Murder in the Gunroom - H. Beam Piper (digital ebook reader .TXT) 📗

then you’ll know that Anton Varcek’s still out, so leave it open for him. That’s the way we do here; last one in locks up.” IX

Rand found another car, a smoke-gray Plymouth coupé, standing on the left of his Lincoln when he went down to the garage. Running his car outside and down to the highway, he settled down to his regular style of driving⁠—a barely legal fifty m.p.h., punctuated by bursts of absolutely felonious speed whenever he found an unobstructed straightaway. Entering Rosemont, he slowed and went through the underpass at the railroad tracks, speeding again when he was clear of the village. A few minutes later, he was turning into the crushed-limestone drive that led up to the buff-brick Gresham house.

A girl met him at the door, a cute little redhead in a red-striped dress, who gave him a smile that seemed to start on the bridge of her nose and lift her whole face up after it. She held out her hand to him.

“Colonel Rand!” she exclaimed. “I’ll bet you don’t remember me.”

“Sure I do. You’re Dot,” Rand said. “At least, I think you are; the last time I saw you, you were in pigtails. And you were only about so high.” He measured with his hand. “The last time I was here, you were away at school. You must be old enough to vote, by now.”

“I will, this fall,” she replied. “Come on in; you’re the first one here. Daddy hasn’t gotten back from town yet. He called and said he’d be delayed till about nine.” In the hall she took his hat and coat and guided him toward the parlor on the right.

“Oh, Mother!” she called. “Here’s Colonel Rand!”

Rand remembered Irene Gresham, too; an overage dizzy blonde who was still living in the Flaming Youth era of the twenties. She was an extremely good egg; he liked her very much. After all, insisting upon remaining an F. Scott Fitzgerald character was a harmless and amusing foible, and it was no more than right that somebody should try to keep the bright banner of Jazz Age innocence flying in a grim and sullen world. He accepted a cigarette, shared the flame of his lighter with mother and daughter, and submitted to being gushed over.

“… and, honestly, Jeff, you get handsomer every year,” Irene Gresham rattled on. “Dot, doesn’t he look just like Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind? But then, of course, Jeff really is a Southerner, so⁠ ⁠…”

The doorbell interrupted this slight non sequitur. She broke off, rising.

“Sit still, Jeff; I’m just going to see who it is. You know, we’re down to only one servant now, and it seems as if it’s always her night off, or something. I don’t know, honestly, what I’m going to do.⁠ ⁠…”

She hurried out of the room. Voices sounded in the hall; a man’s and a girl’s.

“That’s Pierre and Karen,” Dot said. “Let’s all go up in the gunroom, and wait for the others there.”

They went out to meet the newcomers. The man was a few inches shorter than Rand, with gray eyes that looked startlingly light against the dark brown of his face. He wasn’t using a cane, but he walked with a slight limp. Beside him was a slender girl, almost as tall as he was, with dark brown hair and brown eyes. She wore a rust-brown sweater and a brown skirt, and low-heeled walking-shoes.

Irene Gresham went into the introductions, the newcomers shook hands with Rand and were advised that the style of address was “Jeff,” rather than “Colonel Rand,” and then Dot suggested going up to the gunroom. Irene Gresham said she’d stay downstairs; she’d have to let the others in.

“Have you seen this collection before?” Pierre Jarrett inquired as he and Rand went upstairs together.

“About two years ago,” Rand said. “Stephen had just gotten a cased dueling set by Wilkinson, then. From the Far West Hobby Shop, I think.”

“Oh, he’s gotten a lot of new stuff since then, and sold off about a dozen culls and duplicates,” the former Marine said. “I’ll show you what’s new, till the others come.”

They reached the head of the stairs and started down the hall to the gunroom, in the wing that projected out over the garage. Along the way, the girls detached themselves for nose-powdering.

Unlike the room at the Fleming home, Stephen Gresham’s gunroom had originally been something else⁠—a nursery, or playroom, or party-room. There were windows on both long sides, which considerably reduced the available wall-space, and the situation wasn’t helped any by the fact that the collection was about thirty percent long-arms. Things were pretty badly crowded; most of the rifles and muskets were in circular barracks-racks, away from the walls.

“Here, this one’s new since you were here,” Pierre said, picking a long musket from one of the racks and handing it to Rand. “How do you like this one?”

Rand took it and whistled appreciatively. “Real European matchlock; no, I never saw that. Looks like North Italian, say 1575 to about 1600.”

“That musket,” Pierre informed him, “came over on the Mayflower.”

“Really, or just a gag?” Rand asked. “It easily could have. The Mayflower Company bought their muskets in Holland, from some seventeenth-century forerunner of Bannerman’s, and Europe was full of muskets like this then, left over from the wars of the Holy Roman Empire and the French religious wars.”

“Yes; I suppose all their muskets were obsolete types for the period,” Pierre agreed. “Well, that’s a real Mayflower arm. Stephen has the documentation for it. It came from the Charles Winthrop Sawyer collection, and there were only three ownership changes between the last owner and the Mayflower Company. Stephen only paid a hundred dollars for it, too.”

“That was practically stealing,” Rand said. He carried the musket to the light and examined it closely. “Nice condition, too; I wouldn’t be afraid to fire this with a full charge, right now.” He handed the weapon back. “He didn’t lose a thing