to do about Ernst Roehm.

"Colonel Rand; don't you think that Fred Dunmore could have shot Lane
Fleming, and then have gone to his room and waited until I came
downstairs?" he asked.

Here we go again! Rand thought. Just like the Rivers case; everybody
putting the finger on everybody else....

"And have undressed and taken a bath, while he was waiting?" he inquired.
"You came down here only five minutes after the shot. In that time,
Dunmore would have had to wipe his fingerprints off the revolver, leave
it in Fleming's hand, put that oily rag in his other hand, set the
deadlatch, cross the hall, undress, get into the bathtub and start
bathing. That's pretty fast work."

"But who else could have done it?"

"Well, you, for one. You could have come down from your lab, shot
Fleming, faked the suicide, and then gone out, locking the door behind
you, and made a demonstration in the hall until you were joined by
Dunmore and the ladies. Then, with your innocence well established, you
could have waited until your wife prompted you, as she or somebody else
was sure to, and then have gone down to the library and up the spiral,"
Rand said. "That's about as convincing, no more and no less, as your
theory about Dunmore."

Varcek agreed sadly. "And I cannot prove otherwise, can I?"

"You can advance your Dunmore theory to establish reasonable doubt," Rand
told him. "And if Dunmore's accused, he can do the same with the theory
I've just outlined. And as long as reasonable doubt exists, neither of
you could be convicted. This isn't the Third Reich or the Soviet Union;
they wouldn't execute both of you to make sure of getting the right one.
Both of you had a motive in this Mill-Pack merger that couldn't have been
negotiated while Fleming lived. One or the other of you may be guilty; on
the other hand, both of you may be innocent."

"Then who...?" Varcek had evidently bet his roll on Dunmore. "There is no
one else who could have done it."

"The garage doors were open, if I recall," Rand pointed out. "Anybody
could have slipped in that way, come through the rear hall to the library
and up the spiral, and have gone out the same way. Some of the French
Maquis I worked with, during the war, could have wiped out the whole
family, one after the other, that way."

A look of intense concentration settled upon Varcek's face. He nodded
several times.

"Yes. Of course," he said, his thought-chain complete. "And you spoke of
motive. Fr