“You know,” he said, “for a disciple of Korzybski, you came pretty close to confusing orders of abstraction, a couple of times, back there.  You showed that Stephen was at home while Rivers was taking that phone call, a little after ten.  But when you talk about clearing him completely, aren’t you overlooking the possibility that he came back to Rivers’s after you and Philip Cabot left the Gresham place?”

Rand eased the foot-pressure on the gas and spared young Jarrett a side-glance before returning his attention to the road ahead.

“Understand,” Pierre hastened to add, “I don’t believe that Stephen was fool enough to kill Rivers over that fake North & Cheney, but weren’t you producing inferences that hadn’t been abstracted from any descriptive data?”

“Pierre, when I’m working on a case like this, any resemblance between my opinions and the statements I may make is purely due to conscious considerations of policy,” Rand told him.  “I don’t want Farnsworth or Mick McKenna going around bitching this operation up for me.  If they feel justified in eliminating Gresham on the strength of that phone call, I’m satisfied, regardless of the semantics involved.  Right now, the thing that’s worrying me is the ease with which I seem to have talked Farnsworth into laying off Gresham.  He and Olsen both have single-track minds.  They may just dismiss that telephone alibi, such as it is, as mere error of the mortal mind, and go right ahead building some kind of a ramshackle case against Gresham.  Since they picked him for their entry, they won’t want to have to scratch him....  Damn, I wish I could think of where Walters could have sold those pistols!”

“Well, if Rivers wasn’t involved somehow, why was he killed?” Pierre wondered.  “Hey!  Maybe Walters sold the pistols to Umholtz!  He’s just as big a crook as Rivers was, only not quite so smart.”

Rand nodded thoughtfully.  “Maybe so.  And suppose Rivers found out about it, and tried to declare himself in on it.  That stuff would be worth at least ten thousand; I doubt if whoever bought it paid Walters more than two.  In the Umholtz-Rivers income bracket, the difference might be worth killing for.”

“That’s right.  And Umholtz was in the infantry, in the other war; he served in the Twenty-eighth Division.  He was trained to use a bayonet.  And he’d pick that short Mauser; it has about the same weight and balance as a 1903 Springfield.”

“Well, you know, the killer wouldn’t need to have been trained to use a bayonet,” Rand pointed out.  “Mick McKenna made that point, this afternoon.  There have been a lot of war-movies that showed bayonet fighting; pretty nearly everybody knows about the technique that was used.  And against an unarmed and probably unsuspecting victim like Rivers, a great deal of proficiency wouldn’t be needed.”  He slowed the car.  “Up this road?” he asked.

“Yes.  That’s my place, over there.”