“Yes, that’s right.  We didn’t have time to see everything,” Gresham said.  “My God, Jeff!  Twenty-five wheel locks!  Ten snaphaunces.  And every imaginable kind of flintlock—­over a hundred U.S.  Martials, including the 1818 Springfield, all the S. North types, a couple of Virginia Manufactory models, and—­he got this since the last time you saw the collection—­a real Rappahannock Forge flintlock.  And about a hundred and fifty Colts, all models and most variants.  Remember that big Whitneyville Walker, in original condition?  He got that one in 1924, at the Fred Hines sale, at the old Walpole Galleries.  And seven Paterson Colts, including a couple of cased sets.  And anything else you can think of.  A Hall flintlock breech-loader; an Elisha Collier flintlock revolver; a pair of Forsythe detonator-lock pistols....  Oh, that’s a collection to end collections.”

“By the way, Humphrey Goode showed me a pair of big ball-butt wheel locks, all covered with ivory inlay,” Rand mentioned.

Gresham laughed heartily.  “Aren’t they the damnedest ever seen, though?” he asked.  “Made in Germany, about 1870 or ’80, about the time arms-collecting was just getting out of the family-heirloom stage, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d say made in Japan, about 1920,” Rand replied.  “Remember, there were a couple of small human figures on each pistol, a knight and a huntsman?  Did you notice that they had slant eyes?” He stopped laughing, and looked at Gresham seriously.  “Just how much more of that sort of thing do you think I’m going to have to weed out of the collection, before I can offer it for sale?” he asked.

Gresham shook his head.  “They’re all.  They were Lane Fleming’s one false step.  Ordinarily, Lane was a careful buyer; he must have let himself get hypnotized by all that ivory and gold, and all that documentation on crested notepaper.  You know, Fleming’s death was an undeserved stroke of luck for Arnold Rivers.  If he hadn’t been killed just when he was, he’d have run Rivers out of the old-arms business.”

“I notice that Rivers isn’t advertising in the American Rifleman any more,” Rand observed.

“No; the National Rifle Association stopped his ad, and lifted his membership card for good measure,” Gresham said.  “Rivers sold a rifle to a collector down in Virginia, about three years ago, while you were still occupying Germany.  A fine, early flintlock Kentuck, that had been made out of a fine, late percussion Kentuck by sawing off the breech-end of the barrel, rethreading it for the breech-plug, drilling a new vent, and fitting the lock with a flint hammer and a pan-and-frizzen assembly, and shortening the fore-end to fit.  Rivers has a gunsmith over at Kingsville, one Elmer Umholtz, who does all his fraudulent conversions for him.  I have an example of Umholtz’s craftsmanship, myself.  The collector who bought this spurious flintlock spotted what had been done, and squawked to the Rifle Association, and to the postal authorities.”