tories
about him and Mrs. Rivers."

Gresham snapped his fingers. "Damned if there haven't, now!" he said.
"You talk to Adam Trehearne. He did business with Rivers--there wasn't
much in his line Rivers and Umholtz were able to fake--and different
times he's gone to Rivers's shop and there'd be nobody around, and then
Gillis would come in from the house, smelling of Chanel Number Five.
Mrs. Rivers uses Chanel Number Five. Maybe you have something there.
If Cecil thought he could marry the business, with Rivers out of the
way.... You'll take the case, won't you, Jeff?"

"Oh, certainly," Rand assured him. "Now, all they have on you is that
there was ill-feeling between you and Rivers about that fake North &
Cheney, and that you were in Rivers's shop yesterday evening?"

Rand's new client grimaced. "I wish that were all!" he said. "The worst
part of it is the way Rivers was killed. See, back in Kaiser Willie's
war, before I was assigned a company of my own, I was regimental
bayonet-instruction officer. And after we got to France, I always
carried a rifle and bayonet at the front; hell, I must have killed
close to a dozen Krauts just the way Rivers was killed. And during
Schicklgruber's war, I volunteered as bayonet instructor for the local
Home Guard."

"My God!" Rand made a wry face. "There must be close to a hundred people
around here who'd know that, and all of them are probably convinced that
you killed Rivers, and are expressing that opinion at the top of their
voices to all comers. You don't want a detective, you want a magician!"
He took another drag at the cigar, and blew smoke through a circular
gun-rack beside him. "What sort of a character is this Farnsworth,
anyhow?" he asked. "Before the war, I had all the D.A.'s in the state
typed and estimated, but since I got back--"

Gresham slandered the county prosecutor's legitimacy. "God-damn
headline-hunting little egotist! He's running for re-election this
year, too."

"One way, that could be bad. On the other hand, it might be easy to throw
a scare into him.... Stephen, when you were at Rivers's, were you smoking
a cigar?"

Gresham shook his head. "No. I threw my cigar away when I got out of the
car, and I didn't light another one till I got home. If you remember, I
was lighting it when I came in here."

"Yes; so you were. Well, I don't suppose, in view of the state of
relations between you and Rivers, that you had a drink with him, either?"

"I wouldn't d