Murder in the Gunroom, H. Beam Piper [book club books .txt] 📗

this minor verification of his theory. Walters had been expecting to be accused of larceny, and was prepared to treat the charge with contempt. Then he had realized, after a second or so, what the State Police sergeant had really said.

"Good God, gentlemen!" He looked from Mick McKenna to Corporal Kavaalen to Rand and back again in bewilderment. "You surely can't mean that!"

"We can and we do," Rand told him. "You stole about twenty-five pistols from this collection, after Mr. Fleming died, and sold them to Arnold Rivers. Then, when I came here and started checking up on the collection, you knew the game was up. So, last evening, you took out the station-wagon and went to see Rivers, and you killed him to keep him from turning state's evidence and incriminating you. Or maybe you killed him in a quarrel over the division of the loot. I hope, for your sake, that it was the latter; if it was, you may get off with second degree murder. But if you can't prove that there was no premeditation, you're tagged for the electric chair."

"But ... But I didn't kill Mr. Rivers," Walters stammered. "I barely knew the gentleman. I saw him, once or twice, when he was here to see Mr. Fleming, but outside of that...."

"Outside of that, you sold him about twenty-five of these pistols, and got a like number of junk pistols from him, for replacements." He took the list Pierre Jarrett and Stephen Gresham had compiled out of his pocket and began reading: "Italian wheel lock pistol, late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century; pair Italian snaphaunce pistols, by Lazarino Cominazo...." He finished the list and put it away. "I think we've missed one or two, but that'll do, for the time."

"But I didn't sell those pistols to Mr. Rivers," Walters expostulated. "I sold them to Mr. Carl Gwinnett. I can prove it!"

That Rand had not expected. "Go on!" he jeered. "I suppose you have receipts for all of them. Fences always do that, of course."

"But I did sell them to Mr. Gwinnett. I can take you to his house, if you get a search warrant, and show you where he has them hidden in the garret. He was afraid to offer them for sale until after this collection had been broken up and sold; he still has every one of them."

McKenna spat out an obscenity. "Aren't we ever going to have any luck?" he demanded. "Jarrett out on a writ this morning, and now this!"

"But he ain't in the clear," Kavaalen argued. "Maybe he didn't sell Rivers the pistols, but maybe he did kill him."

"Dope!" McKenna abused his subordinate. "If he didn't sell Rivers the pistols, why would he kill him?"

"He's only said he sold them to Gwinnett," Rand pointed out. Then he turned to Walters. "Look here; if we find those pistols in Gwinnett's possession, you're clear on this murder charge. There's still a slight matter of larceny, but that doesn't involve the electric chair. You take my advice and make a confession now, and then accompany these officers to Gwinnett's place and show them the pistols. If you do that, you may expect clemency on the theft charge, too."

"Oh, I will, sir! I'll sign a full confession, and take these police-officers and show them every one of the pistols...."

Rand put paper and carbon sheets in the typewriter. As Walters dictated, he typed; the butler listed every pistol which Gresham and Pierre Jarrett had found missing, and a cased presentation pair of .44 Colt 1860's that nobody had missed. He signed the triplicate copies willingly; he didn't seem to mind signing himself into jail, as long as he thought he was signing himself out of the electric chair.

The book in which Fleming had recorded his pistols he still had; he had removed it from the gunroom and was keeping it in his room. He said he would get it, along with the things he would need to take to jail with him. When it was finished, they all went down the spiral stairway into the library.

Nelda was standing at the foot of it. Evidently she had been listening to what had been going on upstairs.

"You dirty sneak!" she yelled, catching sight of Walters. "After all we've done for you, you turn around and rob us! I hope they give you twenty years!"

Walters turned to McKenna. "Sergeant, I am willing to accept the penalty of the law for what I have done, but I don't believe, sir, that it includes being yapped at by this vulgar bitch."

Nelda let out an inarticulate howl of fury and sprang at him, nails raking. Corporal Kavaalen caught her wrist before she could claw the prisoner.

"That's enough, you!" he told her. "You stop that, or you'll spend a night in jail yourself."

She jerked her arm loose from his grasp and flung out of the library. As she went out, Gladys entered; Rand, who had been bringing up in the rear, stepped down from the stairway.

"He confessed," he said softly. "We had to bluff it out of him, but he came across. Sold the pistols to Carl Gwinnett. We're going, now, to pick up Gwinnett and the pistols."

"I'm glad you found the pistols," she told him. "But what're we going to do, over the week-end, for a butler...."

Rand snapped his fingers. "Dammit, I never thought of that!" He allowed his brow to furrow with thought. "I won't promise anything, but I may be able to dig up somebody for you, for a day or so. Some of my friends are visiting their son, in a Naval hospital on the West Coast, and their butler may be glad for a chance to pick up a little extra money. Shall I call him and find out?"

"Oh, Colonel Rand, would you? I'd be eternally grateful!"

It was just as easy as that.

CHAPTER 18

Dave Ritter, driving his small coupé, kept his eye on the white State Police car ahead. Rand, who had come away from the Fleming home in the white car, had called Ritter from the office of the Justice of the Peace while waiting for Walters to put up bail, after his hearing. Now, en route to Gwinnett's, he was briefing his assistant on what had happened.

"So everything's set," he concluded. "Mrs. Fleming jumped at it; she knows you're coming in your own car, which you may keep in the garage there. You've left New Belfast about now; if you show up around three, you'll be safe on the driving time. Your name is Davies; I decided on that in case I suffer a lapsus linguæ and call you Dave in front of somebody."

"Yeah. I'll have to watch and not call you Jeff, Colonel Rand, sir." He nodded toward the glove-box. "That Leech & Rigdon's in there; you'd better get it out before I go to the Flemings'. The guy at the drive-in made a positive identification; it's the one he sold Fleming. I saw the rest of the pistols he has there; don't waste time looking him up about them. They stink. And I saw Tip this morning. He got young Jarrett sprung on a writ." He thought for a moment. "What does this do to the Rivers and Fleming murders?"

"We can look for one man for both jobs, now," Rand said. "Probably the motive for Fleming was that merger he was so violently opposed to, and the Rivers killing must have been a security measure of some sort. There; that must be Gwinnett's, now."

The State Police car had pulled up in front of a large three-story frame house with faded and discolored paint and jigsaw scrollwork around the cornices, standing among a clump of trees beside the road. McKenna and Kavaalen got out, with Walters between them, and started up the path to the front steps. Ritter stopped behind the white sedan, and he and Rand got out. By that time, Walters and the two policemen were on the front porch.

Suddenly Ritter turned and sprinted around the right side of the house. Rand stood looking after him for a moment, then started to follow more slowly; as he did, a shot slammed in the rear. Jerking out the changeling .38-special, he whirled and ran around the left side of the house, arriving at the rear in time to see Gwinnett standing on a boardwalk between the house and the stable-garage behind, with his hands raised. There was a fresh bullet-scar on the boardwalk at his feet. Ritter was covering him from the corner of the house with the .380 Beretta.

Rand strolled over to Gwinnett, frisked him, and told him to put his hands down.

"Nice, Dave," he complimented. "I thought of that, too, about a minute too late. As soon as he saw Walters coming up the walk with the police, he knew what had happened. Come on, Gwinnett; we'll go through the house and let them in."

Gwinnett's eyes darted from side to side, like the eyes of a trapped animal. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, stiff-lipped. "What is this, a stick-up?"

Nobody bothered to tell him to stop kidding. They marched him through the kitchen, where a Negro girl, her arms white with flour, was dithering in fright, and into the front hall. A woman in a faded housedress had just admitted the two officers and the former Fleming butler.

"You goddam rat!" Gwinnett yelled at Walters, as soon as he saw him.

"For God's sake, Carl," the woman begged. "Don't make things any worse than they are. Keep quiet!"

"All right, Gwinnett," McKenna said. "We're arresting you: receiving stolen goods, and accessory to larceny. We have a search warrant. Want to see it?"

"So you have a search warrant," Gwinnett said. "So go ahead and search; if you don't find anything, you'll plant something. I want to call my lawyer."

"That's your right," McKenna told him. "Aarvo, take him to a phone; let him call the White House if he wants to." He turned to Walters. "Now, where would he have this stuff stashed?"

"In the garret, sir. I know the way."

As Kavaalen accompanied Gwinnett to the phone, Walters started upstairs. Rand and McKenna followed, with Mrs. Gwinnett bringing up the rear. During the search of the attic, she stood to one side, watching the ex-butler dig into a pile of pistols.

"This is one, gentlemen," Walters said, producing a Springfield 1818 Model flintlock. "And here is the Walker Colt, and the .40-caliber Colt Paterson, and the Hall...."

Eventually, he had them all assembled, including the five cased sets. Rand found a couple of empty bushel baskets and laid the pistols in them, between layers of old newspapers. He picked up one, and McKenna took the other, while Walters piled the five flat hardwood cases into his arms like cordwood. Still saying nothing, her eyes stony with hatred, the woman followed them downstairs.

The rest of the afternoon was consumed with formalities. Gwinnett was given a hearing, at which he was represented by a lawyer straight out of a B-grade gangster picture. Rand had a heated argument with an over-zealous Justice of the Peace, who wanted to impound the pistols and jackknife-mark them for identification, but after hurling bloodthirsty threats of a damage suit for an astronomical figure, he managed to retain possession of the recovered weapons.

Ritter left at a little past three, to report for duty in the Fleming household. Rand rode with McKenna and Kavaalen to the State Police substation, where the pistols were transferred to McKenna's personal car, in which they and Rand were to be transported back to the Fleming place.

It was five o'clock before Rand had finished telling the sergeant and the corporal everything he felt they ought to know.

"When we get to the Flemings', I'll give you that revolver I got from the coroner," he finished. "One of your boys can take it to this fellow Umholtz, and get him to identify it. You might also show it to young Gillis, and see what he knows about it. Gillis might even give you a name for who got it from Rivers. I'm not building any hopes on that, and the reason I'm not is that Gillis is still alive. If he knew, I don't think he would be."

"Yeah. I can see that," McKenna nodded. "Fact is, I can see everything, now, except one thing. This pistol-switch somebody gave you; what's the idea of that?"

"Why, that's because I'm on the spot," Rand told him. "I'm to be killed, and somebody else is to be killed along with me. The .25 automatic will be used on me, and the .38 will be used on the other fellow, and we'll be found dead about five feet apart, and I'll be holding my own gun, and the other fellow will be holding the .25, and it will look as though we shot it out and scored a