Murder in the Gunroom, H. Beam Piper [ebook reader color screen .txt] 📗

a meeting at my place tomorrow evening, say at eight thirty. That suit you?”

That, Rand agreed, would be all right. Gresham asked him how recently he had seen the Fleming collection.

“About two years ago; right after I got back from Germany. You remember, we went there together, one evening in March.”

“Yes, that’s right. We didn’t have time to see everything,” Gresham said. “My God, Jeff! Twenty-five wheel locks! Ten snaphaunces. And every imaginable kind of flintlock⁠—over a hundred U.S. Martials, including the 1818 Springfield, all the S. North types, a couple of Virginia Manufactory models, and⁠—he got this since the last time you saw the collection⁠—a real Rappahannock Forge flintlock. And about a hundred and fifty Colts, all models and most variants. Remember that big Whitneyville Walker, in original condition? He got that one in 1924, at the Fred Hines sale, at the old Walpole Galleries. And seven Paterson Colts, including a couple of cased sets. And anything else you can think of. A Hall flintlock breechloader; an Elisha Collier flintlock revolver; a pair of Forsythe detonator-lock pistols.⁠ ⁠… Oh, that’s a collection to end collections.”

“By the way, Humphrey Goode showed me a pair of big ball-butt wheel locks, all covered with ivory inlay,” Rand mentioned.

Gresham laughed heartily. “Aren’t they the damnedest ever seen, though?” he asked. “Made in Germany, about 1870 or ’80, about the time arms-collecting was just getting out of the family-heirloom stage, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d say made in Japan, about 1920,” Rand replied. “Remember, there were a couple of small human figures on each pistol, a knight and a huntsman? Did you notice that they had slant eyes?” He stopped laughing, and looked at Gresham seriously. “Just how much more of that sort of thing do you think I’m going to have to weed out of the collection, before I can offer it for sale?” he asked.

Gresham shook his head. “They’re all. They were Lane Fleming’s one false step. Ordinarily, Lane was a careful buyer; he must have let himself get hypnotized by all that ivory and gold, and all that documentation on crested notepaper. You know, Fleming’s death was an undeserved stroke of luck for Arnold Rivers. If he hadn’t been killed just when he was, he’d have run Rivers out of the old-arms business.”

“I notice that Rivers isn’t advertising in the American Rifleman any more,” Rand observed.

“No; the National Rifle Association stopped his ad, and lifted his membership card for good measure,” Gresham said. “Rivers sold a rifle to a collector down in Virginia, about three years ago, while you were still occupying Germany. A fine, early flintlock Kentuck, that had been made out of a fine, late percussion Kentuck by sawing off the breech-end of the barrel, rethreading it for the breech-plug, drilling a new vent, and fitting the lock with a flint hammer and a pan-and-frizzen assembly, and shortening the fore-end to fit. Rivers has a gunsmith over at Kingsville, one Elmer Umholtz, who does all his fraudulent conversions for him. I have an example of Umholtz’s craftsmanship, myself. The collector who bought this spurious flintlock spotted what had been done, and squawked to the Rifle Association, and to the postal authorities.”

“Rivers claimed, I suppose, that he had gotten it from a family that had owned it ever since it was made, and showed letters signed ‘D. Boone’ and ‘Davy Crockett’ to prove it?”

“No, he claimed to have gotten it in trade from some wayfaring collector,” Gresham replied. “He convinced Uncle Whiskers, but the N.R.A. took a slightly dimmer view of the transaction, so Rivers doesn’t advertise in the Rifleman any more.”

“Wasn’t there some talk about Whitneyville Walker Colts that had been made out of 1848 Model Colt Dragoons?” Rand asked.

“Oh Lord, yes! This fellow Umholtz was practically turning them out on an assembly-line, for a while. Rivers must have sold about ten of them. You know, Umholtz is a really fine gunsmith; I had him build a deer-rifle for Dot, a couple of years ago⁠—Mexican-Mauser action, Johnson barrel, chambered for .300 Savage; Umholtz made the stock and fitted a scope-sight⁠—it’s a beautiful little rifle. I hate to see him prostitute his talents the way he does by making these fake antiques for Rivers. You know, he made one of these mythical heavy .44 six-shooters of the sort Colt was supposed to have turned out at Paterson in 1839 for Colonel Walker’s Texas Rangers⁠—you know, the model he couldn’t find any of in 1847, when he made the real Walker Colt. That story you find in Sawyer’s book.”

“Why, that story’s been absolutely disproved,” Rand said. “There never was any such revolver.”

“Not till Umholtz made one,” Gresham replied. “Rivers sold it to,”⁠—he named a moving-picture bigshot⁠—“for twenty-five hundred dollars. His story was that he picked it up in Mexico, in 1938; traded a .38-special to some halfbreed goat-herder for it.”

“This fellow who bought it, now; did he see Belden and Haven’s Colt book, when it came out in 1940?”

“Yes, and he was plenty burned up, but what could he do? Rivers was dug in behind this innocent-purchase-and-sale-in-good-faith Maginot Line of his. You know, that bastard took me, once, just one-tenth as badly, with a fake U.S. North & Cheney Navy flintlock 1799 Model that had been made out of a French 1777 Model.” The lawyer muttered obscenely.

“Why didn’t you sue hell out of him?” Rand asked. “You might not have gotten anything, but you’d have given him a lot of dirty publicity. That’s all Fleming was expecting to do about those wheel locks.”

“I’m not Fleming. He could afford litigation like that; I can’t. I want my money, and if I don’t get it in cash, I’m going to beat it out of that dirty little swindler’s hide,” Gresham replied, an ugly look appearing on his face.

“I wouldn’t blame you. You could find plenty of other collectors who’d hold your coat while you were doing it,” Rand told him. Then he inquired, idly: “What sort of a pistol was