Murder in the Gunroom

by H. Beam Piper

"Here; I'll show you." Goode rose from his seat and went to a rank of steel filing-cabinets behind the desk. In a moment, he was back, with a large manila envelope under his arm, and a huge pistol in either hand. "Here, Mr. Rand," he chuckled. "We'll just test your firearms knowledge. What do you make of these?"

Rand took the pistols and looked at them. They were wheel locks, apparently sixteenth-century South German; they were a good two feet in over-all length, with ball-pommels the size of oranges, and long steel belt-hooks. The stocks were so covered with ivory inlay that the wood showed only in tiny interstices; the metal-work was lavishly engraved and gold-inlaid. To the trigger-guards were attached tags marked Fleming vs. Rivers.

Rand examined each pistol separately, then compared them. Finally, he took a six-inch rule from his pocket and made measurements, first with one edge and then with the other.

"Well, I'm damned," he said, laying them on the desk. "These things are the most complete fakes I ever saw—locks, stocks, barrels and mountings. They're supposed to be late sixteenth-century; I doubt if they were made before 1920. As far as I can see or measure, there isn't the slightest difference between them, except on some of the decorative inlay. The whole job must have been miked in ten-thousandths, and what's more, whoever made them used metric measurements. You'll find pairs of English dueling pistols as early as 1775 that are almost indistinguishable, but in 1575, when these things were supposed to have been made, a gunsmith was working fine when he was working in sixteenth-inches. They just didn't have the measuring instruments, at that time, to do closer work. I won't bother taking these things apart, but if I did, I'd bet all Wall Street to Junior's piggy-bank that I'd find that the screws were machine-threaded and the working-parts interchanged. I've heard about fakes like these,"—he named a famous, recently liquidated West Coast collection—"but I'd never hoped to see an example like this."

Goode gave a hacking chuckle. "You'll do as an arms-expert, Mr. Rand," he said. "And you'd win the piggy-bank. It seems that after Mr. Fleming bought them, he took them apart, and found, just as you say, that the screw-threads had been machine-cut, and that the working-parts were interchangeable from one pistol to the other. There were a lot of papers accompanying them—I have them here—purporting to show that they had been sold by some Austrian nobleman, an anti-Nazi refugee, in whose family they had been since the reign of Maximilian II. They are, of course, fabrications. I looked up the family in the Almanach de Gotha; it simply never existed. At first, Mr. Fleming had been inclined to take the view that Rivers had been equally victimized with himself. However, when Rivers refused to take back the pistols and refund the purchase price, he altered his opinion. He placed them in my hands, instructing me to bring suit and also start criminal action; he was in a fearful rage about it, and swore that he'd drive Rivers out of business. However, before I could start action, Mr. Fleming was killed in that accident, and as he was the sole witness to the fact of the sale, and as none of the heirs was interested, I did nothing about it. In fact, I advised them that action against Rivers would cost the estate more than they could hope to recover in damages." He picked up one of the pistols and examined it. "Now, I don't know what to do about these."

"Take them home and hang them over the mantel," Rand advised. "If I'm going to have anything to do with selling the collection, I don't want anything to do with them."

Goode was peering at the ivory inlay on the underbelly of the stock.

"They are beautiful, and I don't care when they were made," he said. "I think, if nobody else wants them, I'll do just that.... Now, Mr. Rand, what had you intended doing about the collection?"

"Well, that's what I came to see you about, Mr. Goode. As I understand it, it is you who are officially responsible for selling the collection, and the proceeds would be turned over to you for distribution to Mrs. Fleming, Mrs. Dunmore and Mrs. Varcek. Is that correct?"

"Yes. The collection, although in the physical possession of Mrs. Fleming, is still an undistributed asset."