“Why, no; can’t say I do,” Dunmore replied promptly, evidently grateful for the change of subject.  “You mean, like an inventory?”

“Oh, Fred, you do!” Nelda told him impatiently.  “You know that big gray book Father kept all his pistols entered in.”

“It was a gray ledger, with a black leather back,” Gladys said.  “He kept it in the little bookcase over the workbench in the gunroom.”

“I’ll look for it,” Rand said.  “Sure it’s still there?  It would be a big help to me.”

The rest of the dinner passed in relative tranquillity.  The conversation proceeded in fairly safe channels.  Dunmore was anxious to avoid any further reference to the sum of ten thousand dollars; when Gladys induced Rand to talk about his military experiences, he lapsed into preoccupied silence.  Several times, Geraldine and Nelda aimed halfhearted feline swipes at one another, more out of custom than present and active rancor.  The women seemed to have erected a temporary tri-partite Entente-more-or-less-Cordiale.

Finally, the meal ended, and the diners drifted away from the table.  Rand went to his room for a few moments, then went to the gunroom to get the notes he had made.  Fred Dunmore was using the private phone as he entered.

“Well, never mind about that, now,” he was saying.  “We’ll talk about it when I see you....  Yes, of course; so am I....  Well, say about eleven....  Be seeing you.”

He hung up and turned to Rand.  “More God-damned union trouble,” he said.  “It’s enough to make a saint lose his religion!  Our factory-hands are organized in the C.I.O., and our warehouse, sales, and shipping personnel are in the A.F. of L., and if they aren’t fighting the company, they’re fighting each other.  Now they have some damn kind of a jurisdictional dispute....  I don’t know what this country’s coming to!” He glared angrily through his octagonal glasses for a moment.  Then his voice took on an ingratiating note.  “Look here, Colonel; I just didn’t understand the situation, until you explained it.  I hope you aren’t taking anything that sister-in-law of mine said seriously.  She just blurts out the first thing that comes into her so-called mind; why, only yesterday she was accusing Gladys of bringing you into this to help her gyp the rest of us.  And before that ...”

“Oh, forget it.”  Rand dismissed Geraldine with a shrug.  “I know she was talking through a highball glass.  As far as selling the collection is concerned, you just let Rivers sell you a bill of something you hadn’t gotten a good look at.  He’s a smart operator, and he’s crooked as a wagon-load of blacksnakes.  Maybe you never realized just how much money Fleming put into this collection; naturally you wouldn’t realize how much could be gotten out of it again.  A lot of this stuff has been here for quite a while, and antiques of any kind tend to increase in value.”

“Well, I want you to know that I’m just as glad as anybody if you can get a better price out of him than I could.”  Dunmore smiled ruefully.  “I guess he’s just a better poker player than I am.”