" Rivers frowned. "I thought you were making some kind of an
investigation, and as I'm the only party making any serious offer to buy
those pistols, I wanted to know what there was to investigate."
"Do you consider ten thousand dollars to be a serious offer?" Rand asked.
"And aren't you forgetting Stephen Gresham and his friends?"
"Oh, those people!" Rivers scoffed. "Mr. Rand, you certainly don't expect
them to be able to handle anything like this, do you?"
"Well, the banks speak well of them," Rand replied. "Some of them have
good listings in Dun & Bradstreet's, too."
"Well, so do I," Rivers reported. "I can top any offer that crowd makes.
What do you expect to get out of them, anyhow?"
"I haven't talked price with them, yet. A lot more than ten thousand
dollars, anyhow."
Rivers forced a laugh. "Now, Mr. Rand! That was just an opening offer. I
thought Fred Dunmore was handling the collection." He grimaced. "What do
you think it's really worth?"
Rand shrugged. "It probably has a dealer's piece-by-piece list-value
of around seventy thousand. I'm not nuts enough to expect anything like
that in a lump sum, but please, let's not mention ten thousand dollars in
this connection any more. That's on the order of Lawyer Marks bidding
seventy-five cents for Uncle Tom; it's only good for laughs.
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