the tiny tots wipe off the
cookie-jar, after they've raided it," he said.

A flash-bulb lit the front of the shop briefly. Corporal Kavaalen said
something to the others. McKenna picked up the card Rand had found by the
edges and looked at it.

"What in hell's this all about, Jeff?" he asked.

"Rivers made it out for one of his pistols. An English flintlock
pocket-pistol; I can show you one almost like it, up front. He'd gotten
it and three others, back in 1938, in trade for a Kentucky rifle. The
numbers are reference-numbers; the letters are Rivers's private
price-code. Those three at the end are, respectively, what he absolutely
had to get for it, what he thought was a reasonable price, and the most
he thought the traffic would stand. He sold it in 1942 for his middle
price."

There was another flash by the door, then Kavaalen called out:

"Hey, Mick; we got two of the stiffs, now. All right if we pull out the
bayonet for a close-up of his chest?"

"Sure. Better chalkline it, first; you'll move things jerking that
bayonet out." He turned back to Rand. "You think, then, that maybe some
card in that file would have gotten somebody in trouble, and he had to
croak Rivers to get it, and then burned the rest of the cards for a
cover-up?"

"That's the way it looks to me," Rand agreed. "Just because I can't think
of any other possibility, though, doesn't mean that there aren't any
others."

"Hey! You think he might have been selling modern arms to criminals,
without reporting the sale?" McKenna asked.

"I wouldn't put it past him," Rand considered. "There was very little
that I would put past that fellow. But I wouldn't think he'd be stupid
enough to carry a record of such sales in his own file, though."

McKenna rubbed the butt of his .38 reflectively; that seemed to be his
substitute for head-scratching, as an aid to cerebration.

"You said you were here yesterday, and bought a pistol," he began. "All
right; I know about that collection of yours. But why were you back here
bright and early this morning? You working on Rivers for somebody? If so,
give."

Rand told him what he was working on. "Rivers wants to buy the Fleming
collection. That was the reason I saw him yesterday. But the reason I
came here, this morning, is that I find that somebody has stolen about
two dozen of the best pistols out of the collection since Fleming's
death, and tried to cover up by replacing them with some junk that Lane
Fleming w