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

times he’s gone to Rivers’s shop and there’d be nobody around, and then Gillis would come in from the house, smelling of Chanel Number Five. Mrs. Rivers uses Chanel Number Five. Maybe you have something there. If Cecil thought he could marry the business, with Rivers out of the way.⁠ ⁠… You’ll take the case, won’t you, Jeff?”

“Oh, certainly,” Rand assured him. “Now, all they have on you is that there was ill-feeling between you and Rivers about that fake North & Cheney, and that you were in Rivers’s shop yesterday evening?”

Rand’s new client grimaced. “I wish that were all!” he said. “The worst part of it is the way Rivers was killed. See, back in Kaiser Willie’s war, before I was assigned a company of my own, I was regimental bayonet-instruction officer. And after we got to France, I always carried a rifle and bayonet at the front; hell, I must have killed close to a dozen Krauts just the way Rivers was killed. And during Schicklgruber’s war, I volunteered as bayonet instructor for the local Home Guard.”

“My God!” Rand made a wry face. “There must be close to a hundred people around here who’d know that, and all of them are probably convinced that you killed Rivers, and are expressing that opinion at the top of their voices to all comers. You don’t want a detective, you want a magician!” He took another drag at the cigar, and blew smoke through a circular gun-rack beside him. “What sort of a character is this Farnsworth, anyhow?” he asked. “Before the war, I had all the D.A.’s in the state typed and estimated, but since I got back⁠—”

Gresham slandered the county prosecutor’s legitimacy. “Goddamn headline-hunting little egotist! He’s running for reelection this year, too.”

“One way, that could be bad. On the other hand, it might be easy to throw a scare into him.⁠ ⁠… Stephen, when you were at Rivers’s, were you smoking a cigar?”

Gresham shook his head. “No. I threw my cigar away when I got out of the car, and I didn’t light another one till I got home. If you remember, I was lighting it when I came in here.”

“Yes; so you were. Well, I don’t suppose, in view of the state of relations between you and Rivers, that you had a drink with him, either?”

“I wouldn’t drink that guy’s liquor if I were dying of snakebite, and he wouldn’t offer me a drink if he knew I was,” Gresham declared.

“Well, did you notice, back near the fireplace, a low table with a fifth of Haig & Haig Pinchbottle, and a couple of glasses, and a siphon, and so on, on it?”

“I saw the table. There was an ashtray on it, and a book⁠—I think it was Gluckman’s United States Martial Pistols and Revolvers⁠—but no bottle, or siphon, or glasses.”

“All right, then; it was the killer.” Rand explained about the drinks, and the cigar-ashes. He went on to tell about the destruction of Rivers’s record-cards.

“I don’t get that.” Gresham was puzzled. “Unless it was young Gillis, after all. He could have been knocking down on Rivers, and Rivers caught him at it.”

“I’d thought of that,” Rand admitted. “But I doubt if Rivers would sit down and drink with him, while accusing him of theft. And I can’t seem to find anything around Rivers’s place that looks as though it might have been stolen from the Fleming collection, either.⁠ ⁠… Oh, and that reminds me: If you have time this afternoon, I wonder if you’d come along with me to the Flemings’ and see just what’s missing. I’ll have to know that, in any case, and there’s a good possibility that the thefts from the collection and the killing of Rivers are related.”

“Yes, of course,” Gresham agreed. “And suppose we take Pierre Jarrett along with us. He knows that collection as well as I do; he’ll spot anything I miss. He works at home; I’ll call him now. We can pick him up before we go to the Flemings’.”

They went into Gresham’s bedroom, where there was a phone, and Gresham talked to Pierre Jarrett. It was arranged that he should pick Jarrett up with his car and come to the Flemings’, while Rand went there directly.

Then Rand used the phone to call his office in New Belfast. He talked to Dave Ritter, explaining the situation to date.

“I’m going to need some help,” he continued. “I want you to come here and get a room at the Rosemont Inn, under your own name. I’ll see you there about five thirty. And bring with you a suit of butler’s livery, or reasonable facsimile. I believe there will be a vacancy in the Fleming household tomorrow or the next day, and I want you ready to take over. And bring a small gun with you; something you can wear under said livery. That .357 Colt of yours is a little too conspicuous. You’ll find a .380 Beretta in the top right-hand drawer of my office desk, with a box of ammunition and a couple of spare clips.”

“Right. I’ll be at Rosemont Inn at five thirty,” Ritter promised. “And say, Tip was in, this morning, with a lot of dope on the Fleming estate. Want me to let you have it now, or shall I give it to you when I see you?”

“You have notes? Bring them along; I’ll be seeing you in a couple of hours.”

He parted from Gresham, going out and getting in his car. As Gresham got his own car out of the garage and drove off toward Pierre Jarrett’s house, Rand started in the opposite direction, toward Rosemont.

About a half-mile from Gresham’s he caught an advancing gleam of white on the highway ahead of him and pulled to the side of the road, waiting until the State Police car drew up and stopped. In it were Mick McKenna, Aarvo Kavaalen, and a third man, a Nordic type, in an untidy brown suit.

“Hi, Jeff,” McKenna greeted him, as Rand got out of his