Rivers was away over night, Cecil was never seen to leave the Rivers
place in the evenings. Might this be relevant to Rivers's sudden demise?"

"It could be." Rand was keeping one eye on the hall door and the other on
the head of the spiral stairway. "Don't mention outside what I told you
about Farnsworth having this brainstorm about Stephen Gresham. If it got
out, it might hurt Gresham professionally. The fact is, Gresham has just
retained me to investigate the Rivers murder for him. That won't
interfere to any great extent with the work I'm doing here; if necessary,
I'll bring a couple of my men in from New Belfast to help me on the
Rivers operation." He broke off abruptly, catching a movement at the head
of the spiral, and lifted the pistol in his hand, as though showing it to
Gladys. "See," he went on, "it has two hammers and two nipples, but only
one barrel. It was loaded with two charges, one on top of the other; the
bullet of the rear charge acted as the breech-plug for the front
charge.... Oh, Walters!" He affected to catch sight of the butler for the
first time. "Bring me that .36 Walch revolver, will you?"

"Yes, sir." Walters, crossing the room, veered to the right and went
to the middle wall, bringing a revolver over to the desk. It was a
percussion weapon with an abnormally long cylinder. "The cocktails are
served," he announced.

"We'll be down in a moment; you can put these back where they belong when
you find time," Rand told him. "Now, here," he said to Gladys. "This is
the same idea, in a revolver. Six chambers, two charges in each. In
theory, it was a good idea, but in actual practice ..."

Walters went out the hall door, presumably to call Varcek. Rand continued
talking about the superposed-load principle, as used in the Lindsay
pistol and the Walch revolver, until he was sure the butler was out
of hearing. Gladys was looking at him in appreciative if slightly
punch-drunk delight.

"I wondered why you brought that thing over here with you," she said.
"Brother, was that a quick shift!... You're really sure he's the one?"

"I'm not really sure of anything, except of my own existence and eventual
extinction," Rand told her. "It pretty nearly has to be somebody inside
this house. I don't think anybody else here, yourself included, would
know enough about arms to rob this collection as selectively as it has
been robbed. Did you see what just happened, here? I asked him for one of
the most uncommon