"Good God, Fred!" she shrieked at him. "Don't say things like that! Maybe
they did, but wait till they've bought the collection and paid for it,
before you start accusing them!"
"I'm not accusing anybody," Dunmore growled back at her. "I don't know
enough about it to make any accusations. All I'm saying is--"
"Well, don't say it, then, if you don't know what you're talking about,"
his wife retorted.
In spite of this start, dinner passed in relative quiet. For the most
part, they talked about the remaining chances of selling the collection,
about which nobody was optimistic. Rand tried to build up morale with
pictures of large museums and important dealers, all fairly slavering to
get their fangs into the Fleming collection, but to little avail. A pall
of gloom had settled, and he was forced to concede that he had at last
found somebody who had a valid reason to mourn the sudden and violent end
of Arnold Rivers.
Dinner finished, he went up to the gunroom and began compiling his list.
He found a yardstick, and thumbtacked it to the edge of the desk to get
over-all and barrel lengths, and used a pair of inside calipers and a
decimal-inch rule from the workbench to get calibers. Sticking a sheet of
paper into the portable, he began on the wheel locks, leaving spaces to
insert the description of the stolen pistols, when recovered.
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