Cabot's combination library and gunroom was on the first floor. Like
Rand's own, his collection was hung on racks over low bookcases on either
side of the room. It was strictly a collector's collection, intensely
specialized. There were all but a few of the U.S. regulation single-shot
pistols, a fair representation of secondary types, most of the revolvers
of the Civil War, and all the later revolvers and automatics. In
addition, there were British pistols of the Revolution and 1812,
Confederate revolvers, a couple of Spanish revolvers of 1898, the Lugers
and Mausers and Steyers of the first World War, and the pistols of all
our allies, beginning with the French weapons of the Revolution.
"I'm having the devil's own time filling in for this last war," Cabot
said. "I have a want-ad running in the _Rifleman_, and I've gotten a few:
that Nambu, and that Japanese Model-14, and the Polish Radom, and the
Italian Glisenti, and that Tokarev, and, of course, the P-'38 and the
Canadian Browning; but it's going to take the devil's own time. I hope
nobody starts another war, for a few years, till I can get caught up on
the last one."
Rand was looking at the Confederate revolvers. Griswold & Grier, Haiman
Brothers, Tucker & Sherrod, Dance Brothers & Park, Spiller & Burr--there
it was: Leech & Rigdon. He tapped it on the cylinder with a finger.
"Wasn't it one of those things that killed Lane Fleming?" he asked.
"Leech & Rigdon? So I'm told." Cabot hesitated. "Jeff, I saw that
revolver, not four hours before Fleming was shot. Had it in my hands;
looked it over carefully." He shook his head. "It absolutely was not
loaded. It was empty, and there was rust in the chambers."
"Then how the hell did he get shot?" Rand wanted to know.
"That I couldn't say; I'm only telling you how he didn't get shot. Here,
this is how it was. It was a Thursday, and I'd come halfway out from town
before I remembered that I hadn't bought a copy of _Time_, so I stopped
at Biddle's drugstore, in the village, for one. Just as I was getting
into my car, outside, Lane Fleming drove up and saw me. He blew his horn
at me, and then waved to me with this revolver in his hand. I went over
and looked at it, and he told me he'd found it hanging back of the
counter at a barbecue-stand, where the road from Rosemont joins Route 22.
There had been some other pistols with it, and I went to see them later,
but they were all trash. The Leech & Rigdon had been the only decent
thing there, and Fleming had talked it out of this fellow for ten
dollars. He was disgustingly gleeful about it, particularly as it was
a better specimen than mine."
"Would you know it, if you saw it again?" Rand asked.
"Yes. I remember the serials. I always look at serials on Confederate
arms. The highest known serial number for a Leech & Rigdon is 1393; this
one was 1234."
Rand pulled the .36 revolver from his pants-leg and gave it a quick
glance; the number was 1234. He handed it to Cabot.
"Is this it?" he asked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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