Murder in the Gunroom | Page 8

the dipsomaniac. From time to time,
temporary alliances get formed, mainly against Gladys; all of them resent the way she
married herself into a third-interest in the estate. You're going to have yourself a nice,
pleasant little stay in the country."
"I'm looking forward to it." Rand grimaced. "You mentioned suicide rumors. Such as,
and who's been spreading them?"
"Oh, they are the usual bodyless voices that float about," Tipton told him. "Emanating, I
suspect, from sources interested in shaking out the less sophisticated small shareholders
before the merger. The story is always approximately the same: That Lane Fleming saw
his company drifting reefward, was unwilling to survive the shipwreck, and performed
seppuku. The family are supposed to have faked up the accident afterward. I dismiss the
whole thing as a rather less than subtle bit of market-manipulation chicanery."
"Or a smoke screen, to cover the defects in camouflaging a murder as an accident," Rand
added.
Tipton nodded. "That could be so, too," he agreed. "Say somebody dislikes the looks of
that accident, and starts investigating. Then he runs into all this miasma of suicide rumors,
and promptly shrugs the whole thing off. Fleming killed himself, and the family made a
few alterations and are passing it off as an accident. The families of suicides have been
known to do that."
"Yes. Regular defense-in-depth system; if the accident line is penetrated, the suicide line
is back of it," Rand said. "Well, in the last few years, we've seen defenses in depth
penetrated with monotonous regularity. I've jeeped through a couple, myself, to

interrogate the surviving ex-defenders. It's all in having the guns and armor to smash
through with."

CHAPTER 3
Humphrey Goode was sixty-ish, short and chunky, with a fringe of white hair around a
bald crown. His brow was corrugated with wrinkles, and he peered suspiciously at Rand
through a pair of thick-lensed, black-ribboned glasses. His wide mouth curved downward
at the corners in an expression that was probably intended to be stern and succeeded only
in being pompous. His office was dark, and smelled of dusty books.
"Mr. Rand," he began accusingly, "when your secretary called to make this appointment,
she informed me that you had been retained by Mrs. Gladys Fleming."
"That's correct." Rand slowly packed tobacco into his pipe and lit it. "Mrs. Fleming wants
me to look after some interests of hers, and as you're executor of her late husband's estate,
I thought I ought to talk to you, first of all."
Goode's eyes narrowed behind the thick glasses.
"Mr. Rand, if you're investigating the death of Lane Fleming, you're wasting your time
and Mrs. Fleming's money," he lectured. "There is nothing whatever for you to find out
that is not already public knowledge. Mr. Fleming was accidentally killed by the
discharge of an old revolver he was cleaning. I don't know what foolish feminine impulse
led Mrs. Fleming to employ you, but you'll do nobody any good in this matter, and you
may do a great deal of harm."
"Did my secretary tell you I was making an investigation?" Rand demanded
incredulously. "She doesn't usually make mistakes of that sort."
The wrinkles moved up Goode's brow like a battalion advancing in platoon front. He
looked even more narrowly at Rand, his suspicion compounded with bewilderment.
"Why should I investigate the death of Lane Fleming?" Rand continued. "As far as I
know, Mrs. Fleming is satisfied that it was an accident. She never expressed any other
belief to me. Do you think it was anything else?"
"Why, of course not!" Goode exclaimed. "That's just what I was telling you. I--" He took
a fresh start. "There have been rumors--utterly without foundation, of course--that Mr.
Fleming committed suicide. They are, I may say, nothing but malicious fabrications,
circulated for the purpose of undermining public confidence in Premix Foods,
Incorporated. I had thought that perhaps Mrs. Fleming might have heard them, and
decided, on her own responsibility, to bring you in to scotch them; I was afraid that such
a step might, by giving these rumors fresh currency, defeat its intended purpose."
"Oh, nothing of the sort!" Rand told him. "I'm not in the least interested in how Mr.

Fleming was killed, and the question is simply not involved in what Mrs. Fleming wants
me to do."
He stopped there. Goode was looking at him sideways, sucking in one corner of his
mouth and pushing out the other. It was not a facial contortion that impressed Rand
favorably; it was too reminiscent of a high-school principal under whom he had suffered,
years ago, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Rand began to suspect that Goode might be just
another such self-righteous, opinionated, egotistical windbag. Such men could be
dangerous, were usually quite unscrupulous, and were almost always unpleasant to deal
with.