morale with
pictures of large museums and important dealers, all fairly slavering to
get their fangs into the Fleming collection, but to little avail. A pall
of gloom had settled, and he was forced to concede that he had at last
found somebody who had a valid reason to mourn the sudden and violent end
of Arnold Rivers.

Dinner finished, he went up to the gunroom and began compiling his list.
He found a yardstick, and thumbtacked it to the edge of the desk to get
over-all and barrel lengths, and used a pair of inside calipers and a
decimal-inch rule from the workbench to get calibers. Sticking a sheet of
paper into the portable, he began on the wheel locks, leaving spaces to
insert the description of the stolen pistols, when recovered. When he had
finished the wheel locks, he began on the snaphaunces, then did the
miguelet-locks. He had begun on the true flintlocks when Walters, who had
finished his own dinner, came up to help him. Rand put the butler to work
fetching pistols from the racks, and replacing those he had already
listed. After a while, Dunmore strolled in.

"You say you found Rivers's body yourself, Colonel Rand?" he asked.

Rand nodded, finished what he was typing, and looked up.

"Why, yes. There were a few details I wanted to clear up with him, and I
called at his shop this morning. I found him lying dead inside." He went
on to describe the manner in which Rivers had met his death. "The radio
and newspaper accounts were accurate enough, in the main; there were a
few details omitted, at the request of the police, of course."

"Well, you didn't get involved in it, though?" Dunmore inquired
anxiously. "I mean, you're not taking any part in the investigation?
After all, we don't want to be mixed up in anything like this."

"In that case, Mr. Dunmore, let me advise you not to discuss the matter
of Rivers's offer to buy this collection with anybody outside," Rand told
him. "So far, the police and the District Attorney's office both seem to
think that Rivers was killed by somebody whom he'd swindled in a business
deal. Of course, they know about the collection being for sale, and
Rivers's offering to buy it."

"They do?" Dunmore asked sharply. "Did you tell them that?"

"Naturally. I had to account for my presence at Rivers's shop, this
morning," Rand replied. "I don't know if the idea has occurred to them
that somebody might have killed Rivers to eliminate a rival bidder for
the collection or not; I wo