into the library.
He rushed forward, revolver poised, and then a shot boomed from below,
followed by three more in quick succession.

"Okay, Jeff!" Ritter's voice called out. "War's over!"

He managed, somehow, to get down the steep spiral. The little .25 Webley
& Scott was lying on the bottom step; he pushed it aside with his foot,
and cautioned Varcek, who was following, to avoid it. Ritter, still
looking like the Perfect Butler in spite of the .380 Beretta in his hand,
was standing in the hall doorway. On the floor, midway between the
stairway and the door, lay Fred Dunmore. His tan coat and vest were
turning dark in several places, and Rand's own Detective Special was
lying a few inches from his left hand.

"He came in here and shut the door," Ritter reported. "I couldn't follow
him in, so I took a plant in the hall. When I heard you blasting
upstairs, I came in, just in time to see him coming down. You winged him
in the right shoulder; he'd dropped the .25, and he had your gat in his
left hand. When he saw mine, he threw one at me and missed; I gave him
three back for it. See result on floor."

"Uh-uh; he'd have gotten away, if you hadn't been on the job," he told
Ritter. Then he picked up his own revolver and holstered it. After a
glance which assured him that Fred Dunmore was beyond any further action
of any sort, he laid the square-butt Detective Special on the floor
beside him. "You did all right, Dave," he said. "Now, nobody's going to
have a chance to bamboozle a jury into acquitting him." He thought of his
recent conversation with Humphrey Goode. "You did just all right," he
repeated.

"So it was Fred, then," he heard Varcek, behind him, say. "Then he was
lying about this evidence against Goode." The Czech came over and stood
beside Rand, looking down at the body of his late brother-in-law. "But
why did he tell me that story, and why did he shoot at us when we were
together?"

"Both for the same general reason." Rand explained about the two pistols
and the planned double-killing. "With both of us dead, you'd be the
murderer, and I'd be a martyr to law-and-order, and he'd be in the
clear."

Varcek regarded the dead man with more distaste than surprise. Evidently
his experiences in Hitler's Europe had left him with few illusions about
the sanctity of human life or the extent of human perfidy. Ritter
holstered the Beretta and got out a cigarette.

"I hope you didn't leave your lighter upstairs," he t