g me for an
investigation.... Now, how about the family, as distinct from the
company?"

"Well, there's your client, Gladys Fleming. She married Lane Fleming
about ten years ago, when she was twenty-five and he was fifty-five. In
spite of the age difference, I understand it was a fairly happy marriage.
Then, there are two daughters by a previous marriage, Nelda Dunmore and
Geraldine Varcek, and their respective husbands. They all live together,
in a big house at Rosemont. In the company, Dunmore is Sales, and Varcek
is Production. They each have a corner of the mantle of Lane Fleming in
one hand and a dirk in the other. Nelda and Geraldine hate each other
like Greeks and Trojans. Nelda is the nymphomaniac sister, and Geraldine
is the dipsomaniac. From time to time, temporary alliances get formed,
mainly against Gladys; all of them resent the way she married herself
into a third-interest in the estate. You're going to have yourself a
nice, pleasant little stay in the country."

"I'm looking forward to it." Rand grimaced. "You mentioned suicide
rumors. Such as, and who's been spreading them?"

"Oh, they are the usual bodyless voices that float about," Tipton told
him. "Emanating, I suspect, from sources interested in shaking out the
less sophisticated small shareholders before the merger. The story is
always approximately the same: That Lane Fleming saw his company drifting
reefward, was unwilling to survive the shipwreck, and performed
_seppuku_. The family are supposed to have faked up the accident
afterward. I dismiss the whole thing as a rather less than subtle bit of
market-manipulation chicanery."

"Or a smoke screen, to cover the defects in camouflaging a murder as an
accident," Rand added.

Tipton nodded. "That could be so, too," he agreed. "Say somebody dislikes
the looks of that accident, and starts investigating. Then he runs into
all this miasma of suicide rumors, and promptly shrugs the whole thing
off. Fleming killed himself, and the family made a few alterations and
are passing it off as an accident. The families of suicides have been
known to do that."

"Yes. Regular defense-in-depth system; if the accident line is
penetrated, the suicide line is back of it," Rand said. "Well, in the
last few years, we've seen defenses in depth penetrated with monotonous
regularity. I've jeeped through a couple, myself, to interrogate the
surviving ex-defenders. It's all in having the guns and armor to smash
throug