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"Think how hot you'd be, right now, if you hadn't been wearing it," Ritter reminded him. "Then you knew, since yesterday, that he would do this?" Varcek asked. "I knew one or the other of you would," Rand replied. "I had quite a few reasons for thinking it might be Dunmore, and one good one for not suspecting you." "You mean my dislike for firearms?"
"It is a series of experiments having to do with the chemical nature of life," he said. Another perfunctory chuckle. "No, I am not trying to re-create Frankenstein's monster. The fact is, I am working with fruit flies." "Something about heredity?" Rand wanted to know. Varcek laughed again, with more amusement. "So!
From what I've seen of that household, I think Walters was personally loyal to Lane Fleming, and I don't believe he feels any loyalty to anybody else there, with the exception of Gladys Fleming. He might keep quiet about the missing pistols if she were the thief; if Dunmore, or Varcek, or either of the girls had done the stealing, he'd tell Gladys, and she'd pass it on to me.
You know, though, that the murderer doesn't have to be Varcek, or anybody else who was in the house at the time. The garage doors were open I'm told that your wife was out at the time and anybody could have sneaked in the back way, up through the library, and out the same way. There are one or two possibilities besides you and Anton Varcek." Dunmore's eyes widened.
If Varcek was telling the truth, and he remembered what Walters had told him, the last flicker of possibility that Lane Fleming's death had been accidental vanished. "I talked with him for some ten minutes or so," Varcek continued, "about some technical problems at the plant. All the while, he kept on working on this revolver, and finished cleaning out the cylinder, and also the barrel.
I would continue with my research even if I were independently wealthy and any sort of work were unnecessary." "Tell Colonel Rand what you're working on now," Nelda urged. Varcek gave a small mirthless laugh. "Oh, Colonel Rand would be no more interested than I would be in his pistols," he objected, then turned to Rand.
"It's always better to take a small loss stopping competition than to let it get too big for you. You save a damn-sight bigger loss later." "How soon do you think the pistols will be sold?" Gladys asked. "Oh, in about a month, at the outside," Rand said, continuing to explain what had to be done first. "Well, I'm glad of that," Varcek commented.
Gladys Fleming, wearing a pale blue frock, came forward as Rand entered the parlor, her hand extended. The two other women in the big parlor remained motionless. They would be the sisters, Geraldine Varcek and Nelda Dunmore.
Rand didn't wonder that they resented Gladys so bitterly; economic considerations aside, girls seldom enthuse over a stepmother so near their own age who is so much more beautiful. "Good afternoon, Colonel Rand," Gladys said. "This is Mrs. Varcek." She indicated a very pale blonde who sat slumped in a deep chair beside a low cocktail-table, a highball in her hand. "And Mrs. Dunmore."
Nelda had been pacing back and forth like a caged tiger; at Rand's entrance, she turned to face him, and Rand wondered whether she thought he was Clyde Beatty or a side of beef. Goode and Dunmore sat together on the sofa, forming what looked like a bilateral offensive and defensive alliance, and Varcek, looking more than ever like Rudolf Hess, stood with folded arms in one corner.
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