A swarm of cars were parked in front and beside the red-brick house.  Among them, Rand spotted a gold-lettered green sedan of the New Belfast Dispatch and Evening Express, a black coupe bearing the blazonry of the New Belfast Mercury, cars from a couple of papers at Louisburg, the state capital, and cars from papers as far distant as Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Cincinnati.  In front of the shop, a motley assemblage of journalists was interviewing and photographing an undersized runt in a tan Chesterfield topcoat and a gray Homburg hat, whom they were addressing as Mr. Farnsworth.  The District Attorney of Scott County had a mustache which failed miserably to make him look like Tom Dewey; he impressed Rand as the sort of offensive little squirt who compensates for his general insignificance by bad manners and loud-mouthed self-assertion.  Corporal Kavaalen, standing in the doorway of the shop, caught sight of Rand and his companion as they got out of the car and came to meet them, hustling them around the crowd and into the shop before anybody could notice and recognize them.

“That was a good tip, about the telephone,” he said softly.  “Mick checked at the Rosemont exchange.  Rivers got a long-distance call from Topeka last night; ten fifteen to ten seventeen.  We got the night long distance operator out of bed, and she confirmed it; Rivers took the call himself.  He gets a lot of long distance calls in the evenings; she knew his voice.”  He corrected himself, shifting to the past tense and glancing, as he did, at the chalk outline on the floor, now scuffed by many feet, and the dried bloodstains.  “You say this puts Gresham in the clear?”

“Absolutely,” Rand assured him.  “He was at home from nine twenty-two on.”  He introduced Pierre Jarrett, and explained their mission.  “You find anything except what’s here in the shop?”

“Only Rivers’s own .38 Smith & Wesson, in his room, and a lot of pistols out in the garage, that look like junk to me,” Kavaalen said.  “I’ll show them to you.”

Rand nodded.  “Pierre, you look around the shop; I’ll see what this other stuff is.”

He followed Kavaalen through a door at the rear of the shop; the same one through which Cecil Gillis had carried the Kentucky rifle the afternoon before.  Beside Rivers’s car, there was a long workbench in the garage, and piles of wood and cardboard cartons, and stacks of newspapers, and a barrel full of excelsior, all evidently used in preparing arms for shipment.  There was also a large pile of old pistols, and a number of long-arms.

Rand pawed among the pistols; they were, as the State Police corporal had said, all junk.  The sort of things a dealer has to buy, at times, in order to get something really good.  Many of them had been partially dismantled for parts.  When he was certain that the heap of junk-weapons didn’t conceal anything of value, he returned to the shop.  Pierre was waiting for him by Rivers’s desk.