Tipton nodded.  “That could be so, too,” he agreed.  “Say somebody dislikes the looks of that accident, and starts investigating.  Then he runs into all this miasma of suicide rumors, and promptly shrugs the whole thing off.  Fleming killed himself, and the family made a few alterations and are passing it off as an accident.  The families of suicides have been known to do that.”

“Yes.  Regular defense-in-depth system; if the accident line is penetrated, the suicide line is back of it,” Rand said.  “Well, in the last few years, we’ve seen defenses in depth penetrated with monotonous regularity.  I’ve jeeped through a couple, myself, to interrogate the surviving ex-defenders.  It’s all in having the guns and armor to smash through with.”

CHAPTER 3

Humphrey Goode was sixty-ish, short and chunky, with a fringe of white hair around a bald crown.  His brow was corrugated with wrinkles, and he peered suspiciously at Rand through a pair of thick-lensed, black-ribboned glasses.  His wide mouth curved downward at the corners in an expression that was probably intended to be stern and succeeded only in being pompous.  His office was dark, and smelled of dusty books.

“Mr. Rand,” he began accusingly, “when your secretary called to make this appointment, she informed me that you had been retained by Mrs. Gladys Fleming.”

“That’s correct.”  Rand slowly packed tobacco into his pipe and lit it.  “Mrs. Fleming wants me to look after some interests of hers, and as you’re executor of her late husband’s estate, I thought I ought to talk to you, first of all.”

Goode’s eyes narrowed behind the thick glasses.

“Mr. Rand, if you’re investigating the death of Lane Fleming, you’re wasting your time and Mrs. Fleming’s money,” he lectured.  “There is nothing whatever for you to find out that is not already public knowledge.  Mr. Fleming was accidentally killed by the discharge of an old revolver he was cleaning.  I don’t know what foolish feminine impulse led Mrs. Fleming to employ you, but you’ll do nobody any good in this matter, and you may do a great deal of harm.”

“Did my secretary tell you I was making an investigation?” Rand demanded incredulously.  “She doesn’t usually make mistakes of that sort.”

The wrinkles moved up Goode’s brow like a battalion advancing in platoon front.  He looked even more narrowly at Rand, his suspicion compounded with bewilderment.

“Why should I investigate the death of Lane Fleming?” Rand continued.  “As far as I know, Mrs. Fleming is satisfied that it was an accident.  She never expressed any other belief to me.  Do you think it was anything else?”

“Why, of course not!” Goode exclaimed.  “That’s just what I was telling you.  I—­” He took a fresh start.  “There have been rumors—­utterly without foundation, of course—­that Mr. Fleming committed suicide.  They are, I may say, nothing but malicious fabrications, circulated for the purpose of undermining public confidence in Premix Foods, Incorporated.  I had thought that perhaps Mrs. Fleming might have heard them, and decided, on her own responsibility, to bring you in to scotch them; I was afraid that such a step might, by giving these rumors fresh currency, defeat its intended purpose.”