king a mistake, Mick; if you
are, his lawyer's going to crucify you. What are you using for a motive?"

"Rivers was outbidding this crowd Jarrett and the girl were in with. They
all told me about that," McKenna said. "And he and the girl were planning
to use their end of the collection to go into the arms business, after
they got married. Rivers got in the way." McKenna, at the other end of
the line, must have shrugged, too. "After all, for about four years,
they'd been training Jarrett to overcome resistance with the bayonet, so
he did just that."

"Maybe so. You find out anything about that other matter I was interested
in?"

"You mean the pistols? Huh-unh; we went over Rivers's place with a
fine-tooth comb, and questioned young Gillis about it, and we didn't get
a thing. You sure those pistols went to Rivers?"

"I'm not sure of anything at all," Rand replied, looking at his watch.
"You going to be in, say in a couple of hours? I want to have a talk with
you."

"Sure. I'll be around all evening," McKenna assured him. "If we don't
have another murder."

Rand hung up. He pulled the sheet out of the typewriter, laid it
face down on the other sheets he had finished, and laid a long
seventeenth-century Flemish flintlock on top for a paperweight,
memorizing the position of the pistol relative to the paper under it.

"Put those pistols back on the wall," he told Walters, indicating several
he had laid aside after listing. "Leave the others there; I'm not
finished with them yet. I'll be back before too long. If I don't find any
more bodies."

CHAPTER 16

It was raining again as Rand parked his car about a hundred yards up the
street from Karen Lawrence's antique-shop. The windows were dark, but
Karen was waiting inside the door for him. He entered quickly, mindful of
the All-Seeing Eye across the street, and followed her to a back room,
where Mrs. Jarrett and Dorothy Gresham were. All three women regarded him
intently, as though trying to decide whether he was friend or enemy.
There was a long silence before Mrs. Jarrett spoke, and when she did, her
words were almost the same as Karen's when she had spoken over the phone.

"Colonel Rand," she began, obviously struggling with herself, "you must
tell me the truth. Did you have anything to do with my son's being
arrested?"

Rand shook his head. "Absolutely nothing, Mrs. Jarrett," he told her,
unbuckling the belt of his raincoat and taking it off. "I have ne