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,