“Yes?” Rand succeeded in being negligent about it.

“Oh my, yes!  The newspaper people wanted to take pictures of me holding it, and then, there was an antique-dealer who was here trying to buy it.”

“Who was that—­Arnold Rivers?”

“Why yes!  Do you know him?  He has an antique-shop on the other side of Rosemont; he doesn’t sell anything but guns and swords and that sort of thing,” Kirchner said.  “He was here, making inquiries about it, and my clerk showed it to him, and then he started making offers for it—­first ten dollars, and then fifteen, and then twenty; he got up as high as sixty dollars.  I suppose it’s worth a couple of hundred.”

It was probably worth about thirty-five.  Rand was intrigued by this second instance of an un-Rivers-like willingness to spare no expense to get possession of a .36-caliber percussion revolver.

“Did he have it in his hands?” he asked.

“Oh, yes; he looked it over carefully.  I suppose he thought he could get a lot of money for it, because of the accident, and Mr. Fleming being such a prominent man,” Kirchner suggested.

Rand allowed himself to be struck by an idea.

“Say, you know, that would make it worth more, at that!” he exclaimed.  “What do you know!  I never thought of that....  Look, Mr. Kirchner; I’m supposed to get as much money for these pistols, for the heirs, as I can.  How would you like to give me a letter, vouching for this as the pistol Mr. Fleming killed himself with?  Put in how you found it in his hand, and mention the serial numbers, so that whoever buys it will know it’s the same revolver.”  He picked up the Colt and showed Kirchner the serials, on the butt, and in front of the trigger-guard.  “See, here it is:  2444.”

Kirchner would be more than willing to oblige Mr. Goode’s agent; he typed out the letter himself, looked twice at the revolver to make sure of the number, took Rand’s word for the make, model, and caliber, signed it, and even slammed his seal down on it.  Rand thanked him profusely, put the letter in his pocket, and stuck the Colt down his pants-leg.

About two miles from the county seat Rand stopped his car on a deserted stretch of road and got out.  Unwinding the wire Kirchner had wrapped around the revolver, he picked up an empty beer-can from the ditch, set it against an embankment, stepped back about thirty feet and began firing.  The first shot kicked up dirt a little over the can—­Rand never could be sure just how high any percussion Colt was sighted—­and the other four hit the can.  He carried the revolver back to the car and put it into the glove-box with the Leech & Rigdon.

After starting the car, he snapped on the radio, in time for the two fifteen news-broadcast from the New Belfast station.  As he had expected, the murder was out; the daily budget of strikes and Congressional investigations and international turmoil was enlivened by a more or less imaginative account of what had already been christened the “Rosemont Bayonet Murder.”  Rand resigned himself to the inevitable influx of reporters.  Then he swore, as the newscaster continued: