"Can
be, at that," he said. "I hope you're not making a mistake, Mick; if you
are, his lawyer's going to crucify you. What are you using for a motive?"
"Rivers was outbidding this crowd Jarrett and the girl were in with. They
all told me about that," McKenna said. "And he and the girl were planning
to use their end of the collection to go into the arms business, after
they got married. Rivers got in the way." McKenna, at the other end of
the line, must have shrugged, too. "After all, for about four years,
they'd been training Jarrett to overcome resistance with the bayonet, so
he did just that."
"Maybe so. You find out anything about that other matter I was interested
in?"
"You mean the pistols? Huh-unh; we went over Rivers's place with a
fine-tooth comb, and questioned young Gillis about it, and we didn't get
a thing. You sure those pistols went to Rivers?"
"I'm not sure of anything at all," Rand replied, looking at his watch.
"You going to be in, say in a couple of hours? I want to have a talk with
you."
"Sure. I'll be around all evening," McKenna assured him. "If we don't
have another murder."
Rand hung up. He pulled the sheet out of the typewriter, laid it
face down on the other sheets he had finished, and laid a long
seventeenth-century Flemish flintlock on top for a paperweight,
memorizing the position of the pistol relative to the paper under it.
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