Dunmore turned in his chair angrily. "Now, look here!" he shouted. "There's a limit to what I've got to take from you...." He stopped short, as Nelda, beside him, moved slightly, and his words ended in something that sounded like a smothered moan. Rand suspected that she had kicked her husband painfully under the table. Then Walters came in with the meat course, and firing ceased until the butler had retired. "By the way," Rand tossed into the conversational vacuum that followed his exit, "does anybody know anything about a record Mr. Fleming kept of his collection?" "Why, no; can't say I do," Dunmore replied promptly, evidently grateful for the change of subject. "You mean, like an inventory?" "Oh, Fred, you do!" Nelda told him impatiently. "You know that big gray book Father kept all his pistols entered in." "It was a gray ledger, with a black leather back," Gladys said. "He kept it in the little bookcase over the workbench in the gunroom." "I'll look for it," Rand said. "Sure it's still there? It would be a big help to me." The rest of the dinner passed in relative tranquillity. The conversation proceeded in fairly safe channels. Dunmore was anxious to avoid any further reference to the sum of ten thousand dollars; when Gladys induced Rand to talk about his military experiences, he lapsed into preoccupied silence. Several times, Geraldine and Nelda aimed halfhearted feline swipes at one another, more out of custom than present and active rancor. The women seemed to have erected a temporary tri-partite _Entente_-more-or-less-_Cordiale_. Finally, the meal ended, and the diners drifted away from the table. Rand went to his room for a few moments, then went to the gunroom to get the notes he had made. Fred Dunmore was using the private phone as he entered. "Well, never mind about that, now," he was saying. "We'll talk about it when I see you.... Yes, of course; so am I.... Well, say about eleven.... Be seeing you." He hung up and turned to Rand. "More God-damned union trouble," he said. "It's enough to make a saint lose his religion! Our factory-hands are organized in the C.I.O., and our warehouse, sales, and shipping personnel are in the A.F. of L., and if they aren't fighting the company, they're fighting each other. Now they have some damn kind of a jurisdictional dispute.... I don't know what this country's coming to!" He glared angrily through his octagonal glasses for a moment. Then his voice took on an ingratiating note. "Look here, Colonel; I just didn't understand the situation, until you explained it. I hope you aren't taking anything that sister-in-law of mine said seriously. She just blurts out the first thing that comes into her so-called mind; why, only yesterday she was accusing Gladys of bringing you into this to help her gyp the rest of us. And before that ..."