"Understand," Pierre hastened to add, "I don't believe that Stephen was
fool enough to kill Rivers over that fake North & Cheney, but weren't you
producing inferences that hadn't been abstracted from any descriptive
data?"
"Pierre, when I'm working on a case like this, any resemblance between
my opinions and the statements I may make is purely due to conscious
considerations of policy," Rand told him. "I don't want Farnsworth or
Mick McKenna going around bitching this operation up for me. If they
feel justified in eliminating Gresham on the strength of that phone
call, I'm satisfied, regardless of the semantics involved. Right now, the
thing that's worrying me is the ease with which I seem to have talked
Farnsworth into laying off Gresham. He and Olsen both have single-track
minds. They may just dismiss that telephone alibi, such as it is, as mere
error of the mortal mind, and go right ahead building some kind of a
ramshackle case against Gresham. Since they picked him for their entry,
they won't want to have to scratch him.... Damn, I wish I could think of
where Walters could have sold those pistols!"
"Well, if Rivers wasn't involved somehow, why was he killed?" Pierre
wondered. "Hey! Maybe Walters sold the pistols to Umholtz! He's just as
big a crook as Rivers was, only not quite so smart.
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