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

a minute,” McKenna suggested. “You think this butler, at the Fleming place, was robbing the collection. And you say he could’ve sold the stuff he stole to Rivers. Well, when the family gets you in to work on the collection, Jeeves, or whatever his name is, realizes that you’re going to spot what’s been going on, and will probably suspect him. He knows you’re no ordinary arms-expert; you’re an agency dick. So he gets scared. If you catch up with Rivers, Rivers’ll talk. So he comes over here, last night, and kills Rivers off before you can get to him. And while Rivers may not keep a record of the stuff he got from Jeeves, or whatever his name is⁠—”

“Walters,” Rand supplied.

“Walters, then. While he may not keep a record of what he bought from Walters, the chances are he does keep a record of the stuff Walters got from him, to use for replacements, so the card-file goes into the fire. How’s that?”

The flare of another flashbulb made distorted shadows dance over the walls.

“That would hang together, now,” Rand agreed. “Of course, I haven’t found anything here, except the revolver I bought yesterday, that came from the Fleming place, but I’ll add this: As soon as Rivers found out I was working for the Fleming family, he tried to get that revolver back from me. Offered me seventy-five dollars’ worth of credit on anything else in the shop if I’d give it back to him, not twenty minutes after I’d paid him sixty for it.”

“See!” McKenna pounced. “Look; suppose you had a lot of hot stuff, in a place like this. You might take a chance on selling something that had gotten mixed in with your legitimate stuff, but would you want to sell it right back to where it had been stolen from?”

“No, I wouldn’t. And if I were a butler who’d been robbing a valuable collection, and an agency man moved in and started poking around, I might get in a panic and do something extreme. That all hangs together, too.”

While Rand was talking to McKenna, Private Jameson wandered back through the shop.

“Hey, Sarge, is there any way into the house from here?” he asked. “The outside doors are all locked, and I can’t raise anybody.”

Rand pointed out the flight of steps beside the fireplace. “I saw Rivers come out of the house that way, yesterday,” he said.

The State Policeman went up the steps and tried the door; it opened, and he went through.

“Chances are Mrs. Rivers is away,” McKenna said. “She’s away a lot. They have a colored girl who comes in by the day, but she doesn’t generally get here before noon. And the clerk doesn’t get here till about the same time.”

“You seem to know a lot about this household,” Rand said.

“Yeah. We have this place marked up as a bad burglary- and stickup hazard; we keep an eye on it. Rivers has all these guns, he does a big cash business, he always has a couple of hundred to a thousand on him⁠—it’s a wonder somebody hasn’t made a try at this place long ago.⁠ ⁠… Tell you what, Jeff; say you check up on this butler at the Fleming place for us, and we’ll check up here and see if we can find any of the stuff that was stolen. We can get together and compare notes. Maybe one or another of us may run across something about that accident of Fleming’s, too.”

“Suits me. I’ll be glad to help you, and I’ll be glad for any help you can give me on recovering those pistols. I haven’t made any formal report on that, yet, because I’m not sure exactly what’s missing, and I don’t want any of that kind of publicity while I’m trying to sell the collection. It may be that the two matters are related; there are some points of similarity, which may or may not mean anything. And, of course, I just may find somebody who’ll make it worth my time to get interested in this killing, while I’m at it.”

McKenna chuckled. “That must hurt hell out of you, Jeff,” he said. “A nice classy murder like this, and nobody to pay you to work on it.”

“It does,” Rand admitted. “I feel like an undertaker watching a man being swallowed by a shark.”

“You want to stick around till this clerk of Rivers’s gets here?” McKenna asked. “He should be here in about an hour and a half.”

“No. I’d just as soon not be seen taking too much of an interest in this right now. Fact is, I’d just as soon not have my name mentioned at all in connection with this. You can charge the discovery of the body up to our old friend, Anonymous Tip, can’t you?”

“Sure.” McKenna accompanied Rand to the front door, past the white chalked outline that marked the original position of the body. The body itself, with ink-blackened fingertips, lay to one side, out of the way. Corporal Kavaalen was going through the dead man’s pockets, and Skinner was working on the rifle with an insufflator.

“Well, we can’t say it was robbery, anyhow,” Kavaalen said. “He had eight C’s in his billfold.”

“Migawd, Sarge, is this damn rifle ever lousy with prints,” Skinner complained. “A lot of Rivers’s, and everybody else’s who’s been fooling with it around here, and half the Wehrmacht.”

“Swell, swell!” McKenna enthused. “Maybe we can pass the case off on the War Crimes Commission.”

XI

Mick McKenna had put his finger right on the sore spot. It did hurt Rand like hell; a nice, sensational murder and no money in it for the Tri-State Agency. Obviously, somebody would have to be persuaded to finance an investigation. Preferably some innocent victim of unjust suspicion; somebody who could best clear himself by unmasking the real villain.⁠ ⁠… For “villain,” Rand mentally substituted “public benefactor.”

He was running over a list of possible suspects as he entered Rosemont. Passing the little antique shop