She hurried out of the room.  Voices sounded in the hall; a man’s and a girl’s.

“That’s Pierre and Karen,” Dot said.  “Let’s all go up in the gunroom, and wait for the others there.”

They went out to meet the newcomers.  The man was a few inches shorter than Rand, with gray eyes that looked startlingly light against the dark brown of his face.  He wasn’t using a cane, but he walked with a slight limp.  Beside him was a slender girl, almost as tall as he was, with dark brown hair and brown eyes.  She wore a rust-brown sweater and a brown skirt, and low-heeled walking-shoes.

Irene Gresham went into the introductions, the newcomers shook hands with Rand and were advised that the style of address was “Jeff,” rather than “Colonel Rand,” and then Dot suggested going up to the gunroom.  Irene Gresham said she’d stay downstairs; she’d have to let the others in.

“Have you seen this collection before?” Pierre Jarrett inquired as he and Rand went upstairs together.

“About two years ago,” Rand said.  “Stephen had just gotten a cased dueling set by Wilkinson, then.  From the Far West Hobby Shop, I think.”

“Oh, he’s gotten a lot of new stuff since then, and sold off about a dozen culls and duplicates,” the former Marine said.  “I’ll show you what’s new, till the others come.”

They reached the head of the stairs and started down the hall to the gunroom, in the wing that projected out over the garage.  Along the way, the girls detached themselves for nose-powdering.

Unlike the room at the Fleming home, Stephen Gresham’s gunroom had originally been something else—­a nursery, or play-room, or party-room.  There were windows on both long sides, which considerably reduced the available wall-space, and the situation wasn’t helped any by the fact that the collection was about thirty per cent long-arms.  Things were pretty badly crowded; most of the rifles and muskets were in circular barracks-racks, away from the walls.

“Here, this one’s new since you were here,” Pierre said, picking a long musket from one of the racks and handing it to Rand.  “How do you like this one?”

Rand took it and whistled appreciatively.  “Real European matchlock; no, I never saw that.  Looks like North Italian, say 1575 to about 1600.”

“That musket,” Pierre informed him, “came over on the Mayflower.”

“Really, or just a gag?” Rand asked.  “It easily could have.  The Mayflower Company bought their muskets in Holland, from some seventeenth-century forerunner of Bannerman’s, and Europe was full of muskets like this then, left over from the wars of the Holy Roman Empire and the French religious wars.”

“Yes; I suppose all their muskets were obsolete types for the period,” Pierre agreed.  “Well, that’s a real Mayflower arm.  Stephen has the documentation for it.  It came from the Charles Winthrop Sawyer collection, and there were only three ownership changes between the last owner and the Mayflower Company.  Stephen only paid a hundred dollars for it, too.”