e hell did he get shot?" Rand wanted to know.

"That I couldn't say; I'm only telling you how he didn't get shot. Here,
this is how it was. It was a Thursday, and I'd come halfway out from town
before I remembered that I hadn't bought a copy of _Time_, so I stopped
at Biddle's drugstore, in the village, for one. Just as I was getting
into my car, outside, Lane Fleming drove up and saw me. He blew his horn
at me, and then waved to me with this revolver in his hand. I went over
and looked at it, and he told me he'd found it hanging back of the
counter at a barbecue-stand, where the road from Rosemont joins Route 22.
There had been some other pistols with it, and I went to see them later,
but they were all trash. The Leech & Rigdon had been the only decent
thing there, and Fleming had talked it out of this fellow for ten
dollars. He was disgustingly gleeful about it, particularly as it was
a better specimen than mine."

"Would you know it, if you saw it again?" Rand asked.

"Yes. I remember the serials. I always look at serials on Confederate
arms. The highest known serial number for a Leech & Rigdon is 1393; this
one was 1234."

Rand pulled the .36 revolver from his pants-leg and gave it a quick
glance; the number was 1234. He handed it to Cabot.

"Is this it?" he asked.

Cabot checked the number. "Yes. And I remember this bruise on the left
grip; Fleming was saying that he was glad it would be on the inside, so
it wouldn't show when he hung it on the wall." He carried the revolver to
the desk and held it under the light. "Why, this thing wasn't fired at
all!" he exclaimed. "I thought that Fleming might have loaded it, meaning
to target it--he had a pistol range back of his house--but the chambers
are clean." He sniffed at it. "Hoppe's Number Nine," he said. "And I can
see traces of partly dissolved rust, and no traces of fouling. What the
devil, Jeff?"

"It probably hasn't been fired since Appomattox," Rand agreed. "Philip,
do you think all this didn't-know-it-was-loaded routine might be an
elaborate suicide build-up, either before or after the fact?"

"Absolutely not!" There was a trace of impatience in Cabot's voice. "Lane
Fleming wasn't the man to commit suicide. I knew him too well ever to
believe that."

"I heard a rumor that he was about to lose control of his company," Rand
mentioned. "You know how much Premix meant to him."

"That's idiotic!" Cabot's voice was openly scornful, now, and he seemed
a lit