“Well, let’s skip Fleming, for a minute,” McKenna suggested.  “You think this butler, at the Fleming place, was robbing the collection.  And you say he could’ve sold the stuff he stole to Rivers.  Well, when the family gets you in to work on the collection, Jeeves, or whatever his name is, realizes that you’re going to spot what’s been going on, and will probably suspect him.  He knows you’re no ordinary arms-expert; you’re an agency dick.  So he gets scared.  If you catch up with Rivers, Rivers’ll talk.  So he comes over here, last night, and kills Rivers off before you can get to him.  And while Rivers may not keep a record of the stuff he got from Jeeves, or whatever his name is—­”

“Walters,” Rand supplied.

“Walters, then.  While he may not keep a record of what he bought from Walters, the chances are he does keep a record of the stuff Walters got from him, to use for replacements, so the card-file goes into the fire.  How’s that?”

The flare of another flash-bulb made distorted shadows dance over the walls.

“That would hang together, now,” Rand agreed.  “Of course, I haven’t found anything here, except the revolver I bought yesterday, that came from the Fleming place, but I’ll add this:  As soon as Rivers found out I was working for the Fleming family, he tried to get that revolver back from me.  Offered me seventy-five dollars’ worth of credit on anything else in the shop if I’d give it back to him, not twenty minutes after I’d paid him sixty for it.”

“See!” McKenna pounced.  “Look; suppose you had a lot of hot stuff, in a place like this.  You might take a chance on selling something that had gotten mixed in with your legitimate stuff, but would you want to sell it right back to where it had been stolen from?”

“No, I wouldn’t.  And if I were a butler who’d been robbing a valuable collection, and an agency man moved in and started poking around, I might get in a panic and do something extreme.  That all hangs together, too.”

While Rand was talking to McKenna, Private Jameson wandered back through the shop.

“Hey, Sarge, is there any way into the house from here?” he asked.  “The outside doors are all locked, and I can’t raise anybody.”

Rand pointed out the flight of steps beside the fireplace.  “I saw Rivers come out of the house that way, yesterday,” he said.

The State Policeman went up the steps and tried the door; it opened, and he went through.

“Chances are Mrs. Rivers is away,” McKenna said.  “She’s away a lot.  They have a colored girl who comes in by the day, but she doesn’t generally get here before noon.  And the clerk doesn’t get here till about the same time.”

“You seem to know a lot about this household,” Rand said.

“Yeah.  We have this place marked up as a bad burglary- and stick-up hazard; we keep an eye on it.  Rivers has all these guns, he does a big cash business, he always has a couple of hundred to a thousand on him—­it’s a wonder somebody hasn’t made a try at this place long ago....  Tell you what, Jeff; say you check up on this butler at the Fleming place for us, and we’ll check up here and see if we can find any of the stuff that was stolen.  We can get together and compare notes.  Maybe one or another of us may run across something about that accident of Fleming’s, too.”