have
some more Aristotelian confusion of orders of abstraction. The bayonet
is defined, verbally, as a 'soldier's weapon,' so Farnsworth and Mick
McKenna and the rest of them bemused themselves with suspects like
Stephen Gresham and Pierre Jarrett, and ignored Dunmore, who'd never had
an hour's military training in his life. I'd like to check up on what
picture-shows Dunmore had been seeing in the week or so before the
killing. I'll bet anything he'd been to one of these South-Pacific
banzai-operas. And speaking of confusing orders of abstraction, Mick
McKenna and his merry men pulled a classic in that line. They saw
Dunmore's automobile, verbally defined as a 'gray Plymouth coupe' in
Rivers's drive at the estimated time of the murder. Pierre Jarrett has
a car of that sort, so they included the inferential idea of Pierre
Jarrett's ownership of the car so described.

"Well, that's about all there is to it. Of course, I showed Fred Dunmore
the Leech & Rigdon, and told him it was the gun I'd gotten from the
coroner. That was all he needed to tell him that I was onto the murder,
and probably onto him as the murderer. But he had evidently assumed that
already; that was after he'd assembled my .38 and that .25 automatic, and
was planning to double-kill me and Anton Varcek. At that, he'd have
probably killed me, if I hadn't been wearing that bulletproof vest of
McKenna's. I owe Mick for my life; I'll have to buy him a drink,
sometime, to square that."

"Well, how about Walters, and the pistols he stole?" Gladys asked.
"Didn't that have anything to do with it?"

"No. It was a result of Mr. Fleming's death, of course. I understand that
the situation here had deteriorated rather abruptly after Mr. Fleming's
death. Walters was about fed up on the way things were here, and he was
going to hand in his notice. Then he decided that he ought to have a
stake to tide him over till he could get another buttling job, so he
started higrading the collection."

Gladys nodded. "I suppose he decided, after Lane's death, that he didn't
owe anybody here anything. Too bad he didn't wait, though. The situation
has remedied itself, and that's something else I owe you."

"Yes? I noticed that there was nobody here but you," Rand mentioned.

"Oh, Anton's gone to New York. The Rockefeller Foundation is financing
the major part of his research work, and he's well enough off to finance
the rest himself. Geraldine went with him. Nelda is still recup