Murder in the Gunroom

  CHAPTER 17

  When he rose, the next morning, Rand noticed something which had escapedhis eye when he had gone to bed the night before. His .38-special, in itsshoulder-holster, was lying on the dresser; he had not bothered puttingit on when he had gone to see Rivers the morning before, and it had lainthere all the previous day. He distinctly remembered having moved it,shortly after dinner, when he had gone to his room for some notes he hadmade on the collection.

  However, between that time and the present it had managed to flop itselfover; the holster was now lying back-up. Intrigued by such a remarkableaccomplishment in an inanimate object, Rand crossed the room in thedress-of-nature in which he slept and looked more closely at it,receiving a second and considerably more severe surprise. The revolverin the holster was not his own.

  It was, to be sure, a .38 Colt Detective Special, and it was in hisholster, but it was not the Detective Special he had brought with himfrom New Belfast. His own gun was of the second type, with the cornersrounded off the grip; this one was of the original issue, with the squarePolice Positive grip. His own gun had seen hard service; this one was inpractically new condition. There was a discrepancy of about thirtythousand in the serial numbers. His gun had been loaded in six chamberswith the standard 158-grain loads; this one was loaded in only five, with148-grain mid-range wad-cutter loads.

  Rand stood for some time looking at the revolver. The worst of it wasthat he couldn't be exactly sure when the substitution had been made. Itmight have happened at any time between eight o'clock and twelve, when hehad gone to bed. He rather suspected that it had been accomplished whilehe had been in the bathroom, however.

  Dumping out the five rounds in the cylinder, he inspected the changelingcarefully. It was, he thought, the revolver Lane Fleming had kept in thedrawer of the gunroom desk. There was no obstruction in the two-inchbarrel, the weapon had not been either fired or cleaned recently, thefiring-pin had not been shortened, the mainspring showed the properamount of tension, and the mechanism functioned as it should. There was achance that somebody had made up five special hand-loads for him, usingnitroglycerin instead of powder, but that didn't seem likely, as it wouldnot necessitate a switch of revolvers. There were four or five otherpossibilities, all of them disquieting; he would have been a great dealless alarmed if somebody had taken a shot at him.

  Getting a box of cartridges out of his Gladstone, he filled thecylinder with 158-grain loads. When he went to the bathroom, he tookthe revolver in his dressing-gown pocket; when he dressed, he put onthe shoulder-holster, and pocketed a handful of spare rounds.

  Anton Varcek was loitering in the hall when he came out; he gave Randgood-morning, and fell into step with him as they went toward thestairway.

  "Colonel Rand, I wish you wouldn't mention this to anybody, but I wouldlike a private talk with you," the Czech said. "After Fred Dunmore hasleft for the plant. Would that be possible?"

  "Yes, Mr. Varcek; I'll be in the gunroom all morning, working." Theyreached the bottom of the stairway, where Gladys was waiting."Understand," Rand continued, "I never really studied biology. I wasexposed to it, in school, but at that time I was preoccupied with theso-called social sciences."

  Varcek took the conversational shift in stride. "Of course," he agreed."But you are trained in the scientific method of thought. That, at least,is something. When I have opportunity to explain my ideas more fully, Ibelieve you will be interested in my conclusions."

  They greeted Gladys, and walked with her to the dining-room. As usual,Geraldine was absent; Dunmore and Nelda were already at the table, eatingin silence. Both of them seemed self-conscious, after the pitched battleof the evening before. Rand broke the tension by offering Humphrey Goodein the role of whipping-boy; he had no sooner made a remark in derogationof the lawyer than Nelda and her husband broke into a duet ofvituperation. In the end, everybody affected to agree that the wholeunpleasant scene had been entirely Goode's fault, and a pleasant spiritof mutual cordiality prevailed.

  Finally Dunmore got up, wiping his mouth on a napkin.

  "Well, it's about time to get to work," he said. "We might as well savegas and both use my car. Coming, Anton?"

  "I'm sorry, Fred; I can't leave, yet. I have some notes upstairs I haveto get in order. I was working on this new egg-powder, last evening, andI want to continue the experiments at the plant laboratory. I think Iknow how we'll be able to cut production costs on it, about five percent."

  "And boy, can we stand that!" Dunmore grunted. "Well, be seeing you atthe plant."

  Rand waited until Dunmore had left, then went across to the library andup to the gunroom. As soon as he entered the room above, he saw what waswrong. The previous thefts had been masked by substitutions, but whoeverhad helped himself to one of the more recent metallic-cartridgespecimens, the night before, hadn't bothered with any such precaution,and a pair of vacant screwhooks disclosed the removal. A second look toldRand what had been taken: the little .25 Webley & Scott from the Pollardcollection, with the silencer.

  The pistol-trade which had been imposed on him had disquieted him; now,he had no hesitation in admitting to himself, he was badly scared.Whoever had taken that little automatic had had only one thought inmind--noiseless and stealthy murder. Very probably with one ColonelJefferson Davis Rand in mind as the prospective corpse.

  He sat down at the desk and started typing, at the same time trying tokeep the hall door and the head of the spiral stairway under observation.It was an attempt which was responsible for quite a number oftypographical errors. Finally, Anton Varcek came in from the hallway,approached the desk, and sat down in an armchair.

  "Colonel Rand," he began, in a low voice, "I have been thinking over aremark you made, last evening. Were you serious when you alluded to thepossibility that Lane Fleming had been murdered?"

  "Well, the idea had occurred to me," Rand understated, keeping his righthand close to his left coat lapel. "I take it you have begun to doubtthat it was an accident?"

  "I would doubt a theory that a skilled chemist would accidentally poisonhimself in his own laboratory," Varcek replied. "I would not, forinstance, pour myself a drink from a bottle labeled HNO_3 in the beliefthat it contained vodka. I believe that Lane Fleming should be creditedwith equal caution about firearms."

  "Yet you were the first to advance the theory that the shooting had beenan accident," Rand pointed out.

  "I have a strong dislike for firearms." Varcek looked at the pistols onthe desk as though they were so many rattlesnakes. "I have always fearedan accident, with so many in the house. When I saw him lying dead, with arevolver in his hand, that was my first thought. First thoughts are sooften illogical, emotional."

  "And you didn't consider the possibility of suicide?"

  "No! Absolutely not!" The Czech was emphatic. "The idea never occurred tome, then or since. Lane Fleming was not the man to do that. He was deeplyreligious, much interested in church work. And, aside from that, he hadno reason to wish to die. His health was excellent; much better than thatof many men twenty years his junior. He had no business worries. Thecompany is doing well, we had large Government contracts during the warand no reconversion problems afterward, we now have more orders than wehave plant capacity to fill, and Mr. Fleming was consulting witharchitects about plant expansion. We have been spared any serious labortroubles. And Mr. Fleming's wife was devoted to him, and he to her. Hehad no family troubles."

  Rand raised an eyebrow over that last. "No?" he inquired.

  Varcek flushed. "Please, Colonel Rand, you must not judge by what youhave seen since you came here. When Lane Fleming was alive, such scenesas that in the library last evening would have been unthinkable. Now,this family is like a ship without a captain."

  "And since you do not think that he shot himself, either deliberately orinadvertently, there remains the alternative that he was shot by somebodyelse, either deliberately or, very improbably, by inadvertence," Randsaid. "I think the latter can be safely disregarded. Let's agree that itwas
murder and go on from there."

  Varcek nodded. "You are investigating it as such?" he asked.

  "I am appraising and selling this pistol collection," Rand told himwearily. "I am curious about who killed Fleming, of course; for my ownprotection I like to know the background of situations in which I aminvolved. But do you think Humphrey Goode would bring me here to stir upa lot of sleeping dogs that might awake and grab him by the pants-seat?Or did you think that uproar in the library last evening was just aprearranged act?"

  "I had not thought of Humphrey Goode. It was my understanding that Mrs.Fleming brought you here."

  "Mrs. Fleming wants her money out of the collection, as soon aspossible," Rand said. "To reopen the question of her husband's death andstart a murder investigation wouldn't exactly expedite things. I'm just amore or less innocent bystander, who wants to know whether there is goingto be any trouble or not.... Now, you came here to tell me what happenedon the night of Lane Fleming's death, didn't you?"

  "Yes. We had finished dinner at about seven," Varcek said. "Lane had beenup here for about an hour before dinner, working on his new revolver; hecame back here immediately after he was through eating. A little later,when I had finished my coffee, I came upstairs, by the main stairway. Thedoor of this room was open, and Lane was inside, sitting on that oldshoemaker's-bench, working on the revolver. He had it apart, and he wascleaning a part of it. The round part, where the loads go; the drum, isit?"

  "Cylinder. How was he cleaning it?" Rand asked.

  "He was using a small brush, like a test-tube brush; he was scrubbing outthe holes. The chambers. He was using a solvent that smelled somethinglike banana-oil."

  Rand nodded. He could visualize the progress Fleming had made. If Varcekwas telling the truth, and he remembered what Walters had told him, thelast flicker of possibility that Lane Fleming's death had been accidentalvanished.

  "I talked with him for some ten minutes or so," Varcek continued, "aboutsome technical problems at the plant. All the while, he kept on workingon this revolver, and finished cleaning out the cylinder, and also thebarrel. He was beginning to put the revolver together when I left him andwent up to my laboratory.

  "About fifteen minutes later I heard the shot. For a moment, I debatedwith myself as to what I had heard, and then I decided to come down here.But first I had to take a solution off a Bunsen burner, where I had beenheating it, and take the temperature of it, and then wash my hands,because I had been working with poisonous materials. I should say allthis took me about five minutes.

  "When I got down here, the door of this room was closed and locked. Thatwas most unusual, and I became really worried. I pounded on the door, andcalled out, but I got no answer. Then Fred Dunmore came out of thebathroom attached to his room, with nothing on but a bathrobe. His hairwas wet, and he was in his bare feet and making wet tracks on the floor."

  From there on, Varcek's story tallied closely with what Rand had heardfrom Gladys and from Walters. Everybody's story tallied, where it couldbe checked up on.

  "You think the murderer locked the door behind him, when he came out ofhere?" Varcek asked.

  "I think somebody locked the door, sometime. It might have been themurderer, or it might have been Fleming at the murderer's suggestion. Butwhy couldn't the murderer have left the gunroom by that stairway?"

  Varcek looked around furtively and lowered his voice. Now he looked likeRudolf Hess discussing what to do about Ernst Roehm.

  "Colonel Rand; don't you think that Fred Dunmore could have shot LaneFleming, and then have gone to his room and waited until I camedownstairs?" he asked.

  Here we go again! Rand thought. Just like the Rivers case; everybodyputting the finger on everybody else....

  "And have undressed and taken a bath, while he was waiting?" he inquired."You came down here only five minutes after the shot. In that time,Dunmore would have had to wipe his fingerprints off the revolver, leaveit in Fleming's hand, put that oily rag in his other hand, set thedeadlatch, cross the hall, undress, get into the bathtub and startbathing. That's pretty fast work."

  "But who else could have done it?"

  "Well, you, for one. You could have come down from your lab, shotFleming, faked the suicide, and then gone out, locking the door behindyou, and made a demonstration in the hall until you were joined byDunmore and the ladies. Then, with your innocence well established, youcould have waited until your wife prompted you, as she or somebody elsewas sure to, and then have gone down to the library and up the spiral,"Rand said. "That's about as convincing, no more and no less, as yourtheory about Dunmore."

  Varcek agreed sadly. "And I cannot prove otherwise, can I?"

  "You can advance your Dunmore theory to establish reasonable doubt," Randtold him. "And if Dunmore's accused, he can do the same with the theoryI've just outlined. And as long as reasonable doubt exists, neither ofyou could be convicted. This isn't the Third Reich or the Soviet Union;they wouldn't execute both of you to make sure of getting the right one.Both of you had a motive in this Mill-Pack merger that couldn't have beennegotiated while Fleming lived. One or the other of you may be guilty; onthe other hand, both of you may be innocent."

  "Then who...?" Varcek had evidently bet his roll on Dunmore. "There is noone else who could have done it."

  "The garage doors were open, if I recall," Rand pointed out. "Anybodycould have slipped in that way, come through the rear hall to the libraryand up the spiral, and have gone out the same way. Some of the FrenchMaquis I worked with, during the war, could have wiped out the wholefamily, one after the other, that way."

  A look of intense concentration settled upon Varcek's face. He noddedseveral times.

  "Yes. Of course," he said, his thought-chain complete. "And you spoke ofmotive. From what you must have heard, last evening, Humphrey Goode wasno less interested in the merger than Fred Dunmore or myself. And thenthere is your friend Gresham; he is quite familiar with the interior ofthis house, and who knows what terms National Milling & Packaging mayhave made with him, contingent upon his success in negotiating themerger?"

  "I'm not forgetting either of them," Rand said. "Or Fred Dunmore, or you.If you did it, I'd advise you to confess now; it'll save everybody,yourself included, a lot of trouble."

  Varcek looked at him, fascinated. "Why, I believe you regard all of usjust as I do my fruit flies!" he said at length. "You know, Colonel Rand,you are not a comfortable sort of man to have around." He rose slowly."Naturally, I'll not mention this interview. I suppose you won't want to,either?"

  "I'd advise you not to talk about it, at that," Rand said. "The situationhere seems to be very delicate, and rather explosive.... Oh, as you goout, I'd be obliged to you for sending Walters up here. I still have thiswork here, and I'll need his help."

  After Varcek had left him, Rand looked in the desk drawer, verifying hisassumption that the .38 he had seen there was gone. He wondered where hisown was, at the moment.

  When the butler arrived, he was put to work bringing pistols to the desk,carrying them back to the racks, taking measurements, and the like. Allthe while, Rand kept his eye on the head of the spiral stairway.

  Finally he caught a movement, and saw what looked like the top of apeak-crowned gray felt hat between the spindles of the railing. He easedthe Detective Special out of its holster and got to his feet.

  "All right!" he sang out. "Come on up!"

  Walters looked, obviously startled, at the revolver that had materializedin Rand's hand, and at the two men who were emerging from the spiral. Hewas even more startled, it seemed, when he realized that they wore theuniform of the State Police.

  "What.... What's the meaning of this, sir?" he demanded of Rand.

  "You're being arrested," Rand told him. "Just stand still, now."

  He stepped around the desk and frisked the butler quickly, wonderingif he were going to find a .25 Webley & Scott automatic or his own.38-Special. When he found neither, he holstered his temporary weapon.

  "If this is your idea of
a joke, sir, permit me to say that it isn't...."

  "It's no joke, son," Sergeant McKenna told him. "In this country, apolice-officer doesn't have to recite any incantation before he makes anarrest, any more than he needs to read any Riot Act before he can startshooting, but it won't hurt to warn you that anything you say can be usedagainst you."

  "At least, I must insist upon knowing why I am being arrested," Walterssaid icily.

  "Oh! Don't you know?" McKenna asked. "Why, you're being arrested for themurder of Arnold Rivers."

  For a moment the butler retained his professional glacial disdain, andthen the bottom seemed to drop suddenly out of him. Rand suppressed asmile at this minor verification of his theory. Walters had beenexpecting to be accused of larceny, and was prepared to treat the chargewith contempt. Then he had realized, after a second or so, what the StatePolice sergeant had really said.

  "Good God, gentlemen!" He looked from Mick McKenna to Corporal Kavaalento Rand and back again in bewilderment. "You surely can't mean that!"

  "We can and we do," Rand told him. "You stole about twenty-five pistolsfrom this collection, after Mr. Fleming died, and sold them to ArnoldRivers. Then, when I came here and started checking up on thecollection, you knew the game was up. So, last evening, you took out thestation-wagon and went to see Rivers, and you killed him to keep him fromturning state's evidence and incriminating you. Or maybe you killed himin a quarrel over the division of the loot. I hope, for your sake, thatit was the latter; if it was, you may get off with second degree murder.But if you can't prove that there was no premeditation, you're tagged forthe electric chair."

  "But ... But I didn't kill Mr. Rivers," Walters stammered. "I barely knewthe gentleman. I saw him, once or twice, when he was here to see Mr.Fleming, but outside of that...."

  "Outside of that, you sold him about twenty-five of these pistols, andgot a like number of junk pistols from him, for replacements." He tookthe list Pierre Jarrett and Stephen Gresham had compiled out of hispocket and began reading: "Italian wheel lock pistol, late sixteenth- orearly seventeenth-century; pair Italian snaphaunce pistols, by LazarinoCominazo...." He finished the list and put it away. "I think we've missedone or two, but that'll do, for the time."

  "But I didn't sell those pistols to Mr. Rivers," Walters expostulated. "Isold them to Mr. Carl Gwinnett. I can prove it!"

  That Rand had not expected. "Go on!" he jeered. "I suppose you havereceipts for all of them. Fences always do that, of course."

  "But I did sell them to Mr. Gwinnett. I can take you to his house, if youget a search warrant, and show you where he has them hidden in thegarret. He was afraid to offer them for sale until after this collectionhad been broken up and sold; he still has every one of them."

  McKenna spat out an obscenity. "Aren't we ever going to have any luck?"he demanded. "Jarrett out on a writ this morning, and now this!"

  "But he ain't in the clear," Kavaalen argued. "Maybe he didn't sellRivers the pistols, but maybe he did kill him."

  "Dope!" McKenna abused his subordinate. "If he didn't sell Rivers thepistols, why would he kill him?"

  "He's only said he sold them to Gwinnett," Rand pointed out. Then heturned to Walters. "Look here; if we find those pistols in Gwinnett'spossession, you're clear on this murder charge. There's still a slightmatter of larceny, but that doesn't involve the electric chair. You takemy advice and make a confession now, and then accompany these officers toGwinnett's place and show them the pistols. If you do that, you mayexpect clemency on the theft charge, too."

  "Oh, I will, sir! I'll sign a full confession, and take thesepolice-officers and show them every one of the pistols...."

  Rand put paper and carbon sheets in the typewriter. As Walters dictated,he typed; the butler listed every pistol which Gresham and Pierre Jarretthad found missing, and a cased presentation pair of .44 Colt 1860's thatnobody had missed. He signed the triplicate copies willingly; he didn'tseem to mind signing himself into jail, as long as he thought he wassigning himself out of the electric chair.

  The book in which Fleming had recorded his pistols he still had; he hadremoved it from the gunroom and was keeping it in his room. He said hewould get it, along with the things he would need to take to jail withhim. When it was finished, they all went down the spiral stairway intothe library.

  Nelda was standing at the foot of it. Evidently she had been listening towhat had been going on upstairs.

  "You dirty sneak!" she yelled, catching sight of Walters. "After allwe've done for you, you turn around and rob us! I hope they give youtwenty years!"

  Walters turned to McKenna. "Sergeant, I am willing to accept the penaltyof the law for what I have done, but I don't believe, sir, that itincludes being yapped at by this vulgar bitch."

  Nelda let out an inarticulate howl of fury and sprang at him, nailsraking. Corporal Kavaalen caught her wrist before she could claw theprisoner.

  "That's enough, you!" he told her. "You stop that, or you'll spend anight in jail yourself."

  She jerked her arm loose from his grasp and flung out of the library. Asshe went out, Gladys entered; Rand, who had been bringing up in the rear,stepped down from the stairway.

  "He confessed," he said softly. "We had to bluff it out of him, but hecame across. Sold the pistols to Carl Gwinnett. We're going, now, to pickup Gwinnett and the pistols."

  "I'm glad you found the pistols," she told him. "But what're we going todo, over the week-end, for a butler...."

  Rand snapped his fingers. "Dammit, I never thought of that!" He allowedhis brow to furrow with thought. "I won't promise anything, but I may beable to dig up somebody for you, for a day or so. Some of my friends arevisiting their son, in a Naval hospital on the West Coast, and theirbutler may be glad for a chance to pick up a little extra money. ShallI call him and find out?"

  "Oh, Colonel Rand, would you? I'd be eternally grateful!"

  It was just as easy as that.