She would be
glad of anything that could be used against any of the others. And if,
on the other hand, she had stolen the pistols herself, she wouldn't have
wanted me poking around, and wouldn't have brought me in, at least not
to handle the collection." Rand looked regretfully at his empty glass and
decided against ordering another. "Dave, I just thought of something," he
said. "How do you think this would work?"
He told Ritter what he had thought of. Ritter drank beer slowly and
meditatively.
"It just might work," he considered. "I've seen that gag work a hundred
times: hell, I've used something like that, myself, at least fifty times,
and so have you. And I don't think Walters would be familiar enough with
dick-practice to see what you were doing. But if it turns out that
Walters didn't sell the pistols to Rivers at all, what then?"
"Well, if he sold them to Umholtz, Pierre Jarrett's theory is still valid
until disproved," Rand said. "And if he didn't sell them either to Rivers
or Umholtz, we'll have to conclude that Rivers and Fleming were killed by
the same person, the Rivers killing being a security measure. That is,
unless we find that Rivers was killed by Pierre Jarrett, which is a sort
of medium-high-order probability.
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