the
two privates with the equipment-box. He sighed resignedly. "Aarvo, this
is the notorious Jefferson Davis Rand. Tri-State Agency, in New Belfast."
He gestured toward the Finn. "Corporal Aarvo Kavaalen," he introduced.
"And Privates Skinner and Jameson.... Well, where is it?"

"Right inside." Rand stepped backward, gesturing them in. "Careful; it's
just inside the doorway."

McKenna and the corporal entered; the two privates set down their box
outside and followed. They all drew up in a semicircle around the late
Arnold Rivers and looked at him critically.

"Jesus!" Kavaalen pronounced the _J_-sound as though it were _Zh_; he
gave all his syllables an equally-accented intonation. "Say, somebody
gave him a good job!"

"Somebody's been seeing too many war-movies." McKenna got a cigarette out
of his tunic pocket and lit it in Rand's pipe-bowl. "Want to confess now,
or do you insist on a third degree with all the trimmings?"

Kavaalen looked wide-eyed at Rand, then at McKenna, and then back at
Rand. Rand laughed.

"Now, Mick!" he reproved. "You know I never kill anybody unless I have
a clear case of self-defense, and a flock of witnesses to back it up."

McKenna nodded and reassured his corporal. "That's right, Aarvo; when
Jeff Rand kills anybody, it's always self-defense. And he doesn't
generally make messes like this." He gave the body a brief scrutiny, then
turned to Rand. "You looked around, of course; what do you make of it?"

"Last night, sometime," Rand reconstructed, "Rivers had a visitor. A man,
who smoked cigars. He and Rivers were on friendly, or at least sociable,
terms. They sat back there by the fire for some time, smoking and
drinking. The shades were all drawn. I don't know whether that was
standard procedure, or because this conference was something clandestine.
Finally, Rivers's visitor got up to leave.

"Now, of course, he could have left, and somebody else could have come
here later, been admitted, and killed Rivers. That's a possibility," Rand
said, "but it's also an assumption without anything to support it. I
rather like the idea that the man who sat back there drinking and smoking
with Rivers was the killer. If so, Rivers must have gone with him to the
door and was about to open it when this fellow picked up that rifle,
probably from that rack, over there, and clipped him on the jaw with
the butt. Then he gave him the point three times, the second and third
probably while Rivers was down.