“Would you know it, if you saw it again?” Rand asked.

“Yes.  I remember the serials.  I always look at serials on Confederate arms.  The highest known serial number for a Leech & Rigdon is 1393; this one was 1234.”

Rand pulled the .36 revolver from his pants-leg and gave it a quick glance; the number was 1234.  He handed it to Cabot.

“Is this it?” he asked.

Cabot checked the number.  “Yes.  And I remember this bruise on the left grip; Fleming was saying that he was glad it would be on the inside, so it wouldn’t show when he hung it on the wall.”  He carried the revolver to the desk and held it under the light.  “Why, this thing wasn’t fired at all!” he exclaimed.  “I thought that Fleming might have loaded it, meaning to target it—­he had a pistol range back of his house—­but the chambers are clean.”  He sniffed at it.  “Hoppe’s Number Nine,” he said.  “And I can see traces of partly dissolved rust, and no traces of fouling.  What the devil, Jeff?”

“It probably hasn’t been fired since Appomattox,” Rand agreed.  “Philip, do you think all this didn’t-know-it-was-loaded routine might be an elaborate suicide build-up, either before or after the fact?”

“Absolutely not!” There was a trace of impatience in Cabot’s voice.  “Lane Fleming wasn’t the man to commit suicide.  I knew him too well ever to believe that.”

“I heard a rumor that he was about to lose control of his company,” Rand mentioned.  “You know how much Premix meant to him.”

“That’s idiotic!” Cabot’s voice was openly scornful, now, and he seemed a little angry that Rand should believe such a story, as though his confidence in his friend’s intelligence had been betrayed.  “Good Lord, Jeff, where did you ever hear a yarn like that?”

“Quote, usually well-informed sources, unquote.”

“Well, they were unusually ill-informed, that time,” Cabot replied.  “Take my word for it, there’s absolutely nothing in it.”

“So it wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t suicide,” Rand considered.  “Philip, what is the prognosis on this merger of Premix and National Milling & Packaging, now that Lane Fleming’s opposition has been, shall we say, liquidated?”

Cabot’s head jerked up; he looked at Rand in shocked surprise.

“My God, you don’t think...?” he began.  “Jeff, are you investigating Lane Fleming’s death?”

“I was retained to sell the collection,” Rand stated.  “Now, I suppose, I’ll have to find out who’s been stealing those pistols, and recover them, and jail the thief and the fence.  But I was not retained to investigate the death of Lane Fleming.  And I do not do work for which I am not paid,” he added, with mendacious literalness.

“I see.  Well, the merger’s going through.  It won’t be official until the sixteenth of May, when the Premix stockholders meet, but that’s just a formality.  It’s all cut and dried and in the bag now.  Better let me pick you up a little Premix; there’s still some lying around.  You’ll make a little less than four-for-one on it.”