at the rear in time to see Gwinnett standing on a boardwalk
between the house and the stable-garage behind, with his hands raised.
There was a fresh bullet-scar on the boardwalk at his feet. Ritter was
covering him from the corner of the house with the .380 Beretta.
Rand strolled over to Gwinnett, frisked him, and told him to put his
hands down.
"Nice, Dave," he complimented. "I thought of that, too, about a minute
too late. As soon as he saw Walters coming up the walk with the police,
he knew what had happened. Come on, Gwinnett; we'll go through the house
and let them in."
Gwinnett's eyes darted from side to side, like the eyes of a trapped
animal. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, stiff-lipped.
"What is this, a stick-up?"
Nobody bothered to tell him to stop kidding. They marched him through the
kitchen, where a Negro girl, her arms white with flour, was dithering in
fright, and into the front hall. A woman in a faded housedress had just
admitted the two officers and the former Fleming butler.
"You goddam rat!" Gwinnett yelled at Walters, as soon as he saw him.
"For God's sake, Carl," the woman begged. "Don't make things any worse
than they are. Keep quiet!"
"All right, Gwinnett," McKenna said. "We're arresting you: receiving
stolen goods, and accessory to larceny. We have a search warrant. Want to
see it?"
"So you have a search warrant," Gwinnett said. "So go ahead and search;
if you don't find anything, you'll plant something. I want to call my
lawyer."
"That's your right," McKenna told him. "Aarvo, take him to a phone; let
him call the White House if he wants to." He turned to Walters. "Now,
where would he have this stuff stashed?"
"In the garret, sir. I know the way."
As Kavaalen accompanied Gwinnett to the phone, Walters started upstairs.
Rand and McKenna followed, with Mrs. Gwinnett bringing up the rear.
During the search of the attic, she stood to one side, watching the
ex-butler dig into a pile of pistols.
"This is one, gentlemen," Walters said, producing a Springfield 1818
Model flintlock. "And here is the Walker Colt, and the .40-caliber Colt
Paterson, and the Hall...."
Eventually, he had them all assembled, including the five cased sets.
Rand found a couple of empty bushel baskets and laid the pistols in them,
between layers of old newspapers. He picked up one, and McKenna took the
other, while Walters piled the five flat hardwood cases into his arms
like cordwood. Still saying nothing, her eyes stony with hatred, the
woman followed them downstairs.
The rest of the afternoon was consumed with formalities. Gwinnett was
given a hearing, at which he was represented by a lawyer straight out
of a B-grade gangster picture. Rand had a heated argument with an
over-zealous Justice of the Peace, who wanted to impound the pistols and
jackknife-mark them for identification, but after hurling bloodthirsty
threats of a damage suit for an astronomical figure, he managed to retain
possession of the recovered weapons.
Ritter left at a little past three, to report for duty in the Fleming
household. Rand rode with McKenna and Kavaalen to the State Police
substation, where the pistols were transferred to McKenna's personal car,
in which they and Rand were to be transported back to the Fleming place.
It was five o'clock before Rand had finished telling the sergeant and the
corporal everything he felt they ought to know.
"When we get to the Flemings', I'll give you that revolver I got from the
coroner," he finished. "One of your boys can take it to this fellow
Umholtz, and get him to identify it. You might also show it to young
Gillis, and see what he knows about it. Gillis might even give you a name
for who got it from Rivers. I'm not building any hopes on that, and the
reason I'm not is that Gillis is still alive. If he knew, I don't think
he would be."
"Yeah. I can see that," McKenna nodded. "Fact is, I can see everything,
now, except one thing. This pistol-switch somebody gave you; what's the
idea of that?"
"Why, that's because I'm on the spot," Rand told him. "I'm to be killed,
and somebody else is to be killed along with me. The .25 automatic will
be used on me, and the .38 will be used on the other fellow, and we'll be
found dead about five feet apart, and I'll be holding my own gun, and the
other fellow will be holding the .25, and it will look as though we shot
it out and scored a double knockout. That way, my mouth will be shut
about what I've learned since I came here, and the man who's supposed to
have killed me will take the rap for Fleming and Rivers both. Nothing to
stop an investigation like a couple of corpses who can't tell their own
story and can take the blame for everything."
"_Zhee-zus!_" Kavaalen's eyes widened. "That must be just it!"
"Well, you got your nerve about you, I'll say that," McKenna commented.
"You sit there and talk about it like it was something that was going to
happen to Joe Doakes and Oscar Zilch." He looked at Rand intently. "You
want us to keep an eye on you?"
Rand leaned over and spat into the brass cuspidor, a gesture of
braggadocio he had picked up among the French maquis.
"Hell, no! That's the last thing I do want!" he said. "I want him to try
it. You realize, don't you, that all this is pure assumption and theory?
We don't have a single fact, as it stands, that proves anything. We could
go and pick this fellow up, and he's one of three men, so we could grab
all three of them, and even if we found the .25 Webley & Scott and my .38
in his pockets, we couldn't charge him with anything. Fact is, right now
we can't even prove that Lane Fleming's death was anything but the
accident it's on the books as being. But let him take a shot at me...."
"And then you'll have another nice, clear case of self-defense." McKenna
frowned. "Goddammit, Jeff, you've had to defend yourself too many times,
already. This'll be--well, how many will it be?"
"Counting Germans?" Rand grinned. "Hell, I don't know; I can't remember
all of them."
"One thing," Kavaalen said solemnly, "you never hear of any lawyers
springing people out of cemeteries on writs."
"Look, Jeff," McKenna said, at length. "If it's the way you think, this
guy won't dare kill you instantly, will he? Seems to me, the way the
script reads, this other guy shoots you, and you shoot back and kill him,
and then you die. Isn't that it?"
Rand nodded. "I'm banking on that. He'll try to give me a fatal but not
instantly fatal wound, and that means he'll have to take time to pick his
spot. The reason I've managed to survive these people against whom I've
had to defend myself has been that I just don't give a damn where I shoot
a man. A lot of good police officers have gotten themselves killed
because they tried to wing somebody and took a second or so longer about
shooting than they should have."
"Something in that, too," McKenna agreed. "But what I'm getting at is
this: I think I know a way to give you a little more percentage." He
rose. "Wait a minute; I'll be right back."