was here last, there was a young
fellow named Jordan, or Gordon, or something like that."

"Oh. He was before my time." The present functionary introduced himself
as Cecil Gillis. Rand gave his name and shook hands with him. Young
Gillis wanted to know if Rand was a collector.

"In a small way. General-pistol collector," Rand told him. "Have you many
Colts, now?"

There was a whole table devoted to Colts. No spurious Whitneyville
Walkers; after all, a dealer can sell just so many of such top-drawer
rarities before the finger of suspicion begins leveling itself in his
direction, and Arnold Rivers had long ago passed that point. There were
several of the commoner percussion models, however, with lovely, perfect
bluing that was considerably darker than that applied at the Colt factory
during the 'fifties and 'sixties of the last century. The silver plating
on backstraps and trigger-guards was perfect, too, but the naval-battle
and stagecoach-holdup engravings on the cylinders were far from clear--in
one case, completely obliterated. The cylinder of one 1851 Navy bore
serial numbers that looked as though they had been altered to conform to
the numbers on other parts of the weapon. Many of the Colts, however,
were entirely correct, and all were in reasonably good condition.

Rand saw something that interested him, and picked it up.

"That isn't a real Colt," the exquisite Mr. Gillis told him. "It's a
Confederate copy; a Leech & Rigdon."

"So I see. I have a Griswold & Grier, but no Leech & Rigdon."

"The Griswold & Grier; that's the one with the brass frame," Cecil Gillis
said. "Surprising how many collectors think all Confederate revolvers
had brass frames, because of the Griswold & Grier, and the Spiller &
Burr.... That's an unusually fine specimen, Mr. Rand. Mr. Rivers got
it sometime in late December or early January; from a gentleman in
Charleston, I understand. I believe it had been carried during the Civil
War by a member of the former owner's family."

Rand looked at the tag tied to the trigger-guard; it was marked, in
letter-code, with three different prices. That was characteristic of
Arnold Rivers's business methods.

"How much does Mr. Rivers want for this?" he asked, handing the revolver
to young Gillis.

The clerk mentally decoded the three prices and vacillated for a moment
over them. He had already appraised Rand, from his twenty-dollar Stetson
past his Burberry trench coat to his English hand-sewn