A little later,
when I had finished my coffee, I came upstairs, by the main stairway. The
door of this room was open, and Lane was inside, sitting on that old
shoemaker's-bench, working on the revolver. He had it apart, and he was
cleaning a part of it. The round part, where the loads go; the drum, is
it?"
"Cylinder. How was he cleaning it?" Rand asked.
"He was using a small brush, like a test-tube brush; he was scrubbing out
the holes. The chambers. He was using a solvent that smelled something
like banana-oil."
Rand nodded. He could visualize the progress Fleming had made. If Varcek
was telling the truth, and he remembered what Walters had told him, the
last flicker of possibility that Lane Fleming's death had been accidental
vanished.
"I talked with him for some ten minutes or so," Varcek continued, "about
some technical problems at the plant. All the while, he kept on working
on this revolver, and finished cleaning out the cylinder, and also the
barrel. He was beginning to put the revolver together when I left him and
went up to my laboratory.
"About fifteen minutes later I heard the shot. For a moment, I debated
with myself as to what I had heard, and then I decided to come down here.
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