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 th