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And the hell's own slew of reporters, of course," McKenna said. "Aarvo's going back there, in a little. We're still trying to locate Mrs. Rivers; we haven't been able to, yet. The maid says she went to New York day before yesterday." "I'll probably be around at Rivers's, later in the day. I want to check on that Fleming angle." "Uh-huh; I'll be there, in half an hour," Corporal Kavaalen said.
"Be seeing you." They exchanged so-longs, and Kavaalen backed, and made a U-turn, moving off in the direction of Rosemont. Olsen's voluble protests drifted back as the car receded. Rand returned to his own car and followed. Rand found Gladys alone in the library. As she rose to greet him, he came close to her, gesturing for silence with finger on lips.
Then he had realized, after a second or so, what the State Police sergeant had really said. "Good God, gentlemen!" He looked from Mick McKenna to Corporal Kavaalen to Rand and back again in bewilderment. "You surely can't mean that!" "We can and we do," Rand told him. "You stole about twenty-five pistols from this collection, after Mr. Fleming died, and sold them to Arnold Rivers.
"Sergeant, I am willing to accept the penalty of the law for what I have done, but I don't believe, sir, that it includes being yapped at by this vulgar bitch." Nelda let out an inarticulate howl of fury and sprang at him, nails raking. Corporal Kavaalen caught her wrist before she could claw the prisoner. "That's enough, you!" he told her.
"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 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."
Corporal Kavaalen was going through the dead man's pockets, and Skinner was working on the rifle with an insufflator. "Well, we can't say it was robbery, anyhow," Kavaalen said. "He had eight C's in his billfold." "Migawd, Sarge, is this damn rifle ever lousy with prints," Skinner complained. "A lot of Rivers's, and everybody else's who's been fooling with it around here, and half the Wehrmacht."
Corporal Kavaalen, standing in the doorway of the shop, caught sight of Rand and his companion as they got out of the car and came to meet them, hustling them around the crowd and into the shop before anybody could notice and recognize them. "That was a good tip, about the telephone," he said softly. "Mick checked at the Rosemont exchange.
"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.
Then Farnsworth and Corporal Kavaalen accompanied Rand and Pierre Jarrett to the front door. Some of the reporters who were ravening outside must have spotted Rand as he had entered; they were all waiting for him to come out, and set up a monstrous ululation when he appeared in the doorway.
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