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

There were footsteps in the hall outside, and male voices.

“Adam and Colin,” Pierre recognized them before they entered.

Both men were past fifty. Colin MacBride was a six-foot black Highlander; black eyes, black hair, and a black weeping-willow mustache, from under which a stubby pipe jutted. Except when he emptied it of ashes and refilled it, it was a permanent fixture of his weather-beaten face. Trehearne was somewhat shorter, and fair; his sandy mustache, beginning to turn gray at the edges, was clipped to micrometric exactness.

They shook hands with Rand, who set Hester back in her place. Trehearne took the matchlock out of Pierre’s hands and looked at it wistfully.

“Some chaps have all the luck,” he commented. “What do you think of it, Mr. Rand?” Pierre, who had made the introductions, had respected the detective’s present civilian status. “Or don’t you collect long-arms?”

“I don’t collect them, but I’m interested in anything that’ll shoot. That’s a good one. Those things are scarce, too.”

“Yes. You’ll find a hundred wheel locks for every matchlock, and yet there must have been a hundred matchlocks made for every wheel lock.”

“Matchlocks were cheap, and wheel locks were expensive,” MacBride suggested. He spoke with the faintest trace of Highland accent. “Naturally, they got better care.”

“It would take a Scot to think of that,” Karen said. “Now, you take a Scot who collects guns, and you have something!”

“That’s only part of it,” Rand said. “I believe that by the last quarter of the seventeenth century, most of the matchlocks that were lying around had been scrapped, and the barrels used in making flintlocks. Hester Prynne, over there, could easily have started her career as a matchlock. And then, a great many matchlocks went into the West African slave and ivory trade, and were promptly ruined by the natives.”

“Yes, and I seem to recall having seen Spanish and French miguelet muskets that looked as though they had been altered directly from matchlock, retaining the original stock and even the original lock-plate,” Trehearne added.

“So have I, come to think of it.” Rand stole a glance at his wristwatch. It was nine five; he was wishing Stephen Gresham would put in an appearance.

MacBride and Trehearne joined Pierre and the girls in showing him Gresham’s collection; evidently they all knew it almost as well as their own. After a while, Irene Gresham ushered in Philip Cabot. He, too, was past middle age, with prematurely white hair and a thin, scholarly face. According to Hollywood typecasting, he might have been a professor, or a judge, or a Boston Brahmin, but never a stockbroker.

Irene Gresham wanted to know what everybody wanted to drink. Rand wanted Bourbon and plain water; MacBride voted for Jamaica rum; Trehearne and Cabot favored brandy and soda, and Pierre and the girls wanted Bacardi and Coca-Cola.

“And Stephen’ll want rye and soda, when he gets here,” Irene said. “Come on, girls; let’s rustle up the drinks.”

Before they returned, Stephen Gresham came in, lighting a cigar. It was just nine twenty-two.

“Well, I see everybody’s here,” he said. “No; where’s Karen?”

Pierre told him. A few minutes later the women returned, carrying bottles and glasses; when the flurry of drink-mixing had subsided, they all sat down.

“Let’s get the business over first,” Gresham suggested. “I suppose you’ve gone over the collection already, Jeff?”

“Yes, and first of all, I want to know something. When was the last that any of you saw it?”

Gresham and Pierre had been in Fleming’s gunroom just two days before the fatal “accident.”

“And can you tell me if the big Whitneyville Colt was still there, then?” Rand asked. “Or the Rappahannock Forge, or the Collier flintlock, or the Hall?”

“Why, of course⁠ ⁠… My God, aren’t they there now?” Gresham demanded.

Rand shook his head. “And if Fleming still had them two days before he was killed, then somebody’s been weeding out the collection since. Doing it very cleverly, too,” he added. “You know how that stuff’s arranged, and how conspicuous a missing pistol would be. Well, when I was going over the collection, I found about two dozen pieces of the most utter trash, things Lane Fleming wouldn’t have allowed in the house, all hanging where some really good item ought to have been.” He took a paper from his pocket and read off a list of the dubious items, interpolating comments on the condition, and a list of the real rarities which Gresham had mentioned the day before, which were now missing.

“All that good stuff was there the last time I saw the collection,” Gresham said. “What do you say, Pierre?”

“I had the Hall pistol in my hands,” Pierre said. “And I remember looking at the Rappahannock Forge.”

Trehearne broke in to ask how many English dog-locks there were, and if the snaphaunce Highlander and the big all-steel wheel lock were still there. At the same time, Cabot was inquiring about the Springfield 1818 and the Virginia Manufactory pistols.

“I’ll have a complete, itemized list in a few days,” Rand said. “In the meantime, I’d like a couple of you to look at the collection and help me decide what’s missing. I’m going to try to catch the thief, and then get at the fence through him.”

“Think Rivers might have gotten the pistols?” Gresham asked. “He’s the crookedest dealer I know of.”

“He’s the crookedest dealer anybody knows of,” Rand amended. “The only thing, he’s a little too anxious to buy the collection, for somebody who’s just skimmed off the cream.”

“Ten thousand dollars isn’t much in the way of anxiety,” Cabot said. “I’d call that a nominal bid, to avoid suspicion.”

“The dope’s changed a little on that.” Rand brought him up to date. “Rivers’s offer is now twenty-five thousand.”

There was a stunned hush, followed by a gust of exclamations.

“Guid Lorrd!” The Scots accent fairly curdled on Colin MacBride’s tongue. “We canna go over that!”

“I’m afraid not; twenty would be about our limit,” Gresham agreed. “And with the best items gone⁠ ⁠…” He shrugged.

Pierre and Karen were looking at each other in blank misery; their dream of