"
She looked at him inquiringly for a moment. "Jeff, I want you to tell me
exactly how everything happened," she said. "I think I have a right to
know."
"Yes, you have," he agreed. "I'll tell you the whole thing, what I
actually know, and what I was forced to guess at:
"When this merger idea first took shape, last summer, Dunmore saw how
unalterably opposed to it Mr. Fleming was, and he began wishing him out
of the way. Some time later, he decided to do something about it. I
suppose Anton Varcek gave him the idea, in the first place, with his
jabber about the danger of a firearms accident. Dunmore decided he'd fix
one up for Mr. Fleming. First of all, he'd need a firearm, collector's
type and in good working order. It couldn't be one of the guns in the
collection. He'd have to keep it loaded all the time, waiting for an
opportunity to use it; he couldn't take a weapon out of the collection,
because it would be missed, and he couldn't load one and hang it up
again, because that would be discovered. So he had to get one of his own,
and he got it from Arnold Rivers."
"You know that? I mean, that's not just a guess?"
"I know it. The gun he got from Rivers was a .36 Colt, 1860 Navy-model,
serial number 2444," Rand told her.
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