“That’s a good report, mister,” the corporal approved.  “You stick around; we’ll be right along.  You haven’t touched anything, have you?”

“Not around the body.  How long will it take you to get here?”

“About ten minutes.  I’ll tell Sergeant McKenna right away.”

Rand hung up and glanced at his watch.  Ten twenty-two; he gave himself seven minutes and went around the room rapidly, looking only at pistols.  He saw nothing that might have come from the Fleming collection.  Finally, he opened the front door, just as a white State Police car was pulling up at the end of the walk.

Sergeant Ignatius Loyola McKenna—­customarily known and addressed as Mick—­piled out almost before it had stopped.  The driver, a stocky, blue-eyed Finn with a corporal’s chevrons, followed him, and two privates got out from behind, dragging after them a box about the size and shape of an Army footlocker.  McKenna was halfway up the drive before he recognized Rand.  Then he stopped short.

“Well, Jaysus-me-beads!” He turned suddenly to the corporal.  “My God, Aarvo; you said his name was Grant!”

“That’s what I thought he said.”  Rand recognized the singsong accent he had heard on the phone.  “You know him?”

“Know him?” McKenna stepped aside quickly, to avoid being overrun by the two privates with the equipment-box.  He sighed resignedly.  “Aarvo, this is the notorious Jefferson Davis Rand.  Tri-State Agency, in New Belfast.”  He gestured toward the Finn.  “Corporal Aarvo Kavaalen,” he introduced.  “And Privates Skinner and Jameson....  Well, where is it?”

“Right inside.”  Rand stepped backward, gesturing them in.  “Careful; it’s just inside the doorway.”

McKenna and the corporal entered; the two privates set down their box outside and followed.  They all drew up in a semicircle around the late Arnold Rivers and looked at him critically.

“Jesus!” Kavaalen pronounced the J-sound as though it were Zh; he gave all his syllables an equally-accented intonation.  “Say, somebody gave him a good job!”

“Somebody’s been seeing too many war-movies.”  McKenna got a cigarette out of his tunic pocket and lit it in Rand’s pipe-bowl.  “Want to confess now, or do you insist on a third degree with all the trimmings?”

Kavaalen looked wide-eyed at Rand, then at McKenna, and then back at Rand.  Rand laughed.

“Now, Mick!” he reproved.  “You know I never kill anybody unless I have a clear case of self-defense, and a flock of witnesses to back it up.”

McKenna nodded and reassured his corporal.  “That’s right, Aarvo; when Jeff Rand kills anybody, it’s always self-defense.  And he doesn’t generally make messes like this.”  He gave the body a brief scrutiny, then turned to Rand.  “You looked around, of course; what do you make of it?”

“Last night, sometime,” Rand reconstructed, “Rivers had a visitor.  A man, who smoked cigars.  He and Rivers were on friendly, or at least sociable, terms.  They sat back there by the fire for some time, smoking and drinking.  The shades were all drawn.  I don’t know whether that was standard procedure, or because this conference was something clandestine.  Finally, Rivers’s visitor got up to leave.