Murder in the Gunroom by H. Beam Piper (most read books of all time .txt) 📖

and Varcek and Dunmore left for the Premix plant. Rand debated for a moment the wisdom of speaking to Gladys about the missing pistols, then decided to wait until his suspicions were better verified. After a few minutes in the gunroom, going over Lane Fleming's arms-books on the shelf over the workbench without finding any trace of the book in which he had catalogued his collection, he got his hat and coat, went down to the garage, and took out his car.

It had stopped raining for the time being; the dingy sky showed broken spots like bits of bluing on a badly-rusted piece of steel. As he got out of his car in front of Arnold Rivers's red-brick house, he was wondering just how he was going to go about what he wanted to do. After all ...

The door of the shop was unlocked, and opened with a slow clanging of the door-chime, but the interior was dark. All the shades had been pulled, and the lights were out. For a moment Rand stood in the doorway, adjusting his eyes to the darkness within and wondering where everybody was.

Then, in the path of light that fell inward from the open door, he saw two feet in tan shoes, toes up, at the end of tweed-trousered legs, on the floor. An instant later he stepped inside, pulled the door shut after him, and was using his pen-light to find the electric switch.

For a second or so after he snapped it nothing happened, and then the darkness was broken by the flickering of fluorescent tubes. When they finally lit, he saw the shape on the floor, arms outflung, the inverted rifle above it. For a seemingly long time he stood and stared at the grotesquely transfixed body of Arnold Rivers.

The dead man lay on his back, not three feet beyond the radius of the door, in a pool of blood that was almost dried and gave the room a sickly-sweet butchershop odor. Under the back of Rand's hand, Rivers's cheek was cold; his muscles had already begun to stiffen in rigor mortis. Rand examined the dead man's wounds. His coat was stained with blood and gashed in several places; driven into his chest by a downward blow, the bayonet of a short German service Mauser pinned him to the floor like a specimen on a naturalist's card. Beside the one in which the weapon remained, there were three stab-wounds in the chest, and the lower part of the face was disfigured by what looked like a butt-blow. Bending over, Rand could see the imprint of the Mauser butt-plate on Rivers's jaw; on the butt-plate itself were traces of blood.

The rifle, a regulation German infantry weapon, the long-familiar Gewehr '98 in its most recent modification, was a Nazi product, bearing the eagle and encircled swastika of the Third Reich and the code-letters lza—the symbol of the Mauserwerke A.G. plant at Karlsruhe. It had doubtless been sold to Rivers by some returned soldier. In a rack beside the door were a number of other bolt-action military rifles—a Krag, a couple of Arisakas, a long German infantry rifle of the first World War, a Greek Mannlicher, a Mexican Mauser, a British short model Lee-Enfield. All had fixed bayonets; between the Lee-Enfield and one of the Arisakas there was a vacancy.

Rivers's carved ivory cigarette-holder was lying beside the body, crushed at the end as though it had been stepped on. A half-smoked cigarette had been in it; it, too, was crushed. There was no evidence of any great struggle, however; the attack which had ended the arms-dealer's life must have come as a complete surprise. He had probably been holding the cigarette-holder in his hand when the butt-blow had been delivered, and had dropped it and flung up his arms instinctively. Thereupon, his assailant had reversed his weapon and driven the bayonet into his chest. The first blow, no doubt, had been fatal—it could have been any of the three stabs in the chest—but the killer had given him two more, probably while he was on the floor. Then, grasping the rifle in both hands, he had stood over his victim and pinned the body to the floor. That last blow could have only been inspired by pure anger and hatred.

Yet, apparently, Rivers had been unaware of his visitor's murderous intentions, even while the rifle was being taken from the rack. Rand strolled back through the shop, looking about. Someone had been here with Rivers for some time; the dealer and another man had sat by the fire, drinking and smoking. On the low table was a fifth of Haig & Haig, a siphon, two glasses, a glass bowl containing water that had evidently melted from ice-cubes, and an ashtray. In the ashtray were a number of River's cigarette butts, all holder-crimped, and a quantity of ash, some of it cigar-ash. There was no cigar-butt, and no band or cellophane wrapper.

The fire on the hearth had burned out and the ashes were cold. They were not all wood-ashes; a considerable amount of paper—no, cardboard—had been burned there also. Poking gently with the point of a sword he took from a rack, Rand discovered that what had been burned had been a number of cards, about six inches by four, one of which had, somehow, managed to escape the flames with nothing more than a charred edge. Improvising tweezers from a pipe-cleaner, he picked this up and looked at it. It had been typewritten:

4850:

English Screw-Barrel F/L Pocket Pistol. Queen Anne type, side hammer with pan attached to barrel, steel barrel and frame. Marked: Wilson, Minories, London. Silver masque butt-cap, hallmarked for 1723. 4-1/2" barrel; 9-1/4" O.A.; cal. abt .44. Taken in trade, 3/21/'38, from V. Sparling, for Kentuck #2538, along with 4851, 4852, 4853. App. cost, RLss; Replacement, do. NLss, OSss, LSss.

To this had been added, in pen:

Sold, R. Kingsley, St. Louis, Mo., Mail order, 12/20/'42, OSss.

Rand laid the card on the cocktail-table, along with the drinking equipment. At least, he knew what had gone into the fire: Arnold Rivers's card-index purchase and sales record. He doubted very strongly if that would have been burned while its owner was still alive. Going over to the desk, he checked; the drawer from which he had seen Cecil Gillis get the card for the Leech & Rigdon had been cleaned out.

Picking up the phone in an awkward, unnatural manner, he used a pencil from his pocket to dial a number with which he was familiar, a number that meant the same thing on any telephone exchange in the state.

"State Police, Corporal Kavaalen," a voice singsonged out of the receiver.

"My name is Rand," he identified himself. "I am calling from Arnold Rivers's antique-arms shop on Route 19, about a mile and a half east of Rosemont. I am reporting a homicide."

"Yeah, go ahead—Hey! Did you say homicide?" the other voice asked sharply. "Who?"

"Rivers himself. I called at his shop a few minutes ago, found the front door open, and walked in. I found Rivers lying dead on the floor, just inside the door. He had been killed with a Mauser rifle—not shot; clubbed with the butt, and bayoneted. The body is cold, beginning to stiffen; a pool of blood on the floor is almost completely dried."

"That's a good report, mister," the corporal approved. "You stick around; we'll be right along. You haven't touched anything, have you?"

"Not around the body. How long will it take you to get here?"

"About ten minutes. I'll tell Sergeant McKenna right away."

Rand hung up and glanced at his watch. Ten twenty-two; he gave himself seven minutes and went around the room rapidly, looking only at pistols. He saw nothing that might have come from the Fleming collection. Finally, he opened the front door, just as a white State Police car was pulling up at the end of the walk.

Sergeant Ignatius Loyola McKenna—customarily known and addressed as Mick—piled out almost before it had stopped. The driver, a stocky, blue-eyed Finn with a corporal's chevrons, followed him, and two privates got out from behind, dragging after them a box about the size and shape of an Army footlocker. McKenna was halfway up the drive before he recognized Rand. Then he stopped short.

"Well, Jaysus-me-beads!" He turned suddenly to the corporal. "My God, Aarvo; you said his name was Grant!"

"That's what I thought he said." Rand recognized the singsong accent he had heard on the phone. "You know him?"

"Know him?" McKenna stepped aside quickly, to avoid being overrun by the two privates with the equipment-box. He sighed resignedly. "Aarvo, this is the notorious Jefferson Davis Rand. Tri-State Agency, in New Belfast." He gestured toward the Finn. "Corporal Aarvo Kavaalen," he introduced. "And Privates Skinner and Jameson.... Well, where is it?"

"Right inside." Rand stepped backward, gesturing them in. "Careful; it's just inside the doorway."

McKenna and the corporal entered; the two privates set down their box outside and followed. They all drew up in a semicircle around the late Arnold Rivers and looked at him critically.

"Jesus!" Kavaalen pronounced the J-sound as though it were Zh; he gave all his syllables an equally-accented intonation. "Say, somebody gave him a good job!"

"Somebody's been seeing too many war-movies." McKenna got a cigarette out of his tunic pocket and lit it in Rand's pipe-bowl. "Want to confess now, or do you insist on a third degree with all the trimmings?"

Kavaalen looked wide-eyed at Rand, then at McKenna, and then back at Rand. Rand laughed.

"Now, Mick!" he reproved. "You know I never kill anybody unless I have a clear case of self-defense, and a flock of witnesses to back it up."

McKenna nodded and reassured his corporal. "That's right, Aarvo; when Jeff Rand kills anybody, it's always self-defense. And he doesn't generally make messes like this." He gave the body a brief scrutiny, then turned to Rand. "You looked around, of course; what do you make of it?"

"Last night, sometime," Rand reconstructed, "Rivers had a visitor. A man, who smoked cigars. He and Rivers were on friendly, or at least sociable, terms. They sat back there by the fire for some time, smoking and drinking. The shades were all drawn. I don't know whether that was standard procedure, or because this conference was something clandestine. Finally, Rivers's visitor got up to leave.

"Now, of course, he could have left, and somebody else could have come here later, been admitted, and killed Rivers. That's a possibility," Rand said, "but it's also an assumption without anything to support it. I rather like the idea that the man who sat back there drinking and smoking with Rivers was the killer. If so, Rivers must have gone with him to the door and was about to open it when this fellow picked up that rifle, probably from that rack, over there, and clipped him on the jaw with the butt. Then he gave him the point three times, the second and third probably while Rivers was down. Then he swung it up and slammed down with it, and left it sticking through Rivers and in the floor."

McKenna nodded. "Lights on when you got here?" he asked.

"No; I put them on when I came in. The killer must have turned them off when he left, but the deadlatch on the door wasn't set, and he doesn't seem to have bothered checking on that."

"Think he left right after he killed Rivers?"

Rand shook his head. "No, that was just the first part of it. After he'd finished Rivers, he went back to that desk and got all the cards Rivers used to record his transactions on—an individual card for every item. He destroyed the lot of them, or at least most of them, in the fireplace. Now, I'm only guessing, here, but I think he took out a card or cards in which he had some interest, and then dumped the rest in the fire to prevent anybody from being able to determine which ones he was interested in. I am further guessing that