. "Why, that man
is a notorious swindler! Mr. Rand, do you know that only a week before
his death, Mr. Fleming instructed me to bring suit against him, and also
to secure his indictment on criminal charges of fraud?"

"I didn't know that, but I'm not surprised," Rand answered. "What did he
burn Fleming with?"

"Here; I'll show you." Goode rose from his seat and went to a rank of
steel filing-cabinets behind the desk. In a moment, he was back, with a
large manila envelope under his arm, and a huge pistol in either hand.
"Here, Mr. Rand," he chuckled. "We'll just test your firearms knowledge.
What do you make of these?"

Rand took the pistols and looked at them. They were wheel locks,
apparently sixteenth-century South German; they were a good two feet in
over-all length, with ball-pommels the size of oranges, and long steel
belt-hooks. The stocks were so covered with ivory inlay that the wood
showed only in tiny interstices; the metal-work was lavishly engraved and
gold-inlaid. To the trigger-guards were attached tags marked _Fleming vs.
Rivers_.

Rand examined each pistol separately, then compared them. Finally, he
took a six-inch rule from his pocket and made measurements, first with
one edge and then with the other.

"Well, I'm damned," he said, laying them on the desk. "These things are
the most complete fakes I ever saw--locks, stocks, barrels and mountings.
They're supposed to be late sixteenth-century; I doubt if they were made
before 1920. As far as I can see or measure, there isn't the slightest
difference between them, except on some of the decorative inlay. The
whole job must have been miked in ten-thousandths, and what's more,
whoever made them used metric measurements. You'll find pairs of English
dueling pistols as early as 1775 that are almost indistinguishable, but
in 1575, when these things were supposed to have been made, a gunsmith
was working fine when he was working in sixteenth-inches. They just
didn't have the measuring instruments, at that time, to do closer work.
I won't bother taking these things apart, but if I did, I'd bet all
Wall Street to Junior's piggy-bank that I'd find that the screws were
machine-threaded and the working-parts interchanged. I've heard about
fakes like these,"--he named a famous, recently liquidated West Coast
collection--"but I'd never hoped to see an example like this."

Goode gave a hacking chuckle. "You'll do as an arms-expert, Mr. Rand," he
said. "And you'd w