Murder in the Gunroom | Page 5

in something better than a state of suspended
animation while Rand had been in the Army.
Ritter fumbled a Camel out of his shirt pocket and made a beeline for the desk,
appropriating Rand's lighter and sharing the flame with Kathie.
"You know, Jeff," he said, "one of the reasons why this agency never made any money
while you were away was that I never had the unadulterated insolence to ask the kind of
fees you do. I was listening in on the extension in the file-room; I could hear Kathie damn
near faint when you said five grand."
"Yes; five thousand dollars for appraising a collection they've been offered ten for, and
she only has a third-interest," Kathie said, retracting herself into the chair lately vacated
by Gladys Fleming. "If that makes sense, now ..."
"Ah, don't you get it, Kathleen Mavourneen?" Ritter asked. "She doesn't care about the
pistols; she wants Jeff to find out who fixed up that accident for Fleming. You heard that
big, long shaggy-dog story about exactly what happened and where everybody was

supposed to have been at the time. I hope you got all that recorded; it was all told for a
purpose."
Rand had picked up the outside phone and was dialing. In a moment, a girl's voice
answered.
"Carter Tipton's law-office; good afternoon."
"Hello, Rheba; is Tip available?"
"Oh, hello, Jeff. Just a sec; I'll see." She buzzed another phone. "Jeff Rand on the line,"
she announced.
A clear, slightly Harvard-accented male voice took over.
"Hello, Jeff. Now what sort of malfeasance have you committed?"
"Nothing, so far--cross my fingers," Rand replied. "I just want a little information. Are
you busy?... Okay, I'll be up directly."
He replaced the phone and turned to his disciples.
"Our client," he said, "wants two jobs done on one fee. Getting the pistol-collection sold
is one job. Exploring the whys and wherefores of that quote accident unquote is the other.
She has a hunch, and probably nothing much better, that there's something sour about the
accident. She expects me to find evidence to that effect while I'm at Rosemont, going
over the collection. I'm not excluding other possibilities, but I'll work on that line until
and unless I find out differently. Five thousand should cover both jobs."
"You think that's how it is?" Kathie asked.
"Look, Kathie. I got just as far in Arithmetic, at school, as you did, and I suspect that Mrs.
Fleming got at least as far as long division, herself. For reasons I stated, I simply couldn't
have handled that collection business for anything like a reasonable fee, so I told her five
thousand, thinking that would stop her. When it didn't, I knew she had something else in
mind, and when she went into all that detail about the death of her husband, she as good
as told me that was what it was. Now I'm sorry I didn't say ten thousand; I think she'd
have bought it at that price just as cheerfully. She thinks Lane Fleming was murdered.
Well, on the face of what she told me, so do I."
"All right, Professor; expound," Ritter said.
"You heard what he was supposed to have shot himself with," Rand began. "A Colt-type
percussion revolver. You know what they're like. And I know enough about Lane
Fleming to know how much experience he had with old arms. I can't believe that he'd buy
a pistol without carefully examining it, and I can't believe that he'd bring that thing home
and start working on it without seeing the caps on the nipples and the charges in the
chambers, if it had been loaded. And if it had been, he would have first taken off the caps,

and then taken it apart and drawn the charges. And she says he started working on it as
soon as he got home--presumably around five--and then took time out for dinner, and
then went back to work on it, and more than half an hour later, there was a shot and he
was killed." Rand blew a Bronx cheer. "If that accident had been the McCoy, it would
have happened in the first five minutes after he started working on that pistol. No, in the
first thirty seconds. And then, when they found him, he had the revolver in his right hand,
and an oily rag in his left. I hope both of you noticed that little touch."
"Yeah. When I clean a gat, I generally have it in my left hand, and clean with my right,"
Ritter said.
"Exactly. And why do you use an oily rag?" Rand inquired.
Ritter looked at him blankly for a half-second, then grinned ruefully.
"Damn, I never thought of that," he admitted. "Okay, he was bumped off, all right."
"But