“Fred Dunmore mentioned a packaged diabetic ration you’d developed,” Rand mentioned.

“Oh, yes.”  Varcek shrugged.  “Yes.  Something like an Army field-ration, for diabetics to carry when traveling, or wherever proper food may be unobtainable.  That is for the company; soon we put it on the market, and make lots of money.  But this other, that is my own private work.”

Dunmore had come in while Varcek was speaking and had seated himself beside his wife.

“Don’t let him kid you, Colonel,” he said.  “Anton’s just as keen about that dollar as the rest of us.  I don’t know what he’s cooking up, up there in the attic, but I’ll give ten-to-one we’ll be selling it in twenty-five-cent packages inside a year, and selling plenty of them....  Oh, and speaking about that dollar; how did you make out with Gresham and his friends?”

“I didn’t.  They’d expected to pay about twenty thousand for the collection; Rivers’s offer has them stopped.  And even if they could go over twenty-five, I think Rivers would raise them.  He’s afraid to let them get the collection; Pierre Jarrett and Karen Lawrence intended using their share of it to go into the old-arms business, in competition with him.”

“Uh-huh, that’s smart,” Dunmore approved.  “It’s always better to take a small loss stopping competition than to let it get too big for you.  You save a damn-sight bigger loss later.”

“How soon do you think the pistols will be sold?” Gladys asked.

“Oh, in about a month, at the outside,” Rand said, continuing to explain what had to be done first.

“Well, I’m glad of that,” Varcek commented.  “I never liked those things, and after what happened ...  The sooner they can be sold, the better.”

Breakfast finally ended, and Varcek and Dunmore left for the Premix plant.  Rand debated for a moment the wisdom of speaking to Gladys about the missing pistols, then decided to wait until his suspicions were better verified.  After a few minutes in the gunroom, going over Lane Fleming’s arms-books on the shelf over the workbench without finding any trace of the book in which he had catalogued his collection, he got his hat and coat, went down to the garage, and took out his car.

It had stopped raining for the time being; the dingy sky showed broken spots like bits of bluing on a badly-rusted piece of steel.  As he got out of his car in front of Arnold Rivers’s red-brick house, he was wondering just how he was going to go about what he wanted to do.  After all ...

The door of the shop was unlocked, and opened with a slow clanging of the door-chime, but the interior was dark.  All the shades had been pulled, and the lights were out.  For a moment Rand stood in the doorway, adjusting his eyes to the darkness within and wondering where everybody was.

Then, in the path of light that fell inward from the open door, he saw two feet in tan shoes, toes up, at the end of tweed-trousered legs, on the floor.  An instant later he stepped inside, pulled the door shut after him, and was using his pen-light to find the electric switch.