“My God!” Rand made a wry face.  “There must be close to a hundred people around here who’d know that, and all of them are probably convinced that you killed Rivers, and are expressing that opinion at the top of their voices to all comers.  You don’t want a detective, you want a magician!” He took another drag at the cigar, and blew smoke through a circular gun-rack beside him.  “What sort of a character is this Farnsworth, anyhow?” he asked.  “Before the war, I had all the D.A.’s in the state typed and estimated, but since I got back—­”

Gresham slandered the county prosecutor’s legitimacy.  “God-damn headline-hunting little egotist!  He’s running for re-election this year, too.”

“One way, that could be bad.  On the other hand, it might be easy to throw a scare into him....  Stephen, when you were at Rivers’s, were you smoking a cigar?”

Gresham shook his head.  “No.  I threw my cigar away when I got out of the car, and I didn’t light another one till I got home.  If you remember, I was lighting it when I came in here.”

“Yes; so you were.  Well, I don’t suppose, in view of the state of relations between you and Rivers, that you had a drink with him, either?”

“I wouldn’t drink that guy’s liquor if I were dying of snakebite, and he wouldn’t offer me a drink if he knew I was,” Gresham declared.

“Well, did you notice, back near the fireplace, a low table with a fifth of Haig & Haig Pinchbottle, and a couple of glasses, and a siphon, and so on, on it?”

“I saw the table.  There was an ashtray on it, and a book—­I think it was Gluckman’s United States Martial Pistols and Revolvers—­but no bottle, or siphon, or glasses.”

“All right, then; it was the killer.”  Rand explained about the drinks, and the cigar-ashes.  He went on to tell about the destruction of Rivers’s record-cards.

“I don’t get that.”  Gresham was puzzled.  “Unless it was young Gillis, after all.  He could have been knocking down on Rivers, and Rivers caught him at it.”

“I’d thought of that,” Rand admitted.  “But I doubt if Rivers would sit down and drink with him, while accusing him of theft.  And I can’t seem to find anything around Rivers’s place that looks as though it might have been stolen from the Fleming collection, either....  Oh, and that reminds me:  If you have time this afternoon, I wonder if you’d come along with me to the Flemings’ and see just what’s missing.  I’ll have to know that, in any case, and there’s a good possibility that the thefts from the collection and the killing of Rivers are related.”

“Yes, of course,” Gresham agreed.  “And suppose we take Pierre Jarrett along with us.  He knows that collection as well as I do; he’ll spot anything I miss.  He works at home; I’ll call him now.  We can pick him up before we go to the Flemings’.”

They went into Gresham’s bedroom, where there was a phone, and Gresham talked to Pierre Jarrett.  It was arranged that he should pick Jarrett up with his car and come to the Flemings’, while Rand went there directly.