ouldn't have allowed inside his house. For my money, it's the
butler. Now that Fleming's dead, he's the only one in the house who knows
enough about arms to know what was worth stealing. He has constant access
to the gunroom. I caught him in a lie about a book Fleming kept a record
of his collection in, and now the book has vanished. And furthermore, and
most important, if he'd been on the level, he would have spotted what was
going on, long ago, and squawked about it."

"That's a damn good circumstantial case, Jeff," McKenna nodded. "Nothing
you could take to a jury, of course, but mighty good grounds for
suspicion.... You think Rivers could have been the fence?"

"He could have been. Whoever was higrading the collection had to have an
outlet for his stuff, and he had to have a source of supply for the junk
he was infiltrating into the collection as replacements. A crooked dealer
is the answer to both, and Arnold Rivers was definitely crooked."

"You know that?" McKenna inquired. "For sure?"

Another flash lit the front of the shop. Rand nodded.

"For damn good and sure. I can show you half a dozen firearms in this
shop that have been altered to increase their value. I don't mean
legitimate restorations; I mean fraudulent alterations." He went on to
tell McKenna about Rivers's expulsion from membership in the National
Rifle Association. "And I know that he sold a pair of pistols to Lane
Fleming, about a week before Fleming was killed, that were outright
fakes. Fleming was going to sue the ears off Rivers about that; the fact
is, until this morning, I'd been wondering if that mightn't have been
why Fleming had that sour-looking accident. If he'd lived, he'd have run
Rivers out of business."

"Hell, I didn't know that!" McKenna seemed worried. "Fleming used to
target-shoot with our gang, and he knew too much about gats to pull a
Russ Columbo on himself. I didn't like that accident, at the time, but I
figured he'd pulled the Dutch, and the family were making out it was an
accident. We never were called in; the whole thing was handled through
the coroner's office. You really think Fleming could have been bumped?"

"Yes. I think he could have been bumped," Rand understated. "I haven't
found any positive proof, but--" He told McKenna about his purchase, from
Rivers, of the revolver that had been later identified as the one brought
home by Fleming on the day of his death. "I still don't know how Rivers
got hold of it,"