g my suggestion to
him."

CHAPTER 21

In the month which followed, events transpired through a thickening
miasma of rumors, official communiques, journalistic conjectures,
and outright fabrications, fitfully lit by the glare of newsmen's
photo-bulbs, bulking with strange shapes, and emitting stranger noises.
There were the portentous rumblings of prepared statements, and the
hollow thumps of denials. There were soft murmurs of, "Now, this is
strictly off the record ..." followed by sibilant whispers. The unseen
screws of political pressure creaked, and whitewash brushes slurped
suavely. And there was an insistent yammering of bewildered and
unanswered questions. Fred Dunmore really had killed Arnold Rivers,
hadn't he? Or had he? Arnold Rivers had been double-crossing
Dunmore ... or had Dunmore been double-crossing Rivers? Somebody
had stolen ten--or was it twenty-five--thousand dollars' worth
of old pistols? Or was it just twenty-five thousand dollars? Or
what, if anything, had been stolen? Was somebody being framed for
something ... or was somebody covering up for somebody ... or what?
And wasn't there something funny about the way Lane Fleming got killed,
last December?

The surviving members of the Fleming family issued a few noncommittal
statements through their attorney, Humphrey Goode, and then the Iron
Curtain slammed down. Mick McKenna gave an outraged squawk or so, then
subsided. There was a series of pronunciamentos from the office of
District Attorney Charles P. Farnsworth, all full of high-order
abstractions and empty of meaning. The reporters, converging on the
Fleming house, found it occupied by the State Police, who kept them at
bay. Harry Bentz, of the New Belfast _Evening Mercury_, using a 30-power
spotting-'scope from the road, observed Dave Ritter, whom he recognized,
wearing a suit of butler's livery and standing in the doorway of the
garage, talking to Sergeant McKenna, Carter Tipton and Farnsworth; the
_Mercury_ exploited this scoop for all it was worth.

On the whole, the Rosemont Bayonet Murder was, from a journalistic
standpoint, an almost complete bust. There had been no arrest, no
hearing, no protracted trial, no sensational revelations. Only one
monolithic fact, officially attested and indisputable, loomed out of
the murk: "... and the said Frederick Parker Dunmore, deceased, did
receive the aforesaid gunshot-wounds, hereinbefore enumerated, at the
hands of the said Jefferson Da