oved out a piece at a time, and
worthless pistols moved in and hung on the racks to replace valuable
pistols taken." He had left the library door purposely open; when the
doorbell rang, he heard it. "I'll let them in," he said. "You go and head
Walters off."

Rand hurried to the front door and admitted Gresham and Pierre, hustling
them down the hall, into the library, and up the spiral to the gunroom,
while Gladys went to the foot of the front stairs. Through the open
gunroom door, Rand could hear her speaking to Walters, as though sending
him on some errand to the rear of the house. He closed the door and
turned to the others.

"We'll have to make it fast," he said. "Mrs. Fleming can't hold the
butler off all day. Let's start over here, and go around the racks."

They began at the left, with the wheel locks. Pierre put his finger
immediately on the shabby and disreputable specimen Rand had first
noticed.

"Phew! Is that one a stinker!" he said. "What used to be there was a
nice late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century North Italian pistol,
all covered with steel filigree-work. A real beauty; much better than
average."

"Those Turkish atrocities," Gresham pointed out. "They're filling in for
a pair of Lazarino Cominazo snaphaunces that Lane Fleming paid seven
hundred for, back in the mid-thirties, and didn't pay a cent too much
for, even then. Worth an easy thousand, now. Remember the pair of
Cominazo flintlocks illustrated in Pollard's _Short History of Firearms_?
These were even better, and snaphaunces."

"Well, you go over the collection," Rand told them. "Note down anything
you find missing." He handed them a pad of paper and a pencil from the
desk. "I have something else to do, for a few minutes."

With that he left them scrutinizing the pistols on the wall, and went to
the workbench in the corner, drawing the .36 Colt from under his
waistband. Working rapidly, he dismounted it, taking off the barrel and
cylinder, and cleaned it thoroughly before putting it together again.
Pierre and Gresham had just started on the Colts when he slipped the
revolver out of sight and rejoined them.

It took over a half-hour to finish; when they had gotten completely
around the collection, Rand had a list of twenty-six missing items,
including four cased sets. At a conservative estimate, the missing
pistols were worth ten to twelve thousand dollars, dealer's list value;
the stuff that had been moved in to replace them m