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

could raise that much,” he said. “Might I ask who’s making this offer?”

“You might; I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you. You wouldn’t want me to publish your own offer broadcast, would you?”

“I think I can guess. If I’m right, don’t hold your head in a tub of water till you get it,” Gwinnett advised. “Making a big offer to scare away competition is one thing, and paying off on it is another. I’ve seen that happen before, you know. Fact is, there’s one dealer, not far from here, who makes a regular habit of it. He’ll make some fantastic offer, and then, when everybody’s been bluffed out, he’ll start making objections and finding faults, and before long he’ll be down to about a quarter of his original price.”

“The practice isn’t unknown,” Rand admitted.

“I’ll bet you don’t have this twenty-five thousand dollar offer on paper, over a signature,” Gwinnett pursued. “Well, here.” He opened his brief case and extracted a sheet of paper, handing it to Rand. “You can file this; I’ll stand back of it.”

Rand looked at the typed and signed statement to the effect that Carl Gwinnett agreed to pay the sum of fifteen thousand dollars for the Lane Fleming pistol-collection, in its entirety, within thirty days of date. That was an average of six dollars a pistol. There had been a time, not too long ago, when a pistol-collection with an average value of six dollars, particularly one as large as the Fleming collection, had been something unusual. For one thing, arms values had increased sharply in the meantime. For another, Lane Fleming had kept his collection clean of the two-dollar items which dragged down so many collectors’ average values. Except for the two-dozen-odd mysterious interlopers, there wasn’t a pistol in the Fleming collection that wasn’t worth at least twenty dollars, and quite a few had values expressible in three figures.

“Well, your offer is duly received and filed, Mr. Gwinnett,” Rand told him, folding the sheet and putting it in his pocket. “This is better than an unwitnessed verbal statement that somebody is willing to pay twenty-five thousand. I’ll certainly bear you in mind.”

“You can show that to Arnold Rivers, if you want to,” Gwinnett said. “See how much he’s willing to commit himself to, over his signature.”

VIII

Pre-dinner cocktails in the library seemed to be a sort of household rite⁠—a self-imposed Truce of Bacchus before the resumption of hostilities in the dining-room. It lasted from six forty-five to seven; everybody sipped Manhattans and kept quiet and listened to the radio newscast. The only new face, to Rand, was Fred Dunmore’s.

It was a smooth, pinkly-shaven face, decorated with octagonal rimless glasses; an entirely unremarkable face; the face of the type that used to be labeled “Babbitt.” The corner of Rand’s mind that handled such data subconsciously filed his description: forty-five to fifty, one-eighty, five feet eight, hair brown and thinning, eyes blue. To this he added the Rotarian button on the lapel, and the small gold globule on the watch chain that testified that, when his age and weight had been considerably less, Dunmore had played on somebody’s basketball team. At that time he had probably belonged to the Y.M.C.A., and had thought that Mussolini was doing a splendid job in Italy, that H. L. Mencken ought to be deported to Russia, and that Prohibition was here to stay. At company sales meetings, he probably radiated an aura of synthetic good-fellowship.

As Rand followed Walters down the spiral from the gunroom, the radio commercial was just starting, and Geraldine was asking Dunmore where Anton was.

“Oh, you know,” Dunmore told her, impatiently. “He had to go to Louisburg, to that Medical Association meeting; he’s reading a paper about the new diabetic ration.”

He broke off as Rand approached and was introduced by Gladys, who handed both men their cocktails. Then the news commentator greeted them out of the radio, and everybody absorbed the day’s news along with their Manhattans. After the broadcast, they all crossed the hall to the dining-room, where hostilities began almost before the soup was cool enough to taste.

“I don’t see why you women had to do this,” Dunmore huffed. “Rivers has made us a fair offer. Bringing in an outsider will only give him the impression that we lack confidence in him.”

“Well, won’t that be just too, too bad!” Geraldine slashed at him. “We mustn’t ever hurt dear Mr. Rivers’s feelings like that. Let him have the collection for half what it’s worth, but never, never let him think we know what a Goddamned crook he is!”

Dunmore evidently didn’t think that worth dignifying with an answer. Doubtless he expected Nelda to launch a counteroffensive, as a matter of principle. If he did, he was disappointed.

“Well?” Nelda demanded. “What did you want us to do; give the collection away?”

“You don’t understand,” Dunmore told her. “You’ve probably heard somebody say what the collection’s worth, and you never stopped to realize that it’s only worth that to a dealer, who can sell it item by item. You can’t expect⁠ ⁠…”

“We can expect a lot more than ten thousand dollars,” Nelda retorted. “In fact, we can expect more than that from Rivers. Colonel Rand was talking to Rivers, this afternoon. Colonel Rand doesn’t have any confidence in Rivers at all, and he doesn’t care who knows it.”

“You were talking to Arnold Rivers, this afternoon, about the collection?” Dunmore demanded of Rand.

“That’s right,” Rand confirmed. “I told him his ten thousand dollar offer was a joke. Stephen Gresham and his friends can top that out of one pocket. Finally, he got around to admitting that he’s willing to pay up to twenty-five thousand.”

“I don’t believe it!” Dunmore exclaimed angrily. “Rivers told me personally, that neither he nor any other dealer could hope to handle that collection profitably at more than ten thousand.”

“And you believed that?” Nelda demanded. “And you’re a business man? My God!”

“He’s probably a good one, as long as he sticks to pancake flour,” Geraldine was