Gresham laughed heartily. "Aren't they the damnedest ever seen, though?" he asked. "Made in Germany, about 1870 or '80, about the time arms-collecting was just getting out of the family-heirloom stage, wouldn't you say?"
"I'd say made in Japan, about 1920," Rand replied. "Remember, there were a couple of small human figures on each pistol, a knight and a huntsman? Did you notice that they had slant eyes?" He stopped laughing, and looked at Gresham seriously. "Just how much more of that sort of thing do you think I'm going to have to weed out of the collection, before I can offer it for sale?" he asked.
Gresham shook his head. "They're all. They were Lane Fleming's one false step. Ordinarily, Lane was a careful buyer; he must have let himself get hypnotized by all that ivory and gold, and all that documentation on crested notepaper. You know, Fleming's death was an undeserved stroke of luck for Arnold Rivers. If he hadn't been killed just when he was, he'd have run Rivers out of the old-arms business."
"I notice that Rivers isn't advertising in the American Rifleman any more," Rand observed.
"No; the National Rifle Association stopped his ad, and lifted his membership card for good measure," Gresham said. "Rivers sold a rifle to a collector down in Virginia, about three years ago, while you were still occupying Germany. A fine, early flintlock Kentuck, that had been made out of a fine, late percussion Kentuck by sawing off the breech-end of the barrel, rethreading it for the breech-plug, drilling a new vent, and fitting the lock with a flint hammer and a pan-and-frizzen assembly, and shortening the fore-end to fit. Rivers has a gunsmith over at Kingsville, one Elmer Umholtz, who does all his fraudulent conversions for him. I have an example of Umholtz's craftsmanship, myself. The collector who bought this spurious flintlock spotted what had been done, and squawked to the Rifle Association, and to the postal authorities."
"Rivers claimed, I suppose, that he had gotten it from a family that had owned it ever since it was made, and showed letters signed 'D. Boone' and 'Davy Crockett' to prove it?"
"No, he claimed to have gotten it in trade from some wayfaring collector," Gresham replied. "He convinced Uncle Whiskers, but the N.R.A. took a slightly dimmer view of the transaction, so Rivers doesn't advertise in the Rifleman any more."
"Wasn't there some talk about Whitneyville Walker Colts that had been made out of 1848 Model Colt Dragoons?" Rand asked.
"Oh Lord, yes! This fellow Umholtz was practically turning them out on an assembly-line, for a while. Rivers must have sold about ten of them. You know, Umholtz is a really fine gunsmith; I had him build a deer-rifle for Dot, a couple of years ago—Mexican-Mauser action, Johnson barrel, chambered for .300 Savage; Umholtz made the stock and fitted a scope-sight—it's a beautiful little rifle. I hate to see him prostitute his talents the way he does by making these fake antiques for Rivers. You know, he made one of these mythical heavy .44 six-shooters of the sort Colt was supposed to have turned out at Paterson in 1839 for Colonel Walker's Texas Rangers—you know, the model he couldn't find any of in 1847, when he made the real Walker Colt. That story you find in Sawyer's book."
"Why, that story's been absolutely disproved," Rand said. "There never was any such revolver."