“Well, I’ll talk to her about it.  I may want to buy some of the ammunition for myself,” Rand said.  “So I only need to bother with what’s on the walls, in this room?...  By the way, did Mr. Fleming keep any sort of record of his collection?  A book, or a card-index, or anything like that?”

“Why no, sir.”  Walters was positive.  Then he hedged.  “If he did, I never saw or heard of anything of the sort.  Mr. Fleming knew everything in this room.  I’ve seen him, downstairs, when somebody would ask him about something, close his eyes as though trying to visualize and then give a perfect description of any pistol in the collection.  Or else, he could enumerate all the pistols of a certain type; say, all the Philadelphia Deringers, or all the Allen pepperboxes, or all the rim-fire Smith & Wesson tip-back types.  He had a remarkable memory for his pistols, although it was not out of the ordinary otherwise, sir.”

Rand nodded.  Any collector—­at least, any collector who was a serious arms-student—­could do that, particularly if he were a good visualizer and kept his stuff in some systematic order.  At the moment, he could have named and described any or all of his own modest collection of two hundred-odd pistols and revolvers.

“I was hoping he’d kept a record,” he said.  “A great many collectors do, and it would have helped me quite a bit.”  He made up his mind to compile such a record, himself, when he got back to New Belfast.  It would be a big help to Carter Tipton, when it came time to settle his own estate, and a man on whom the Reaper has scored as many near-misses as on Jeff Rand should begin to think of such things.  “And how about writing materials?  And is there a typewriter available?”

There was:  a cased portable was on the floor beside the workbench.  Walters showed him which desk drawers contained paper and other things.  There was, Rand noticed, a loaded .38 Colt Detective Special, in the upper right-hand desk drawer.

“And these phones,” the butler continued, indicating them.  “This one is a private outside phone; it doesn’t connect with any other in the house.  The other is an extension.  It has a buzzer; the outside phone has a regular bell.”

Rand thanked him for the information.  Then, picking up a note-pad and pencil, he started on the left of the collection, meaning to make a general list and rough approximation of value for use in talking to Gresham’s friends that evening.  Tomorrow he would begin on the detailed list for use in soliciting outside offers.

Twenty-five wheel locks:  four heavy South German dags, two singles and a pair; three Saxon pistols, with sharply dropped grips, a pair and one single; five French and Italian sixteenth-century pistols; a pair of small pocket or sash pistols; a pair of French petronels, and an extremely long seventeenth-century Dutch pistol with an ivory-covered stock and a carved ivory Venus-head for a pommel; eight seventeenth-century French, Italian and Flemish pistols.  Rand noted them down, and was about to pass on; then he looked sharply at one of them.