"My God!" Varcek stared at Rand unbelievingly. "Why, he hit you! You're wounded!"
"Only in the necktie," Rand reassured him. "I have a hole in my shirt, too." He reached under the latter garment and rummaged, as though to evict a small trespasser. When he brought out his hand, he was holding a battered .25-caliber bullet. He held it out to show to Varcek and Ritter.
"Sure," Ritter grinned at Varcek. "Didn't you know? Superman."
"I'm wearing a bulletproof vest; Mick McKenna loaned it to me yesterday," Rand enlightened Varcek. "I never wore one of the damn things before, and if I can help it, I'll never wear one again. I'm damn near stewed alive in it."
"Think how hot you'd be, right now, if you hadn't been wearing it," Ritter reminded him.
"Then you knew, since yesterday, that he would do this?" Varcek asked.
"I knew one or the other of you would," Rand replied. "I had quite a few reasons for thinking it might be Dunmore, and one good one for not suspecting you."
"You mean my dislike for firearms?"
"That could have been feigned, or it could have been overcome," Rand replied. "I mean your knowledge of biology and biochemistry. If you'd killed Lane Fleming, there'd have been no clumsy business of fake accidents; not as long as both of you ate at the same table. He'd have just died, an unimpeachably natural death." He turned to Ritter. "Dave, I'm going upstairs; I want to get out of this damned coat of mail I'm wearing. While I'm doing it, I want you to call Carter Tipton, at the Jarrett place, and Humphrey Goode, and Mick McKenna, in that order. Tell Goode to get over here as fast as he can, and come up to my room; tell him we have to consider ways and means of implementing my suggestion to him."