ight have a value of
two or three hundred, but no serious collector would buy any of it at any
price. There had been no attempt to replace the cased items; the cases
had been merely rearranged on the table to avoid any conspicuous
vacancies.

"See that thing?" Pierre asked, tapping a small .25 Webley & Scott
automatic with his finger. Rand looked at it; it had been fitted with an
English-made silencer. "That thing," Pierre said, "is the one illustrated
in Pollard's book. The identical pistol; it used to be in the Pollard
collection."

"Lane had a lot of stuff from some famous collections," Gresham said.
"Pollard collection, Sawyer collection, Fred Hines collection, Meeks
collection, even the old Mark Field collection, that was sold at Libbie
Galleries in 1911. His own could rank with any of them. Think you can get
any of this stuff back?"

"I hope so. By the way, where does this fellow Umholtz, the fabricator of
spurious Whitneyville Walker Colts, hang out? I believe he ought to be
looked into."

"Say, that's an idea!" Pierre ejaculated. "He might have bought the
pistols, instead of Rivers. Why, he has a gunshop at Kingsville, on Route
22, about fifteen miles west of here, just this side of the village. He
had a big sign along the road, and his shop's in the barn, behind the
house."

"I'll have to check up on him. But first, I want to see if any of this
stuff's at Rivers's shop. I won't ask you to come along," he told
Gresham. "No use you sticking your head into the lion's mouth. I've
talked the State Police temporarily off your trail, but I still have
Farnsworth to worry about."

"He'd like to prosecute a big corporation lawyer, if he thought he had
any chance of getting a conviction," Pierre said. "Make a nice impression
on the proletarian vote in the south end of the county."

"You're a member of the Mohawk Club in New Belfast, aren't you?" Rand
asked Gresham. "Well, go there and stay there for a couple of days, till
the heat's off. Pierre, you can come with me to Rivers's; I'll run you
home in my car when we're through."

Gresham let himself out the front door; Pierre and Rand went out through
the garage and got into Rand's car.

"You have any idea, so far, about who could have killed Rivers?" the
ex-Marine asked, as they coasted down the drive to the highway.

"I haven't even the start of an idea," Rand said. He ran briefly over
what he knew, or at least those items which were likely to become public