Part 19 (1/2)

”You have any idea, so far, about who could have killed Rivers?” the ex-Marine asked, as they coasted down the drive to the highway.

”I haven't even the start of an idea,” Rand said. He ran briefly over what he knew, or at least those items which were likely to become public knowledge soon. ”From what I've observed at the shop, and from what I know of Rivers's character, I'd think that he'd been in some kind of a crooked deal with somebody, and got double-crossed, or else the other man caught Rivers double-crossing him. Or else, Rivers and somebody else had some secret in common, and the other man wanted a monopoly on it and killed Rivers as a security measure.”

”Think it might be the Fleming pistols?”

”That depends. I'll have to see whether any of the Fleming pistols turn up anywhere in Rivers's former possession. Personally, I've about decided that the man who was drinking with Rivers killed him. There aren't any indications that anybody else was in the shop afterward. If that's the case, I doubt if the killer was Walters. You know what a sn.o.bbish guy Rivers was. And from what I know of him, he seems to have had a thoroughly Aristotelian outlook; he identified individuals with cla.s.s-labels. Walters, of course, would be identified with the label 'butler,' and I can't imagine Rivers sitting down and drinking with a 'butler.' He would only drink with people whom he thought of as his equals, that is, people whom he identified with cla.s.s-labels of equal social importance to his own labels of 'antiquarian' and 'businessman.'”

”That sounds like Korzybski,” Pierre said, as they turned onto Route 19 in the village and headed east. ”You've read _Science and Sanity_?”

Rand nodded. ”Yes. I first read it in the 1933 edition, back about 1936; I've been rereading it every couple of years since. The principles of General Semantics come in very handy in my business, especially in criminal-investigation work, like this. A consciousness of abstracting, a realization that we can only know something about a thin film of events on the surface of any given situation, and a habit of thinking structurally and of individual things, instead of verbally and of categories, saves a lot of blind-alley chasing. And they suggest a great many more avenues of investigation than would be evident to one whose thinking is limited by intensional, verbal, categories.”

”Yes. I find General Semantics helpful in my work, too,” Pierre said. ”I can use it in plotting a story.... Oh-oh!”

”The Gentlemen of the Press,” Rand said, looking ahead as the car approached the Rivers house and shop. ”There hasn't been a good, sensational, murder story for some time; this is a gift from the G.o.ds.”

A swarm of cars were parked in front and beside the red-brick house.

Among them, Rand spotted a gold-lettered green sedan of the New Belfast _Dispatch_ and _Evening Express_, a black coupe bearing the blazonry of the New Belfast _Mercury_, cars from a couple of papers at Louisburg, the state capital, and cars from papers as far distant as Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Cincinnati. In front of the shop, a motley a.s.semblage of journalists was interviewing and photographing an undersized runt in a tan Chesterfield topcoat and a gray Homburg hat, whom they were addressing as Mr. Farnsworth. The District Attorney of Scott County had a mustache which failed miserably to make him look like Tom Dewey; he impressed Rand as the sort of offensive little squirt who compensates for his general insignificance by bad manners and loud-mouthed self-a.s.sertion. Corporal Kavaalen, standing in the doorway of the shop, caught sight of Rand and his companion as they got out of the car and came to meet them, hustling them around the crowd and into the shop before anybody could notice and recognize them.

”That was a good tip, about the telephone,” he said softly. ”Mick checked at the Rosemont exchange. Rivers got a long-distance call from Topeka last night; ten fifteen to ten seventeen. We got the night long distance operator out of bed, and she confirmed it; Rivers took the call himself.

He gets a lot of long distance calls in the evenings; she knew his voice.” He corrected himself, s.h.i.+fting to the past tense and glancing, as he did, at the chalk outline on the floor, now scuffed by many feet, and the dried bloodstains. ”You say this puts Gresham in the clear?”

”Absolutely,” Rand a.s.sured him. ”He was at home from nine twenty-two on.”

He introduced Pierre Jarrett, and explained their mission. ”You find anything except what's here in the shop?”

”Only Rivers's own .38 Smith & Wesson, in his room, and a lot of pistols out in the garage, that look like junk to me,” Kavaalen said. ”I'll show them to you.”

Rand nodded. ”Pierre, you look around the shop; I'll see what this other stuff is.”

He followed Kavaalen through a door at the rear of the shop; the same one through which Cecil Gillis had carried the Kentucky rifle the afternoon before. Beside Rivers's car, there was a long workbench in the garage, and piles of wood and cardboard cartons, and stacks of newspapers, and a barrel full of excelsior, all evidently used in preparing arms for s.h.i.+pment. There was also a large pile of old pistols, and a number of long-arms.

Rand pawed among the pistols; they were, as the State Police corporal had said, all junk. The sort of things a dealer has to buy, at times, in order to get something really good. Many of them had been partially dismantled for parts. When he was certain that the heap of junk-weapons didn't conceal anything of value, he returned to the shop. Pierre was waiting for him by Rivers's desk.

He shook his head. ”Not a thing,” he reported. ”I found a couple of out-and-out fakes, and about ten or fifteen that had been altered in one way or another, and a lot of reblued stuff, but nothing from Fleming's collection. What did you find?”

Rand laughed. ”I found Rivers's sc.r.a.p-heap, and some pistols that probably contributed parts to some of the stuff you found,” he said. ”Of course, all we can say is that the stuff isn't here; Rivers could have bought it, and stored it outside somewhere. But even so, I'm not taking the Fleming butler too seriously as a suspect for the murder.”

”What's this about Fleming's butler?” a voice broke in. ”Have you been withholding information from me?”

Rand turned, to find that Farnsworth had left the press conference in front and crepe-soled up on him from behind.

”I withheld a theory, which seems to have come to nothing,” he replied.

Kavaalen told the D.A. who Rand was. ”He's cooperating with us,” he added. ”Sergeant McKenna instructed us to give him every consideration.”

”It seems that a number of valuable pistols were stolen from the collection of the late Lane Fleming,” Rand said. ”We suspected that the butler had stolen them and sold them to Rivers; I thought it possible that he might also have killed Rivers to silence him about the transaction.” He shrugged. ”None of the stolen items have turned up here, so there's nothing to connect the thefts with the death of Rivers.”

”Good heavens, you certainly didn't suspect a prominent and respected citizen like Mr. Rivers of receiving stolen goods?” Farnsworth demanded, aghast.