old Rand.

Rand produced and snapped it, holding the flame out to his assistant.
"Dave," he lectured, "the Perfect Butler always has a lighter in good
working order; lighting up the mawster is part of his duties. Remember
that, the next time you have a buttling job."

Ritter leaned forward for the light. "Dunmore was a better shot with his
right hand than he was with his left," he commented. "He didn't come
within a yard of me, and he scored a twelve-o'clock center on you. Right
through the necktie."

Rand glanced down. Then he burst into a roar of obscene blasphemy.

"Seven dollars and fifty cents I paid for that tie, not three weeks ago,"
he concluded. "Does your grandmother make patchwork quilts? If she does,
she can have it."

"My God!" Varcek stared at Rand unbelievingly. "Why, he hit you! You're
wounded!"

"Only in the necktie," Rand reassured him. "I have a hole in my shirt,
too." He reached under the latter garment and rummaged, as though to
evict a small trespasser. When he brought out his hand, he was holding a
battered .25-caliber bullet. He held it out to show to Varcek and Ritter.

"Sure," Ritter grinned at Varcek. "Didn't you know? Superman."

"I'm wearing a bulletproof vest; Mick McKenna loaned it to me yesterday,"
Rand enlightened Varcek. "I never wore one of the damn things before, and
if I can help it, I'll never wear one again. I'm damn near stewed alive
in it."

"Think how hot you'd be, right now, if you hadn't been wearing it,"
Ritter reminded him.

"Then you knew, since yesterday, that he would do this?" Varcek asked.

"I knew one or the other of you would," Rand replied. "I had quite a few
reasons for thinking it might be Dunmore, and one good one for not
suspecting you."

"You mean my dislike for firearms?"

"That could have been feigned, or it could have been overcome," Rand
replied. "I mean your knowledge of biology and biochemistry. If you'd
killed Lane Fleming, there'd have been no clumsy business of fake
accidents; not as long as both of you ate at the same table. He'd
have just died, an unimpeachably natural death." He turned to Ritter.
"Dave, I'm going upstairs; I want to get out of this damned coat of mail
I'm wearing. While I'm doing it, I want you to call Carter Tipton, at the
Jarrett place, and Humphrey Goode, and Mick McKenna, in that order. Tell
Goode to get over here as fast as he can, and come up to my room; tell
him we have to consider ways and means of implementin