Olsen's voluble protests drifted back
as the car receded. Rand returned to his own car and followed.
CHAPTER 13
Rand found Gladys alone in the library. As she rose to greet him, he came
close to her, gesturing for silence with finger on lips.
"There's a perfect hell of a mess," he whispered. "Somebody murdered
Arnold Rivers last night."
She looked at him in horror. "Murdered? Who was it? How did it...?"
"I haven't time to talk about that right now," he told her. "Stephen
Gresham and Pierre Jarrett are on their way here, and I'd like you to
keep the servants, and particularly Walters, out of earshot of the
gunroom while they're here. It seems that a number of the best pistols
have been stolen from the collection, sometime between the death of Mr.
Fleming and the time I saw the collection yesterday. Stephen and Pierre
are going to help me find out just what's been taken. I have an idea they
might have been sold to Rivers. That may have been why he was killed--to
prevent him from implicating the thief."
"You think somebody here--the servants?" she asked.
"I can't see how it could have been an outsider. The stuff wasn't all
taken at once; it must have been moved out a piece at a time, and
worthless pistols moved in and hung on the racks to replace valuable
pistols taken.
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