r, and then returned to his own
room.

CHAPTER 17

When he rose, the next morning, Rand noticed something which had escaped
his eye when he had gone to bed the night before. His .38-special, in its
shoulder-holster, was lying on the dresser; he had not bothered putting
it on when he had gone to see Rivers the morning before, and it had lain
there all the previous day. He distinctly remembered having moved it,
shortly after dinner, when he had gone to his room for some notes he had
made on the collection.

However, between that time and the present it had managed to flop itself
over; the holster was now lying back-up. Intrigued by such a remarkable
accomplishment in an inanimate object, Rand crossed the room in the
dress-of-nature in which he slept and looked more closely at it,
receiving a second and considerably more severe surprise. The revolver
in the holster was not his own.

It was, to be sure, a .38 Colt Detective Special, and it was in his
holster, but it was not the Detective Special he had brought with him
from New Belfast. His own gun was of the second type, with the corners
rounded off the grip; this one was of the original issue, with the square
Police Positive grip. His own gun had seen hard service; this one was in
practically new condition. There was a discrepancy of about thirty
thousand in the serial numbers. His gun had been loaded in six chambers
with the standard 158-grain loads; this one was loaded in only five, with
148-grain mid-range wad-cutter loads.

Rand stood for some time looking at the revolver. The worst of it was
that he couldn't be exactly sure when the substitution had been made. It
might have happened at any time between eight o'clock and twelve, when he
had gone to bed. He rather suspected that it had been accomplished while
he had been in the bathroom, however.

Dumping out the five rounds in the cylinder, he inspected the changeling
carefully. It was, he thought, the revolver Lane Fleming had kept in the
drawer of the gunroom desk. There was no obstruction in the two-inch
barrel, the weapon had not been either fired or cleaned recently, the
firing-pin had not been shortened, the mainspring showed the proper
amount of tension, and the mechanism functioned as it should. There was a
chance that somebody had made up five special hand-loads for him, using
nitroglycerin instead of powder, but that didn't seem likely, as it would
not necessitate a switch of revolvers. There