Murder in the Gunroom by H. Beam Piper (100 books to read in a lifetime TXT) 📕

“Oh, he’s talking through his hat!” Cabot declared. “He just hopes we’ll lose interest, and then he’ll buy what’s left of the collection for a song.”

“Maybe he knows the collection’s been robbed,” Trehearne suggested. “That would let him out, later. He’d accuse you or the Fleming estate of holding out the best pieces, and then offer to take what’s left for about five thousand.”

“Well, that would be presuming that he knows the collection has been robbed,” Cabot pointed out. “And the only way he’d know that would be if he, himself, had bought the stolen pistols.”

“Well, does anybody need a chaser to swallow that?” Trehearne countered. “I’m bloody sure I don’t.”

Karen Lawrence shook her head. “No, he’d pay twenty-five thousand for the collection, just as it stands, to keep Pierre and me out of the arms business. This end of the state couldn’t support another arms-dealer, and with the reputation he’s made for himself, he’d be the one to go under.” She stubbed out her cigarette and finished her drink. “If you don’t mind, Pierre, I think I’ll go home.”

“I’m not feeling very festive, myself, right now.” The ex-Marine rose and held out his hand to Rand. “Don’t get the idea, Jeff, that anybody here holds this against you. You have your clients’ interests to look out for.”

“Well, if this be treason make the most of it,” Rand said, “but I hope Rivers doesn’t go through with it. I’d like to see you people get the collection, and I’d hate to see a lot of nice pistols like that get into the hands of a damned swindler like Rivers.⁠ ⁠… Maybe I can catch him with the hot-goods on him, and send him up for about three-to-five.”

“Oh, he’s too smart for that,” Karen despaired. “He can get away with faking, but the dumbest jury in the world would know what receiving stolen goods was, and he knows it.”

Dorothy and Irene Gresham accompanied Pierre and Karen downstairs. After they had gone, Gresham tried, not very successfully, to inject more life into the party with another round of drinks. For a while they discussed the personal and commercial iniquities of Arnold Rivers. Trehearne and MacBride, who had come together in the latter’s car, left shortly, and half an hour later, Philip Cabot rose and announced that he, too, was leaving.

“You haven’t seen my collection since before the war, Jeff,” he said. “If you’re not sleepy, why don’t you stop at my place and see what’s new? You’re staying at the Flemings’; my house is along your way, about a mile on the other side of the railroad.”

They went out and got into their cars. Rand kept Cabot’s taillight in sight until the broker swung into his drive and put his car in the garage. Rand parked beside the road, took the Leech & Rigdon out of the glove-box, and got out, slipping the Confederate revolver under his trouser-band. He was pulling down his vest to cover the butt as he went up the walk and joined his friend at the front door.

Cabot’s combination library and gunroom was on the first floor. Like Rand’s own, his collection was hung on racks over low bookcases on either side of the room. It was strictly a collector’s collection, intensely specialized. There were all but a few of the U.S. regulation single-shot pistols, a fair representation of secondary types, most of the revolvers of the Civil War, and all the later revolvers and automatics. In addition, there were British pistols of the Revolution and 1812, Confederate revolvers, a couple of Spanish revolvers of 1898, the Lugers and Mausers and Steyers of the first World War, and the pistols of all our allies, beginning with the French weapons of the Revolution.

“I’m having the devil’s own time filling in for this last war,” Cabot said. “I have a want-ad running in the Rifleman, and I’ve gotten a few: that Nambu, and that Japanese Model-14, and the Polish Radom, and the Italian Glisenti, and that Tokarev, and, of course, the P-’38 and the Canadian Browning; but it’s going to take the devil’s own time. I hope nobody starts another war, for a few years, till I can get caught up on the last one.”

Rand was looking at the Confederate revolvers. Griswold & Grier, Haiman Brothers, Tucker & Sherrod, Dance Brothers & Park, Spiller & Burr⁠—there it was: Leech & Rigdon. He tapped it on the cylinder with a finger.

“Wasn’t it one of those things that killed Lane Fleming?” he asked.

“Leech & Rigdon? So I’m told.” Cabot hesitated. “Jeff, I saw that revolver, not four hours before Fleming was shot. Had it in my hands; looked it over carefully.” He shook his head. “It absolutely was not loaded. It was empty, and there was rust in the chambers.”

“Then how the hell did he get shot?” Rand wanted to know.

“That I couldn’t say; I’m only telling you how he didn’t get shot. Here, this is how it was. It was a Thursday, and I’d come halfway out from town before I remembered that I hadn’t bought a copy of Time, so I stopped at Biddle’s drugstore, in the village, for one. Just as I was getting into my car, outside, Lane Fleming drove up and saw me. He blew his horn at me, and then waved to me with this revolver in his hand. I went over and looked at it, and he told me he’d found it hanging back of the counter at a barbecue-stand, where the road from Rosemont joins Route 22. There had been some other pistols with it, and I went to see them later, but they were all trash. The Leech & Rigdon had been the only decent thing there, and Fleming had talked it out of this fellow for ten dollars. He was disgustingly gleeful about it, particularly as it was a better specimen than mine.”

“Would you know it, if you saw it again?” Rand asked.

“Yes. I remember the serials.