CHAPTER 10
When Rand came down to breakfast the next morning, he found Gladys,Nelda, and a man whom he decided, by elimination, must be Anton Varcek,already at the table. The latter rose as Rand entered, and bowed jerkilyas Gladys verified the guess with an introduction.
He was about Rand's own age and height; he had a smooth-shaven,tight-mouthed face, adorned with bushy eyebrows, each of which was almostas heavy as Rand's mustache. It was a face that seemed tantalizinglyfamiliar, and Rand puzzled for a moment, then nodded mentally. Of coursehe had seen a face like that hundreds of times, in newsreels andnews-photos, and, once in pre-war Berlin, its living double. Rudolf Hess.He wondered how much deeper the resemblance went, and tried not to let itprejudice him.
Nelda greeted him with a trowelful of sweetness and a dash ofbedroom-bait. Gladys waved him to a vacant seat at her right and summonedthe maid who had been serving breakfast. After Rand had indicated hispreference of fruit and found out what else there was to eat, he inquiredwhere the others were.
"Oh, Fred's still dressing; he'll be down in a minute," Nelda told him."And Geraldine won't; she never eats with her breakfast."
Varcek winced slightly at this, and shifted the subject by inquiring ifRand were a professional antiques-expert.
"No, I'm a lily-pure amateur," Rand told him. "Or was until I took thisjob. I have a collection of my own, and I'm supposed to be something ofan authority. My business is operating a private detective agency."
"But you are here only as an arms-expert?" Varcek inquired. "You are notmaking any sort of detective investigation?"
"That's right," Rand assured him. "This is practically a paid vacation,for me. First time I ever handled anything like this; it's a realpleasure to be working at something I really enjoy, for a change."
Varcek nodded. "Yes, I can understand that. My own work, for instance. Iwould continue with my research even if I were independently wealthy andany sort of work were unnecessary."
"Tell Colonel Rand what you're working on now," Nelda urged.
Varcek gave a small mirthless laugh. "Oh, Colonel Rand would be no moreinterested than I would be in his pistols," he objected, then turned toRand. "It is a series of experiments having to do with the chemicalnature of life," he said. Another perfunctory chuckle. "No, I am nottrying to re-create Frankenstein's monster. The fact is, I am workingwith fruit flies."
"Something about heredity?" Rand wanted to know.
Varcek laughed again, with more amusement. "So! One says: 'Fruit flies,'and immediately another thinks: 'Heredity.' It is practically a standardresponse. Only, in this case, I am investigating the effect of dietchanges. I use fruit flies because of their extreme adaptability. IfI find that I am on the right track, I shall work with mice, next."
"Fred Dunmore mentioned a packaged diabetic ration you'd developed," Randmentioned.
"Oh, yes." Varcek shrugged. "Yes. Something like an Army field-ration,for diabetics to carry when traveling, or wherever proper food may beunobtainable. That is for the company; soon we put it on the market, andmake lots of money. But this other, that is my own private work."
Dunmore had come in while Varcek was speaking and had seated himselfbeside his wife.
"Don't let him kid you, Colonel," he said. "Anton's just as keenabout that dollar as the rest of us. I don't know what he's cookingup, up there in the attic, but I'll give ten-to-one we'll be sellingit in twenty-five-cent packages inside a year, and selling plenty ofthem.... Oh, and speaking about that dollar; how did you make out withGresham and his friends?"
"I didn't. They'd expected to pay about twenty thousand for thecollection; Rivers's offer has them stopped. And even if they could goover twenty-five, I think Rivers would raise them. He's afraid to letthem get the collection; Pierre Jarrett and Karen Lawrence intendedusing their share of it to go into the old-arms business, in competitionwith him."
"Uh-huh, that's smart," Dunmore approved. "It's always better to take asmall loss stopping competition than to let it get too big for you. Yousave a damn-sight bigger loss later."
"How soon do you think the pistols will be sold?" Gladys asked.
"Oh, in about a month, at the outside," Rand said, continuing to explainwhat had to be done first.
"Well, I'm glad of that," Varcek commented. "I never liked those things,and after what happened ... The sooner they can be sold, the better."
Breakfast finally ended, and Varcek and Dunmore left for the Premixplant. Rand debated for a moment the wisdom of speaking to Gladys aboutthe missing pistols, then decided to wait until his suspicions werebetter verified. After a few minutes in the gunroom, going over LaneFleming's arms-books on the shelf over the workbench without finding anytrace of the book in which he had catalogued his collection, he got hishat and coat, went down to the garage, and took out his car.
It had stopped raining for the time being; the dingy sky showed brokenspots like bits of bluing on a badly-rusted piece of steel. As he got outof his car in front of Arnold Rivers's red-brick house, he was wonderingjust how he was going to go about what he wanted to do. After all ...
The door of the shop was unlocked, and opened with a slow clanging of thedoor-chime, but the interior was dark. All the shades had been pulled,and the lights were out. For a moment Rand stood in the doorway,adjusting his eyes to the darkness within and wondering where everybodywas.
Then, in the path of light that fell inward from the open door, he sawtwo feet in tan shoes, toes up, at the end of tweed-trousered legs, onthe floor. An instant later he stepped inside, pulled the door shut afterhim, and was using his pen-light to find the electric switch.
For a second or so after he snapped it nothing happened, and then thedarkness was broken by the flickering of fluorescent tubes. When theyfinally lit, he saw the shape on the floor, arms outflung, the invertedrifle above it. For a seemingly long time he stood and stared at thegrotesquely transfixed body of Arnold Rivers.
The dead man lay on his back, not three feet beyond the radius of thedoor, in a pool of blood that was almost dried and gave the room asickly-sweet butchershop odor. Under the back of Rand's hand, Rivers'scheek was cold; his muscles had already begun to stiffen in _rigormortis_. Rand examined the dead man's wounds. His coat was stained withblood and gashed in several places; driven into his chest by a downwardblow, the bayonet of a short German service Mauser pinned him to thefloor like a specimen on a naturalist's card. Beside the one in whichthe weapon remained, there were three stab-wounds in the chest, and thelower part of the face was disfigured by what looked like a butt-blow.Bending over, Rand could see the imprint of the Mauser butt-plate onRivers's jaw; on the butt-plate itself were traces of blood.
The rifle, a regulation German infantry weapon, the long-familiar _Gewehr'98_ in its most recent modification, was a Nazi product, bearing theeagle and encircled swastika of the Third Reich and the code-letters_lza_--the symbol of the Mauserwerke A.G. plant at Karlsruhe. It haddoubtless been sold to Rivers by some returned soldier. In a rack besidethe door were a number of other bolt-action military rifles--a Krag, acouple of Arisakas, a long German infantry rifle of the first World War,a Greek Mannlicher, a Mexican Mauser, a British short model Lee-Enfield.All had fixed bayonets; between the Lee-Enfield and one of the Arisakasthere was a vacancy.
Rivers's carved ivory cigarette-holder was lying beside the body, crushedat the end as though it had been stepped on. A half-smoked cigarette hadbeen in it; it, too, was crushed. There was no evidence of any greatstruggle, however; the attack which had ended the arms-dealer's life musthave come as a complete surprise. He had probably been holding thecigarette-holder in his hand when the butt-blow had been delivered, andhad dropped it and flung up his arms instinctively. Thereupon, hisassailant had reversed his weapon and driven the bayonet into his chest.The first blow, no doubt, had been fatal--it could have been any of thethree stabs in the chest--but the killer had given him two more, probablywhile he was on the floor. Then, grasping the rifle in both hands, he hadstood over his victim
and pinned the body to the floor. That last blowcould have only been inspired by pure anger and hatred.
Yet, apparently, Rivers had been unaware of his visitor's murderousintentions, even while the rifle was being taken from the rack. Randstrolled back through the shop, looking about. Someone had been here withRivers for some time; the dealer and another man had sat by the fire,drinking and smoking. On the low table was a fifth of Haig & Haig, asiphon, two glasses, a glass bowl containing water that had evidentlymelted from ice-cubes, and an ashtray. In the ashtray were a number ofRiver's cigarette butts, all holder-crimped, and a quantity of ash, someof it cigar-ash. There was no cigar-butt, and no band or cellophanewrapper.
The fire on the hearth had burned out and the ashes were cold. They werenot all wood-ashes; a considerable amount of paper--no, cardboard--hadbeen burned there also. Poking gently with the point of a sword he tookfrom a rack, Rand discovered that what had been burned had been a numberof cards, about six inches by four, one of which had, somehow, managed toescape the flames with nothing more than a charred edge. Improvisingtweezers from a pipe-cleaner, he picked this up and looked at it. It hadbeen typewritten:
4850:
English Screw-Barrel F/L Pocket Pistol. _Queen Anne type, sidehammer with pan attached to barrel, steel barrel and frame. Marked:Wilson, Minories, London. Silver masque butt-cap, hallmarked for 1723.4-1/2" barrel; 9-1/4" O.A.; cal. abt .44. Taken in trade, 3/21/'38, fromV. Sparling, for Kentuck #2538, along with 4851, 4852, 4853. App. cost,RLss; Replacement, do. NLss, OSss, LSss._
To this had been added, in pen:
_Sold, R. Kingsley, St. Louis, Mo., Mail order, 12/20/'42, OSss._
Rand laid the card on the cocktail-table, along with the drinkingequipment. At least, he knew what had gone into the fire: Arnold Rivers'scard-index purchase and sales record. He doubted very strongly if thatwould have been burned while its owner was still alive. Going over to thedesk, he checked; the drawer from which he had seen Cecil Gillis get thecard for the Leech & Rigdon had been cleaned out.
Picking up the phone in an awkward, unnatural manner, he used a pencilfrom his pocket to dial a number with which he was familiar, a numberthat meant the same thing on any telephone exchange in the state.
"State Police, Corporal Kavaalen," a voice singsonged out of thereceiver.
"My name is Rand," he identified himself. "I am calling from ArnoldRivers's antique-arms shop on Route 19, about a mile and a half east ofRosemont. I am reporting a homicide."
"Yeah, go ahead--Hey! Did you say homicide?" the other voice askedsharply. "Who?"
"Rivers himself. I called at his shop a few minutes ago, found the frontdoor open, and walked in. I found Rivers lying dead on the floor, justinside the door. He had been killed with a Mauser rifle--not shot;clubbed with the butt, and bayoneted. The body is cold, beginning tostiffen; a pool of blood on the floor is almost completely dried."
"That's a good report, mister," the corporal approved. "You stick around;we'll be right along. You haven't touched anything, have you?"
"Not around the body. How long will it take you to get here?"
"About ten minutes. I'll tell Sergeant McKenna right away."
Rand hung up and glanced at his watch. Ten twenty-two; he gave himselfseven minutes and went around the room rapidly, looking only at pistols.He saw nothing that might have come from the Fleming collection. Finally,he opened the front door, just as a white State Police car was pulling upat the end of the walk.
Sergeant Ignatius Loyola McKenna--customarily known and addressed asMick--piled out almost before it had stopped. The driver, a stocky,blue-eyed Finn with a corporal's chevrons, followed him, and two privatesgot out from behind, dragging after them a box about the size and shapeof an Army footlocker. McKenna was halfway up the drive before herecognized Rand. Then he stopped short.
"Well, Jaysus-me-beads!" He turned suddenly to the corporal. "My God,Aarvo; you said his name was Grant!"
"That's what I thought he said." Rand recognized the singsong accent hehad heard on the phone. "You know him?"
"Know him?" McKenna stepped aside quickly, to avoid being overrun by thetwo privates with the equipment-box. He sighed resignedly. "Aarvo, thisis the notorious Jefferson Davis Rand. Tri-State Agency, in New Belfast."He gestured toward the Finn. "Corporal Aarvo Kavaalen," he introduced."And Privates Skinner and Jameson.... Well, where is it?"
"Right inside." Rand stepped backward, gesturing them in. "Careful; it'sjust inside the doorway."
McKenna and the corporal entered; the two privates set down their boxoutside and followed. They all drew up in a semicircle around the lateArnold Rivers and looked at him critically.
"Jesus!" Kavaalen pronounced the _J_-sound as though it were _Zh_; hegave all his syllables an equally-accented intonation. "Say, somebodygave him a good job!"
"Somebody's been seeing too many war-movies." McKenna got a cigarette outof his tunic pocket and lit it in Rand's pipe-bowl. "Want to confess now,or do you insist on a third degree with all the trimmings?"
Kavaalen looked wide-eyed at Rand, then at McKenna, and then back atRand. Rand laughed.
"Now, Mick!" he reproved. "You know I never kill anybody unless I havea clear case of self-defense, and a flock of witnesses to back it up."
McKenna nodded and reassured his corporal. "That's right, Aarvo; whenJeff Rand kills anybody, it's always self-defense. And he doesn'tgenerally make messes like this." He gave the body a brief scrutiny, thenturned to Rand. "You looked around, of course; what do you make of it?"
"Last night, sometime," Rand reconstructed, "Rivers had a visitor. A man,who smoked cigars. He and Rivers were on friendly, or at least sociable,terms. They sat back there by the fire for some time, smoking anddrinking. The shades were all drawn. I don't know whether that wasstandard procedure, or because this conference was something clandestine.Finally, Rivers's visitor got up to leave.
"Now, of course, he could have left, and somebody else could have comehere later, been admitted, and killed Rivers. That's a possibility," Randsaid, "but it's also an assumption without anything to support it. Irather like the idea that the man who sat back there drinking and smokingwith Rivers was the killer. If so, Rivers must have gone with him to thedoor and was about to open it when this fellow picked up that rifle,probably from that rack, over there, and clipped him on the jaw withthe butt. Then he gave him the point three times, the second and thirdprobably while Rivers was down. Then he swung it up and slammed down withit, and left it sticking through Rivers and in the floor."
McKenna nodded. "Lights on when you got here?" he asked.
"No; I put them on when I came in. The killer must have turned them offwhen he left, but the deadlatch on the door wasn't set, and he doesn'tseem to have bothered checking on that."
"Think he left right after he killed Rivers?"
Rand shook his head. "No, that was just the first part of it. After he'dfinished Rivers, he went back to that desk and got all the cards Riversused to record his transactions on--an individual card for every item. Hedestroyed the lot of them, or at least most of them, in the fireplace.Now, I'm only guessing, here, but I think he took out a card or cards inwhich he had some interest, and then dumped the rest in the fire toprevent anybody from being able to determine which ones he was interestedin. I am further guessing that the cards which the killer wanted tosuppress were in the 'sold' file. But I am not guessing about thedestruction of the record-file; I found the fireplace full of ashes,found one card that had escaped unburned--you can be sure that onewasn't important--and found the drawer where the record-system was keptempty."
"Think he might have stolen something, and covered up by burning thecards?" McKenna asked.
Rand shook his head again. "I was here yesterday; bought a pistol fromRivers. That's how I noticed this card-index system. Of course, I didn'tlook at everything, while I was here, but I can't see where any quantityof arms have been removed, and Rivers didn't have any single item thatwas worth a murder. Fact is, no old firearm is. Ther
e are only a very fewold arms that are worth over a thousand dollars, and most of them arewell-known, unique specimens that would be unsaleable because everycollector would know where it came from."
"We can check possible thefts with Rivers's clerk, when he gets here,"McKenna said. "Now, suppose you show me these things you found, back atthe rear ... Aarvo, you and the boys start taking pictures," he toldthe corporal, then he followed Rand back through the shop.
He tested the temperature of the water in the ice-bowl with his finger.He looked at the ashtray, and bent over and sniffed at each of the twoglasses.
"I see one of them's been emptied out," he commented. "Want to bet ithasn't been wiped clean, too?"
"Huh-unh." Rand smiled slightly. "Even the tiny tots wipe off thecookie-jar, after they've raided it," he said.
A flash-bulb lit the front of the shop briefly. Corporal Kavaalen saidsomething to the others. McKenna picked up the card Rand had found by theedges and looked at it.
"What in hell's this all about, Jeff?" he asked.
"Rivers made it out for one of his pistols. An English flintlockpocket-pistol; I can show you one almost like it, up front. He'd gottenit and three others, back in 1938, in trade for a Kentucky rifle. Thenumbers are reference-numbers; the letters are Rivers's privateprice-code. Those three at the end are, respectively, what he absolutelyhad to get for it, what he thought was a reasonable price, and the mosthe thought the traffic would stand. He sold it in 1942 for his middleprice."
There was another flash by the door, then Kavaalen called out:
"Hey, Mick; we got two of the stiffs, now. All right if we pull out thebayonet for a close-up of his chest?"
"Sure. Better chalkline it, first; you'll move things jerking thatbayonet out." He turned back to Rand. "You think, then, that maybe somecard in that file would have gotten somebody in trouble, and he had tocroak Rivers to get it, and then burned the rest of the cards for acover-up?"
"That's the way it looks to me," Rand agreed. "Just because I can't thinkof any other possibility, though, doesn't mean that there aren't anyothers."
"Hey! You think he might have been selling modern arms to criminals,without reporting the sale?" McKenna asked.
"I wouldn't put it past him," Rand considered. "There was very littlethat I would put past that fellow. But I wouldn't think he'd be stupidenough to carry a record of such sales in his own file, though."
McKenna rubbed the butt of his .38 reflectively; that seemed to be hissubstitute for head-scratching, as an aid to cerebration.
"You said you were here yesterday, and bought a pistol," he began. "Allright; I know about that collection of yours. But why were you back herebright and early this morning? You working on Rivers for somebody? If so,give."
Rand told him what he was working on. "Rivers wants to buy the Flemingcollection. That was the reason I saw him yesterday. But the reason Icame here, this morning, is that I find that somebody has stolen abouttwo dozen of the best pistols out of the collection since Fleming'sdeath, and tried to cover up by replacing them with some junk that LaneFleming wouldn't have allowed inside his house. For my money, it's thebutler. Now that Fleming's dead, he's the only one in the house who knowsenough about arms to know what was worth stealing. He has constant accessto the gunroom. I caught him in a lie about a book Fleming kept a recordof his collection in, and now the book has vanished. And furthermore, andmost important, if he'd been on the level, he would have spotted what wasgoing on, long ago, and squawked about it."
"That's a damn good circumstantial case, Jeff," McKenna nodded. "Nothingyou could take to a jury, of course, but mighty good grounds forsuspicion.... You think Rivers could have been the fence?"
"He could have been. Whoever was higrading the collection had to have anoutlet for his stuff, and he had to have a source of supply for the junkhe was infiltrating into the collection as replacements. A crooked dealeris the answer to both, and Arnold Rivers was definitely crooked."
"You know that?" McKenna inquired. "For sure?"
Another flash lit the front of the shop. Rand nodded.
"For damn good and sure. I can show you half a dozen firearms in thisshop that have been altered to increase their value. I don't meanlegitimate restorations; I mean fraudulent alterations." He went on totell McKenna about Rivers's expulsion from membership in the NationalRifle Association. "And I know that he sold a pair of pistols to LaneFleming, about a week before Fleming was killed, that were outrightfakes. Fleming was going to sue the ears off Rivers about that; the factis, until this morning, I'd been wondering if that mightn't have beenwhy Fleming had that sour-looking accident. If he'd lived, he'd have runRivers out of business."
"Hell, I didn't know that!" McKenna seemed worried. "Fleming used totarget-shoot with our gang, and he knew too much about gats to pull aRuss Columbo on himself. I didn't like that accident, at the time, but Ifigured he'd pulled the Dutch, and the family were making out it was anaccident. We never were called in; the whole thing was handled throughthe coroner's office. You really think Fleming could have been bumped?"
"Yes. I think he could have been bumped," Rand understated. "I haven'tfound any positive proof, but--" He told McKenna about his purchase, fromRivers, of the revolver that had been later identified as the one broughthome by Fleming on the day of his death. "I still don't know how Riversgot hold of it," he continued. "Until I walked in here not half an hourago and found Rivers dead on the floor, I'd had a suspicion that Riversmight have sneaked into the Fleming house, shot Fleming with anotherrevolver, left it in Fleming's hand and carried away the one Fleming hadbeen working on. The motive, of course, would have been to stop a lawsuitthat would have put Rivers out of business and, not inconceivably, injail. But now ..." He looked toward the front of the shop, where anotherphoto-flash glared for an instant. "And don't suggest that Rivers gotconscience-stricken and killed himself. Aside from the technicaldifficulties of pinning himself to the floor after he was dead, thatexplanation's out. Rivers had no conscience to be stricken with."
"Well, let's skip Fleming, for a minute," McKenna suggested. "You thinkthis butler, at the Fleming place, was robbing the collection. And yousay he could've sold the stuff he stole to Rivers. Well, when the familygets 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 willprobably suspect him. He knows you're no ordinary arms-expert; you're anagency dick. So he gets scared. If you catch up with Rivers, Rivers'lltalk. So he comes over here, last night, and kills Rivers off before youcan get to him. And while Rivers may not keep a record of the stuff hegot from Jeeves, or whatever his name is--"
"Walters," Rand supplied.
"Walters, then. While he may not keep a record of what he bought fromWalters, the chances are he does keep a record of the stuff Walters gotfrom him, to use for replacements, so the card-file goes into the fire.How's that?"
The flare of another flash-bulb made distorted shadows dance over thewalls.
"That would hang together, now," Rand agreed. "Of course, I haven't foundanything here, except the revolver I bought yesterday, that came from theFleming place, but I'll add this: As soon as Rivers found out I wasworking for the Fleming family, he tried to get that revolver back fromme. Offered me seventy-five dollars' worth of credit on anything else inthe shop if I'd give it back to him, not twenty minutes after I'd paidhim sixty for it."
"See!" McKenna pounced. "Look; suppose you had a lot of hot stuff, in aplace like this. You might take a chance on selling something that hadgotten mixed in with your legitimate stuff, but would you want to sellit right back to where it had been stolen from?"
"No, I wouldn't. And if I were a butler who'd been robbing a valuablecollection, and an agency man moved in and started poking around, I mightget in a panic and do something extreme. That all hangs together, too."
While Rand was talking to McKenna, Private Jameson wandered back throughthe shop.
"Hey, Sarge, is there any way into the house from here?" he
asked. "Theoutside doors are all locked, and I can't raise anybody."
Rand pointed out the flight of steps beside the fireplace. "I saw Riverscome out of the house that way, yesterday," he said.
The State Policeman went up the steps and tried the door; it opened, andhe went through.
"Chances are Mrs. Rivers is away," McKenna said. "She's away a lot. Theyhave a colored girl who comes in by the day, but she doesn't generallyget here before noon. And the clerk doesn't get here till about the sametime."
"You seem to know a lot about this household," Rand said.
"Yeah. We have this place marked up as a bad burglary- and stick-uphazard; we keep an eye on it. Rivers has all these guns, he does a bigcash business, he always has a couple of hundred to a thousand onhim--it's a wonder somebody hasn't made a try at this place longago.... Tell you what, Jeff; say you check up on this butler at theFleming place for us, and we'll check up here and see if we can find anyof the stuff that was stolen. We can get together and compare notes.Maybe one or another of us may run across something about that accidentof Fleming's, too."
"Suits me. I'll be glad to help you, and I'll be glad for any help youcan give me on recovering those pistols. I haven't made any formal reporton that, yet, because I'm not sure exactly what's missing, and I don'twant any of that kind of publicity while I'm trying to sell thecollection. It may be that the two matters are related; there are somepoints 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 interestedin this killing, while I'm at it."
McKenna chuckled. "That must hurt hell out of you, Jeff," he said. "Anice 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 beingswallowed by a shark."
"You want to stick around till this clerk of Rivers's gets here?" McKennaasked. "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 thisright now. Fact is, I'd just as soon not have my name mentioned at all inconnection with this. You can charge the discovery of the body up to ourold friend, Anonymous Tip, can't you?"
"Sure." McKenna accompanied Rand to the front door, past the whitechalked outline that marked the original position of the body. The bodyitself, with ink-blackened fingertips, lay to one side, out of the way.Corporal Kavaalen was going through the dead man's pockets, and Skinnerwas working on the rifle with an insufflator.
"Well, we can't say it was robbery, anyhow," Kavaalen said. "He had eightC's in his billfold."
"Migawd, Sarge, is this damn rifle ever lousy with prints," Skinnercomplained. "A lot of Rivers's, and everybody else's who's been foolingwith it around here, and half the _Wehrmacht_."
"Swell, swell!" McKenna enthused. "Maybe we can pass the case off on theWar Crimes Commission."